It's Time to D-D-D-Dual Land! | EDHRECast 150

[Music] hello and welcome to the edh rec cast my name is joey schultz and i'm joined as always by my fantastic co-hosts first up he challenges you to a duel it's matt morgan i'm i'm really disappointed this week i was passed over for a job i was trying to get a job working at an ice cream store because i told them i only want to work on sundays oh man you know what matt that uh that right there that story that's that's a real scoop it's a rocky road to finding employment and it's nuts i would i would have more puns for you but i butter pecan somebody my own size i don't even know what that one means anyway up next he challenges you to a dual land that's dana roach um now that this crazy gamestop stock spike thing has passed us i don't have to worry about what i missed out on there i can go back to worrying about all the reserve list spiking cards i've missed out on so that's kind of nice yeah definitely nice definitely nice dana real nice indeed anyway this is the edh rec cast edh rec 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 decks and here on the podcast what we'd like to do is give all that data a little more context hey matt what is it that we're talking about on this episode this week we're going to talk about dual lands like arena where you have to fight each other in it um not that type of duel i think we want to talk about some lands that tap for for for two different colors you know help you color fix that kind of that good it's it's matt what it is is it's time to do dual land that's what it is i i know that my research for this episode is just gonna go out the window so um good luck to both of you for carrying this episode so that's just it like dual lands color fixing stuff in edh that's such an important thing but especially with the new snow duels at common that have been introduced in caldheim there are so many different dual land options right now so we figured that what we might need to do is just sit down and kind of evaluate them to see what are the best of the best so that's going to be our episode should be really really fun but before we get to that we want to pause and give a huge thank you to the folks at the command zone podcast who handle all the post-production work on our podcast here making it look as spiffy as it does and we want to thank our sponsors for the show too uh yeah idiot directcast is sponsored by card kingdom and tcg player lately we've seen some real crazy price creep on a whole lot of singles and you can take advantage of that by buy listing cards you aren't playing the card kingdom for these bumped up prices i just mailed out four orders this week myself they also have a huge selection of singles as does our other sponsor tcg player a great site with an endless array of cards you can pick up and they will also let you set up a storefront if you want to sell your own cards through tcgplayer just go to edh rec 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 would like to support the podcast directly you can do so over at patreon.com edh recast we have all sorts of tiers whether you want to join the discord that we have all for all of our patrons you can do that and get in on all the dad jokes uh maybe talk about some 60 card formats or you just want to have people check out your decks you can do that in our discord or you can get some swag every now and then we are getting ready to send out our first round here coming up very soon so if you want to get in on all that kind of fun stuff and support the show go to edh patreon.comrecast not only that but we also have a tier to thank one of our patreon subscribers so matt who are we shouting out this episode so this week we are going to give a big shout out to brian camacho thank you so much for your support we definitely appreciate it and uh thank you for just teaming up with us partner with over at patreon as it were awesome thank you so much brian all right fellas let's get to our topic now it is time to duel lands there are so many dual lanes and we're going to go through them by a rough order of popularity and just give them a quick evaluation and we're going to have to be quick about it to be honest because there are a lot of dual lands dana let's get started waste no time what would you say is roughly the most popular dual land type in commander you know shock lands would be number one here the most popular land type they've been reprinted in three different sets in standard over the years they are fetchable if you have a plan to go get them they have basic land types for fetching and for other things that care about that and they can come into play untapped if you choose to spend a couple life um so that's kind of the the default in terms of duel ins um that i see the most play and what i think of what i think of of affordable dual lands i should say affordable you know they still kind of go up and down in price but yeah i i think it's been a really long time since i played an edge game where shock lanes didn't you know show up on the table for sure yeah they are kind of considered at this point the gold standard as it were uh just for being able to enter the battlefield untapped at the cost of only two life being fetchable is a big deal like you said if you're playing cards like far seek you're able to pick up you know a godless shrine as as you need it so just having that basic land type is one of those big big factors that draws a lot of people towards wanting to play shock lands in pretty much any deck that can afford to play them yeah and the ability to circumvent the tempo loss like they don't have to enter tapped man that can be really big because it does feel like the format is getting a lot more efficient those mana curves are lowering down and stuff like that so being able to actually not take a turn off if you need that extra mana really really huge we all know shock lanes we all love shock lanes shock lanes show up and i think in all of the decks that we have that can play it am i right there guys yeah so something's got to be the best and and these just happen to be it and then they are in pretty much all of my two plus color decks and i think yeah we all tended to play standard at various times when these were in standard so i would guess we all just have shock lands available and we build a deck we just pull a shotgun on inventory and put it into the deck yeah so then we move on though to our next one which is czech lands those are the dual lands that require you to have a certain type of land for them to come into play tapped uh excuse me for them to come into play untapped they will intercept if you don't have for example in the case of dragon school summit you would need a mountain or a swamp on the field and then it would be able to enter untapped and dragon skull scum is actually the most popular of the different czech lands are these lands that you guys are as fond of or do you kind of not like them as much as some other types well as somebody that encourages basics as often as possible i love check lanes they're kind of the first lands that i go to and i also try to keep a decent supply of these on hand they're also fairly cheap especially compared to the shock lanes for example most of them are kind of around that five dollar range which is kind of a sweet spot for being more affordable i should say uh but they're just so good because all they require is some something to have a basic land type so they could come in untapped if you have a shock land on the battlefield for example or just obviously a basic well that's a really good point with the shotgun thing um because i have kind of turned on these a little bit a few years back number one i don't run as many basics as i should i've got