Do EDH Players Run Enough Lands? | EDHRECast 185

[Music] hello and welcome to the edh recast my name is joey schultz and i'm joined as always by my fantastic co-host first up he's not really interested in building slogirk the overslime but he might be interested in building fast gurk that's matt morgan so joey do you know the uh the guise of strapped a legendary spirit is his favorite breakfast cereal do you know what that happens to be i do not it happens to be boo berries because he is a spirit also known as a ghost matt you know what i'm i'm gonna think about all of that but i'm really happy for you or sorry that that happened that's an appropriate response to what just happened good good i'm glad up next he's pretty sure that lind cheerful tormentor was the nickname that they gave to paul lind in the hollywood squares television show that's dana roach that's a that's a deep cut joey i'm waiting for a charles nelson reilly joke next i've i made references that dana got i've done it i have achieved victory hi dana well hello joey um where is old stickfinger's favorite place to trick-or-treat the only thing that i know about him is that he's right behind you it is in fact right behind you yes yeah that's uh that's a fun fact about old stick fingers is that he's always right behind you so watch out watch out while you're trick-or-treating apparently uh also um the bones are his money and so are the worms what the huh i don't i don't entirely know what that reference is i don't like this that one i'm not happy for you that one i am just sorry that this happened anyway let's take off and finish this intro this is the edh recast idiotrack is the best deck building resource on the web for the commander format compiling data from deck lists all over the internet to provide helpful recommendations for new commander dex and here on the podcast what we like to do is give all of that data a little more context dana what is it that we're talking about in this week's episode we are talking about the amount of lands people run their adh decks yes indeed do edh players run enough lands in their commander decks this is a really interesting topic that you guys had especially been eager to talk about so we're gonna look into it see if maybe there's anything that the data can give us a bit more direction on see what players are up to and especially our feelings about people's mana bases in commander should be really interesting conversation real quick before we get into it let's pause and thank the folks at the command zone for handling the post-production work on our podcast and of course we want to thank our sponsors for the podcast as well yes the idiot track cast is sponsored by card kingdom and tcg player the vampire and werewolf tribes of cardboard online sellers just shuffle up your tribal deck and head over adhrac click on the card in question and choose the vendor link down below doing so supports both the site and the show and if you'd prefer to support the show directly you can do so over at patreon.com edgerecast we have patron tears of all sorts of levels we have patron exclusive content that comes out each and every month uh so make sure you head over to patreon.com edh recast we even have a very special tier where we give a shout out to somebody just for supporting us because we just definitely appreciate all of that support so this week we want to give a shout out to the spookiest patron that we have uh victor chan who probably is enjoying the vampires that we're getting um probably really liking innistrad that's a good vampire name absolutely thank you so much victor for your support all right fellas let's get into our main topic we are talking about whether edh players run enough lands in their decks matt this was a topic that was of keen interest to you um so let's enter the conversation let's just get our thoughts down do we think just before we even got numbers or any personal anecdotes or anything like that do you think that players are running enough lanes in their commander decks um absolutely not if you could have seen me um when dana asked the question um i've been shaking my head for like five minutes um so yeah absolutely not um i and this is a conversation comes up on the uh the social medias every now and then and um came up recently and just kind of thought it's probably a good time to kind of revisit and look at some numbers because i definitely don't think folks are running enough lands um i don't think i'm running enough lanes even but it seems like the last time that we talked about our folks running enough lands was uh when zandikar rising came around we had the the mdfcs the modal dual faced cards uh which are lands on one side and spells on the other and um seems like a good time to maybe revisit that yeah now that we've seen the if there's been an impact from those that could definitely be something to pay attention to real quick i also want to get uh your thoughts uh dana real like just what do you think are players playing enough lands is that a do you have the opposite opinion of matt or starting the conversation off do you agree with him where are you at yeah i i think 26 27 is plenty um you go find a new podcast i i agree with matt i think players on average are probably not running enough lands um and i'll throw a caveat out here right now that will kind of cover the rest of the show we're not talking about cedh here that's a whole different bird um the the laws of physics that apply to you know the game we're playing doesn't really apply there um but yeah yeah we're really since we don't play a whole lot of it we would not at all be qualified to talk about it so we're going to go more on our a different social type of edh that we're a bit more experienced with so that is definitely where our thoughts for sure um i i think players don't run enough and i think they they maybe don't factor in enough things when they look at their deck and figure out how many lands it needs i don't think it's it's it's a science it's much more an art something we've discussed in the past but i think this is a good example of a of an art versus a science and there's a lot of factors that kind of come into play to determine what the right number is for your deck and i do think players maybe don't entirely understand what those factors are well and i've see i've seen people make an argument about well my elf tribal deck only runs 30 but it also runs you know eight lane or elf type of variants and all these mana dorks in mana rocks and but they take that rule and they apply it to all of their decks when that's they're they're making the exception the rule and that's definitely backwards yeah yeah that's exactly it there are a lot of factors that can affect it and so let's get into a few of those to see other things that we think could change those land counts justifiably raise them up justifiably lower them down justifiably let's talk about that and right from the off one of the first things i actually want to do is check in with the average number of lands that an edh deck tends to contain according to the data and uh this was an interesting thing to see and it's bit the same number for a little bit now like the average number of edh uh the excuse me the average number of lands that appear in an edh deck is 35. on average an idiht contains 35 lands it's been that way for a while then i think that that's kind of neat to see like it was 35 about a year ago and a little bit before that and it's still 35 now so that's interesting technically right now it's 34.9 but we're rounding because matt unless you've been able to uh defy the laws of physics i i don't think you can run 34.9 lands in like your murray deck i mean time and space has no meaning in my deck so i could figure it out maybe gotcha but but it is just kind of interesting i feel like 35 is low that like i open up a page like zaxara for example the the hydra commander and i see that the average zaksara deck is playing 35 lands and i'm just like but how are you going to play all of your ex bells and your hydras i feel like you need more lands than that so starting off for me seeing the the actual number there i also agree with you guys i feel like that's too low well and looking at my own decks too i only have two decks that have 35 everything else has more um that's my alilah artful provocateur deck which is like historic tribal so there's already a bunch of like signets and uh artifacts that are producing a bunch of mana so like that's intentionally low because i'm intentionally playing a lot of uh just mana generating artifacts and then my merry weather lie duelist deck which like that's the deck that like i've tuned and pruned the most over the years i'm most familiar with so like i'm comfortable being down there but i'm also running two of the mdfcs from zenith car rising as well so like 37 landish cards but 35 actual lands um and even then like it's such a tight list i wish i could run a little bit more gotcha and dana um what about your experiences there then when you hear that number same reaction yeah um i i think that's just not quite enough um for most people the lowest amount i'm running is 34 and that's in a deck that's encroaching on cedh territory it's not necessarily a cedh deck but it's playing that kind of game um it's not one i play terribly often but like even in that deck it's it's got like a 1.7 average cmc um it's just a super low to the ground deck and even that i just like anything less than 34 seems really really difficult to get an opening hand like ignoring