Every Mana Fixing Land Cycle Ever Part 2

Ryan Overturf concludes his look at every mana fixing land cycle ever printed in Magic, and what they mean for Cube! 

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Transcript

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What's up gamers? Welcome back to 180 MTG. My name is Ryan Overturf, and this week is part two of my look at every mana fixing land cycle ever. Last week I started this look going in order by release date for these cycles. So when the cycle starts, I end up talking about just the full cycle to not jump around and do half at a time. So I started with Alpha Duels, of course, your tropical islands, etc., and now I'm kind of just kind of cruising along in order by release date, and I've gotten all the way up to Battle for Zendicar with Battle Lands. So I'm just going to jump in today, check out part one if you haven't listened yet, talked about a lot of very important cycles, and a lot of more charming cycles and stuff in between there as well. But we're starting with Battle for Zendikar lands today. So the Battle Lands are typed duels. There is now a full ten of these. The first five were printed into standard and Battle for Zendikar, and that standard format actually had just ridiculously strong mana for four color mana bases, given the fact that cons of Tarkir had printed allied fetches into standard, so you could have really strong mana bases there, and it was just a half cycle for many years until over the course of the last year the enemy-colored entries were printed, so now we have all ten of the battle lands. So these are typed duels that enter the battlefield tapped unless you control two or more basic lands. So Canopy Vista is a forest plains, of course, taps for green or white, and enters the battlefield tapped unless you control two or more basic lands. As typed duels that have the ability to enter the battlefield untapped, these are quite strong. Notably, they are going to enter tapped at least for the first two turns. You have to get some basic lands on the battlefield first. That does make them quite a bit more modest than original duels or even shock lands, but as the game progresses, once you have the two basics, they are just basically the same as an original duel and a little bit stronger than shock lands there. And it's worth pointing out that this cycle is dirt cheap. Most of these have already been reprinted into multiple commander decks, even the new ones. The only one that only has one printing at this time is Eclipse Step, that's the black-white entry, and even then it's still only like three or four bucks. Everything else is sub-a dollar. That means that we now have a cycle of typed duels that can fit into budget cubes, which is meaningful for cards like Knight of the White Orchid, really just anything that references any basic land type, you get a little bit more fixing consistency there, some more synergies open up with the ability to find untapped duels and just have more untapped lands with those basic land types. There's not a ton to say about these outside of them being appealing typed mana fixing, but that does say a lot. These are appealing cards for Cube. There is a little bit of give and take with the battle lands given that they can't enter untapped on the first turn, and they will enter untapped on later turns. They kind of advantage decks that are trying to go longer a little bit more than aggressive decks, so they fit better into three plus color decks than they do into two-color decks, but you'll certainly play them in a two-color deck, and the fact that they do incentivize you to have some basic lands in your deck does go a long way into making them fit more into two or three color decks. So I think these are pretty well designed, they are solid game pieces. I only have them slotted for an upcoming cube project. I've played with them a little bit, I brought them to a stone soup draft recently, and I like the way that they played. So I'm a fan of these. I intend to cube with them more in the future. They're a cycle that um I have liked more now that all ten are printed. I didn't think about them too much when only five existed, but I do think they play pretty well. And that brings us to a cycle of lands that do not play very well. The Snarls first started with Shadows over Inastrod, later completed in Strixhaven. And also just given the perfect name in Strixhaven, the original Shadows entries just had kind of regular names for lands, so choked estuary as a land enters the battlefield. You may reveal an island or swamp from your hand, and if you don't, choked estuary enters the battlefield tapped, and it taps for blue or black. So you need to have an island or a swamp card, whatever corresponding basic land types, or not basic land types, just land types. It can be a dual land, you reveal to these will cause them to enter the battlefield untapped. But then all five entries that were printed in Strixhaven were called something snarl, pertaining to something in the world of Strixhaven. So we have all ten of these now, and these have always been colossally disappointing lands to put in your constructed deck. They did see some play in Pioneer when Meta bases were a little bit more modest when that format first launched, but for the most part, these are lands that tell you that they might enter the battlefield untapped on the first turn, but overwhelmingly, even going to the first turn, if you keep a small number of land hand, or of course when you top deck these, these enter the battlefield tapped the overwhelming majority of the time. They kind of promise something that they never deliver on. It would be really hard for me to say very many positive things about the Snarl cycle. Largely, I would rather be playing with Guild Gates than these, because maybe there's a gate synergy, and the guild gates are honest about the fact that they enter the battlefield tapped, where I think that like a fortified village looks like something that's gonna be really nice for your green and white deck if you want to curve out early, but it's just gonna gum up the works on turn three or four, and then if you have any additional non-basic lands in your deck, like any non-typed land is not gonna be able to reveal to these, so then even keeping a two or three lander sometimes is a tapped land even on the early turns of the game. So these are just lands that I don't mess with. I don't own any of these, I don't want to own any of these. They kind of incentivize playing more basic lands, and they do play better in two-color decks than three-colored decks, or more colors, certainly. So yeah, there's the nice thing that I'm gonna say about them. And they are very cheap because they're not appealing and nobody wants them. You can put these in a cube, there are budget options that can enter the battlefield untapped on the first turn, but generally the experience of playing with them is just so foul that I'm kind of against it. I'm not trying to yuck anybody's yum, but I do earnestly just hate these. Alright, back to some sweet lands. Amon Cat introduced a cycle of five two-color typed cycling dual lands that was later completed in commander decks very recently. So Canyon Slough is the swamp mountain, taps for black or red, Canyon Slough enters the battlefield tapped, and it is cycling too. So these are just kind of two-color lands. The triomes were introduced and completed before this land cycle was later completed. I like these a lot more than triombs. I'm really happy that they completed this cycle. Some people call these bicycle lands because by their two colors and they have cycling cycle. I like just calling them cycling duels. They enter tapped, so you know you're not going to be able to have super busted mana bases, you're not gonna be able to curve out playing these in a deck that features many colors, but you're always happy to have these in a two-color deck. They play pretty well in three-color decks, and being typed duels does give them synergies and kind of things you can make use of as you branch into four or five-color decks as well. I specifically use these in environments where I use tapped lands as sort of an aspect of the design. The two examples are gonna be 30 to 50 Feral Hogs, where I don't have any dual lands that enter the battlefield untapped, which does kind of slow the games down and makes you really think about your mana bases instead of just playing a five-colored deck and having access to whatever you want and kind of focusing players on getting red mana in a way where you don't just take every dual land because they enter tapped and there are drawbacks, and then the one burt where everything costs one, so lands entering tapped is a real cost, and then cycling is also a buyout. So things entering tapped is a cost, having the cycling buyout, and then also kind of making it more appealing to stick to two or three colors because you only get so much fixing, and them entering tapped is that cost. I really like these designs. I believe I only have