a ton of utility lands in my decks so i had hit a point kind of where they weren't coming into play untapped as consistently as i would have liked but then in the last couple years we've gotten other dual land cycles that do have the basic land typing as well as like the triumphs that that do and things like like mystic sanctuary the cycle of of one color lands um that was in el drain that also the basic land typing so now i've i've kind of come the other direction on them because just accidentally i've put more of the basic land typings into my decks that make these a little bit better so um if i'm playing a two color deck or a two color deck and for the most part i'm playing them in three colors as well i mean that's a really good point that you said like the more basic land types that we get on our dual lands these kind of get better and better like the a lot of other land cycles they're they're just what they are like shock lanes will they're never going to get really actively better than they already are these do because the more dual lands or triumphs that we get that have basic land types just helps out this land cycle very very much dana i've had the exact same experience although i love that in lieu of playing basics in your deck you're playing cards that have basic land types instead because you're just allergic to playing basics or something but yeah these are lands that are very dependent upon the rest of your mana base so you definitely have to watch out for them and i also have the same experience i think that i actually am only running them in two colored decks right now but i will have to double check on that but i definitely am not running them in any four color decks and in three colors i'm a little hazy on it because i also sometimes have that bad habit of not playing as many actual basics as i should and that can bite me in the butt with these particular types of lands um speaking of all of those different types of lands that have land types on them matt what's uh what's up next so the next ones are the battle for zendikar lands and i don't know if they ever got a catchy name other than the bfz lands but these are going to be stuff like cinder glade and canopy vista where the land is going to enter the battlefield tapped unless you control two or more basic lands now unlike the czech lands that need basic land types these actually do need basics but i actually i really like this cycle because a i play a lot of basics but b i think the cycle as far as like bang for your buck probably the most like cost efficient dual land because most of them are like a dollar-ish because they've been printed in pre-cons several times yeah being cheap to purchase and being fetchable does a whole lot for the fact that these are going to come into play tapped for me more often than i would like but those two factors really offset it they're they're cheap they're easy to find um i i put them in most of my decks here as well yeah i forgot that they have they have basically in types as well which is yeah the same the same boon that we talked about with the with the shock glands applies to the to these lanes as well yeah these i will say i definitely am not running any of these in my three color decks matt are you playing them in any of yours i'm actually playing them in my alila deck i'm playing all of them that i can and there and in my ukema and kazure deck but i only have i can really only play sunken hollow there but i like i said i play a lot of basics and so these reliably are almost always going to come in untapped past turn i would say five or six that's just the way i typically construct my mana bases if you're if you're somebody like dana who just really doesn't want to get blown up by back to basics apparently um then these probably aren't as good but if you're playing a lot of ways to ramp with basic lands these do get better and like i said just the cost effectiveness of these for being a duel that can fairly reliably come in untapped i i love this cycle yeah i don't run them in my one three color deck i have because there's just too many copies of the other dual lens that kind of crowd them out and i definitely am bad about running basics in a three color deck even worse than how bad i am in a two color deck so um i don't run them there but i i agree they are they are really really solid and a fantastic value for sure yeah i i definitely want more of these actually because as far as i know there's only the ally cycle yet and they haven't done the enemy cycle and i've got a lot of golgari decks that would love to be playing lands like these so wizards finish that cycle soon um up next we've got painlands they enter untapped they can tap for a colorless or if you let them deal a damage to you they can tap for one of the two colors that you might need like a dark r wastes for example or the most popular one that we're seeing is java maya coast which can tap for a blue or green but it will deal the damage to you pain lands i really really like because there is guaranteed no way that they're going to affect your tempo and if you need the color then maybe you need the color and if you don't need the color it's not going to deal any damage i'm a really big fan of painlands i think that i'm running these and not just in my two colored decks but also in my three color decks as well yeah i'm totally with you there joey um two color decks three colored x these are probably my favorite cycle maybe even after the shock lands um the fact that the reality is like after turn five or so you don't generally take that much damage from them anyway i mean not occasionally the pip but like there's plenty of times that at that point you can kind of work around taking damage from them and the fact that they tap for a colorless is pretty useful in some situations if you're playing a deck that like cares about colorless mana if you're using eldrazi displacer or something so like that can be relevant as well i just i think they're a really good land they've crept up in price a little bit there's a few of them that are closing in on 10 or even a little bit more than that now so they're not the the value they once were but i'm a huge fan of these lands and i put them in in almost everything yeah the enemy color pairings got i believe it was some corset reprints so there's quite a few of the the enemy color pain lands floating around so they're i think they're typically going to be a little cheaper but i think that the pain land cycle is probably one of the more underrated land cycles because like you point out dana like no matter what they're going to come in untapped and they might deal you one to a few damage in those early turns but later in the game the fact they cut they tap for colorless mana is a huge boon that i think a lot of people kind of forget about almost and especially like you mentioned underratedness like the most popular shock land is showing up in 53 percent of decks that can play it the most popular painland yavamaya coast is showing up in 26 of decks that can play it so there is definitely quite a disparity that you're highlighting there and also matt to go back to the fact that dana said he really loves the shock lands and he really likes the pain lands does it surprise you at all that dana's favorite lands are the ones that hurt him for benefit if you wanted one life you still won that's that's dana's motto that this is the guy who genuinely has decided that losing 24 life was worth drawing a card so like he just he loves dealing damage to himself for benefit i still i still think that none of these lands no matter what will equal the life that dana has lost to his ancient tombs over the course of any game that we've played over at twitch.tv definitely slash each