So while everyone in the Rumour Mill preview thread overreacts to the fact they didn't reprint lands as good as the original Dual Lands or reprint Fetchlands, I'm going to muse on why I think these dual lands are good.
First of all, Limited: Dual lands are great for Limited, even at Rare. There is some but not an overly high amount of multicoloured cards, meaning there's likely not much need for non-Rare dual lands. Perhaps these could have been Uncommon, but that might have made multicoloured strategies too effective and taken some of the heat away from the Devotion mechanic. Ultimately, scry 1 in Limited ona dual lands is going to be awesome. Any time you draw one of these and filter a land of the top of your deck you are gaining a considerable increase in card quality, which wins Limited games.
Now, Constructed: While some very tightly tuned aggro decks in Modern might want these, I am going to go out on a limb and say these won't see much play there. Modern has Fetchlands and Shocklands, so it's good. Moving on.
These will be playable in Standard come rotation. Block featured all sorts of 2 colour and 3 colour decks, and some of those decks were willing to reach for Guildgates simply for fixing (others tried to use them as a win condition, but that's a special case). So, automatically each 2 colour deck sees a massive improvement by gaining card quality at the expense of some speed. In the case of control decks and some midrange decks, they likely won't even care.
This will be especially true in decks that can gain something from the information. Play a scry land, no creature? Awesome, not only did you just filter away a land, you also just stopped Domri Rade from NOT drawing you a card. If it was a creature, awesome. Now you know you won't whiff, which makes deciding between using the +1 and -2 that much easier. Already, the Gruul scry land combos with the currently most played Planeswalker in the format. Awesome
I'm certain there's way more to these than people expect. A lot of crying was done over the Scars dual lands, and they turned out better than expected. I expect these will be the same.
I really like the amount of Scry in the set, and that it's available in all colors is great - that said, I gotta admit I was underwhelmed by the duals also. I'll reserve judgement until I play with them, as they might turn out just fine, but yeah...initial reaction was 'woot, duals!' *read text* 'uh...meh'
Just because they look boring doesn't stop them from being powerful. The Core set duals were anything but exciting, but they turned out to be quite good.
People have been talking about how they should reprinted Lightning Bolt instead of Lightning Strike. It terms of its complexity, Lightning Bolt is on the low end of the scale, but it is still very powerful. Scry 1 might not be much, but attached to a land its added value.
They are just plain meh. They are guildgates with a small upside at best. The only lands I run in my deck that always CiPT are ones with significantly bigger impact than scry 1, something that Thassa is going to let me do every single one of my upkeeps for free anyways.
Bojuka Bog exiles a graveyard.
Creeping Tar Pit swings in and is almost guaranteed to connect, I've won games off of it.
Tolaria West can fetch me any land in my deck.
It takes more than scry 1 one time to justify yourself. I'd rather run a basic.
I'm in between on this. I will use them, I well likely enjoy them, but it is underwhelming. this is the kind of card that can be a fairly good dual but reads poorly on paper; I think we can all agree that we haven't used them yet but they are underwhelming at first glance.
Naw, the fixing I run is more than enough that that is virtually never an issue. This jank isn't going to make enough of a difference for the hit to tempo.
They are only 5 rare slots NGW. Also, your awesome fixing like Pilgrim, Farseek, and Arbor elf are all going away with the Innistrad lands so have fun with your mono colored decks, I hear those are the rage.
Anyway, I think these are great. Honestly, with three colored decks slowing down, these won't even be a hindrance when you consider how powerful a guaranteed scry is. I think these cards will be grossly underestimated and they will certainly find a place in standard, EDH, and obviously limited.
Naw, the fixing I run is more than enough that that is virtually never an issue. This jank isn't going to make enough of a difference for the hit to tempo.
Considering you're talking about a format that hasn't even come into being yet as there still is a massive amount of the set missing, how likely is it that your testing of your mana bases is actually relevant to what people are going to playing and running?
Or did you come back from the future, like JCVD in Time Cop?
After read the first few posts to the OG post, I get the feeling the community, as a whole, is a little perturbed that they are rare, and not uncommon.
I agree, should have been A) Uncommon (or) B) Not ETB (Enter the Battlefield) tapped.
Why is Wizards so afraid that duals that ETB untapped will just kill the shocklands. There are other options, such as dealing 1 damage when coming into play, or filtering, or returning a land, or coming into play w/in the first 3 or 4 turns untapped. There are options if the dual is to be rare.
I expect an uncommon to be an ETB tapped land, not a rare.