them in those two cubes and just the red ones in the 30 to 50 feral hogs environment. But anywhere we're kind of playing that aesthetic where you do want mana fixing to be a little bit more modest, and maybe you're taking advantage of type duels like 30 to 50 feral hogs has fetched lands, the one burt has a number of cards that actually call out land types as ways, like not while Nikodal gets larger if you have a plains and a mountain, so the type duels give you an advantage there. And both of those cubes actually also have triumphs. So where I currently use these, it's because the lands entering tapped as an aspect of the design and kind of toning down the mana fixing in that way. But they are also really cheap options, these are all sub a dollar, they kind of just don't really see play anywhere where that would really drive up the price. So you have another cycle of typed dual lands, and having that cycling there, that it that is meaningful. That is something that puts the triomes over. That was a huge aspect of why they were so defining in standard when they were legal there, just like having that ability to reduce your flood just a little bit, even at three mana on the triomes. So if you are going for slightly more modest mana bases, cycling for two is considerably stronger and more efficient than cycling for three. I like the way that these play. If I cubed more in the 540 card cube space, I would probably have these in a fair number of cubes. At 180 and even at 360, they're harder to make fit, but I like the way that they play and they're worth shouting out. Next up is a land cycle that I won't have very much to say about because these are designed for multiplayer, but I do want to talk about every mana fixing land cycle ever. So these are the Bond lands, originally printed in Battle Bond, just the five allied entries there, and then Commander Legends rounded out the cycle with the enemy entries. So what these are are lands that enter the battlefield tapped unless you have two or more opponents. So Bountiful Promenade, it's a land, bountiful Promenade enters the battlefield tapped, unless you have two or more opponents, taps for green or white. So these are not typed, they have no additional types, they're just lands, they tap for one of two colors, and if you're playing with two players, they always enter the battlefield tapped. But if you're gonna do something in the space like a commander cube, these are going to be very appealing. I think that when it comes to making mana bases work for commander, the experience that I have playing cubes like that does involve a lot of fetch lands and typed duels to kind of get the most fixing in the most players' hands. But these ones do stand out as something that would be a high priority if I were to curate a commander cube. It's just really easy to slot these ones in. Somebody's gonna play them, they are strong. If you're doing anything in the multiplayer space, these make a lot of sense there. There's also a part of me that thinks it would be really funny to put these in a two-player cube. You know, to do that, you're probably going to be doing something like taking advantage of amulet of vigor, something that makes these enter untapped. Something about just having these in a two-player environment is just kind of hilarious to me. And the art on these, these are actually like pretty expansive pieces, a lot of detail. Like these are really well-illustrated cards, so there there is some appeal to them. I don't play with them anywhere. Commander is likely the only place you're going to see these, but the idea of putting them somewhere else is very amusing to me. And that brings us to Horizon Lands. This cycle technically started back in Future Sight with Horizon Canopy, the green-white entry, and currently it stands as a six-card cycle with the five enemy color pairs being printed in modern horizons. These are lands that tap for one of two colors, deal a damage to you, and you can pay one, tap, and sacrifice them to draw a card. So Fiery Islet taps for blue or red, you pay a life to do that, and you can pay one, tap, and sacrifice fiery eyelet to draw a card. I have these in several cubes, and where I tend to play with them has more to do with that kind of flood insurance. It's going to be in environments where getting to your fourth and fifth land is going to be more mana than you have use for, and so having some lands that allow you to mitigate fighting a little bit, similar to the cycling duels, except these are just lands that enter the battlefield untapped, fix your mana, and then you can cash them in for that card later. The untapped land aspect of that definitely matters though. Oftentimes when you start to cube with these, they show up in monocolor decks about as much as they do in two-color decks, or not necessarily even monocolor, but just kind of off-color. You could maybe be playing a gruel deck and have Sun Bay Canyon, Fiery Island in your deck just because they are red sources that you can cash in to kind of mitigate flooding. So the real appeal to these is going to be putting them in environments that have a very low mana curves. So the one bert, the tempo two bert, I have these in 30 to 50 feral hogs, another environment that you do kind of want to mitigate flooding. You always got to be playing on the battlefield in these cubes. Horizon lands play great in any environments like that. These are lands that show up sometimes in like the digital powered cubes, they play fine there. Um, you don't always have the most time to mess around sacrificing them to draw a card, but there's some synergies that open up there too. If you're taking it really slow, you know, these these draw some cards with light from the loam, though that's more of a thing with the cycling lands. In general, I think that these lands play very well. I'm always very happy to see them when they're on color for a two-color deck. And if I'm trying to play a monocolor deck or like a different two-color pair, playing one that's a little bit off-color to mitigate flooding a little bit, it's a good quality of life thing, assuming that the cube is designed where most of the cards will make your main deck consistently. These become less appealing the more you have oddball and aspirational cards in your cube, but as nuts and bolts part of a cube that is just kind of mostly appealing cards designed to make main decks more often than not, these fit very well. They are odd in the sense that you have a six card cycle, so as far as mana fixing, sometimes I have tried them with like a broken cycle where the other, the non-green-white allied colors, I do something like give one-offs to some of those other colored pairs. This is a cycle where I don't know if they're gonna complete it one day. There's some things going on there that make it chip challenging or weird. Like a blue-white horizon land doesn't make a ton of sense. Like putting that in an actual blue-white deck is a little bit strange. Given the fact that you'll often play these in like a mono-white aggressive deck, it's a card that would play, it's just a little bit weird to print. The gruel one would just be very strong. I would be very surprised if we ever see these in standard, and they seem to be really moving away from the direct to modern or direct to internal format kind of decks. Maybe these show up in commander decks, so they're not very appealing lands in commander, though they can be kind of chase cards, I guess, but they're kind of medium value, like these are all like six-ish dollars. So I don't know. They are strange. I don't know if we'll ever see the cycle completed. I don't especially care anymore now that there are so many more appealing mana fixing lands. I mostly just like these for the utility and the way to mitigate flood in efficient environments. I I guess I would be happy to see the cycle completed, but it's no longer as high of a priority. Like when these first came out as the enemy color cycle, and there were six of these, I really was interested in seeing the full ten, but with the volume of options in cube now for mana fixing, it's less of a priority for me. It would be cool, I could take it or leave it. And that brings us to Triomes, first printed in Ikoria, the cycle later completed in Streets of New Capenna. These are three colored typed duels that enter tapped and then cycle for three. So in Data Triome is a plains swamp forest, so taps for white, black, or green, edges of battlefield tapped, and cycles for three. These are grotesque. I do have these in multiple cubes. The red entries are in 30 to 50 feral hogs. I am currently messing with having the blue entries in the version of the power tubert that I'm working on. I have these in the one bert, and then I also have these in kind of a five-colored graveyard, kind of a third module for the spooky cube that I've been working on. And so that kind of shows the three ways that you can utilize these. One, you are using them in a cube where mana fixing just generally enters the battlefield tapped. I think