rock cast very likely dana's starting life total is 12. it's it's secret he'll just do all that to himself it's really really great um up next we've got bounce lands these are fantastic enter the battlefield taft but they tab for both of their colors and you do have to return a land to your hand uh when they enter but these are just so great landfall decks love these simic growth chamber for example in a tatiova deck is just absolutely out of this world bounce lands are a total foundational piece of dual landness for me and i specifically love them because you know i can use them to get extra cards in my hand and maybe i'll have too many cards in my hand and i have to discard my runescar demon into the graveyard oh no i wonder what i might do with that will i reanimate it later who knows stop giving the listeners ideas no i love bounce lands because there's those cool tricks that you can do but they're also great for lane fall decks they're just great to secure your manor these are really really solid ones really really solid see i'm actually a little lukewarm on these compared to some of the other ones but i also don't play nearly as many utility lands as as you guys do so if you're playing stuff like bajuka bog these are fantastic because they can reset it i said i said it i can't take it back but i don't play a whole lot of those types of effects outside of a few so i'm lukewarm and because these are terrible on turn two if you're trying to develop your battlefield you mean you have to bounce something back chances are you might have to discard a card so like there are some situations like that where early game they're not great but the fact that they tap for two mana on their own that is pretty powerful yeah i i i don't think i run any of these anymore in my decks um i like them they're fine but i think this this is the first land cycle we're talking about here that's kind of fallen victim to the fact that we've just got a gazillion decent duel land cycles now and that this is one of the ones that have just worked its way out of my rotation i'm just not playing them anymore yeah there's definitely synergies here but yeah i i'm with i'm with dana like at this point like we're kind of creeping into the the territory where like it gets kind of competitive for those dual land slots um in a lot of mana bases i i i totally know that it's competitive i get that but man i like dual land so much that in my two color decks i'm even playing guildless commons because that's the colorless bounce land from commander legends and i just i really like the security of a two-land opening hand that has a bounce line and it feels way better than a two-lane opening handle that doesn't have a bounce lane in it like it just makes me feel so much better and secure in my mana well there's definitely like dual end cycles we'll get to where i just can't conceive of a situation where i would ever run them that isn't the case here i'm not playing them for various reasons but like i don't think at all someone is mistaken by doing so there's still a really good land cycle yeah all right up next we've got the temples enter the battlefield always tapped but you also get described one most popular one that we're seeing is the temple of mystery very elusive very interesting least popular one is temple of malice i guess people don't like the angry lands all that much dana is that your favorite land because it's malice and you like that your lands are mad at you yes right just a theory just a theory do you guys like the skylands these temples when they first came out i jammed them in every single deck i had and they stayed there for several years but like as new cycles have came out gradually they became an obvious target when i wanted to put in something new um some cycles we'll discuss here in the next few minutes they just became the ones that became the obvious cut because they always come into play tapped the scry effect is good this is the same as the bounce lands i think they're quite good they've just gotten bumped out by things that i like a little bit more well and we've gotten to the point where we're going to talk about lands that don't always enter the battlefield untapped or at least you don't have the option with the bounce lands obviously but as far as lanes that no matter what are going to enter battlefield tapped the the temples are my favorite actually um i think the the the ability to scry one um and just kind of set up your draws make sure you're you're getting things in the next coming turn that you might need or just getting stuff out of the way that you don't need um i think that's a very very powerful effect and of all the lands that enter the battlefield tapped no matter what these are definitely my favorite and i still play them in a lot of decks i i like what you said there of the glands that definitely enter tapped these are my favorite too but i also i'm kind of i've waned off them in my three color or far color decks i just don't have room for them at all anymore and even in my two color decks i sometimes give them the side eye because i'm like that tempo loss costs me sometimes see i i think if you're getting it on turn two or say it's a late game play i i really like these you know if this is my 10th land chances are i don't need i'm not hitting 10 mana to cast something specifically so i don't mind them as a late game play either to make sure i'm not hitting more lands or anything like that like i just yeah i think scry is kind of an underrated ability in general especially when it's incidental like something on a land i think that's a very powerful effect that that a lot of players maybe take for granted yeah well and they're also i mean like they are still showing up in plenty of decks and especially like as we're getting farther down this list like budget consciousness definitely becomes a factor to be aware of so if it sounds like we're kind of like ooh poo pooing on like a temple or something like that that is like for the purposes of conversation about you know getting a more tuned mana base but you know definitely play with your budget in fact that's nowhere clearer than with one of the next types that we've got here the tapped life gainers from cons of tarkir block they enter the battlefield and you gain a life those are really solid on a budget if you're tuning up you're probably going to leave them but we did have to mention them here because they are very very popular showing up and upwards of 17 of decks that can play them but you know just a thing to be aware of but if you're on a budget play within your budget definitely a caveat that we want to make sure we inject into the conversation oh absolutely absolutely i think if there is a place that if you if kind of players getting into the format are starting to kind of invest some money in mana bases are never a bad place to do it because no matter what like you're going to play lanes in every single deck and you can transition that more often than not from deck to deck so just kind of a mtg finance tip or whatever you want to call it i mean investing in real estate when it comes to magic isn't a bad place and even then like there are some very very good budget lands out there too it's free real estate that's that's what i heard that's what i had and also um kind of moving away from that now if we are talking again about um tuning stuff up these are a little bit farther down the list because there's kind of a scattered popularity since the cycle was just finished this year but um dana how do you feel about the bond lands that started in battle bond and ended in commander legends those uh those beautiful lands so like if i'm building a deck these are probably the ones i slot in after shocks and painlands