We all love Verdant Catacombs, right? Do you love it when $200 flies out of your pocket for 4 of them? Not really. How about you run Evolving Wilds? While they are extremely budget friendly, there are quite a few reasons they aren't anywhere near competitively playable. But what if there was an alternative?
To skip the talk, scroll to the last two lines at the bottom of the post.
Today I'm bringing you two possibilities for alternate fetch lands that should ideally meet the following requirements:
- They won't end up expensive
- They wont cause fetchland's price to plummet
- They're at least somewhat competitively viable
- Not broken in any of the various formats
The first option is what I like to call Half Fetches. Half Fetches would essentially only allow the user to Tap it, Pay 1 life, Sacrifice it and search their library for ONE basic land type, allowing a Green Half Fetch to grab a card with the Forest type such as an Overgrown Catacomb, but not a Blood Crypt. But what are the pros-cons?
Pros:
- Competitively viable
- Not any more broken than Real Fetches themselves
Cons:
- They rely on Dual Lands to be competitive, which are already quite expensive
- Would likely end up expensive, no matter the rarity (besides common, which wouldn't happen)
- Speculation: Could cause a drop in Real Fetches price, as these can be used in some of their places
That brings us to the second option, which I believe are the Ideal Fetches. Ideal Fetches would also allow the user to Tap it, Pay 1 life, Sacrifice it and search their library for a basic land NAMED X or Y. So what does this mean?
Pros:
- You cannot search for dual lands, so its not too broken.
- Its somewhat competitively viable, and would actually see some play.
- Ideal Fetches aren't nearly as good as Real Fetches, so Real Fetches prices should remain stable.
- Ideal Fetches, especially if printed as an Uncommon, wouldn't cost nearly as much as our current Real Fetches.
Cons:
- The con is there are no real cons!
What do you think? Could these Ideal Fetches be viable? Would Wotc ever do something like this?
Example Ideal Fetch: (Uncommon) Vibrant Reef - Tap, Pay 1 life, Sacrifice Vibrant Reef: Search your deck for a card named Forest or Island, and put it onto the battlefield. Then shuffle your library.
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I think 'ideal' fetches are a good budget option. However I would rather the land cycle do something new and the fact that they don't fix colors for limited means they would be supplemental-only. My ideal would be an interesting alternative cycle to fetches. Example:
Green changeland
Land-Changeland
T, pay 1 life, Sacrifice ~: Search your library for a basic forest and put it into play
T, pay 2 life, Sacrifice~: Search your library for a changeland and put it into play.
I like your approach to mana fixing... it would also make the concept of deck thinning a lot more viable, but a lot of life would be lost. Maybe landfall lifegain? Now that'd be COOL.
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I think this belongs in custom card creation. That said neither of your options seem to accomplish the goals you set out.
Half fetchs would literally replace fetchs in a number of builds as long as they were significantly cheaper causing the price on fetchs to plummet. But the worst part is that they are do nothing lands without the shock or tango lands. This is the reason such lands would never be printed.
While your Ideal fetchs don't accomplish the goal of fetchs at all. At least not in a format other than the standard they would be printed in. No format would want these because they are strictly inferior to the fetch lands and they don't help a budget build as normal dual lands would be better a majority of the time.
To reach a level where they could be considered competitive the lands have to accomplish three things.
1)Enter untapped (or at least the potential)
2)Fetch their land untapped (or at least the potential)
3)Interact favorably with current mana base. If powerful enough decks will bend over backwards to accommodate, that shouldn't be the goal because overshooting would warp the format further.
Your Half fetchs hit all three and would thus be straight replacements so they would hit a similar price point (whether that is going as high or bringing them low)
Your Ideal fetchs fail on 3 hard so would have little value in anything but very budget builds and they wouldn't even really improve these budget decks, just offer more options.
If you really want to challenge this problem look at potential downsides that could reasonable be circumvented, thus narrowing the number of decks that would play them while maintaining a similar powerset.