if you keep these away from lands that enter the battlefield untapped, then you can still use these to build five-color mana bases, but there is a cost there, and the one bird has another thing going on with the mana curve being so low, you want to trim lands, so it becomes more difficult. If you're in an environment where your curb is just kind of normal, and sometimes you maybe would play up to 18 lands, then yeah, these kind of easily give you access to five colors of mana. Triomes also kind of give you some padding on adding an extra land and getting a little bit greedy is not even the right word. Just trying to play all five colors, playing an extra land when they have cycling, they kind of give you a free roll on that. The cost is very low. But I'm trying to say the things that I like about them. Uh so in the one bird, they do often kind of facilitate two-colored decks just because you can't play that many lands, you don't have that much time to cycle, so these do kind of do what I was saying with the original trilands, where they will often play in two-color decks, and with all ten of them in the spread, then you kind of have more hits for any two-color pair. And then in 30 to 50 Feral Hogs, these actually do something pretty cool. I don't have all 10, I only have the red entries, and I don't want to have a bunch of lands that have non-red mana in that environment because you always have to play red. The cube necessitates that you play Razor Swine if you want to complete, compete, but then just putting like Godless Shrine in the cube. I want you to be able to play three colors, but having a bunch of like two-color and non-red lands makes your mana base really weird. If you have just the red triome and you want to play a three-color deck, and you have some fetch lands there, you have high access to that, and it enables you to do that. And even just having the red entries, you can get into four or five-color space. I still have some other stuff going on in the design that pushes back on wanting to do that. Some of it is at some point you want to play some basic lands because you want Lance to enter the battlefield untapped, but then I also have a lot of pitch cards that kind of makes you want to play a high volume of any given color that you go into that isn't red. So I have to work against these. Like once you have these in your cube, even if you don't have all 10, they do push players towards playing all five colors. That's simply what the incentivize. That is just what they do. And that's not categorically a bad thing. I just want to be very explicit about what these lands incentivize and what their function is, because it can be undesirable in some environments for players to draft five-colored good stuff decks. If you really want players to latch on to, especially two-color archetypes, triomes are going to incentivize them not to do that, but rather just to try to find individual power outliers and to generate whatever colors of mana they're able to do. And sometimes you do want to incentivize five color. That spooky cube module I was talking about, it is something that's kind of built around the card Soul Flare, and I feature the card Chromanticor, which is a five-color keyword soup card that has bestow. But because I want you to sometimes have access to five colors of mana, having five color mana fixing just makes sense there. Three-color mana fixing is kind of fundamentally five-color mana fixing. You just get too much with just having one of these, and if you have all ten in the spread, it is not difficult to be able to make all five colors of mana. And whether it's fetch lands, buddy lands, whatever mana fixing you have on top of triombs, they tend to make it even easier to branch into that, unless you are putting only tapped fixing into your cube. And that's another example of kind of fighting against the first order effects of triombs, which is enabling players to play five-colored decks. I do think if you have very strong flagship archetype defining cards and mono colors, if you have multiple in the same color, if you have some two-color stuff that really pushes towards a two-color deck, you still see some strong two-color decks, even with triombs in the spread. In that Soul Flare cube, I've had some pretty cool two-color stuff happen while also facilitating up to five colors. Ultimately, there's just less friction playing five color with these than two-color. They just make it so easy. But if you work at it and fight back against what triomes incentivize a little bit, you can still build modest mana bases given the right criteria for the rest of your cube curation. And while we're talking about triombs, I do want to say one thing from a player perspective. This is something that I see all the time, but I've never really seen talked about. And this is just a tip that I want to give to players playing with triombs in formats that have fetch land, which that's going to be true of the digital powered cubes, at least that has been for some time now. And this, the advice that I want to give is that most players fetch their triomes too often. On turn one, it usually makes a lot of sense. If you can't use your mana, go and fetch up your tapped land, get your mana online. However, if your mana base is already functional, if you have access to all of your colors, and especially if you don't like if you have enough mana where a tapped land in the future of the game is not going to be a detriment to casting your spells, then when you crack a fetch land, you actually want to go and find a basic land and leave the triome in your deck. Because if you draw Draw the basic land after you already have your mana online, it's just a land. It taps for mana, it's a blank draw step, right? We've already established that you can make your colors, you can make as much mana as you need. Whereas if you draw the triome, it has cycling. So when you are thinking about fetching a triome, it will often be correct in the first turn, but not always. Just when you have fetch lands and trioms in your deck, think about what fetching the triome does. And if you wouldn't maybe rather find a basic land, because triomes are better as draw steps than basic lands are because they have cycling. They have velocity towards finding spells when you draw them in your hand. They can only fix your mana when you fetch for them, which is not always what you need. So something to think about. Maybe you already knew this, but the average player absolutely fetches their triomes too often. You'll gain a little bit of equity over a long sampling of games if you're leaving the triome in your deck when your mana is already online. Alright, next up is Thriving Lands. This is a cycle of five five-color lands that all have one color that the always tap for, and then they also just all choose a second color when they enter. Third two color lands, but they're kind of five-color lands. This is Thriving Bluff, Thriving Grove, Thriving Heath, Thriving Isle, and Thriving Moor. Thriving Bluff enters tapped. When it enters, you choose a color other than red, and it can tap for a mana of that color or red when you tap it. So these are lands that function very similar to Evolving Wilds. If you just put them in a deck and you don't even have to have a basic defined, they're gonna enter tapped and give you access to the color of mana of your choice. And then they also will always make one color. But you don't even have to be playing a red deck to necessarily want to play Thriving Bluff because it will fix for one color always. That's what I mean when I compare it to Evolving Wilds. These are lands that play really well, they're printed at common, they're great fixing for rarity restricted cubes. If you want to just make mana smooth and you want to use five slots as opposed to ten, this is a five five color mana fixing cycle that is going to be really effective for that. These are stronger than vivid lands. If your color requirements are uh a little bit more consistent, if you're keeping things to three, maybe a fourth color splash, the vivid lands when your mana base gets a little bit more uh, let's say eccentric when uh maybe you need different colors over multiple turns. These are not just stronger than vivid lands, and they also have kind of a weird tracking thing. You do have to remember the color that you named. I usually just use colored dice, but you're still putting dice on your lands at that point. That is something that can be irritating, but I like the way that these ones play. They're gonna be really nice as far as a tapped land that can give you any color of mana, which makes them useful for like a desert cube, just to have some lands that'll be reliable for any deck, and stronger if you are the base color, but even all five of them could find their way to anybody, and you'll be able to fix your mana. These play pretty great. I like these a lot. There's also a mostly functional reprint of these. There's a set of five gates that were printed in Battle for Boulders Gate. Those are Black Dragon