go straight to the bond lands they always come into play untapped unless you're at the point in the game where it's you and one other person and like very rarely at that point in the game doesn't matter yeah it's usually so far along somebody turns deep that you know one mana probably isn't going to matter anyway um so i think these are just amazing they they always come into play on tap they do what you want consistently every single time and the price is relatively fair on them so i love on the commander legends ones the prices on the battle bond lands those are those are creeping up shock those are cracked up yeah and that would be a big thing too if you're if you're looking to grab some some lands right now before they get expensive uh the time is running out on your chance to to get these commander legends uh the bond lands in there because they're like dana said they're very very good like being able to enter the battlefield tapped as long as you have two or more opponents that's a very very powerful effect in a four player format so grab these while you can before they they do get expensive because the the ally color lands in the cycle they are expensive well and i believe way back when the original cycle first came out we spent a lot of time telling people to get that cycle because they were going to want to be expensive so um we we love them then and i think we still love them now wizards put these in precons please they're so good these i do play in my two color decks i play them in three color decks i'm pretty sure i even played them in my four color decks and if i had a five color deck i might consider some of them in their tube if i had extras i don't really have extras because they are climbing up in price in some cases like these are really really solid wizards if you can make them more affordable oh we'll love that and something that i think these the numbers would definitely be higher on these two if a they were around as long as some of these other cycles but b like if they were just easy to find because sometimes they are a little hard to find for like your local game store yeah um the something that i definitely don't want to see much in pre-cons anymore are the guild gates another one that i feel like we're kind of obligated to mention yes they're budget-friendly but they always enter tapped i don't like these i don't i don't i don't know i i almost think that like you'll you want a regular basic land up for guild gate sometimes unless you're specifically building a gates deck i'm just not a fan of guild gates anymore at all i mean i think their home at this point is in a very budget list i had to build a 50 deck fairly recently for for a thing i participated in um i put gilgate in there because at that point there's just so few dual lan options you can fit in that kind of a budget deck they're absolutely good enough for that kind of environment but once you get much beyond that there's just so many relatively expensive duals that are better and then once you have a few of those in a deck then i agree you're just better off running running basic lands particularly in a two-colored action yeah i mean i i do agree with the point that basic lands might be a little better if you're if you're in a three color deck or a four color deck and you just need any sort of mana fixing these are fine and i have run guild gates in recent decks um kind of as placeholders like i just need i need my 37th land so i'm going to throw a guild gate in there just help my color fixing and the next time i have you know a couple bucks i'll replace it with something else like these are fine i don't i'm never going to fault anybody for playing them they're a good place holder in my decks but there are better options i think unless you're just on a very strict budget and if that's the case then definitely play to your budget don't feel obligated to to stretch for something that you know you probably shouldn't be going for do you mean like the next ones on our list of popularity like the definitely the og dual lands the tropical islands the bayous the plateaus those finally show up on the list here they've got the basic types they always enter untapped these cards are ungodly expensive gotta shout them out here but like oh man i mean yeah if you have them run them we kind of just it's a perfunctory thing that we have to mention but like they are pretty far down the list because they are so you know cost prohibitive in so many ways they've almost gotten so cost prohibitive that it's tough to run them because they're so expensive and i feel kind of like i don't know if i want this much money sitting here in a piece of cardboard when i could just run a guild gate or run whatever and sell this and you know make a couple card payments yeah exactly yeah yeah no totally feel the same way and actually the next one on our list we're finally getting to the fetchlands as well a bit more um cost effective than the og duals but only kinda to be honest you know they sacrificed pale life and you go find another thing and you can find like in the case of pluto delta an island or a swamp and so you can get your dual lands your other types of dual lanes these things are also amazing staples although notably for being staples and commander the most popular one pluto delta only shows up in about 15 of decks that can play it i usually thought that it would be like a red green one or something because of the landfall applicability that these can have but i guess that turns out not to be the case yeah fetches are great because of their interactions with those other dual ants yeah i think these two cycles the og duels and the fetchlands i i talked about the the battle for zenderkar lands as being the best bang for your buck this is the opposite like the the amount of money that you invest into the original dual lands from alpha and then any any fetches really the the whether you're talking about the onslaught cycle which is the ally color or the the original zendikar cycle which is the enemy color fetchlands uh i think you can get so much more power into your deck by skipping the scalding tarn and buying literally any other you know 15 cards for the deck indeed yeah i played a lot during cons so i have multiple copies of most of these if i didn't i probably wouldn't be adding them the decks or at least i wouldn't rush to do so i might do it you know hey i've had this deck for three years i love it i'm going to upgrade to a dual land but for how much value they provide outside a landfall decision like in your average deck that doesn't care about landfall triggers or something for me they wouldn't be worth chasing down given what the price is yeah yeah they just like it's almost like kind of a luxury item at this point like yeah they're nice but you don't need them to build a functioning mana base and like it's only one land that's gonna occupy 40 plus of your your budget towards the deck and if you're playing on a budget definitely skip these and get literally a whole mana base right yeah absolutely yeah what do we think about the shadowmoor filter lands so an example here being graven cairns which can tap for a colorless mana but also you can pay a red or a black mana to produce red red red black or black black so you have to pay the corresponding color but then you can really mix and match the types from within that color well dana where do you think you're at with those like do you play these in two colors seems like a good deal but in three colors does that seem like a good deal do you like these lands at all what are you thinking i do play them in two colors um and i like them the the ability to tap them for colorless again like a with a pain land is fairly useful sometimes but they're probably one