Yeah, forced CiPT is no good for a rare land (these needed to be uncommon). These will see small amounts of play as they are better than guild gates, but not by a whole lot. It will force people to back away from 3 color decks and really lock down mana bases. They put these in so that people would want to use devotion because they can't play 3 or 4 colors effectively anymore.
After read the first few posts to the OG post, I get the feeling the community, as a whole, is a little perturbed that they are rare, and not uncommon.
I agree, should have been A) Uncommon (or) B) Not ETB (Enter the Battlefield) tapped.
Why is Wizards so afraid that duals that ETB untapped will just kill the shocklands. There are other options, such as dealing 1 damage when coming into play, or filtering, or returning a land, or coming into play w/in the first 3 or 4 turns untapped. There are options if the dual is to be rare.
I expect an uncommon to be an ETB tapped land, not a rare.
I think they want to slow down the format this way Stooge. Tapped dual lands can make a pretty big difference in the format right?
Does everyone forget that the Scars dual lands would not always come into play untapped? People complained to high heaven about those, and yet they ended up seeing play in Standard and have seen some Modern play. Entering the battlefield tapped can be a hit to tempo, no doubt, but it's up to a good deck designer and good player to mitigate those potential set backs while harnessing the upsides.
I don't feel they are going to slow down the format as much as people think. A canny Magic player is not going to be hindered by this draw back, and will likely be able to maximize the gain of this benefit. It's amateurish players that can't see pas the downside.
It surprises me that it upsets people these are Rare. They are playable dual lands, they increase the value of the set by being Rare. They make the chances of a pack opening a card of significant value higher. They would be very, very pushed as Uncommons. In recent sets, Uncommon dual lands only appear when there is a need to push mana fixing for the sake of Limited. This is doubly true when they design common dual lands. Alara had Trilands as Uncommons because the set needed them for Limited, and the Panaromas were back up. The guildgates were made intentionally underpowered compared to most other taplands because they need to glue the format together and it allowed for them to have a few cute cards to keep of them and make going beyond simple guild strategies worth it. The Refuges from Zendikar helped with some basic fixing and were common enough you could expect to have a few to smooth out mana issues when drafting/playing Allies in Limited.
Dual lands, like other cards, are given their rarities for a reason. While giving these scry makes them feel like they should be Uncommon because the Guilgates were Common, you are mistake the rule for the exception. The Guildgates are the odd ones out, Common only because they exist in a heavy multicolored set. The basic tapland dual is an Uncommon, even without an added bonus. Wizards is well aware of how much of a disadvantage that coming into play tapped can be, and add abilities appropriately. Gaining 1 life, that's still pretty fair at Uncommon. Giving you scry and creating card quality? That might be Uncommon, but if the set doesn't need the fixing, it's closer to Rare.
The way people are talking, you'd think that multicolor decks were absolutely unheard of in formats without duals that ETB untapped.
Smoothing your draw step with your land drop is more valuable than most people realize. These lands will be played and they will do work for you, helping you keep from flooding, grabbing that next land you needed to draw, or digging closer to that one spell that can get you out of a tight situation. That is a powerful effect to have on a card that doesn't cost you a nonland slot in your deck. For some decks that will be worth giving up tempo. For others, it won't be, and they won't play these lands. That's fine. We don't need to have one universal set of dual lands for all deck types. I hope that M15 or the block after brings a new dual land cycle that's more suited to aggro over control, so that there is a spectrum of mana-fixing options available to choose from.
I don't feel they are going to slow down the format as much as people think.
No, they will just force back to mono or light splash dual color decks (which we are already starting to see due to Burning Earth). These effectively remove the possibility of strong 3 color decks, and kill off any remaining 4 color decks (although not like 4 colors was all that big outside of rites). It's just a shift back to mono is all as they want due to their block design devotion. It's just lazy design, and the fact they stuck these at rare I think is what frustrates people more. These aren't rare lands.
It's just lazy design, and the fact they stuck these at rare I think is what frustrates people more. These aren't rare lands.
While we can disagree as to whether or not these are worthy of being Rare (I argue the case in my post above), explain how they are 'lazy design'? I hear the words 'bad design' and 'lazy design' being dropped a lot lately with no real factual basis to back it up other than a person's opinion on the cards. What's lazy about it? If you read the article, it sounds like it was anything but lazy of them.
You did, you know, read the article that talks about how development got to this point, and how these lands were created, right?
but why do that want to make monocolored decks right after a dual colored block... that's like following a graveyard set by making a set that wants you too never have cards at grave
While we can disagree as to whether or not these are worthy of being Rare (I argue the case in my post above), explain how they are 'lazy design'? I hear the words 'bad design' and 'lazy design' being dropped a lot lately with no real factual basis to back it up other than a person's opinion on the cards. What's lazy about it? If you read the article, it sounds like it was anything but lazy of them.