the rest of the game your ability to have an opening starting hand once you're at those low numbers gets really really challenging unless you're playing a deck with a crazy model like zero drop rocks or something it just that's that's it's really tough and even if you're using the mana dorks in that situation to make up for lands you know one board wipe one pyroclasm one earthquake set to one is going to basically end your game um i i want to pause there because you didn't actually say what the commander is that that deck that you're playing 34 lands edrick's five master of trest so it's a deck running you know almost exclusively one drop creatures gotcha okay so yeah that is the kind of thing where you definitely don't need a whole lot because you would totally flood out because you just your curve is so low you don't need to cast five drops slight game and even your late game spells are like a beast master ascension which pumps up all of your stuff but it's still only three mana it's also a deck that if it gets too late game i've probably already lost like if the game has gotten to that point it's kind of irrelevant what i'm drawing i'm probably not going to win at that point yeah that i i think that totally makes sense so then i i'm gonna ask you um kind of there dana like you're hinting at one drops in mana curve is mana curve like one of the primary factors that you consider when you're choosing the number of lands for your deck or are there different factors going into that i don't think you want to ignore manic curve but i think manic curve is overrated in commander compared to other formats not that it's not important but it's a much bigger deal elsewhere where like you want where you're gonna have you know four of a one drop four of a two drop whatever and it's very easily easy to like have that perfect kind of curve in a commander deck it's much more difficult and the situations where you want to be dropping those cards are much more situational um there's a lot more variables in play versus playing against one particular deck um mana curves are are relevant and you want to keep an eye on them but i think it's much less important than commander than it is elsewhere yeah the typical deck they always talk about like you want it to look like a bell curve um i have decks granted it's kind of intentional but it's just like an exponential curve um uh the dyer deck uh that that deck is just like it's four like the curve starts at four i've i've joked about that on the stream over at twitch.tvhrecast there it is but yeah it's just like that that deck just it's kind of like dana's edric deck um it's doing things that just the typical deck shouldn't be but we at least also know that deck is an outlier not the rule that we're going to follow as the norm for the rest of our decks right right and and that is also an important thing to note too like if you open up lord wing grace's page for example you will see that the average lord win grace act plays 40 lands which for the record is good i'm really happy to see that number there because i feel like 40 is like a minimum number for landfall decks i feel like that's really really important to see but yeah that is also not going to be that doesn't speak to the average deck because not every deck is playing landfall so those strategies especially matt as you're mentioning with like you have so many six seven eight and even nine drops in that deck that the land count is going to be wildly completely different based off of you know me playing a typical reanimator deck instead i i definitely too i need two hands worth of fingers to count the average cmc of most cards yes just make sure that those fingers are not old stick fingers because he's right moving on moving on i don't like this so so a number that we often hear sort of touted along online when people ask for what is a good number of lands to play in an edh deck is between 36 and 38 lands matt is that a number that resonates with you is that a number that like a range that you feel comfortable with is that like thumbs up where where are you at yeah thumbs up 36 to 38 depending on how aggressive the deck is um how fast you want to come out the gates what's what a loose idea of your curve like maybe you want to start at 36 because you're playing a lot of cheaper creatures 38 if you're playing you know some bigger stuff i really like the new pre-cons you know at you know when you compare the the pre-constructed decks that wizards has made for commander um if you look at the old ones like they had what like 33 lands and a couple of them like it was atrocious these days it's much much better um i think most of the pre-cons these days are coming out with anywhere from 37 to 40 even i like that a lot more because it's to me at least if you're flooding out you're getting too much mana you're drawing too many lands at least when you do draw a business spell you're gonna be able to cast it right away you're not missing anything because you as soon as you draw any sort of action it's gonna happen whereas if you don't draw enough lands you're sitting there waiting and you don't get to do anything so every time you draw another great spell that'd be so cool to cast right now you still don't have the manage to do it and then you're discarding cards to hand size whereas you're at least being able to play lands every single turn i think that's a big big thing that a lot of folks kind of go back and forth on between too many and two and not enough lands that also that range really resonates with me especially because it feels if we're playing like 36 of our deck is lands 37 of our deck is made of lands that feels similar to playing a like a range of 22 to 23 lands in a 60 card format and when i looked through like recent standard tournament winning deck lists i did notice that a majority of the decklists there played between 22 and 24 lands so i feel like just like the 60 card formats i found a range that seems to be comfortably competitive for them in there it feels like commander players have uh converged upon that 36 to 38 range because it has basically a similar ratio dana do you also like the number range or are you going to tell us that you're running 26 lands what's going on with you um i i do like that range i tend to be in a at the bottom end of it i tend to run around 36 there's a couple reasons for that i i do think the amount of colors in your deck make a difference i think the more colors you have maybe the more lens you want i tend to play mono color decks or two color decks so there's a little bit less worry about like fixing for me so i'm relatively comfortable at 36. i would say i probably also run more small efficient draw spells than most players do my decks are filled with like kind of like the night's whisper signing blood expressive iteration kind of like two mana draw two kind of spells i just play a ton of those in almost all of my decks so as long as i can get those like first two or so lands down it's pretty easy for me to hit that draw spot lets me find that that next land and then get kind of things rolling from there um so i i found like 36 i tend to be okay anything less than that though i just hit those those spells sometimes where you just don't have enough land so i like to stay around 36 usually i i love what you mentioned there with the knights whisper stuff i actually feel like that greases the wheels immensely like you and matt might play the same number of draw spells but if you're playing the low end chart of course knight's whisper stuff and matt's full up on all of those return of the wild speaker and risk card's expertise y'all might both have 10 draw spells in your deck but yours have a very different placement on the curve than mats and that will affect your mana consistency quite a lot yeah i think that's what makes a huge difference um i think the the deck i'm playing that has a um 35 or i might even be 34 now is my telerand sky summoner deck but it also has a gazillion one mana can trips in it the kind of portent or ponders or brainstorm kind of spells um and i like like there's like 30 or so different one mana spells let me dig down in that deck because i'm using those belts to make drakes it that deck is it's very easy for me in that situation to get away with 34 lands because as long as i can start the game out with a couple i can always dig down and find what i need because i'm just i'm literally always gonna have two or three of those spells in my hand that's not normal either that's like one of those situations where you're kind of breaking the laws of physics as well but but similarly like if you know if you're not playing the night's whisper spells but you are applying a bunch of ponder kind of effects in your deck because you dislike can trips in blue or you're playing a bunch of faithless looting kind of things in in red or something you might also get we'll get away with running in that like 35 36 range much more easily than somebody else that isn't running a bunch of those but you kind of have to know and when i say a bunch i'm not talking like two or three i'm talking you need to be looking at like six or eight or ten of those things to consistently be able to count on having one in hand when you need it to dig down yeah my my real the ever wise deck is the exact same way that is the lowest that i have it's 34 lands but that deck is literally just designed to just churn through the deck so which is actually funny because like i've either always been flooded it seems or have been screwed with mana it