One of the arguments you pro-BDD-guys use most is, that the ETBT effect won't matter most of the time. Well, in those occasions when it matter, I'd rather have a land that doesn't enter tapped.
What? And I wouldn't?
I think you would greatly benefit from rereading my previous post. Nobody wants their lands to come into play tapped. After including your color's ABU duals though, you have to give something up in order to get untapped colorfixing. In the case of shocklands, it's life. In the case of Battlebond lands, it's the risk associated with it possibly coming into play tapped.
Throughout most of the game, if not the entire game, Battlebond duals will enter the battlefield untapped. It's only in extremely rare instances where you have a Battlebond land in hand, AND you only have one opponent left, AND you could use every point of mana you could make that turn, AND you have no other land you can play that turn that the Battlebond lands falter. And even in those highly unlikely circumstances may the consequences not even matter.
The argument for the Battlebond lands is that the circumstances in which they are poor are so rare that it's safer to take the risk associated with playing them than it is to play some other land that can always enter the battlefield untapped (like a shockland). To make an analogy, playing a shockland in place of a Battlebond land is a lot like buying insurance on a used game you purchased at GameStop. Sure, in the unlikely scenario the game you purchased was defective, you'll be in the clear. Most likely the insurance was just a waste of money though. As such, the better-safe-than-sorry approach isn't really mitigating risk. It's just displacing it somewhere else, somewhere less advisable.
Unless you're actually playing 1v1, the drawback of these lands is pretty small - by the time the game gets down to a 1v1 (assuming it ever does), mana is rarely the constraint on your play. There will is a few occasions where it will hurt you, but it's not something I'm really going to consider when deckbuilding.
Overall, I rate the two colour lands like this:
1 - Fetches: Their effectiveness is dependent on what other lands you have in your deck, but if you have the support, they're easily the best. Being able to get any of your deck's colours, no matter how many of said colours you have, for the cost of one life is unparalleled, and there's several widely played cards (e.g. Top) which synergise fantastically with the shuffle.
2 - Duals: No ingame drawbacks (outside of a game, cost is a thing...) and fetchable. Simple but great.
3 - Shocks: A pretty small drawback in a 40 life format (which, if the game state allows, you can even avoid if you don't need the mana now) for a fetchable land.
An easy top three, but after them, things are less clear cut and more dependent on the deck.
4a - Tangos: In a two colour deck, or possibly a green heavy 3 colour deck I like these a lot (although for the latter I'd still drop them down the list). They're fetchable (and tutorable with the green soceries) and outside of a few decks with really awkward colour requirements (Krond the Dawn-Clad for example), I would always run a good number (probably 17-18) of basics in a two colour deck, as you don't really need the fixing of the non-basics and Blood Moon effects are a very real thing in this format, so the drawback is often not relevant. Plus you can often get around the drawback simply by fetching them when you don't need the mana that turn. Of course, if you're not running a full set of 7 fetches in your 2 colour deck, they become worse.
4b - BBDs: In a 3+ colour deck, Tango lands' drawbacks become far more pronounced and outweigh the benefits of being fecthable. So what are the next best land? Well, the ones that almost always ETB untapped when relevant and have no other potential drawbacks. In pretty much every scenario that matters, they work out as a non-fetchable dual. Which is still very good.
4c - Painlands: The drawback isn't that severe, especially if your colour requirements aren't that high so you can use the alternative mode. In most decks these are worse than at least one of the two previous, but there are some decks that do really like to have the ability to make colourless mana, even if it's just for a couple of cards, so these can be a good source of it with a pretty minor drawback on an always untapped two-colour land. For decks that don't want the colourless, I'd move them down a couple of places - they're still good, but there are better.
5 - Checklands: Between basics and basic typed non-basics (which you want some of for fetching), these are usually a two colour land that ETBs untapped. Again, particularly good in two colour decks these are great fixing without anything fancy.
6a - Lorwyn/Shadowmoor Filters: They produce colourless like the painlands, and can help with awkward colour requirements, but not producing colour on their own, and needing specific colours of mana as an input make me dislike these in typical 3+ colour decks and I don't often need that much fixing in a 2c deck.
6b - Fastlands: If you're playing a blisteringly fast cEDH deck, these are very good. If you're not....they're not.
7 - Cyclelands: Being fetchable is great. Being cyclable is great. Always ETBing tapped is....not so great. To be honest, if I'm getting to this point in this list and still need multicolour lands, I'm going to start looking at the gold ones, but in a green deck with enough fetches, I might want one more basic typed option.
8a - Temples: See Cyclelands but worse - were these fetchable, I'd like them a lot even ETBing tapped, but the scry alone doesn't make up for that drawback.
8b - Manlands: See Temples. There are a few decks where having access to another creature can be useful which will push these higher, but in a typical deck, again, the potential upside is outweighed by always ETBing tapped.
9 - Old Filters: Always ETB untapped, but do nothing on their own, needing support from other mana sources. Only needing generic unlike the later filters is nicer, but they can be rather awkward to use for many decks, and again, if I'm getting this far down the list and still need fixing lands, I'm going to be looking at things like City of Brass or Reflecting Pool
10 - Reveal lands: Clunky - in a two colour deck, you don't need to get this far down the list, and in 3+ colours, the chances of you wiffing on the reveal are too high for my liking.