of those cycles that's on the verge of getting cut at some point when you know something better comes along or a cycle gets finished or something um they're also in this weird place for like for a lot of years after the first printing they had crept up relatively high in price most of them were like in the 20-ish dollar range so i wanted them for a deck but i didn't want to spend the money on them and when they finally got a reprint um at that point there were enough other cycles that they suddenly became less desirable because we had picked up so many more good dual land cycles in the in the time since they were first printed um so they kind of missed this weird mark for me um a little bit and i also just think they're only they're only decent they're not amazing so these actually this is a cycle that yes it enters untapped but i don't play these in any decks i don't think i've played them in a couple and they've just never felt great um i don't know i just can't quite put my finger on it but i'm not a big fan of these especially for the price like you said dana i think these were price prohibitive for a long time and i think people kind of forgot about them so even when they did get reprinted people just didn't really care because i i just they're they're fine i guess if you have a lot of very specific mana requirements they're fine but i just i i don't play them in any of my decks i did i remember back you know when i was first getting into the format and i saw these and i was just like oh i would love to try these out for sure in my three colored x and now i won't touch them in any of my three color decks in a two color deck i feel way comfortable about it and like oh this can be really really useful for sure but in a three-colored deck i'm just like nah no i really don't it's just cool to see how that has evolved because there are so many other dual end options that have kind of supplanted that need for this type of color fixing which is a lot stricter than it originally looks so i totally get where both of you guys are coming from on it um then we'll move on to the amonkhet cycling lands also have dual types and they can be cycled out of your hand to draw a card do we like these the irrigated farmlands and the sheltered thickets of the world or are we kind of lukewarm on these what do you feel about the cycling lands for me at least they're one of those cycles that came out and i ran them for about a year and then when something better something new came out or they finished a cycle of the next group we'll talk about kind of like it was with the skylands these became the obvious removal target for me see i i'm a big fan of them just being able to cycle them away to to dig deeper and say they're your 10th land plus just cycle them away and get a redraw i think that's a fairly powerful effect you see a lot of people in 60 card formats valuing that versatility quite a bit and the fact that they're fetchable like i know that they i've had you know a situation where i crack effectually in my angry omnath deck at the end of a turn well i don't need uh something that's gonna come into play untapped so i just grabbed these because i'm not gonna do anything with the mana anyways then i can draw the land that will be untapped the next turn there's some synergy you can play around with these i really like them uh i just i know they're not terribly popular um i like these more than the filter lanes from lore one though yeah i probably agree with that as well i like better than the filters but which isn't a huge bar to clear necessarily either interesting i feel like i might be the opposite of you guys there i really value the tempo and the cycling is something that i'm not sure i've required as often but i can totally see where you're coming from that on that too and you know what price can also totally play a huge factor in those because one of these is a lot more available than the other um actually okay now speaking of lands that are a little bit tougher to get a hold of matt you want to tell us a little bit about some some of those horizon lands so the horizon lands or the canopy lands as they originally were for horizon canopy these are the lands that unearth the battlefield untapped which is nice and you can tap them for a green or a white for example like horizon canopy and they'll deal you one damage or you can pay one mana and tap them and sacrifice them and you draw a card effectively kind of cycling kind of like we talked about a minute ago um these never really have been super available they've never really been cheap they there there were a lot of these copies that just kind of got snapped up by 60 card players they came out originally in modern horizons um which was a modern and 60 card format targeted set really so these never really had a chance to get into the hands of commander players i don't think but they're so good they're soaked they are very good but their price also really reflects how good they are it's it's true it's true i just i don't mind the life that i'll lose to using them that accessibility in case i get stuck top decking and the no tempo loss love them a plus i i want more i like them a lot but i think i like them a little more in theory than in practice however i will note here i think that might be me too i think i'm not aggressive enough with sacrificing them to draw the card i think i get greedy and decide to just keep it in play for another turn longer and that winds up being two turns and three turns so i think in part i maybe don't use them correctly quote unquote the amount of games or rule violations these cause by failing to maintain the game state uh because you forget that these cost you life in a later game they're just a pile of dual lands i mean that's nitpicking and that's just well i i'm just like wait dana what you just described there do you not like the horizon lands because you just want them to keep dealing damage to you so you probably wouldn't have to draw the card just a massive kiss with my lands i just want to make sure i'm following all right final ones that we're going to round out with here the odyssey filter lands or as some will call them the signet lands because they don't actually tap for mana on their own but you can pay any type of mana into them and then they will produce two mana of the corresponding dual type so dark water catacombs for example you can pay a mana into it and tap it and then you will get a blue and a black mana so these signet lands these different type of filterings matt how are you feeling about these do you like thumbs up thumbs down these are a little bit obscure what are you thinking i mean they are a little obscure but i do know that they've shown up in a decent amount of pre-cons as well i don't play these in any of my decks i just i don't think they cut it not being able to tap for mana on their own is kind of a detriment in in my mind um i'm just i'm not a big fan of them i don't think i play any of them i think you can play any number of different cycles that we've already talked about over this all right i am a big fan of these i'm the opposite of matt here i i wish they would finish this cycle um i run them on every deck that can run them um i i have them in my three color deck the one i have as well um unlike the the um shadowmoor filters where you can find yourself in weird positions where you don't have the right color mana to kind of activate them if you've got a mana it doesn't matter what you can use these so basically unless it's your only land you've kept on turn one it's a land you can activate and get both of the colors you need i i think these are a really really solid land that i wish like i said they would finish this cycle so i could play more of them yeah i