seems um one way or another that deck only operates in extremes i swear that deck hates me like i'm sorry for your pain no it is like really interesting i i do it to myself apparently but like it's so consistent how much it like it's sorry i don't mean to the inconsistency is so consistent yes i i get it yes yes exactly but yeah like the whole deck is designed just to like crank through the deck like if i get two mana um i have access to one of like the 20 spells i have that's going to get me access to getting at least like four or five more cards deep and that's generally enough to get me to the next land it's very very similar to dana's tower and deck where yes it's intentionally being very low but it also has a ton of cantrip effects where um one mana i use a spell to draw another card um and then usually it's it's getting a couple cards deep whether it's like faithless looting or i get to to draw two and discard two ponder where i get to look at the top three cards or i get to shuffle even if i don't like any of those cards and then i still draw a card so you're always ending up um at parity with cards in hand and that's a good way to find other cards in your deck i so one of the things it feels like we're really hitting on here isn't just that something like a mana curve can affect uh the number of lands that you might want to play but especially the card velocity that you've got going on within the deck can be a really big thing that greases the wheels to ensure that you find those cards those lands to actually play so just the reliability of finding lands if you're drawing enough cards or discarding them and then drawing a bunch more that level of card velocity can secure your land account a bit more easily than some other decks that don't have that same level of velocity is basically what i'm picking up on both your guys takes there yeah i think that's definitely a big factor and probably one that's more important than most players realize is that the ability to dig down you know draw a card velocity like you said is a much bigger factor than i think most people realize i think they tend to fixate on either mana curve or average cmc um and not they're not important but i think those matter a little bit less than some other factors particularly what your card draw and velocity are well and kind of adjacent to that thought too um card selection is also very very important i think that's one reason why sylvan library is as expensive as it is because the effect is so powerful you're able to kind of help control what cards you're going to be drawing in green which is something that typically green doesn't do instead you just draw 20 cards which is what green normally does but being able to control you know the next few cards like say you know you have your sylvan library trigger you look at the top three cards your library you're like i really don't need this six drop right now because it's only turned three um i'm going to put another card down and i'm gonna draw this land that i need just to keep everything dropping and so you can kind of hold off on drawing a certain card until when you really want it that's another huge factor there's a lot of effects in blue that are dealing with this whether it's like soothsaying where you can just look at topxcars your library and and rearrange them but there's a lot of different ways that you can kind of control what is happening with the top of your deck and that also matters the the silver library one's a really good point matt um i've noticed when i drop like that turned two or three silver in the library and i wound up taking all three cards in the next turn yeah my thought process is almost never oh i want all of three these three cards it's almost always i just want one or two of these out of the way like like i just want to get them into my hand not to have use for them which i i may do but like nope i just need to go to see three different things next turn i want to have the option to to look at you know three cards now and three cards next turn as opposed to just looking at like four cards let's see it's so funny because matt was talking about card selection and i was so convinced that dana was about to be like card selection what do you mean you're selling libraries take them all you lose it he's selecting all three cards yeah yes very much dana you you hinted at something earlier that i want to circle back to you had mentioned that playing more colors would affect the number of lands that you were inclined to play since you build so many mono color and two-color decks like you've got your geru and your jury for example those are things that you feel more comfortable slimming down on the number of lanes that you've got because there are fewer colors to get is that a fielding mat that you share as well if you're playing more colors does that make you more inclined to play more lands or do you think it's probably kind of a wash either way what do you think about that statement that dana made earlier for me it's a wash when i was looking through all of my decks um typically the amount of colors that i'm playing doesn't really affect the like the number of lands that i'm playing um i mentioned that my my alila deck plays 35 lanes which is on the low end that's a three color deck and then i have two color decks that are playing 37 so it doesn't really have that big of an impact in my decks that i've noticed um but i understand where that thought comes from because um you you have to prioritize you know your color fixing um you're typically probably want to play a few more like ramp spells or anything like that just to get access to all of your colors um so yeah i definitely understand why you would want to play more lands um that just doesn't reflect in my decks because i tend to prioritize like the lens that i am playing they're there for a reason and it's typical i'm just playing more duels um as opposed to just playing more lands just volume gotcha so dana i guess i also want to i don't want to speak for you if you want to elaborate more on that thought um just how it manifests yeah sure um i'm i'm not sure where i am with it either so so in a mono color deck as long as i've drawn lands they will get the job done like i don't care for the most part i mean occasionally you have a situation where like you've drawn three of the eight utility lands you have or something and the car was meta doesn't solve your problem but like i mean that's a problem more specific to you probably yeah i was being generous when i said eight um seriously um eight is more is more closely affiliated to the number of basically right yes just be honest um but no so the mono color deck though usually um if you have lands out they're going to do what you need to do they're going to cast the brainstorm to dig down further they're going to cast that night's whisper they will let you dig down to find what you need and a two color deck that's generally true as well i found it's the three color deck for me where things get tricky where i can't always rely on the three lands i have in hand to provide the colors i need to let me do what i want to do in that case i might want to i tend to feel like i want to have more choices i maybe want to have four lands in hand so i can then play the ones that are going to get me what i want you know maybe that's less of an issue if you have the absolute perfect mana base it's going to make you you know filled with cards that make every single color you will need but short of that i feel like it does make a difference i think the option to have more lands in hand in your opening hand so you can play the appropriate colors to let you cast a spell to take that next step is a much bigger deal than it is with one or two colored eggs all right i i can totally i'm i can absolutely see that i feel like one of the things that's biasing me right now is that i have my three color deck at the moment is the mimioplasm and since that's a reanimator deck that's cheating costs out the water that that's i think is the deck of mine that plays the fewest number of lands because i'm just constantly cheating the mana costs but i think that that's giving me an incorrect impression and we can talk about strategies a little bit later on but when i do think of other decks that i have that are four colors like rayhan and ishai i think i am sticking closer to like 37 to 38. because i think what you're saying is is true and when i think of the monocolored decks that i have it can be a little bit lower than that so i haven't really decided but i do like the logic that you're putting out there because there's the choice involved there again back to that selection does feel like a pretty big deal and it's nice to be cognizant of that so kind of a similar vein to um the amount of colors in your deck um does the commander's mana cost affect what you guys are are doing for land count is that something you take into consideration when you're actually doing your your total lands for a deck i like this question a lot because i think i think my answer is an immediate and resounding yes i uh yes with a caveat dang it as soon as i said i'm like no there's an asterisk on this because i just talked about mimeoplasm and nimbleplasm is a five mana commander but i'm running very few but in that deck mimi plasm is much closer to my top end so i am building with that in mind whereas something like like marin i am going to shape the ramp that i have in that deck around when i want to cast the commander um like i could overload that deck