First of all, I thought I already made it clear Half Fetches would likely fail due to its cons.
Second, the purpose of Ideal Fetches IS to improve budget decks, but I believe it does more than offer another option. Current budget lands are often quite niche/painful, and mostly come into play tapped, while the Ideal Fetches would hopefully give a bit more balance.
Third, I agree that managing the downsides is a very successful way to create viable lands, but Budget Magic really lacks an untapped land that doesn't have a huge downside like Caves of Koilos causing life loss every turn, and a lot of decks cant exist because of it.
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Example Ideal Fetch: (Uncommon) Vibrant Reef - Tap, Pay 1 life, Sacrifice Vibrant Reef: Search your deck for a card named Forest or Island, and put it onto the battlefield. Then shuffle your library.
This should be:
"Search your deck for a basic forest or island."
"A card named X or Y" is overly wordy, and further complicated in that wizards very rarely makes cards where specific card names matter.
Part of the problem here is that there are 10 combinations of opposite lands. That's pretty much unacceptable in terms of being released together in a set, because that's just too many.
I think the easy answer is the card-disadvantage fetchlands:
Name
Land -[possible subtype?] (U or R) T, discard a card, sacrifice ~: Search your library for a [land type A] or [Land type B] and put it onto the battlefield.
In a graveyard themed set this is great; in other contexts it's pretty bad.
You could always do other fetches like this:
Name
Land -[possible subtype?] (U or R) T: add C to your mana pool. T, remove a +1/+1 counter from a creature you control, sacrifice ~: Search your library for a [land type A] or [Land type B] and put it onto the battlefield.
Name
Land -[possible subtype?] (U or R) T: add C to your mana pool. T, put N (4-7?) cards from your graveyard on the bottom of your library, sacrifice ~: Search your library for a [land type A] or [Land type B] and put it onto the battlefield.
Name
Land -[possible subtype?] (U or R)
(T: add C to your mana pool.)? T, Reveal a [~] from your hand, sacrifice ~: Search your library for a [land type A] or [Land type B] and put it onto the battlefield.
Reveal lands may or may not get a mana ability depending on what you're revealing. Reveal could trigger off of:
* N cards with the same name.
* N cards with different names.
* legendary creature
* spirit creature
* elemental creature!
* [creature type] creature (Goblins, elves, etc.)
* [card type] or [card types]
Of course, the big problem is WOTC doesn't like dedicating so much time/space to card searching. So you might actually be better off proposing a wish land:
Wish land name
Land - [sub-type?] (R) T, Pay 1 life, sacrifice ~: You may out a [c] or [d] land card from outside the game.
Of course, the big problem is WOTC doesn't like dedicating so much time/space to card searching. So you might actually be better off proposing a wish land:
Wish land name
Land - [sub-type?] (R) T, Pay 1 life, sacrifice ~: You may out a [c] or [d] land card from outside the game.
I'm pretty sure Wish effects rank even lower than tutors in terms of effects that Wizards wants to see on cards. We get multiple shuffle effects per set at all rarities. Wishes have gaps of several years per printing. That doesn't even touch on the playability issues that come with using sideboard space to fix mana.
I like these ideas, though one really inspired me...
Name
Land -[possible subtype?] (U or R)
T: add C to your mana pool.
T, put N (4-7?) cards from your graveyard on the bottom of your library, sacrifice ~: Search your library for a [land type A] or [Land type B] and put it onto the battlefield.
What if this was changed to something like the below example?
Haunted Timberland
T: add C to your mana pool.
T, sacrifice ~: Put the top 5-6 cards of your library into your graveyard. Then, search your graveyard for a Swamp or Forest and put it onto the battlefield.
Graveyard hate is extremely common and would outright shut these down, though they could be potentially broken in dredge lists... here is a solution.
Haunted Timberland
Land - Quarantine
T: add C to your mana pool.