Gate, Citadel Gate, Cliff Gate, Manor Gate, and Sea Gate. Just the exact same text box, except these have the type gate. So if you want to go for those gate synergies, these open that up in a very significant way. With the 10 guild gates, especially if you have gate synergies, they make sense to have them all there. You get more unique gates, but with these battle for Baldur's Gate, choose a color lands, these will just play in somebody's deck. You can put them in any deck. And if you are one of the base colors, then they are just stronger than guild gates, because they'll all always give you what you want. If you're a two-color deck, there's a specific guild gate for you, but even if you're playing a Zorius, of course you want Azorius Guildgate, but then Citadel Gate and Sea Gate are both the exact same card. One of them always gives you white, one always gives you blue, and you just name the other color. You can even splash a third color with these, and then the other three gates that choose a color, they'll be blue or white. They'll be worse than your specific guild gate, but they'll be better than the other off-colored guild gates, certainly the fully off-colored guild gate. You wouldn't really put Gruel Guildgate in your blue-white deck, but Cliff Gate could fix your mana. It will be something worth considering. So the gate cycle of these is also quite appealing. I've cubed these a decent amount. They play really well at lower power levels, at rarity restricted environments, and the gate matter stuff is something I'll be experimenting with a little bit in an upcoming uh environment that I'll be talking about. These are cool, I like these designs quite a bit. And that brings us to pathways, first printed in Caldheim and rounded out in Zendikar Rising. These are two-sided lands, both sides are just lands that enter untapped and make mana of one color. So you get functionally a two-color land here, but you have to choose which one you want when you play it. So uh clear water pathway is a land that taps for blue, that's the front side, or you can play the back side, which is Merc Water Pathway, a land that enters untapped and tap for black. You might have heard my mouse click there when I went to look at the back side, and that is because neither myself nor anybody could possibly name all 20 sides of these. These lands are fine. I have been using less and less double-sided cards in my cubes because I have noticed that a lot of players, if they're not already familiar with both sides, don't even bother reading the second side. There's already just some friction with unfamiliar magic cards, but then double-sided cards do exacerbate that. But I will say dual-phase cards with lands on the backside tend to have the least friction in that regard, especially pathways. These are tremendously simple. The entire text box is actually on that little, um, I don't know what to call this, teaser for the backside. Like on the front of the pathway, there's a little box that says what the backside does, and it actually contains the entire text. Just tap add mana. So you get everything on the front of these, so they are relatively simple in this space there. Different people feel differently about the act of actually flipping a card in the sleeve. Like there's people that'll pull it out a little bit, not even take the card all the way out, people that flip it but leave it outside of the sleeve. I like taking the card all the way out, flipping it and re-sleeving it. I enjoy that, and I always make sure to reflip it at the end, like some people leave these on one side or the other. I always get it to the front side because the back side they have the white text. It's clear which side is the front and the back. So I like the act of de-sleeving and re-sleeving cards, but different people have different appetites for that. As far as how these play, they play fine. They're pretty modest, they're gonna be better in two, maybe three color decks. These are not very strong four or five color fixing, because you do only get to select one color of mana they're gonna make. They do enter untapped. Realistically, I think pathways do the most for two-color aggro decks, which is a win in my book. I do like lands that facilitate exactly that. But these really don't open up any meaningful synergies. There's no frills, there's no types. They're just like, okay, they're quite a bit weaker than paint lands, shock lands, dual lands, of course. Like they rank pretty low in terms of both power and synergy. They're also all several dollars because they haven't been really reprinted, probably because they're just so not appealing. And a lot of the fact that I haven't played with them much that contributes to why I can't name both sides. These are cards that you mostly play when you have to and constructed. They're fine for cube. I have one playset of them. They've been in and out of a couple environments. I'm usually pretty happy when I cut them from a cube, but they play reasonably. Eventually, the ones that I still have will find its way into a cube. I've heard of people experimenting with these and some rules modifications for cube. I have a friend who wanted to do a cube where instead of basic lands in the basic land box, you can add any number of pathways, which is a way you could utilize these to make pretty strong mana bases, but with that kind of decision attached to them. Really the aesthetic about choosing one side or the other is the coolest thing happening here. Outside of that though, you just don't see these too much, and there's not a lot of incentive to really play with them. These are fine. And then Caldheim also brought us the full 10 tapped typed snow duels. So Alpine Meadow, it's a snow land, it's a mountain plain, so it taps for red or white, and it enters the battlefield tapped. These ones have really interesting aesthetics. These look pretty unique. There's kind of this washed-out snow land text box. There's like a blotch of colors that appears in the text box. They're not solidly colored like a lot of other lands, and it's to show the whiteness of the snow there. So these look really visually distinct, which I think is kind of cool. I have these in multiples in the tundra. These are the snow lands for my snow desert cube. Solid mana fixing, they're typed. I do a little bit with domain or basic land types mattering there, which of course these help facilitate. And then they are snow, which is meaningful if you want to play with the admittedly not very large pool of snow matter cards, or just with a snow aesthetic. There's now several sets that do that. There's not a ton of space there, but definitely if you're breaking singleton, there is stuff to do, and the tapped type snow duels are pretty cool in the space. These are the perfect lands for a cube called the Tundra. They don't play in a lot of other places, but I do also have tapped type duels in my popper tubert. That said, the snow ones, I don't have any reason to play with these over the just regular tapped type duels, which I will be talking about shortly. The loudest thing that comes to mind for me, if you want to build a cube that's a little bit closer to Popper Constructed, you could definitely use these, these power up scred, that's a thing that happens in Popper Constructed. Just again, a very small number of cards that actually care about controlling snow permanence. These are snow, they'll check those boxes. That is very specific space though. Next up is campuses that debuted in Strixhaven. This is a five-color enemy land cycle. These are lands that enter tapped, tap for one of two colors or not typed at all, and for four you can tap them to scry one. So Lorehold Campus, these are all named after the schools of Strixhaven. Lordhold campus enters tapped, taps for red or white, you can pay four and tap it to scry one. This is tremendously modest upside over just a generic land that enters tapped, so you don't get typed land synergies here or get to play with gates, anything like that. But in low power, definitely low rarity environments, the games will go long enough where it won't be uncommon to be able to activate these to scry. It's a lot of mana to do that, doesn't have tremendous impact on the games, but the longer the games go, the more it matters. My popper cube has often led to really grindy games over the years. So this is an activated ability that certainly matters. If you're playing in like the 540 card Popert Cube space, absolutely, these seems like they'd make the cut there. Only having with five enemy colors, that that can lead to a little bit of awkwardness, but there are some other incomplete cycles when it comes to common lands, and at some point you do just want more lands. And there are some Allied-only lower rarity land cycles too. So even though it might look a little bit weird, these ones play fine and they're gonna contribute to kind of a grindy, low-powered environment. These cards play solid, pretty modest, but what they do can be kind of nice when it comes up. And that brings us to