with a bunch of two mana ram for instance uh and a bunch of you know enough lands to guarantee that i'm gonna get to play her on turn three but on turn three she doesn't necessarily do a whole lot because i don't have anything in the graveyard for her to get back compared to if i had a commander that's only you know two mana for instance that is going to be a pretty different experience and if i've got a commander that's seven mana you know if i'm playing some vishkal deck for example like yeah that's going to make a pretty a pretty sizeable difference i think the closest example is actually uh probably my yanet deck uh my net that's five mana and the curve itself is pretty high like that's a thing that i want to be able to make sure that i hit and if i miss an early land drop i'm not going to cast that commander at all so yeah i absolutely think that the mana cost and the commander plays a big role for me um i i think about it i don't know if i do anything about it i've thought about it every now and then i guess um but i mean so looking at my at my decks um it doesn't really play into how i execute the mana bases uh miri like i mentioned 35 lands for a three cmc but that whole deck is a bunch of small creatures leading into some some big haymaker turns um so the the lion count in general is is pretty pretty low uh for my like my uh vivicus asmari deck though that's a bunch of big creatures so i i think it's more just the style of deck as opposed to my commander's six man of value that's what's playing a bigger role because i have 37 lands in my ukimah and kasir deck which is the partner deck but all i really care about is that that three mana pukima but it's still playing 37 lance which is a decent amount so um i would say that i consider your question dana don't do anything about it well you know i kind of don't either but i think for a different reason um in my case if just coincidentally enough the decks i have with higher cmc commanders tend to be ones where the commander isn't a super important part of what the tech does um a spirit in my sphinx tribal deck is just a sphinx in the command zone like that's why a spirit is there the deck doesn't need a spirit to run i sometimes forget this video is there in the command zone and don't cast it because i have enough other things going on in the deck doesn't it's not like it's not a part of the deck it's just a free sphinx i have there yeah um so as a result like multiple decks of mine with higher cmc commanders just so happen to work that way or the commander isn't necessarily important to be on the field for the deck to function um so it it winds up like not being something i worry about just because it never comes up and how the decks are built and how they play i i will throw anything here even if this isn't like this is related to the mana cost question but not exactly the mana cost question but like the number of commanders i have in the command zone also affects how many lands i want that deck to run if i'm playing a partner deck i've got two command taxes that i have to be tracking there and i'll likely have to pay both of them maybe once maybe twice throughout that game like that also plays into like if i'm gonna have two commanders that feels like i have an even more of an obligation to make sure that the land base can support that and hit consistent land drops to make sure that i can actually cast one or both of them again in the late game since those mana costs are going to climb up quite a bit once the commander attack starts doubling on two commanders in the zone that that is a really good point that i hadn't really considered i also don't play very many partner decks but having to worry about you know how many spells you're gonna be able to cast managing twice the commander tax like that's a really good point that i think most players including me because i'm just now thinking about it uh don't think about it enough because uh that adds up man that the the commander tax like that two mana um but just twice as much yeah it's it's really cool i mean i i really enjoy playing it like my virtual gorm deck for example i love it and virtus is just a little three mana guy but as soon as i put him down onto the battlefield everyone and their mother is going to try and get rid of irides because no one wants him to cut their life in half because it's very scary when that happens which means he ends up costing like five mana seven mana i've cast him for i've played an eleven mana one one in in my lifetime because of how much feared his hate uh how much hate he just gets over time but i've also got another commander that i also have to contend with so there's a lot juggling there um so that's an interesting point too so i i'm i'm interested in that dana because i think that i need to study a bit more to really answer your question but i know for sure the answer to the partner's question um but mana cost in the command zone i feel like it is actually pretty reasonable to shape a curve around that that does actually make a lot of sense to me even though i know that matt disagrees because of all of his big dragon vivictus stuff i mean i'm just just giving you just anecdotal evidence don't treat it like anything scientific because there's zero science behind anything that i do with my dex gotcha well there are some other numbers that i do want to get to but i think i'll have to save that for the back half of the show because there is a segment that we've put off for far too long guys how about we challenge some stats let's do that yeah is is this the segment that is sponsored by altersleeves.com where you can head to altersleeves.comrecast to get all sorts of just awesome alternate arts for your your your cards have it printed on a sleeve instead of the card itself play around interchangeable protect your cards all the same time is this that segment where you can go to altersleeves.comrecast because they sponsor this certain segment and we have edhrex sleeves that you can buy there with our lovely visage on them yes that is in fact the segment that i'm talking about yeah okay let's talk about challenge the stats because there's so much data on eda track but we don't always agree with that sometimes i think that cards see too much or too little play so we'd love to challenge those stats dana how about you start us off this week what's your challenge my challenge is brought to us by a listener um hegemon78 on twitter and it's for the card victory chimes it is a three mana rock and and we've been talking about that a lot lately the the good three-man rocks we've gotten in the last couple of years um victory times would qualify as one it is a three-man iraq and it says a player of your choice adds colorless mana their mana pool so the fact that it's colorless not any color does hurt a little bit however it also has a text untap victory chimes during each other player's untap step and that's very very decent in general but there's a couple of commanders where it really shines and it's just probably not seeing enough play in those decks the first and foremost is probably crew fix god of horizons where mana doesn't drain from your mana pool victory times over the course of just one spinner on the table is adding four mana to your mana pool um if you're tapping untapping it on every player's turn which you would be doing um 25 is pretty good representation but i feel like it should be in way more crew fixed decks and so does hegemon 78 the other two decks though he points out are uh nimrous unas trickster and a pharah god of the polis two commanders that reward you for casting spells and other players turns and when you do so you get to draw a card um so you try to like spread your spells around and instead of dumping them out in one turn you want to like do as many spells one at a time on kind of other players turns particularly with afara victory chimes is a great way to let you do that on as many turns as possible and draw a card every time you do it it's in only four percent of a pharah decks oh and there's also you know that's really good if your commander has an activated ability as well like kenrif the return king that has a bunch of activated abilities and it's also only in four percent of kenrose decks so it's not the kind of card i think you want to run in in every single deck but there's a lot of places where it does crazy good work and it should be in more crew fix decks more afar decks more kenworth decks for sure so i'm with hegemon 78 here victory chimes should see more play that is a really cool challenge and dana since you talked about a mana rock i am also going to talk about a mana rock for my challenge the stats but i'm actually going to go the opposite direction i'm going to talk about one that i think is seeing too much play in a specific monoblack deck the commander that i'm talking about here is chainer dementia master which fun fact before i built sir conrad the grim the commander that i was going to play for monoblack was chain of dementia master but then conrad came out and stole my heart away and he won't give it back he's just too beautiful jaina the dimension master is a really cool five mana 33 minion legend that can revive creatures from your graveyard he gives all of your nightmares plus one plus one and you can pay three black mana and three life to reanimate a creature from your graveyard and that creature becomes black and a nightmare in addition to its other creature types and excuse me i'm realizing that i misread that it doesn't just return a creature from your