T, sacrifice ~: Exile the top 5-6 cards of your library. Then, put a Swamp or Forest exiled with a Quarantine land into play.
Another one!
Barren Orchard
Land - Quarantine
T: add C to your mana pool.
T, sacrifice ~: Exile the top 5-6 cards of your library. Then, put a Plains or Forest exiled with a Quarantine land into play.
Not exactly wish lands, but balanced either way.
Cool thing is ridiculous combo decks can't use these lands at all, and for any deck they have a risk of failing. A similar approach was taken by the Pokémon company to keep the trainer card Max Elixir balanced, and its worked extremely well.
If you happen to exile 2 lands on your first try, you'll be safe for another go, however, especially if the exiled cards is reduced to 5, you could fail and your entire game could be RIP. Also, key parts of your deck could potentially be revealed. (exile is by default face up for everyone to view right?) #Pull from Eternity
I'd love for these lands to be printed as uncommons and exile just 5 cards from the top. Either way, interesting ideas overall (you guys).
Also, these wouldn't have to be printed together, though it'd be nice. Perhaps they could be in a couple back to back sets featuring any form of quarantine in their storyline. IDEK.
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BlazingRagnarok,
WOTC doesn't do wish-effects often because they're weird. But a fetchland that tutored from the sideboard would speed up game play because it doesn't require shuffling.
I'm not saying they should do it - but I'm saying it would solve the major problem that keeps Fetchlands from being regular set inclusions.
Comedian_Chameleon,
Re: Self-mill fetches: This enables graveyard effects too much for WOTC's liking, and there's a large chance you'll simply miss in 3+ color decks.
Re: Exile fetches: Large chance you'll miss, and it would enable hypothetical "cares about exile" cards... although Arcslogger-style effects already do this.
If anything, I think the Discard Fetches are the most elegant means of doing this; all upsides for graveyard decks, and all downsides for other decks. However, the Reveal creature type fetches (with mana abilities) would be quite fun and practical in tribal sets.
Another option: Legendary Fetch
Land - [special type?] T: Add C to your mana pool. T, sacrifice ~, reveal a legendary card in your hand: Search for a basic land that can add one of the colors in that card's mana cost to your mana pool.
Revealing legendaries to fetch lands is kind of cool, and would be rather open-ended. But it'd have to be a legendary block, and I'd want these to be uncommon... It's clearly not as good as existing fetches because it can't get duals.
We all love Verdant Catacombs, right? Do you love it when $200 flies out of your pocket for 4 of them? Not really. How about you run Evolving Wilds? While they are extremely budget friendly, there are quite a few reasons they aren't anywhere near competitively playable. But what if there was an alternative?
To skip the talk, scroll to the last two lines at the bottom of the post.
Today I'm bringing you two possibilities for alternate fetch lands that should ideally meet the following requirements:
- They won't end up expensive
- They wont cause fetchland's price to plummet
- They're at least somewhat competitively viable
- Not broken in any of the various formats
The first option is what I like to call Half Fetches. Half Fetches would essentially only allow the user to Tap it, Pay 1 life, Sacrifice it and search their library for ONE basic land type, allowing a Green Half Fetch to grab a card with the Forest type such as an Overgrown Catacomb, but not a Blood Crypt. But what are the pros-cons?
Pros:
- Competitively viable
- Not any more broken than Real Fetches themselves
Cons:
- They rely on Dual Lands to be competitive, which are already quite expensive
- Would likely end up expensive, no matter the rarity (besides common, which wouldn't happen)
- Speculation: Could cause a drop in Real Fetches price, as these can be used in some of their places
That brings us to the second option, which I believe are the Ideal Fetches. Ideal Fetches would also allow the user to Tap it, Pay 1 life, Sacrifice it and search their library for a basic land NAMED X or Y. So what does this mean?
Pros:
- You cannot search for dual lands, so its not too broken.
- Its somewhat competitively viable, and would actually see some play.