Modern Horizons 2 Bridges, kind of a menace of Popper constructed. These are tapped lands that are artifacts. They tap for one of two colors and are indestructible. So Dark Moss Bridge is an artifact land, enters tapped, is indestructible, and taps for black or green. I have these in a couple of cubes, certainly the artifact tubert. Anywhere where I'm playing around with Affinity for Artifacts, having artifact lands is very valuable there. That's mostly where I play with these. There are other synergies you can utilize these lands for. These come up in Popper Constructed also for some stuff that can like destroy a land, and then the lands controller gets some benefit. Cleansing wildfire is one of the very played ones. Two mana sorcery destroys a land, its controller may search the library for a basic land card, put on the battlefield tapped, shuffle, and then you draw a card. So with cleansing wildfire, if you target your own indestructible land, you go find a basic, ramp your mana, and you also draw a card. So pretty powerful interaction there that shows up a lot in Popper Constructed at higher rarities. You open up some other synergies. Of course, you can just control these and cast Armageddon if you want to get really high powered with it. Uh Boom Bust is kind of a more obscure interaction. It's a split card where Boom is a two-mana card, destroys a land you control and a land your opponent controls, but if yours is indestructible, then you just destroy their land for two mana. So there's a lot of synergies and combinations to exploit with the tapped artifact bridges by virtue of them being indestructible and also being artifacts. It's a lot of upside on a tapped land. I personally don't get too weird with them. I just play them in environments where I have affinity going on. I really like that they are lands that count as artifacts for those meaningful artifact synergies without easily being destroyed by artifact destruction, which you want some sampling of in an artifact-heavy environment just to have interaction, so it's a really welcome line of text there. And then it also opens up kind of a lot of synergy potential in other spaces as well. So kind of a lot of reasons to cube with the Modern Horizons bridges. And I suppose it's not too surprising that a Modern Horizons set is one that brought us a tapped cycle that does stand out among tapped cycles. Which brings us to Slow Lands from our third visit to Inistrad, Inistrad, Midnight Hunt, and Crimson Vow. This is a 10-card complete cycle. These are lands that enter the battlefield tapped unless you control two or more other lands. So Deserted Beach, it's a land, enters the battlefield tapped unless you control two or more other lands, taps for white or blue. So so-called slow lands because they have the opposite mechanic of fast lands, whereas fast lands enter untapped on the early turns, slow lands enter tapped on the early turns, and then are always going to be untapped as the game starts to go along. So naturally, these have the opposite incentives of fast lands. Fast lands are going to be great at facilitating two and three color lower to the ground decks, whereas slow lands, if you're trying to play a lot of turns, if you're trying to play a lot of colors, as the game goes long, these are always going to untap, they're going to be great at fixing your mana on turn four plus. As such, these don't really fit a lot of my cube designs. They enter fairly similar space to the Battle of Zendikar type duels, where they can first potentially enter the battlefield tapped on the third turn, though those ones incentivize you to play more basic lands, where slow lands, like sometimes I like these in the kind of cube where you're gonna play 15 or more non-basic lands, or you're gonna get a ton of non-basic lands, and you're gonna be able to fix all of your colors pretty easily. Like you really want these in like a fully five-colored cube. They function really well there. And so I do have these in that cube that is trying to push Soul Flayer and Chromanticor. These are quite solid, three plus color lands. These play really well in decks playing a lot of colors, and then they are going to be less desirable the more you want players playing cards in the first and second turns of the game, and aggressive decks being able to actually go under your opponent. And that brings us to Streets of Nukepenna, a couple common cycles here. Let's start with the gain life fetch lands. This is broker's hideout, cabaret courtyard, Maestro's Theater, Obscura Storefront, and Reviters Lookout. These are all three-color fetch lands, kind of in that same space as the Panoramas, a little bit stronger. I guess different. I think generally I'd say that these are stronger, but there there are some different functions here. So broker's hideout, land, when it enters the battlefield, you sacrifice it. When you do, search your library for a basic forest, planes, or island card, put it on the battlefield tapped, then shuffle, and you gain one life. So these are going to find one of three different basic lands, so they do fix you in the space where you want to have a bunch of different basic lands in your deck, they gain a life, and they also do their thing immediately when they enter. I think similar to panoramas, I like these kind of in a space where you are playing like a color restricted cube. These are kind of fine in the modest evolving wild space, but mostly if I was going to build like a modest or low rarity, low power Naya cube, then Cabaretti Courtyard would be an interesting three-color land to put into that environment. And you do also enter some space here with differently named fetch lands if you want to maintain Signalton and do stuff in the landfall space. These certainly play there. Gaining a life means these are three color options that can kind of exist in that same pace as the tapped gain life lands. The mana fixing is a little bit different. You only get one of three colors, but it is three-color access versus two-color access, so some considerations there for sure. Importantly, there is no enemy side of this cycle. This is just a five-card allied three-color cycle. Maybe we'll see a completion of this when we go back to Akoria, which has been announced next year. There's gonna be a Kamagawa Akoria crossover, which I would expect to be a three-color enemy set, but it's not 100% confirmed on that front. We'll see. As of now, these are largely outshined by the modern Horizons 3 fetch lands. We're gonna get to those in just a minute here, but there are some reasons why you might play with these. And then there also is a cycle of tapped lands that you can pay 4 mana to sacrifice them to draw a card out of Streets of New Capenna. So Botanical Plaza, Racer's Ring, Skybridge Towers, Tramway Station, and Waterfront District. So waterfront district enters the battlefield, taps, taps for blue or black. You can pay to blue black to tap it and sacrifice it to draw a card. So this is a five-colored Allied cycle that I I think you could say that this kind of complements the scry, the campus cycle from Strixhaven, those all being enemy colored. You can kind of use those as a 10-card cycle. They play differently. Those ones tap to scry, these ones sacrifice to draw a card. So they're not exactly the same, but you can play them that way. And it is important to note if you want to talk about trying to use that as a cycle. There is just a 10-card cycle that's texturally about the same as these in Avatar. That is just a fully colorless ability. You pay for tapsac those to draw a card. So I'll be talking about those in a minute. For that reason, these ones are pretty forgettable. They have an aesthetic that does speak to Streets of Nukepenna. So you can certainly access these lands for that reason, and at lower rarities, especially if you want just more cycles. These make sense in like a popper cube, like a larger size popper cube environment. And speaking of popper cubes, now it's time to talk about Dominaria United's tapped type duel. So you have all 10 here. Contaminated Aquifer is gonna be the blue black entry. It's an island swamp, tapped for blue or black, and contaminated aquifer enters the battlefield tapped. So kind of functionally, very similar to those tapped type snow duels. Aesthetically, the colors here, the text box is gonna fully be shaded in the two colors. So visually, these are a little bit louder. So if you just want a cycle of tapped typed duels, I think that these ones are gonna be more the go-to if you're not playing in the snow space, if you don't have that aesthetic. I think it's a very reasonable and I would expect it to be uh pardon the pun common to see both cycles in like a larger popper cube, getting the typed duels that is meaningful there. Though whether you want to do snow, it kind of makes sense to break singleton in the snow space. If you're just looking for common tap duels and you otherwise value singleton in your designs, having both of these in the popper cube makes a lot of sense to me. There are