graveyard it's any graveyard lord this thing is so good there's only like 445 chainer decks out there and there need to be more this guy's awesome the issue that he sometimes run into uh runs into is that when chainer himself leaves play all of your nightmares would get exiled but the thing that this chain or deck loves to do is to find one of those awesome creatures that you love to reanimate like a gray merchant of asphadel that is going to drain so much life from your enemies and then pair that with something like a viscera seer so that you can just sacrifice that creature all over again and then immediately bring it back by paying that three mana cost it's so so awesome this is a very very cool reanimator deck but there is a mana rock in here that i don't know if it actually needs and it's a very expensive one at that i'm talking about jet medallion two mana artifact black spells you cast cost one generic mana less to cast 41 percent of the 445 trainer decks are playing this one and while it is a cool card for monoblack i don't think it's necessary for this one because given my experience with playing chainer a whole lot of your mana goes into that activated ability which isn't reduced by the medallion at all and i feel like it would be more opportune to get a mana rock that can pay for any of your spells including your colorless spells which jet medallion wouldn't affect at all and a man rock that's going to supply you mana for chainers activated ability which the jet medallion does absolutely nothing to so a 27 30 card here a mana rock that i actually don't know if this deck really needs i would be a little bit critical of that one and see if there might be other mana supplements that you can use instead of this very expensive jet medallion for a very very cool commander indeed well joey i i'm happy for you so i'm gonna go to something that makes me happy too because uh if let's just make everybody happy here i'm gonna talk about celestia card because we should be um so kyler sarguardian emissary this card is super fun um i bought the the pre-con this came in um human tribal this this deck has just been a lot of fun if you've watched twitch.tv slash eda directcast on wednesday evenings you'd have seen this a couple times and boy howdy i i've just been enjoying learning about this deck navigating a bunch of little things about it so um one little synergy that i really want to dial in on is kyle's ability that other humans you control get plus one plus one for each counter on kyler um so that's that's very important it's each counter not each plus one plus one counter which a lot of people i've seen um kind of just assume it has to be a plus one plus one counter um and you get to put a bunch of plus encounters onto kyler because whenever another human enters battlefield you do put a plus one plus one counter onto kyler's segardian emissary um so typically you're gonna be building a lot of human tribal synergies but there's one that i really like that man folks that you you want you want to put this in the deck um slippery bog bonder is a card that i'm challenging it is three in a green for a human druid that has flash and hex proof um it's a three three and says when slippery bog bonder enters the battlefield put a hex proof counter on target creature then move any number of counters from among creatures you control onto that creature so not only do you get to put all sorts of plus one plus one counters that you may incidentally be playing onto kyler but you put a hex proof counter onto kyler which does actually count as a counter that's going to make all of your creatures bigger so at worst slippery bog bonder makes kyler give all your give all your humans plus two plus two because of the abilities um it protects your commander it's another human which is going like so slippery bog binder essentially is a five five that makes your your commander hex proof this card is so silly uh just just play this it's only in 26 of kyler deck so far um this is probably one of the best cards in the deck it's a dollar card right now um it's so good if you have any leftover aquaria cards from when a corey was dealing with all sorts of keyword counters that's also going to feed into kyler's ability that's just one synergy that man i i discovered on accident and i love it now and i think everybody should be taking advantage of it just because yeah slippery bog bonder 26 oh it's so good so good best card to the deck i love that like leading into your challenge you're just like yeah joey did every animator thing let's talk about celestenia and then you genuinely did show me up with an absolutely excellent challenge because you have used that in games which i did you slashed recast and that synergy has indeed done the wrecking of the face that it's really powerful we've seen it in person dana and i can i think personally attest to how powerful that ends up being and how much of a nuisance it is that it's so good and difficult to deal with in addition to all of that i mean the card basically acts like if swift foot boots were a five-five creature that also had hex proof like that's what this card is that's that's um i don't want to think about that world where the swift boots also become the five five creatures that seems that seems more like a dana strategy actually i'm pretty sure he's done he's managed to i definitely i have absolutely killed people with twisted boots that are animated before sure it's an image straight out of bed knobs and broomsticks the armor comes to life perfect it's very fantasia okay uh guys let's get back to talking about the number of lands that edh players are running in their decks and whether we think it's enough and i hinted before we took that break for challenger stats that i had a little bit more data to share and i would like to share it now specifically i was kind of curious whether not just the number of colors that you play has a role in the number of lanes in a deck but do these specific colors have an effect on the number of lanes that players use on average and the answer is definitely yes basically in the data we can actually pick out that decks that include green on average tend to play one more land than decks that don't include green for example the red green color combination those commanders tend to run an average of about 35 lanes while almost every other two color combination runs like 33 lands or every three color combination that includes green such as you know naya and jund they run like 35 or 34 lands on average but every three color combination that doesn't include green like esper or mardu they run an average of 33. so matt i feel like i'm going to pass this back to you now hearing that the specific numbers of decks that include green actually affects the number of lands is this something you're happy to hear expected to see what do you think when you hear all of those numbers um i think expected to see is a good way to put it especially when you consider you have you know your cultivate your far seek those types of of ramp spells that are getting lands out of your library putting them onto the battlefield um just that's kind of green's calling card when it comes to ramp is there they're putting more lanes in there because they're pulling more lands out whereas if you're playing is it or grixis or or esper whatever it is uh your ramp typically is going to come in the form of artifacts uh just kind of how the most efficient are whether it's the cygnets your soul rings um anything like that you're kind of leaning on that a little bit more so yeah it does add up um and everything kind of checks out why green would be running more lands on average because their ramp packages are going to be more reliably land-based dana what do you think um it doesn't surprise me but i also think that maybe that isn't the right way to do it um i think green's land ramp gives them more options to fix and you can maybe get away with slightly less lands there whereas i think the other colors that don't have that option they're relying on mana rocks to fix plenty of which including my challenge of stacks pick victory giants don't fix your colors so i think you you need to have a little bit more reliably or have a more reliable chance to draw those lands they're going to make you multiple colors and and have an optional lands to play to get you the colors you need so yeah it makes sense but i don't know if i necessarily ascribe to that logic myself i'm so happy you said that because when i saw those i was just like well then the esper and the mardu and the grix just need to stop playing 33 lands on average right to play more yeah they need to go up this number's too low i still feel that way that this number is too low and i just want to see the land count increase because i feel like this is not consistent enough like no so matt i'm sorry but like i i want all of the other ones to to be there on the same level i don't i i i said that i think that's why that's happening i didn't say i agree with it i i think these people running 33 lands are a little out of their minds anyway well yeah they probably are actually yeah well so speaking of out of your mind then here's a fun fact that um that now i'm going to wield this over you matt i also looked at the numbers for mono colored decks and here's a weird twist this is the one case where green doesn't have more lands than the other mono colors the average green deck contains 34 lands and the average mono black deck contains 35 and i found that very very fun hahaha in your face mr green man