- Ideal Fetches aren't nearly as good as Real Fetches, so Real Fetches prices should remain stable.
- Ideal Fetches, especially if printed as an Uncommon, wouldn't cost nearly as much as our current Real Fetches.
Cons:
- The con is there are no real cons!
What do you think? Could these Ideal Fetches be viable? Would Wotc ever do something like this?
Example Ideal Fetch:
(Uncommon) Vibrant Reef - Tap, Pay 1 life, Sacrifice Vibrant Reef: Search your deck for a card named Forest or Island, and put it onto the battlefield. Then shuffle your library.
Green changeland
Land-Changeland
T, pay 1 life, Sacrifice ~: Search your library for a basic forest and put it into play
T, pay 2 life, Sacrifice~: Search your library for a changeland and put it into play.
Half fetchs would literally replace fetchs in a number of builds as long as they were significantly cheaper causing the price on fetchs to plummet. But the worst part is that they are do nothing lands without the shock or tango lands. This is the reason such lands would never be printed.
While your Ideal fetchs don't accomplish the goal of fetchs at all. At least not in a format other than the standard they would be printed in. No format would want these because they are strictly inferior to the fetch lands and they don't help a budget build as normal dual lands would be better a majority of the time.
To reach a level where they could be considered competitive the lands have to accomplish three things.
1)Enter untapped (or at least the potential)
2)Fetch their land untapped (or at least the potential)
3)Interact favorably with current mana base. If powerful enough decks will bend over backwards to accommodate, that shouldn't be the goal because overshooting would warp the format further.
Your Half fetchs hit all three and would thus be straight replacements so they would hit a similar price point (whether that is going as high or bringing them low)
Your Ideal fetchs fail on 3 hard so would have little value in anything but very budget builds and they wouldn't even really improve these budget decks, just offer more options.
If you really want to challenge this problem look at potential downsides that could reasonable be circumvented, thus narrowing the number of decks that would play them while maintaining a similar powerset.
Second, the purpose of Ideal Fetches IS to improve budget decks, but I believe it does more than offer another option. Current budget lands are often quite niche/painful, and mostly come into play tapped, while the Ideal Fetches would hopefully give a bit more balance.
Third, I agree that managing the downsides is a very successful way to create viable lands, but Budget Magic really lacks an untapped land that doesn't have a huge downside like Caves of Koilos causing life loss every turn, and a lot of decks cant exist because of it.
This should be:
"Search your deck for a basic forest or island."
"A card named X or Y" is overly wordy, and further complicated in that wizards very rarely makes cards where specific card names matter.
Part of the problem here is that there are 10 combinations of
oppositelands. That's pretty much unacceptable in terms of being released together in a set, because that's just too many."Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
They also never printed more than 5 duals at a time, with the exception of alpha/beta duals.
The "fix" would be splitting the printings between years, likely never seeing each other in the same standard environment. And likely, rares.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Arguably, the Guildgates can also be included. Even though they were split across sets, all ten of them did appear in Dragon's Maze boosters.
Name
Land -[possible subtype?] (U or R)
T, discard a card, sacrifice ~: Search your library for a [land type A] or [Land type B] and put it onto the battlefield.
In a graveyard themed set this is great; in other contexts it's pretty bad.
You could always do other fetches like this:
Name
Land -[possible subtype?] (U or R)
T: add C to your mana pool.
T, remove a +1/+1 counter from a creature you control, sacrifice ~: Search your library for a [land type A] or [Land type B] and put it onto the battlefield.
Name
Land -[possible subtype?] (U or R)
T: add C to your mana pool.
T, put N (4-7?) cards from your graveyard on the bottom of your library, sacrifice ~: Search your library for a [land type A] or [Land type B] and put it onto the battlefield.
Name
Land -[possible subtype?] (U or R)
(T: add C to your mana pool.)?
T, Reveal a [~] from your hand, sacrifice ~: Search your library for a [land type A] or [Land type B] and put it onto the battlefield.