absolutely reasons why you would have type duel there, even just like the common land cycl from Lord of the Rings uh really give you a reason to want both of these in a popper cube environment. So I can absolutely see that happening there. And then these are, of course, very cheap, these are very clean and elegant, they do exactly what they say, they are modest because they enter the battlefield tapped, and they have synergies because they have types. So awesome cycle, really happy to see this printed at Common. These were a long time coming. Great designs. And another set of great designs in the tapped type duel space is going to be the surveil lands from murders at Karlov Manor. These are tapped typed duels that surveil one when they enter the battlefield. So commercial district, it's a mountain forest, so it taps for red or green, enters the battlefield tapped, and when commercial district enters the battlefield, you surveil one. So these are power level upgrades over temples in multiple ways. They are typed and you surveil instead of scrying. That does mean that you open up synergies to put a card that you care about having in your graveyard, into your graveyard instead of scrawling it to the bottom if you don't want to draw it. This is meaningful, this happens in constructed with reanimator strategies. Personally, I've been known to surveil a lava dart or two into my graveyards to get some value out of flashback. These can help enable delirium and threshold, just putting a card into your graveyard. That is a very meaningful upside here. I really can't say enough good things about these lands. If you're interested in a mana base that involves fetches and finding type duels, I like having an untap cycle. Maybe you want shock lands and just original duels, but then I also like supplementing with these the first fetchable surveil land. If you have a two-color deck and you get some fetches, it's good to have the option. As you get into three or more colors, you can't really always justify having a bunch of tap duels, but having one or two surveil lands, it is just really nice if you're not going to use the mana. It can kind of feel like your casting consider when you put one of these onto the battlefield. These are just quite strong in a way that doesn't feel like they're game warping or defining. I think that these designs are just excellent. These cards play great. I like them in any high-powered cube, anywhere where there's fetch lands. I have these in the one bird, so the space where like the enter tapped and they kind of give you some value when they enter. They're really meaningful there. They sculpt your draws. I have these in four different cubes, they play awesome. The one big downside, murders at Karlov Manor, a little bit of a flop of a set, and there's not a lot else worth opening there. So these were quite expensive for a while. They still are pretty expensive and they're played in every format. You know, they're gonna be in your commander decks, standard, modern legacy, vintage, like these just show up everywhere. But the prices are starting to come down. These are cards that I would like to see some reprints. They keep reprinting shock lands all the time, having some diversity there, but given that these are still standard legal, it makes sense why they haven't been reprinted a ton just yet. Hopefully, these lands get some more reprints and continue to go down in price. These just play awesome, and even setting aside lands, just in terms of carts, I think that in the last several years, the Surveil lands are the most significant printing for the world of Cube. These just really upgraded what you can do with mana bases, being fetchable duels that give you some card selection when they enter. These are just amazing. I love these and I love seeing them in Cube. Next up are some oddballs. These are the room lands from Ravnica Clue Edition. So they made 10 rooms, I guess nine rooms, and the secret passage representing all ten of Magic's two-color pairs. So the billiard room is a land and it's just tapped, taps for black or red. You can pay for and tap it to investigate. It's kind of weird having every two-color pair get access to investigating on a land here, but anyway, it's a complete cycle, and this is going to give you some actual card draw over time. These are uncommon, so they can't go in popper, but you can play them in a peasant, uh otherwise rarity-restricted environment. These are kind of slow. You'll use six mana, I guess seven mana, because you have to tap the land itself every time you want to make a clue and draw a card, but that is some card advantage over time. There are some synergies you can explore with clues. Mostly, these are just a little bit of upside on a tapped land. And notably, these were all printed with like a borderless extended frame. There's like a bunch of clue game pieces kind of sketched into the background on the border there. So visually, they are very loud. I don't have these in any cube. I think I something I have entertained the idea of. Maybe someday I'll build it. I don't know. Designing it has not been very fun for me, but I I do like the idea of a cube that just kind of deals with mundanity and the real world. And so these lands are like perfect for that. Your like your land is called Kitchen, you know? So there's something going on there aesthetically. These don't fit any of my environments, but these are solid tapped lands for a cube. If I was playing, definitely like a 540-card peasant cube, and possibly a 360-card peasant cube that did firmly stick to the rarity restriction, commons and uncommons only. The upside on here is real in games that are always going long, but ultimately these are fairly forgettable. Really, the most significant reason to play these room lands to me would be going for that aesthetic where you really want these really basic room names, something kind of appealing to the aesthetic here, whether it be Mundanity, whether it be the game clue, like if you are speaking to a universe is beyond kind of thing, that is certainly where these lands can really shine and where their aesthetic will really fit in. Alright, next up is damage dealing deserts from Outlaws of Thunder Junction. This is a full 10 card cycle. These are desert lands that enter tapped, and when they enter, they deal one damage to target opponent and tap for one of two colors. So abrated bluffs, it's a land desert, abrated bluffs enters tapped. When abraided bluffs enters, it deals one damage to target opponent and taps for red or white. So this is kind of the opposite side of gain life lands. Instead of maybe pursuing padding life totals or giving synergies with gaining one life, these are when you try to accelerate a game towards a conclusion a little bit faster, maybe give a little something to aggressive decks that having lands that are the battlefield tap takes away. And then, of course, you have desert synergies, not a ton of cards that really play in the desert manner space, but there are some. Definitely if you're going for like a retail limited kind of feel there, the multiple desert sets, then some cards there start to shine playing with these lands. Magic hasn't done deserts enough times for it to be something that I have really pursued as a mechanical function of cubes, but these are really cleanly and loudly going to be lands that make sense in a desert cube. You know, just kind of on the nose. Land type desert for your desert environment, and the deserts that you deal damage to yourself when you make colored mana, they're gonna be something that kind of plays with these, where life totals are under pressure and mana, you kind of feel deprived on resources, so a lot going on here aesthetically. These can also turn on mechanics like bloodthirst and um that kind of thing. Spectacle is the other one I was trying to think of. There's stuff going on here. These are neat. If you want to go into a lower rarity or a lower power level cube with tapped lands that maybe have some aggressive slants, then these can give you some extra damage there in the mana base, so they're appealing for that reason. Next up is a weird one. It kind of doesn't make sense to talk about this as a 10-card cycle, because outside of the context of Modern Horizons 3, it's really difficult to imagine playing with all 10 of these, but this is a full 10-card cycle where there's a spell on the front and a tap land on the back. This is Blood Soaked Insight, Drounder of Truth, Glasswing Grace, Legion Leadership, Revitalizing Repast, Rush of Inspiration, Strength of the Harvest, Stumpstomp, Suppression Ray, and Waterlogged Teachings. So Waterlog Teachings, it's three and one blue-black hybrid. These all have a hybrid mana cost. That one's an instant. Search your library for an instant card or a card with flash, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle. And on the back side, it's a tap land called a non dated archive that taps for blue or black. I'm not going to read all of these and they all play in pretty different context. A