mono black is the best i mean well if you want to take it that way um colorless decks run 35.3 lands on average so netty netty boo boo no you've absolutely got me there it's absolutely true but in those cases i feel like there is a pretty clear reason that you can draw for that like monoblack loves the cabal coffers or cabal stronghold synergy so more swamps is absolutely like part of an essential game plan for model black and as for a colorless deck i mean there are fewer possible spells out there to run in the first place so i feel like that has a really big effect not only that but as we were talking about earlier where does the commander's mana cost affect the number of lands that you'd play well some of the best colorless commanders are things like kozalek shout out to ashlynn rose and that's a 10 mana creature so yeah you would want to play more lanes that you can actually cast your colorless commander in the first place well joey i think that just as much as anything with these mono color land counts is the strategy that typically is employed by each of these colors like mono red is typically kind of known as the the aggressive color so it makes sense why mono red is only running 33 lands on average or why mono blue is doing that as well because like dana pointed out with this tal rand deck there are so many one mana efficient can trips where you're getting a lot of card selection that you're able to find those lands whereas with mono green mono black like those are typically bigger mana type of strategies there so they have to be playing more lane just because they want more in play and they don't have that type of card selection blue does or just the the all-out gun at speed that mono red does so i think the strategy plays just as much as a factor as anything else with why any of these mono colored decks are playing the lands they are and that honestly is going to be another huge factor that i think we've kind of obliquely addressed but we haven't directly addressed is that like the strategy itself is going to be one of the most deciding factors here if you're playing landfall yeah that's not going to be a 33 land deck it's just not going to be the case but i feel like that's not even necessarily the only example there like one of the reasons that we might see more lands in more colors for instance could be because of like a super friend strategy for instance like that is the kind of strategy that you're gonna have a lot of like five and six mana planeswalkers you need to hit them consistently so that is the type of strategy that would really encourage you to play more of those lands whereas if you're playing like dana for example you have an elf ball deck uh just an elf tribal deck that is the kind of thing that is low to the ground and more aggressive and that that strategy on its own is just going to completely change the amount of resources that you provide in the in the land base just on its face the strategy plays such a huge role and i guess we had like talked about that peripherally but maybe not directly yeah and that was definitely a situation where i noticed in that deck i think i was running 38 initially and i just drew too many lands the amount of ramp i had additionally it's a commander deck where the commander taps for mana um so so making mana just wasn't a problem there if i you know happen to not see land on turn six it was a way um less pro a way lesser problem that would have been plenty of other decks you know what that's a huge point too marwyn your deck there actually makes mana herself i would expect to see that if your commander is the one that can produce mana like a bellby corrupted observer deck for example that can do a lot to smooth out your land necessities your lack of scorch thrash might be another example like commanders that produce mana on their own that can also be a really big factor that allows you to have a more comfortable closer to 35 compared to a deck that might be hungrier for like the 37 or 38 when planning for the long game they don't have that instant ramp right there in their zone so that also is going to play a huge huge factor in all of this kind of circling around to the strategy i think one of them that i uh mentioned earlier is i play a bunch of reanimator decks i'm constantly cheating costs into play i don't want to pay nine mana for a creature i want to cheat it into play that's another type of strategy that would also encourage me just like matt you were mentioning with the the mono red aggro or stuff like that that can be a faster strategy well when i'm cheating mana costs with a reanimator that's another strategy that i'm like i feel a little bit more comfortable than i do in my other decks if i play a few less lands here because i'm just gonna cheat those costs anyway so that's great yeah well and this is another reason too like you said having having mana in the command zone another reason why rafalos definitely needs to stay banned um because you want to talk about like all the mana that card can generate it's it's a little ludicrous there you go so here's a left turn in the conversation now we often hear this adage that if you add two mana rocks or if you add two sources of ramp you can remove one land dana let's ask you first is this an adage that you agree with or that you disagree with when you see that kind of logic floating around online as it seems to do a whole lot what is your main thought about that idea i think if somebody asked me if i had heard the old adage that if it's raining in the morning make sure to have a big breakfast my response would be that adage makes no sense because those two things have nothing to do with one another i feel the same way here the amount of ramp and mana rocks have in my deck has nothing to do with how many lands i play now that's not of course universally true if you're playing some kind of a super fast combo deck you might not care about making that fourth landfall because your deck's trying to combo off and win super quickly and as long as you have a couple lands enough to play those rocks whatever maybe that's going to get you there and there are definitely exceptions where that's maybe true by and large however making your land drops is a whole different thing than ramping ahead with mana rocks those two things really aren't that related and i want to be doing both of those things every turn dana i'm gonna need you to say all of that over again because that adage you just made up at least i hope you made up and it's not some old prospector talk like i was laughing the entire way through that they used to say that in a mine every morning before we'd go down in coal that that's going to be my new ring tone that was absolutely brilliant okay so matt what do you think do you think that adding more ramp can be an excusable justification for slimming down on the land count we're talking about more of the the social we're not talking about competitive stuff um but right in the the type of games that we're playing um i don't think i would ever do that um i if so especially with with land ramp if you're playing rampant growth or any of those types of things that are grabbing lands out of your library putting them on the battlefield you're taking lands out of the deck which means you can't draw those later it's the same reason that i don't consider a fetch land because a true land or going up a land because you're just taking out a land that you could be drawing later because you're you're thinning the deck out um in 60 card formats in in modern and legacy especially where fetchlians kind of run rampant like you might see somebody who keeps a a hand and they play their fetch lane but they don't crack if they don't get a land out of their deck because they want to draw an additional land on their drawstep and so taking a land out of there just prevents them from doing that it reduces the chances so um i don't ascribe to if you're playing ramp sources um you can go down on lands i think you want to have your your lands set because you typically in a game of commander which is all about resource accumulation that's what the format kind of pivots around whether you like it or not so you want to be able to give yourself the most opportunity to accumulate those resources and continue drawing the lands which then are going to let you cast more spells over the course of the game all right i just want to clarify so the the thin to win argument you're saying that the mathematics of that work a lot better in sixty card format but they don't work out in commander so you know they do not work out um if you want to check out any of frank carsten's amazing articles he's one of the smartest magic writers out there um i know he has written many articles about thin no win and percentages and everything um and and he's even said in a couple articles uh this does not translate well to commander in singleton formats because of the nature of it like it's scarcely a thing in 60 card formats it is mathematically irrelevant in 100 card formats right so for you i just want to make sure i fully understood what you're saying you would rather play if you do have more ram sources especially the ones that go and find lands you still think that like if anything that might be causing you to play like almost more lands in the deck to make sure or or was that not just a watch yeah it's not going to impact anything that i do about the the total lands that i'm playing um i i so yeah to to answer the question directly um i'm not taking out lands because i'm adding in more