mean they they are a good budget land option um i just i don't play really any of them and but i see why you would want to yeah i i thought that dana was gonna say i wish that they did damage to me but what's especially useful about these is that if you have a high density of uh utility lanes like a lot of non-basics that only tap for colorless this is a great way to color fix from those and i think that's my favorite applicability for them i could maybe be persuaded to run these in a three-color deck but i do largely in my head kind of reserve them just to two colors but like the shadow more filter lands i don't think i could ever be persuaded to run those in a three-color deck whereas i could with these uh odyssey versions um so that's definitely something else to keep in mind and and you've noted joey like i do run a ton of utility lands and he said like you said these work really good index that do have them so that's probably part of the reason i'm partial to them as well all right so guys we just went through um a bunch of lands and here's the thing we didn't even address all of the most interesting ones even because like there's a bunch of new lands that have come out recently from zendikar and kaldheim that just don't even have enough data for us to really talk about yet the pathway lands that are you know double-sided modal double-faced cards where you get the choice of which side to play and there are now snow duels at common coming out in caldheim always intertapped but they've got basic land typing and you know what there's a bunch of other ones that we don't even have time for there are shadows hand lands where you have to reveal certain types from your hand like choked estuary there's the refuges there are future site dual lands that do all sorts of crazy stuff there's the cycle of tainted lands there are even tribal lands like ancient amphitheater where there are like basic uh tribal types that can help you with untapped or tapped there are the slow fetches that we didn't even address there are so many different types of dual lands nowadays and that's the thing you just we there's so many we can't play all of them this is somehow a place where like all of these are like good but they're not all playable even though they're all playable it's such a weird position to be in for commander yeah this list here is where you get to the point where it tends to be very deck or playstyle specific um you know shock lands really don't care what you're doing they're fantastic no matter what and really a lot of the cards on the list we talked about early where we got into an in-depth discussion there's some flex in how you play or how your deck is built but they're for the most part pretty good this grouping here is really dependent on what you're doing and how you're doing it yeah i'm never going to fault anybody for playing some of these especially it was like a budget option but i just think that there are some some better options out there some of them i actually i like a little bit more than like the signet lands we talked about um but at the same time like that there are so many land cycles out there like you just you literally don't have space to to play all of them in any given deck um we're just naming the ones that are the most popular by the amount of decks that they're in but there are so many out there and just like we didn't even like there's jump start lands the thriving land cycle right that are totally fine like there's there's a lot of just totally i think they're playable i know joey doesn't but like there's totally fine lands that we just we don't have time to talk about because they're just so many out there yeah and i think you know to use some specific examples here i think if you are playing a a two-color deck that's very heavy into black and therefore you're running a bunch of swamps and things like that the tainted land cycle is just as good as the battlebond land cycle for the most part um i would run them on that kind of deck if you were playing something with with red where you're running like a valkurt for example where you want to have as many mountains as possible than those the snow duels the new ones we just got that have the land type on them become that much better in that kind of deck so i think those are like i said these are just really specific to what you're doing and a lot of them are playable in that that that kind of specific thing that you're doing yeah i mean a lot of them are playable but they're just not all playable which is the the really ironic thing as far as you only have so many land slots in a deck right exactly right if you were to play all of the lands that we list off in this episode you would not have room for basics or for utility lanes at all in fact i actually went through to get some just anecdotal evidence but i wanted to kind of track like in our decks how many of these dual lands we are actually playing on average because like we listed off like what 12 or 15 earlier and then we also mentioned a bunch of other ones that we don't even have time for but like even among the 12 or 15 that we mentioned even we're not playing all of those in our lands at all uh in our decks at all like i checked my marin deck for example and it turns out that in that deck i'm using eight total of the dual lands that we talked about i checked out my felice deck as well the same story happened there i'm running eight total different duel lands and i didn't want to make it just about me i also went through your guys's decks i was a bit of a snoop sorry about it um i checked dana's veil of the nightclub deck again i saw eight duel lands in there and his galicia deck i saw nine dual lanes and then matt when i started snooping on you i uh went through your mirrory deck for example you were a little bit weirder you were running even fewer you've only got five dual lanes in your mirrory deck and your reality everwise deck only six so like that's just it the dual lanes that we listed there are a bunch of good ones but you don't have room for all of them because you still got to make room for your basics and your utility lands like of all those good dual lands you're not on average really going to be running all that many of them even though they're also great yeah i i i've gone on the record a few times just a couple uh saying that like i tend to prioritize just trying to get as many basics and into my decks um but then hearing you actually say i only have five duels in my mary deck like i kind of think about it i'm like yeah that sounds about right actually uh you especially in two color decks and and well that's one thing that i kind of noticed was those are a bunch of two color decks that we all have but they're playing single digit in most circumstances uh amount of dual lands and i'm sure if we go to three color decks that's kind of get a little topsy-turvy yeah uh here let's um count up through your ukima and kazar deck that's a three color deck there um we are seeing 22 total dual lands in europe and kazar deck so even then that's still probably seven ish of each different type and not like 22 of just one color combination but only about seven ish of a certain color combination so i mean again it's just anecdotal evidence but like that's how whittling down on these dual lands it kind of ends up being impractical usage rather than just abstractly thinking about the dual lands when you actually get down to the deck building there's just not room for a whole lot of them well and i know in my alilah deck as well that's that's a three color deck there's 17 dual lands and they're not counting like command tower stuff like that but i still run 12 basics and like i cut on a few dual lands because i'm focusing on utility lands like that