couple of them care about energy. Um, these are cards where you mostly consider them on a one-card basis. Maybe you use them over a gold spell slot, maybe you use these as part of just an incomplete cycle or a cycle where you deliberately have different members of different cycles in your cube to not do a full complete cycle. It's absolutely something you can do. And I do like what some of these cards do. Uh, revitalizing repost is the repast. I don't actually know. This is the one I've played with the most, though. It's the green black one. On the front side, it's a one-mana instant for a green or black hybrid instant. Put a plus one plus one counter on target creature, it gains indestructible until end of turn. So it's actually a really powerful combat trick. And then it also has the buyout of being able to be played as a tab green or black land. So combat trick or protection spell. Revitalizing repast is honestly stronger than a lot of stuff in the protection spell combat trick space. So I'd only wanted it in a very high power environment for that kind of thing. Anywhere where you have a spell that's appealing, that is a buyout to be a land, typically that is going to be something that's very strong, even if the spell and the land are modest, that modality is really strong. And like I was saying, outside of doing like a Modern Horizons 3 set cube, it's difficult to imagine putting all 10 of these in the same cube. I'm sure there's people that do it. And if you want to take a look at these, I think more on individual card bases is where I evaluate them. I have one or two in a few different cubes, but all 10 are fairly disjointed, but individually there's some pretty cool designs here. And now for a much cleaner cycle, it's the Modern Horizons 3 landscape. These are all some word landscape. There's all 10 of these, and these are three color mana fixers. So bountiful landscape is a land, enters untapped, taps through colorless. You can sacrifice bountiful landscape and tap it to search your library for a basic forest, island, or mountain, put it onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle, and it cycles for green, blue, red. So you go and find one of three basics. These can only find basic lands, so they're not going to have synergies with type duels, but you can just play these if your mana is already working and you just need one more mana. You can just tap them for colorless, so you can cast spells the turn that you play these if your mana is already working. Otherwise, they can fix your mana for one of three colors, and then kind of similar to triombs, they have a buyout where they cycle for three, but where triomes have a generic three mana buyout, you actually need all three colors to cycle these. So unless you have a consistent three plus color mana base, then these aren't giving you all the upside of something like a triumph. They're considerably more modest in that space. You will often play these in a two-color deck because, like some other cycles we've talked about here, these give you multiple landfall triggers if you are searching for one of the two basic types, even if you don't have all three, these are useful mana fixing and the enter untapped if you just want to just make your land drop. So these are powerful, but these aren't so pushed over on power level as triomes that they just kind of play in a more modest space. They are just more reasonable to have, they're common, so they can play all the way down to popper cubes, the only find basics, the only cycle if you already have a really good mana otherwise. I think these designs are really excellent. I hadn't really played with these before Shoebox. These were in some of the cubes that I drafted at Shoebox, and I've been messing around a bit with trying them in some other cubes since then. I have these in Stadium Stampede, the cube that I'm gonna have at CubeCon next month. And yeah, these are just really good designs. They play excellent. They're not weak, but they're not overbearing. Like they just play reasonably, they have multiple synergies, and they can go all the way down to a popper cube. And it's not out of the question to have these in a powered cube if you just want more stuff that gives you a bunch of landfall triggers. That is something that can be an aspect of even very high power environments. So these are just really excellent designs that do really scale with what else is happening in your environment. So I like the landscape cycle quite a lot. Great designs, play great. And that brings us to verges, another very recent cycle. This one in Dusk Morn and Aether Drift. So we have the full 10 card cycle. These are weird, these are lands that they tap for one of two colors automatically. And then if you have one of the two colors they make in the basic land type, then they're gonna make the other color. So Blaze Meyer Verge, it's a land, enters on tapped, taps for black, and then you can tap it for red, but you can only do that if you control a swamp or a mountain. And so with only 10 entries, that means that you have kind of a mix match of this is a black-red land, but on turn one it can only make one black mana. It can't make the red mana on the first turn, so it's gonna make more sense in a deck that is trying to cast Thought Seas than a deck that is trying to cast Goblin Guide. I have no idea if we would ever see the other side of this and we get a full 20 card cycle where you would get a land that taps for red, it can only make black if you have a swamp or a mountain. But given that these cards have kind of strange incentives. Like if we're talking about land that enters the battlefield untapped, then it actually does really matter what you're trying to cast on turn one. So Hushwood Verge, that's the green-white one, it always taps for green, but only makes white if you control a forest or a plains. This is awesome if you're trying to cast Landowar elves. This is pretty bad if you're trying to cast Savannah Lions. So I haven't cubed with these at all in my own designs. I think if I wanted to use these, I would really be paying a lot of mind to what you want to do with the mana on turn one. That said, these are just lands that are going to play great in three plus color decks, or you know, even two colored decks are trying to have the game go along, just because in the later turns they always make any color of mana. So if you don't really care about aggressive decks and you want to have lands five and on enter the battlefield on tapped, these are solid mana fixers. They just have kind of strange incentives that don't have the best brain feel for me. There's a lot of other options when it comes to land to cube with. If you're looking for another cycle, you want to enter untapped and you don't necessarily care about what players are doing on turn one. Yeah, these are fine, they can go anywhere. For my preferences, they're just kind of a little bit weird in terms of how they function in practice and the kind of decks and turn one plays that they incentivize. They are on tapped lands, but that's not as true as it is of fast lands and pain lands. There's some specific stuff going on here that will impact the power level and the texture of what one mana plays and how your two-color decks look in your environment, what they actually want to be doing on the first turn of the game. So these are maybe more complicated than they look, and some in some environments are just not even going to make that matter, right? If you're just trying to play long games every time, then you can completely ignore everything I said about turn one mattering. But if you have a low mana curve, then you are going to have the right color some of the time, and you're not going to have the right color some of the time if you don't pay attention to that in your design, and or as a player, you don't pay attention to it in draft. So that stuff all matters a lot to me as a designer and a player, but it won't matter to every cube environment. So your mileage may vary with verges, they're not for me at this time, but I could see trying to design around their parameters in the future. It is something that I do find kind of intriguing, but I would have to have more reason to explore that space. And then Duskmorn also gave us the full 10 cycle of what I believe are called the unlucky lands. These are lands that enter the battlefield tapped, unless a player has 13 or less life, and then tap for one of two colors. So abandoned campground enters the battlefield tapped unless a player has 13 or less life and then taps for white or blue. It can be any player, so you can deal damage to yourself or kind of be behind in a damage race, and then they will start to enter the battlefield untapped, or you could have dealt your opponent some damage and then they'll enter the untapped. And they make one of two colors. They're common, so you can go in popper cubes, you know, whatever your restriction is, these tend to be able to play. I do think aesthetically it's pretty cool having that 13 layer. You're gonna