Reveal lands may or may not get a mana ability depending on what you're revealing. Reveal could trigger off of:
* N cards with the same name.
* N cards with different names.
* legendary creature
* spirit creature
* elemental creature!
* [creature type] creature (Goblins, elves, etc.)
* [card type] or [card types]
Of course, the big problem is WOTC doesn't like dedicating so much time/space to card searching. So you might actually be better off proposing a wish land:
Wish land name
Land - [sub-type?] (R)
T, Pay 1 life, sacrifice ~: You may out a [c] or [d] land card from outside the game.
I'm pretty sure Wish effects rank even lower than tutors in terms of effects that Wizards wants to see on cards. We get multiple shuffle effects per set at all rarities. Wishes have gaps of several years per printing. That doesn't even touch on the playability issues that come with using sideboard space to fix mana.
Name
Land -[possible subtype?] (U or R)
T: add C to your mana pool.
T, put N (4-7?) cards from your graveyard on the bottom of your library, sacrifice ~: Search your library for a [land type A] or [Land type B] and put it onto the battlefield.
What if this was changed to something like the below example?
Haunted Timberland
T: add C to your mana pool.
T, sacrifice ~: Put the top 5-6 cards of your library into your graveyard. Then, search your graveyard for a Swamp or Forest and put it onto the battlefield.
Graveyard hate is extremely common and would outright shut these down, though they could be potentially broken in dredge lists... here is a solution.
Haunted Timberland
Land - Quarantine
T: add C to your mana pool.
T, sacrifice ~: Exile the top 5-6 cards of your library. Then, put a Swamp or Forest exiled with a Quarantine land into play.
Another one!
Barren Orchard
Land - Quarantine
T: add C to your mana pool.
T, sacrifice ~: Exile the top 5-6 cards of your library. Then, put a Plains or Forest exiled with a Quarantine land into play.
Not exactly wish lands, but balanced either way.
Cool thing is ridiculous combo decks can't use these lands at all, and for any deck they have a risk of failing. A similar approach was taken by the Pokémon company to keep the trainer card Max Elixir balanced, and its worked extremely well.
If you happen to exile 2 lands on your first try, you'll be safe for another go, however, especially if the exiled cards is reduced to 5, you could fail and your entire game could be RIP. Also, key parts of your deck could potentially be revealed. (exile is by default face up for everyone to view right?) #Pull from Eternity
I'd love for these lands to be printed as uncommons and exile just 5 cards from the top. Either way, interesting ideas overall (you guys).
Also, these wouldn't have to be printed together, though it'd be nice. Perhaps they could be in a couple back to back sets featuring any form of quarantine in their storyline. IDEK.
WOTC doesn't do wish-effects often because they're weird. But a fetchland that tutored from the sideboard would speed up game play because it doesn't require shuffling.
I'm not saying they should do it - but I'm saying it would solve the major problem that keeps Fetchlands from being regular set inclusions.
Comedian_Chameleon,
Re: Self-mill fetches: This enables graveyard effects too much for WOTC's liking, and there's a large chance you'll simply miss in 3+ color decks.
Re: Exile fetches: Large chance you'll miss, and it would enable hypothetical "cares about exile" cards... although Arcslogger-style effects already do this.
If anything, I think the Discard Fetches are the most elegant means of doing this; all upsides for graveyard decks, and all downsides for other decks. However, the Reveal creature type fetches (with mana abilities) would be quite fun and practical in tribal sets.
Another option:
Legendary Fetch
Land - [special type?]
T: Add C to your mana pool.
T, sacrifice ~, reveal a legendary card in your hand: Search for a basic land that can add one of the colors in that card's mana cost to your mana pool.
Revealing legendaries to fetch lands is kind of cool, and would be rather open-ended. But it'd have to be a legendary block, and I'd want these to be uncommon... It's clearly not as good as existing fetches because it can't get duals.