mana rocks yeah i think that like when it comes to a strategy again like elves where maybe the you know marwin might be making humana or if it's just like any old you know it's a green black elf commander that doesn't produce mana like so many of the other elves in the deck can cause such a huge population of mana insurgents like that can't have a material effect but giving an exact formula like for every two remove one or whatever that doesn't necessarily line up for me either i feel like it would be difficult to ascribe that across all strategies because a deck like elves absolutely but that isn't going to have the same resonance in a deck like dragons for that kind of thing i feel like it doesn't necessarily there isn't ever a clean easy formula dana like you said at the top of the show this is more of an art than it is a science and trying to give it an exact formula is probably going to end up just not really communicating properly with the actual style and strategy of deck that you're playing and that's more where your focus should be than trying to find those secret hack formulas to try and to try and crack it yeah the only thing close that i've come to in my own decks is my alia artful provocateur deck um it already had so many sources of artifact ramp but that was when i was running 37 lands so i've shaved down over the course of time but i've added in ponder and cantrip effects just to smooth everything out in general because i always seem to have too many lands and i was drawing too many so i just kind of added some card selection into it instead of adding more artifacts to cut down on the lands well that kind of raises an interesting question i guess i will ask the two of you because i have my own answer here what is the first thing you do when you feel like a deck doesn't quite have enough lands is it add another land because it generally isn't for me when i feel like oh man this deck needs like i wish i had one more land in it i'm just going to add another draw spell it's generally what i do and maybe eventually i will feel like okay that didn't solve my problem but like if if i feel like a couple explained that one drop still wasn't quite enough then i'll go i guess i should add one more that that's usually what i do i tend to feel like my 36 to 37 lands is plenty and if i'm not seeing them consistently enough it's because i'm not drawing enough cards not that i don't have enough lands but but is that unique to me or is that is that what you guys do as well dana i something something it's raining outside to have a big breath i feel like the things you just said there are a little bit loosely related if i think my deck needs another land my instinct is to like put another land in it the garden velocity is a thing to address for sure but if i feel like i'm not hitting my mana you're absolutely right that there are multiple factors to pay attention to there and the card velocity is something that could be playing a role so it's good to be like to examine the deck more thoroughly and understand that i really love that point but if i think it needs a land my instinct is to grab a land and not to grab because i'm the mother that'll just totally make sense i i it it's i might well be the outlier here yeah i'm taking joey's site on this argument as well like if it needs lands it needs lands it doesn't need draw spells all right um yeah it doesn't matter how many lands i'm or how many cards i'm drawing if i'm not drawing any of the lands because i don't have enough in the deck um if that's not really going to change so it occurs to me that over the course of the show we've talked a bit about the commanders that we have that play the least number of lands but i am actually just for curiosity's sake kind of curious like matt what is the deck that you play that has the greatest number of lands in it and and why that might be um well i know exactly why these two decks are are running 45 and 46 lands respectively uh and it's because they're landfall decks yeah oh so so ac type of guy streets it's the civic precon that's all about landfall and you um it's basically tatiova on steroids um so you're just playing a lot of lands you're drawing a bunch of cards you're playing more lanes and drawing more cards um it's it's a little easy for that deck to get out of hand but i just i want as many cards in or as many lands in the deck because every time i play land i'm getting rewarded for it whether it's drawing cards or i have some landfall triggers or anything like that or i just i want a bunch of lanes because then i can cast engulf the shore and bounce everybody's uh creatures back and just go crazy with that but also i have omnath lucas of rage which is running 46 lands and that's just all about getting a bunch of lands into play and i'm doing stuff like scapeshift with vala cutting play so i'm just doming the table or i'm just generating a bunch of elementals so both of those strategies like i'm intentionally running a lot of lands because i just want them i'm benefiting from playing more of them and i'm casting spells that are putting more of them into play and so yeah it both of them they're intentionally running a very large number um but it's kind of crazy actually thinking about it now because i'm not counting the uh the dual-faced cards um i'm running 48 land-ish cards because i have a couple of them that i can play so yeah almost half the deck could be a land and for the record that's more lands than the typical landfill deck tends to play definitely do you have do you have an inkling though you know barring landfall because i guess you know in retrospect that question was kind of obvious barring landfall though do you have an inkling of what your most land voluminous deck might be um i believe it is the boros precon deck the lor or the lorehold excuse me lorehold precon deck from stricthaven because that deck came with 37 i believe and i added an extra one because um the deck kind of struggles and like i need res i need a lot of resources in that deck um it's and kind of low powered um it's it's pre-con plus go ahead and to clarify there just because i know when looking through data for the face commander of the deck ozgear osgear runs a lot lower on lands because he's really good at creating more mana rocks but you've opted for alibu and i just want to make that i have yes yeah yeah i i put alibu at the front um so it's it's still once a bunch of lands though um because all these these you know things that are gonna be making lots of different artifacts uh they cost a lot of mana mere battlesphere is not a cheap card when it comes to the mana so needle okay okay so then dana how about you same question what's the deck that you're playing that runs the most lands and i'm gonna stop you from saying a landfall answer um my landfall deck doesn't have a tunnel accident um i don't say these words to me dana you don't make any sense and to be fair it's not really a landfall deck it's more of a lands matter deck i i don't do crazy landfall things in it so there's a reason that deck compared to matt's ac deck it looks a little bit different in terms of land counts my most really is my crash deck at 37 that's the most lands are in any of my decks is is only 37. um in one thing i will say that i definitely do in thinking about it um and this probably harkens back to my comment about adding a draw spell when i feel like i'm sure to land i tend to tweak my deck around the land count that i've already decided i want to have versus tweaking the land count around what plays well like if i feel like my deck isn't playing well with the amount of lands i want i adjust the deck so it's okay with that amount versus versus doing it the other way around what kind of what kind of like so adapt to the heliocentric model so here's the here's here's the logic to that i want to have a lot of toys like i want to have all the fun cards in my deck and i don't want to have to play 40 lands to to be able to play all those toys i want to be able to you know only play 36 lands and have access to four more toys so i will tweak the deck to allow me to be able to get away with running 36 but um anything less than that is too few but i tend to stay yeah 37's the most i'm running and it tends to be 36 and way more of my decks than than not i feel like i've discovered secrets on this like i said i don't yeah good old dana moses roach because everything's set in stone i am not going to argue that's the correct way to do it i'm just saying that's what i tend to do as long as we're on the same page i hear 37 i'm like that's the average for me the deck that i have not titania which is my land-based deck that has 40. and that if we're not counting lanes the next one after that is felice which i think is like 38 maybe even 39 because the curve in that deck tends to i've got so many cards that cost five mana that i really want to be able to play and i can't afford to miss a land drop so that's one for me that's the kind of answer that i was looking for dana meanwhile you're like oh yeah my landfall deck it's got 20 lands in it and i'm just like i don't know what to do with you sometimes dude that's great it has 36 in it um for my for my gruel landfall deck um i i i also note though another difference i think between my my brewing and in the way youtube grew is i'm much greedier with the amount of of duel lands i run you don't say um i don't run a ton of basics in my decks and that's i i would tell i would say don't emulate that if you're someone else um because you can absolutely get