Hello and welcome back. I’ve been thinking about land cards recently, especially after seeing the pizza TMNT lands in the wild. Land cards are most of the time the least glamorous but really the most important part of a deck. Being able to play them almost every turn, making sure a deck has enough, and hitting the colors you need when you need them enable everything you do.
Lands are so important that many consider anything affecting them en masse to be taboo outside the competitive side of the Commander format. I would argue for single target land destruction all day. After all, when I see a land causing me a problem across the table I want it gone but still want to let the players still play.
Many lands don’t cause much of a problem. The Surveil lands from Murders at Karlov Manor or the original Shock lands from Ravnica: CIty of Guilds. No one is going to blow those up (probably). With so many similar lands these days, the original dual lands from Alpha, Beta and Unlimited aren’t really needed and if for some reason you want one there are other ways to accomplish that.
So, without further ado, I want to present the five* cycles of dual lands I think you should consider for your Commander deck building.
SHOCK LANDS
The flagship lands that come to mind for most people who don’t know about the dual lands from the very beginning of magic, these easily fix mana bases at varying speeds as you need. Need the mana now? 2 damage to you, like the card Shock, and you have it. If not, you can have it enter tapped and wait.
The other upside to these are the lands’ types. Each has two basic land types, making them tutorable by many cards, especially in Green like Farseek, but can also be fetched by cards like Oreskos Explorer or The Cave of Two Lovers. Probably more well known, they can each be found with the Fetch lands, which we’ll discuss later.
SLOW LANDS
I get why they are called the slow lands (since they mirror the utility of the “Fast” land cycle), but I much prefer these for casual Commander play. In fact, it’s my favorite cycle on the list today. As long as you’ve played any two lands before these, they come into play untapped. Most decks won't have more than a few of these, so the odds of this happening is very high. If you do play them early, they are like any other tapped land.
Granted, that means for higher power, lower to the ground mana curved decks, these lands probably won't offer the consistency needed. Outside of that, I stick these lands in anything I can if I have ‘em.
PAIN LANDS
The good old stand by, I remember when I was paying $10 for these in eighth edition frames. Reprinted a bunch and “bested” by many other lands, these still pull their own weight in a mana base. They even have some utility over newer lands in that they can create colorless mana, which can help you if you play certain cards like Eldrazi Displacer.
I was going to add the Filter lands to the list since they are similar, but they won't produce colored mana without another card. While those lands can also produce colorless up front and so aren’t useless, Pain lands are just better.
SURVEIL LANDS
These come into play tapped, but also have an immediate impact on your game plan. They allow some card selection,, with this being especially true for decks that want to put cards into the graveyard.
Like the Shock lands, these also have two basic land types each, and therefore can be searched like the Shock lands by all the same cards, helping with consistency.
VERGE LANDS
Verge lands are similar to Filter lands in that they need to have another land down to be at full strength, but are usually easier to unlock to reach that potential. They also come into play untapped and help fix the mana you are probably missing. These can be ever so slightly clunky, but if AEther Drift brought us anything, it finished this cycle of excellent lands from Duskmourn.
FETCH LANDS
Lastly, the Fetch lands. This comes with an asterisk from me since I actually don’t think decks need these almost at all unless there is a heavy imbalance in four or five colored mana bases or mana costs in the deck. For instance, I use Arid Mesa in Feather because I NEED to hit the second white source to get her on the table, and another in The Ancient One to cover triple black and blue pipped costs.
Outside of those scenarios and competitive play, I think these kinda be skipped for deck building. If you do have some, they do help the deck you have, but your deck can run find with a Fabled Passage.
SPELUNKING
Those are my favorite cycles for building my own decks. Cost does play a role in my selections if any of you asked where the Battlebond (Crowd) lands are at.
I typically run 9-12 dual lands in each deck depending on the number of colors the deck is, but which ones depend on what the deck is trying to do. Sometimes I’ll add the Scry lands over the Surveil. Other times I use the Filter lands over the Pain ones. It all really depends on what your deck needs to do and when.
Until next time, remember the basics (lands).