eats into it because i'm still going to value my basics and i'd rather cut dual lands and and some of that in exchange for my utility lands like hall of heliad's generosity and that deck for example now dana to clarify real quick a basic land is a thing that was printed in the original set um it's got like types like forest and swamp and they just have i just wanted to make sure that you're on the same page you can customize whatever art you want on them as long as they're snow type my my one three color deck has six basics in it two two of each basic type is it because they don't deal damage to you yeah that's that's the main reason all right which is a group which is a tremendously greedy mana base i will absolutely die the first second someone glances in the direction of a of a blood moon very very much all right fellas we've put it off long enough with all of that land data but you know it's not a classic key daedric episode unless we get to our favorite segment challenging some stats it's one of our favorites here on the podcast because there's so much data on eda trek but we don't always agree with it sometimes we think the cards are seeing too much play or too little plays so let's take a break from the dual lanes real quick and talk about challenging some stats dana how about you start us off absolutely so manager is a card that puts mana in your mana pool for each tap to land your opponent's control it's fantastic in commander and it's one that i've played more than a few times it's a good effect on edh recast stream at twitch.tv social media track cast jessica's will that also adds manager mana pool like that in red is already in 3000 x despite only existing like the last two months however the card i want to challenge here is battle him does a similar thing it's in just under six thousand decks which is a good amount but it's one in a red for an instant and you add a red to your mana pool for each creature you control i don't think it's as universally good at all as as manager or as jessica's will but if you are playing a token deck it can be an absolute blowout being able to spend two mana to generate even like six or seven can make for a really powerful turn and in the right token deck it could generate 10 or 12 or 15 or even more than that it's it's only in like half of the sabirah tolzida caravan ear decks it's only in about half of the krenko mob boss decks for for mono red decks that tend to make a ton of tokens i feel like it should be in more than half of these huge token generators it's the kind of card that can be an absolute blowout and i think probably the reason it isn't in more is because it doesn't look cool like all it does is generate humana for one big huge turn and i think it's an easy thing to cut in favor of something flashier but i think it should see more play sweet stuff alright i'm gonna move on to my pick now and this is a really strange one but i found it for my mimeoplasm deck recently and i couldn't be happier with it this is the card waker of waves a seven mana seven seven whale that says your creatures your opponent's control got minus one minus one and that doesn't sound all that good but here's the cool part it has an ability of paying two mana and discarding waker of waves from your hand to let you look at the top two cards of your library you put one of them into your hand and the other one goes to your graveyard so this most of the time is just sort of a cantrip effect that lets me load a good creature into my graveyard from my mimeoplasm to nom nom nom on a little bit later and it will put another card into my graveyard too then frankly even just reviving this later on to you know make sure that my opponent's token army is a little bit worse against me has been really effective this is an uncountable counter cantrip spell that helps me load good stuff into the graveyard and i couldn't be happier to have found it for my mimi plasm deck to get great tokens on him and to revive big whales from the graveyard like it's a very missable card only showing up in 125 decks right now but this is a really interesting one that if you are in a blue reanimator strategy you might want to give a look to because of how easy it is to get into your graveyard so that's my challenge and matt take us home what's yours so my challenge this week is our listener submitted challenge um jimmy the base in our uh in our patron discord which you can join patreon.com edhreccast jimmy had a really good suggestion this week that i kind of thought about for a second then the more that i talked about it then when joey gave me the stamp of approval i knew it was a pretty good challenge so jimmy's pointing out that mimikvat is currently only played in six percent of sir conrad decks now mimic that uh it does a lot of a lot of stuff basically you can imprint creatures that go to the graveyard you exile them um and then you can just exile something else and it's there's a lot of words on it folks there's a lot of words but sir conrad is a monoblock commander that cares all about creatures entering and leaving the graveyard specifically your own graveyard so jimmy points out that it's a way to get compounding triggers for conrad in the event of multiple creatures dying at a time due to the imprint being a triggered ability not a replacement effect so when your creatures die you can have all of those triggers go on the stack you can imprint one then you can imprint another and then you can imprint another all the while you're getting enter the graveyard and leaving the graveyard triggers while it's all happening you're probably doing a healthy healthy well not so healthy for your opponents but a good amount of damage in the process of all of those triggers going on and resolving because so many creatures are entering and leaving the battlefield thanks to them getting exiled with the imprintability on mimikvat um joey i know is like just giddy right now so i think this is probably a pretty good challenge i might say so good catch jimmy the bass or bass whichever one you are only in six percent of conrad decks that is a little bit low indeed i have recommended this in an upping the average video for sir conrad i run it in my own sir conrad list it is really messed up how many secret triggers this can get you and also if you just happen to put a good creature underneath imprinted onto the mimikvat to just pump out token copies of it every turn that's also good which is the original function of the card but yeah that's also sometimes pretty acceptable in addition to the extra damage that this card can let you do yeah it definitely seems like it's going to get out of hand pretty quickly and the fact that joey's already playing it means probably more people should be playing it i i hear joey knows a thing or two not three though um about graveyard decks uh you know as a necromancer myself i have picked up a few tricks and jimmy the base i definitely approve of this one all right guys let's get sort of wrapping up our um sort of final thoughts maybe about duel lands what are some potential lessons that you should take home about which dual lands you should choose you know there's not a whole lot that you actually will always have room for so how do you find the dual lands that most suit you in your decks would you say dana do you have any tips that you would want to share um one tip i would share i guess would be to periodically re-evaluate the the dual lands that are already in your decks based on what has happened um you know we both discussed joey how our thoughts on the czech lands have kind of changed over the years as we've gotten other dual lands that granted that basic land type that's the kind of thing that's going to probably keep happening and maybe down the