You did, you know, read the article that talks about how development got to this point, and how these lands were created, right?
can you link me to this article? I would love to read it...
They are only 5 rare slots NGW. Also, your awesome fixing like Pilgrim, Farseek, and Arbor elf are all going away with the Innistrad lands so have fun with your mono colored decks, I hear those are the rage.
10 slots in the block I said, not the set.
And I don't care about Pilgrim, Farseek, or Arbor Elf, I don't play green, nor do I play Standard.
I am speaking solely as an EDH player. These lands are not worth running outside of a very budget deck, just like the guildgates that these are marginally better than.
Theros Dual Land
Land (Rare)
Add or to your mana pool
When Theros Dual Land enters the battlefield, scry 1.
As Theros Dual Land enters the battlefield, you may pay 3 life. If you don't, Theros Dual Land enters the battlefield tapped.
First of all, Limited: Dual lands are great for Limited, even at Rare. There is some but not an overly high amount of multicoloured cards, meaning there's likely not much need for non-Rare dual lands. Perhaps these could have been Uncommon, but that might have made multicoloured strategies too effective and taken some of the heat away from the Devotion mechanic. Ultimately, scry 1 in Limited ona dual lands is going to be awesome. Any time you draw one of these and filter a land of the top of your deck you are gaining a considerable increase in card quality, which wins Limited games.
Now, Constructed: While some very tightly tuned aggro decks in Modern might want these, I am going to go out on a limb and say these won't see much play there. Modern has Fetchlands and Shocklands, so it's good. Moving on.
These will be playable in Standard come rotation. Block featured all sorts of 2 colour and 3 colour decks, and some of those decks were willing to reach for Guildgates simply for fixing (others tried to use them as a win condition, but that's a special case). So, automatically each 2 colour deck sees a massive improvement by gaining card quality at the expense of some speed. In the case of control decks and some midrange decks, they likely won't even care.
This will be especially true in decks that can gain something from the information. Play a scry land, no creature? Awesome, not only did you just filter away a land, you also just stopped Domri Rade from NOT drawing you a card. If it was a creature, awesome. Now you know you won't whiff, which makes deciding between using the +1 and -2 that much easier. Already, the Gruul scry land combos with the currently most played Planeswalker in the format. Awesome
I'm certain there's way more to these than people expect. A lot of crying was done over the Scars dual lands, and they turned out better than expected. I expect these will be the same.
People have been talking about how they should reprinted Lightning Bolt instead of Lightning Strike. It terms of its complexity, Lightning Bolt is on the low end of the scale, but it is still very powerful. Scry 1 might not be much, but attached to a land its added value.
They are just plain meh. They are guildgates with a small upside at best. The only lands I run in my deck that always CiPT are ones with significantly bigger impact than scry 1, something that Thassa is going to let me do every single one of my upkeeps for free anyways.
Bojuka Bog exiles a graveyard.
Creeping Tar Pit swings in and is almost guaranteed to connect, I've won games off of it.
Tolaria West can fetch me any land in my deck.
It takes more than scry 1 one time to justify yourself. I'd rather run a basic.
UBBreya's Toybox (Competitive, Combo)WR
RGodzilla, King of the MonstersG
-Retired Decks-
UBLazav, Dimir Mastermind (Competitive, UB Voltron/Control)UB
"Knowledge is such a burden. Release it. Release all your fears to me."
—Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
Naw, the fixing I run is more than enough that that is virtually never an issue. This jank isn't going to make enough of a difference for the hit to tempo.
UBBreya's Toybox (Competitive, Combo)WR
RGodzilla, King of the MonstersG
-Retired Decks-
UBLazav, Dimir Mastermind (Competitive, UB Voltron/Control)UB
"Knowledge is such a burden. Release it. Release all your fears to me."
—Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
Anyway, I think these are great. Honestly, with three colored decks slowing down, these won't even be a hindrance when you consider how powerful a guaranteed scry is. I think these cards will be grossly underestimated and they will certainly find a place in standard, EDH, and obviously limited.
Considering you're talking about a format that hasn't even come into being yet as there still is a massive amount of the set missing, how likely is it that your testing of your mana bases is actually relevant to what people are going to playing and running?
Or did you come back from the future, like JCVD in Time Cop?
Legacy:
UR UR Delver
UBR Ad Nauseam Tendril
W Death & Tax
Modern deck:
UW UW control (with Spreading Seas and Wall of Omens)
BRG Vengevine!
I agree, should have been A) Uncommon (or) B) Not ETB (Enter the Battlefield) tapped.