fit if you're going for kind of like a spooky aesthetic. Clearly, these make sense if you're building a cube around the world of Duskmorn. And I do think that mechanically, that one player having 13 or less life is kind of interesting, because this isn't like fast lands where they stop entering untapped, or slow lands where they start entering untapped just by things that very naturally happen in a regular game of magic. A player going to 13 or less life typically involves some amount of agency, some decision making, some back and forth. So I have not played with these. I didn't didn't do any Duskborn drafts, and I haven't cubed these anywhere, but I can't- it's easy for me to imagine playing games where you want a land enter untapped, or maybe even you're hedging against an opponent having one of these, and you want it to keep entering untapped, where you engage with combat a little bit differently because you want somebody's life total to be more or less than 13 for whatever reason. So I do think that these having that kind of dynamism, even if it's not super likely to come up, is pretty cool. That's most likely to be a thing if you are breaking singleton, if you have a bunch of these as a lands in your cube, then you could really kind of lean into that 13 matters kind of thing, which there's some stuff in that space and some of the Instraud sets. There absolutely could be something to explore there. I haven't done it myself, but I do think that these lands are pretty intriguing. They look pretty awesome. There's room to play with these. I haven't done anything with them myself yet, but I do think it would be cool to explore that space. And then next up is Towns from Final Fantasy. This is just a 10-card cycle of tapped lands with a type that is town. These are all named from some town in some Final Fantasy game or another, so I've heard of some of them, but uh just to get the texture of the cards, Baron Airship Kingdom is the blue-red entry. It's a land town, enters tapped, taps for blue or red. There's a small number of cards from Final Fantasy that shout out towns as a subtype. I would be very surprised if we see in universe set start to explore a town, but town is something that could show up in other universes beyond releases. Maybe we go back to Final Fantasy, I don't know. They did go so deep on the Final Fantasy release, going over all 16 games. I think that there's more, there's definitely more stuff in the Final Fantasy games that I love that they could end up printing, but kind of the way that they approached it, the way the universes beyond works, I just don't know. I don't know if we'll ever see more towns. So not a lot to talk about these here, but they are tapped lands that do some stuff, and there are a small number of cards that do care about towns in the specifically in the Final Fantasy set as well. Which brings us to common surveil lands. These debuted in Marvel's Spider-Man, and then the cycle was completed in Secrets of Strixhaven. So Spider-Man has the Allied color entries, and then Secrets of Strixhaven has their Allied counterparts, which does make for a little bit of a jarring aesthetic with some real world stuff happening in the Spider-Man versions and the Strixhaven ones being in Magic's School of Magic. But anyway, these are lands that enter tapped, tap for one of two colors. For four generic mana, you can tap them in surveil one. So Ominous Asylum is a Rakdos entry, entrance tapped, taps for black or red, four, tap, surveil one. These are a little bit stronger than the cycle that just scry ones. You know, surveilling is just a little bit stronger than scrying. This is a steep mana cost, but it's something that will come up as games go along. Definitely a cycle that you could have in a popper cube, a really low power level environment, probably a larger cube list is where you're looking at these. If you're not messing around with typed synergies or artifact synergies, then there starts to be more reason to play these for a little bit of card selection in games that do go long. These are fine, not a lot to say about them outside of popper cube environments. And then there is a full 10 card cycle in very similar space from Avatar. These are tapped lands you can sacrifice and pay four mana to draw a card. So airship engine room is a land, enters tap, taps for blue or red, four tap, sacrifice, airship engine room, draw a card. So instead of getting card selection over time, these ones you just cash in to fully draw a card. So kind of the very modest low power, low rarity horizon lands, as it were. They enter tapped, they cost a lot more to sacrifice and draw a card. I will say that if I'm trying to play a deck that wants to hit all of its land drops, maybe it's playing a bunch of colors. This is the kind of land that you can pretty freely put an 18th land into your deck, because eventually you'll be able to cash it into draw a card. You want to hit all your land drops anyway. So these play fine. I'd be happy enough to see these, definitely in like a 540-card popper cube environment. You know, if you're going for an avatar set cube, if you want to build out the avatar world in that way, they certainly make sense there aesthetically. Uh largely, these are kind of bigger popper cube specific avatar aesthetic lands here. Nothing super new, but some upside on tapped lands. And that leaves just one cycle. We only have allied entries here. This is from Magic's newest set, Marvel Superheroes. We have five Allied lands that enter untapped, they tap for colorless, and then they tap for one of two colors, but only if they enter this turn, or you control a basic land. So Dark Fortress is a land that taps for colorless, taps for black or red, but only if it enters this turn, or if you control a basic land. So on the first turn, these make either color. I like them more than verges for that reason. I like the incentive for you to control the basic land, but they're not just off, they can still tap for colorless, and they still give you colored mana the turn that they enter. I like the way that these lands play a lot. I would really like to see this cycle continued, get all 10 entries. Don't know if or when that's gonna happen. I have not played with these yet. I mostly just like the way that they look texturally. They're gonna be really good at supporting two color decks, they're gonna play well enough in three-color decks, and then they start to get worse as you go into more colors because you do need to control a basic land. They're gonna require you to have a decent representation of basic lands in your deck to really function. So lands that enter untapped, that fix for one of two colors, that incentivize basic lands, they really fit in that two, three color incentive space that I really like to kind of just make it so modest mana bases and players exploring, uh like the two-color pairs and more specific synergies over just playing all the strongest cards, which is where I like most of my cube designs to land. And that is going to conclude my look at every mana fixing land cycle ever here on 180 MTG, sort of a follow-up to all about the lands that we did at two-parter on the 540 several years ago. So there's some new lands to talk about, the most groundbreaking ones. You know, we have all the triumphs now, but I do think that Surveil lands are the lands that stand out as really being groundbreaking. I also think that the Modern Horizons 3 fetch lands are very significant in terms of what they add to the world to Cube. We have more stuff for landfall, we have more stuff for modest mana bases, we have more stuff for greedy mana bases. Getting new cards always gives us more things to explore in Cube. And when it comes to lands, yeah, there's a ton of different options. And also the way that players design and think about cube has changed a lot. That's made it so even some of the lands I would never give a second thought before start to become interesting or appealing to think about in like a desert cube environment, or lands that are going to be useful if you want to deprive players of resources instead of building something that's very high power level that has very clean and consistent mana. So it's just more to think about just in terms of how we think about cube, and of course, a lot of new and appealing game pieces as well. But that's all for me for now. If you're enjoying the podcast and you'd like to pay me for my work, then you can do that now. You can go to patreon.com forward slash 180 mtg, subscribe at any tier. You'll also get access to the 180 MTG Discord, or if you just want to make a one-time contribution or you're not interested in the Discord, you can also go to KO-Fi Kofi.com forward slash 180 MTG and make a contribution there as well. I would certainly appreciate any of that. And of course, just listening at all. I'm always appreciative for that. Liking, commenting, reviewing, sharing that's all good stuff here. So thank you so much for any and all of that. And I will be back next week talking more cube. Later, gamers.