road that's going to make the tainted land cycle more appealing when suddenly you realize well in addition to my six basics i'm also running like six or seven different dual lands that have the basic land typing suddenly those tainted lands in black become that much better because you're running other dual lands have the typing so that's the kind of thing to kind of reevaluate periodically because the lands you add sometimes change the other lands talking about the lorwin filters um you know the more lands you have on your deck that tap for colorless the more utility lands useful we start adding those warwind filters become become less useful because you need a colored mana to to actually turn them on so that's the kind of thing they can get away from you if you're not careful as you've made changes the utility of some of these lands and your decks changes as well and matt i mean my big thing is just play to to your budget and then there's like i said there's there are so many rare dual land cycle options out there and even not even rare ones like uncommons and commons even that are going to get the job done you don't need a fetch shock original you know alpha beta dual land mana base to have a functioning and an effective mana base like there are so many options out there the pathways are great and if you're playing the pathways with the bounce lands that's a way to reset your pathways to getting all sorts of different colors out there there's just it requires a little bit of creativity sure but man there there are so many options out there and relatively affordable budget is purely subjective i know but you can almost always find something some way to upgrade your mana base with some of these dual lanes and like i said some of those cycles that we kind of talked about but didn't because we don't have time there's a lot of options out there i think just putting a little bit of research into it you can find very effective additions to your mana base that aren't going to be super detrimental to your wallet as well yeah dana i kind of want to go back to a point that you made um too as well uh to watch out for the synergies that exist for your other dual lands but also like my my point i guess is like to evolve on that watch for this energy's with your commander it's not just for landfall decks where the fetchlands can get you multiple land drops but like i will use painlands in my graven deck because i want to lose more life that way i love using the bounce lands in my necromancy decks because they can overflow my hand so i am forced to discard cards and i like having cards in my graveyard that seems really really great if you've got life gained duels i'm not as high on them here but if you're in a life gain deck like a karlov of the ghost council that's another thing that you can totally use to get additional life gain triggers for a life game dedicated deck to pump up your commander that way so those little synergies are just so important to look out for and that's really the point is that there's no like one broad brush that i guess we can give about which are the best dual lands and which are not because different commanders will have different requirements of your mana base i mean heck thinking of my um my feather deck like the the mana demands in that deck are way stricter than in any other deck that i have because it's so many one mana usually white cantrip spells or battle uh sort of like little battle effects in there so i need a lot of lands that can produce white mana for me and that means that i have a bigger premium on my dual lanes in that deck than i do in a deck where i'm running a bunch of other utility lanes as well like there are different demands on your mana base for color fixing and stuff and that can really guide the choices that you're making in your mana base for sure yeah i i like the points that you you said joey about look at your deck and like what kind of color pips you need in that deck and kind of craft around that because there are some decks like my mary deck i don't have a lot of double color requirements in that deck so i can play a lot of basics but i mean if you're dane and you're playing triple red triple blue whatever i mean you might need to emphasize the dual lanes more i think that's why he does it i think that's why dana does it what i do in some cases like you joke but like my sphinx deck is super hungry for blue mana because almost everything says double blue some of them are triple blue so i have more than the average amount of dual lands in that deck because i just have so much blue mana as a requirement kind of the inverse of that will be my my kedis and crom deck um most of the spells i cast tend to be red when i cast them on like a kill turn and i tend to want to cast like three or four spells all of which tend to use red mana so i need to have a density of red mana pips in that particular deck so i run more than average there as well on the other hand you know i just having added the card forsaken monument to my vela deck that was a card that came out in the most recent zenith car set and one of the clauses on that card is whenever you tap a permanent for colorless mana add an additional colorless so suddenly in that deck things like the the filter lands that do tap for a colorless got much more valuable the um tainted land cycle there i had taken the tainted then out of that deck just not that it was bad but there was something slightly better well suddenly that card worked its way back in because if i have the freaking monument out that tainted taps for two mana so those kind of changes right it's not just about other lands on your deck it's all the cards in your deck make a big difference indeed so now my final mission here i think is to find the lands not just the ones that dana uses his own lands that deal a bunch of damage to him but now my mission is to find dual lands my own dual lands that also deal damage to dana dana i can't wait to find that is a cycle i really look forward to i'm sure it's coming around the corner this was a whole bunch of fun you guys but with all of this what i think we need to do is call the episode to a close so thank you so much for joining me and if our listeners want to get in touch with us where is it that they can find us all matt so you can find me on the twitters at mathemas55 that's m-a-t-h-i-m-u-s-55 and don't forget wednesday evenings we are streaming games we play paper magic via the spell table over at twitch.tv edh recast our guests are always great the games are usually great but sometimes they're even better than great so make sure you tune in wednesday evenings and check out all the games we're playing over there as well and dana you can find me on the twitter birds at dana roach you can hear me once week on my other podcast cmdr central and you can find all three of us on patreon.comcast and i'm joey schultz you can find me at joseph m schultz on twitter and you can find the cast at idihrecast on facebook and on twitter as well plus if you have a question you can contact us at edhrecast gmail.com our thanks go out once again to the entire team at the command zone for handling the post-production work on our podcast here and our thanks go out to our sponsors for the show tcgplayer and cardkingdom.com you can find them using the price info links on eda track or you can visit cardkingdom.com edhrec and that shows your support for the show listeners will be back at you next week with more data and insights but until then remember edh wreck your deck before you wreck your deck you

Channel: EDHRECast

Views: 27,789

Keywords: Magic the gathering, commander, edh, edhrec

Id: AXpwhCLgwnI

Length: 56min 33sec (3393 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 19 2021