Why is Wizards so afraid that duals that ETB untapped will just kill the shocklands. There are other options, such as dealing 1 damage when coming into play, or filtering, or returning a land, or coming into play w/in the first 3 or 4 turns untapped. There are options if the dual is to be rare.
I expect an uncommon to be an ETB tapped land, not a rare.
Yeah, forced CiPT is no good for a rare land (these needed to be uncommon). These will see small amounts of play as they are better than guild gates, but not by a whole lot. It will force people to back away from 3 color decks and really lock down mana bases. They put these in so that people would want to use devotion because they can't play 3 or 4 colors effectively anymore.
I think they want to slow down the format this way Stooge. Tapped dual lands can make a pretty big difference in the format right?
I don't feel they are going to slow down the format as much as people think. A canny Magic player is not going to be hindered by this draw back, and will likely be able to maximize the gain of this benefit. It's amateurish players that can't see pas the downside.
It surprises me that it upsets people these are Rare. They are playable dual lands, they increase the value of the set by being Rare. They make the chances of a pack opening a card of significant value higher. They would be very, very pushed as Uncommons. In recent sets, Uncommon dual lands only appear when there is a need to push mana fixing for the sake of Limited. This is doubly true when they design common dual lands. Alara had Trilands as Uncommons because the set needed them for Limited, and the Panaromas were back up. The guildgates were made intentionally underpowered compared to most other taplands because they need to glue the format together and it allowed for them to have a few cute cards to keep of them and make going beyond simple guild strategies worth it. The Refuges from Zendikar helped with some basic fixing and were common enough you could expect to have a few to smooth out mana issues when drafting/playing Allies in Limited.
Dual lands, like other cards, are given their rarities for a reason. While giving these scry makes them feel like they should be Uncommon because the Guilgates were Common, you are mistake the rule for the exception. The Guildgates are the odd ones out, Common only because they exist in a heavy multicolored set. The basic tapland dual is an Uncommon, even without an added bonus. Wizards is well aware of how much of a disadvantage that coming into play tapped can be, and add abilities appropriately. Gaining 1 life, that's still pretty fair at Uncommon. Giving you scry and creating card quality? That might be Uncommon, but if the set doesn't need the fixing, it's closer to Rare.
Smoothing your draw step with your land drop is more valuable than most people realize. These lands will be played and they will do work for you, helping you keep from flooding, grabbing that next land you needed to draw, or digging closer to that one spell that can get you out of a tight situation. That is a powerful effect to have on a card that doesn't cost you a nonland slot in your deck. For some decks that will be worth giving up tempo. For others, it won't be, and they won't play these lands. That's fine. We don't need to have one universal set of dual lands for all deck types. I hope that M15 or the block after brings a new dual land cycle that's more suited to aggro over control, so that there is a spectrum of mana-fixing options available to choose from.
R Citizen Cane (Feldon of the Third Path)
No, they will just force back to mono or light splash dual color decks (which we are already starting to see due to Burning Earth). These effectively remove the possibility of strong 3 color decks, and kill off any remaining 4 color decks (although not like 4 colors was all that big outside of rites). It's just a shift back to mono is all as they want due to their block design devotion. It's just lazy design, and the fact they stuck these at rare I think is what frustrates people more. These aren't rare lands.
While we can disagree as to whether or not these are worthy of being Rare (I argue the case in my post above), explain how they are 'lazy design'? I hear the words 'bad design' and 'lazy design' being dropped a lot lately with no real factual basis to back it up other than a person's opinion on the cards. What's lazy about it? If you read the article, it sounds like it was anything but lazy of them.
You did, you know, read the article that talks about how development got to this point, and how these lands were created, right?
And I'm sure a lot of scrying will be done over these dual lands.
can you link me to this article? I would love to read it...
Here.
R Citizen Cane (Feldon of the Third Path)
10 slots in the block I said, not the set.
And I don't care about Pilgrim, Farseek, or Arbor Elf, I don't play green, nor do I play Standard.
I am speaking solely as an EDH player. These lands are not worth running outside of a very budget deck, just like the guildgates that these are marginally better than.
There is a difference between a land that doesn't always come into play untapped and a land that always comes into play tapped.
UBBreya's Toybox (Competitive, Combo)WR
RGodzilla, King of the MonstersG
-Retired Decks-
UBLazav, Dimir Mastermind (Competitive, UB Voltron/Control)UB
"Knowledge is such a burden. Release it. Release all your fears to me."
—Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
Theros Dual Land
Land (Rare)
Add or to your mana pool
When Theros Dual Land enters the battlefield, scry 1.
As Theros Dual Land enters the battlefield, you may pay 3 life. If you don't, Theros Dual Land enters the battlefield tapped.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.