burned for that but because i tend to run so many lands that produce multiple colors of mana i i tend to very frequently have the colors i need early on that let me cast the spells let me dig deeper i don't find myself in a position where i have to worry about colors very often um i think that's something that helps me with with that land count too so to a degree i'm doing the thing that we say we shouldn't do which is run too few lands um it's just that the the the amount of lands i'm running are right at the bottom end of maybe the threshold versus down in like the 33-34 range you're this is this is ludicrous i need to move on i've got fair enough we've got so there's just one final question that i want to talk to you guys about and that actually involves a little bit more data and this is really really interesting uh to sort of look over i mentioned at the top of the show that the average number of lands that appears in an edh deck is 35 and that it's still 35 because over the past year but year and a half we've drawn this data report and looked over yeah it seems to be consistently 35 but again we are rounding there and here is a distinction that i do want to make because technically we were rounding up from what the current average is which is 34.9 because i don't know you can't play 34.9 lanes in a deck it's one full card so we were rounding up to 35 there but the number a year and a half ago used to be 35.4 and that i find kind of interesting like there has actually been a downward trend in terms of number of lands in a deck there has been downward movement and the folks who listen to the full podcast get to hear that if you if you didn't listen to the full thing you won't know this secret nugget we saved it for the end i i just want to take the temperature in the room here and ask what do you guys think about that like matt you had been mentioning the mdfcs earlier like balagued recovery and those double-faced lands do you think that that has had a material effect on the number of lands cards that show up in players decks where are you at when you hear that trend um i definitely think it has played an impact i don't think it should have though um okay i i i've been in the camp for for the the mdfcs and i love belligerent recovery it is one of my favorite cards the utility behind it is fantastic but i think a lot of people are treating them as lands that you can cast the spells later when they really should be spells that make sure you always have three lanes in your opening hand um you want to play them as lanes as soon as possible um i i i think they they're they're tricky to play and i think it encourages people to have some bad deck building habits because i remember when they first came out people were like i'm only running 30 lands and seven mdfcs and that hurt my soul so bad that that's a tough proposition i i'm there for sure yeah it's just it's intentionally adding mono color enter the battlefield tapped lands and that's it's it's real rough it's real hard to to justify um so yeah i i think that is definitely impacting quite a bit um i think they are great cards but i think you you always it's kind of like uh temple the false god that's one a controversial card whether you're you're josh kwai or benny smith or anyone out there you want to make sure temple of false god is occupying a spell slot in your deck same with all of the mdfcs you want ballygood recovery to be ballaged recovery we don't call it balaged bed or whatever the lion's face is i don't know what it is the causal's land face thing um are you talking about kazul's fury the mdfc yeah but i don't know what the land face is called so yeah but we we call them by the spell but the name of the spell um i think that's what you should be treating the masses treating them as lands or treating them as spells i'm just so backwards about these because there's just two faces to remember yeah he's you're flip-flopping like a pancake it's it's tough to keep up with you i'm flip-flopping like a waffle it has to go upside down to cook properly so my position on these has evolved a little bit since they first came out um i initially was in the same boat as matt where you need to treat them as spells or it will cause problems i think i've changed that somewhat i think it's okay to have one or two perhaps in your deck that you're treating as lands however i think you need to be disciplined and tell yourself if one of these is in my opening hand i i'm not going to miss a land drop like you can't be greedy with them and say oh i don't know if i want to play this because i want to cast as a spell later if you can't consistently force yourself to play them as a land when you need to then you need to start counting them as spells um i run ballot get recovery in a couple different green decks and i'm treating it as a land and that's what i do i i have told myself as a rule if i need to play as a land i'm playing it as a land like that's i have to do that or it shouldn't be in my deck so i that for me i think is is the difference that the change for me as as i've seen them over the course of the you know year or so they've been out um i'm i'm okay with running a couple in the land slots as long as i'm disciplined about it yeah baligate recovery if it's in my opening hand i'm playing it as my very first land to take away that temptation from myself yeah and and there are of course those cool tricks that you can do with bounce lands and stuff like that and lord knows i i think of the three of us i'm the guy who plays the most bounce lines on my decks because i also love the fact that sometimes they make me discard cards and then i can reanimate them out of my graveyard it's a great time so like the synergy is definitely there and i do appreciate that but i do personally still lean more towards i want to count them as spells that i am responsible with my mana base because i already have what i consider a dangerous habit of potentially slimming downs slimming down on lands already so this is a rule that i'm setting for myself to make sure that i never fall victim to yeah i'll just cut a land to make room for these cool cards so that is especially why i treat them as spells first and foremost i get both of your perspectives for sure but it is just interesting to me to see that these could have had a role in a slightly downward trend in terms of the number of land cards that appear in a deck because i mean the amount of play that they're seeing is big like ballyget recovery shows up in 13 of eligible decks 13 of over 220 000 decks like that is the same rate of inclusion 13 as the return of the wild speaker like that is the the type of like penetration in the format that we're talking about i feel like that's pretty darn good valid awakening the red mdfc that wheels your hand that's showing up in 11 of decks and that is a little bit lower but it's the same inclusion rate as the card gamble in red decks i feel like this is a a pretty big thing to see like they are certainly popular and we are feeling their impact so when it comes to the number of lanes that people are playing it's really important to note that and to be aware of how your relationship is with those mdfcs because even on this podcast apparently we can't even agree about how they should be treated but that is a conversation you definitely need to have with yourself and with your own decks too well and it's not even that like there's a right or wrong way unless it's dignified that it's probably not but but yeah it's how how conscious are you being of of why you're putting xyz cards in the deck and just today we're just talking about lands and cards that can be lands or should be lands um but yeah like there's no right or wrong way just are you being mindful of of why you're putting a card in there um and how you're playing it yeah and art not a science as was so eloquently stated earlier and also guys it's currently raining outside so i'm gonna have a big breakfast so how about we call this episode to a close if our listeners would like to get in touch with us where is it that they can find us all matt well you can find me posting breakfast pictures on twitter over at mathimus55 that's m-a-t-h-i-m-u-s-55 and don't forget wednesday evenings we are streaming over at twitch.tv edh recast wednesday evenings we have guests on every single week so make sure you tune in because the games are always a great load of fun and dana you will find me giving giving me morning weather report every day on twitter at dana roach you can hear me on my other podcast cmdr central i'm writing articles for commander's herald nadhrek and you can find all of us together at patreon.com slash media directcast and i'm joey schultz you can find me at joseph m schultz on twitter and you can find the cast at edhrec cast on facebook and on twitter as well plus if you've got a question you can contact us at edhredcast gmail.com our thanks go out once again to the whole team at the command zone for handling the post-production work on the podcast and we want to thank our sponsors tcgplayer and cardkingdom.com and you can visit altersleeves.com idiotcast for cool custom edhrex sleeves listeners we'll be back at you next week with more data and insights but until then remember edh wreck your deck before you wreck your deck and old stick fingers is right behind you [Music] you

Channel: EDHRECast

Views: 46,653

Keywords: magic the gathering, commander, edh, edhrec, mtg

Id: OBtYR4XcOlg

Length: 70min 38sec (4238 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 22 2021