11 - Ravnica Karoos: If you're on a very tight budget, these are good. If you can afford even a half decent manabase, don't go here outside of very specific combos.
11 - Ravnica Karoos: If you're on a very tight budget, these are good. If you can afford even a half decent manabase, don't go here outside of very specific combos.
Karoos are for doubling up on land ETBs (Bojuka Bog, etc.) or getting more landfall triggers with the same number of cards. If you don't have lands with useful ETBs and you're not playing landfall, avoid them.
11 - Ravnica Karoos: If you're on a very tight budget, these are good. If you can afford even a half decent manabase, don't go here outside of very specific combos.
Karoos are for doubling up on land ETBs (Bojuka Bog, etc.) or getting more landfall triggers with the same number of cards. If you don't have lands with useful ETBs and you're not playing landfall, avoid them.
Landfall/ETB shenanigans (plus Amulet of Vigor) are what I meant by specific combos. But I do feel that, for the extreme budget decks (i.e. those that think spending £1 on a land is too much), they're a good option. I'd certainly run them over guildgates or the taplands that gain a life. The give pseudo-card advantage in that they let you play one more land before you stop hitting land drops and in the kind of meta those decks play in LD isn't really an issue (and frankly, the LD thing isn't really an issue anywhere, it's just something I see mentioned a lot - if someone's dumb enough to waste a strip mine on a karoo, more fool them. There are way more powerful lands in this format)
4a - Tangos: In a two colour deck, or possibly a green heavy 3 colour deck I like these a lot (although for the latter I'd still drop them down the list). They're fetchable (and tutorable with the green soceries) and outside of a few decks with really awkward colour requirements (Krond the Dawn-Clad for example), I would always run a good number (probably 17-18) of basics in a two colour deck, as you don't really need the fixing of the non-basics and Blood Moon effects are a very real thing in this format, so the drawback is often not relevant. Plus you can often get around the drawback simply by fetching them when you don't need the mana that turn. Of course, if you're not running a full set of 7 fetches in your 2 colour deck, they become worse.
9 - Old Filters: Always ETB untapped, but do nothing on their own, needing support from other mana sources. Only needing generic unlike the later filters is nicer, but they can be rather awkward to use for many decks, and again, if I'm getting this far down the list and still need fixing lands, I'm going to be looking at things like City of Brass or Reflecting Pool
11 - Ravnica Karoos: If you're on a very tight budget, these are good. If you can afford even a half decent manabase, don't go here outside of very specific combos.
I don't get why people think the "tangos" are good, outside of mid-budget manabases where you're missing duals and need fetch targets (and for sake of argument, you don't have cyclers on color, because I'd probably rather have those as well).
Nonbasic hate in commander is...overrated. Yes, blood moon is strong in modern, but that's because you can run 4x and sideboards exist. In commander you have one copy and there are a LOT of really really good nonbasics. Giving up most of those nonbasics so you can run 1-2 nonbasic hate card efficiently - which, depending who you're playing against, might not even be particularly good - is a pretty poor trade imo. You basically have to be mono-color, which is a pretty big sacrifice in itself. Not to mention, blood moon and b2b are often the sorts of cards that draw disproportionate hate while not necessarily accomplishing much - blood moon especially is really easy for most decks to handle with just a couple basics or color-fixing mana rocks.
So I don't buy the argument that you need to gimp your manabase to play around bm, b2b, and ruination. Ruination is the only one of those that's even good imo, and if you see someone is playing mono-red and you think they might be playing it, you can just fetch basics and be reasonably protected. Running a ton of fixing lands makes it much safer to play the format's plethora of amazing utility lands - yavimaya hollow, volrath's stronghold, ancient tomb, boseiju, who shelters all, hall of the bandit lord, riptide laboratory, the 2-color cycle from INN block...that's off the top of my head, but there's a ton more. Not to mention, for a 3+ color deck, it drastically reduces your chances of getting color screwed.
So imo running more than ~8 basics in a 2-color deck is probably a mistake unless you're building to a specific nonbasic-hate-heavy meta or you're trying to run a lot of green ramp. Which means tangos are usually just an etbt typed dual except in the very late game. Still maybe playable but I'd put them at the very bottom of the list.
Old filters really depend on deck, but if your commander costs no colorless mana I think they can be great for allowing you to play colorless lands and still drop your commander on-curve.
Karoos I think are seriously underrated. Yes, etbt is a significant downside, especially in cEDH, but effectively drawing you a land is a pretty enormous upside. Whether they're worth it depends whether you prefer tempo or value - cEDH will prefer tempo most of the time, but in most metas they work great. And yes, there's also the potential for re-etb or for palinchron shenanigans (and they also go great with exploration-type effects), but I think they're perfectly serviceable without any of that.
I'm not even convinced that Blood Crypt is better than Luxury Suite. I can understand playing shocklands if someone doesn't own the original ABU duals, and they need the basic land types to turn their fetchlands gold. Aside from that, the Battlebond duals are better than shocklands in almost every instance.
Excluding the fetch-land assistance, there are other situations where blood crypt is better. I run bubbling muck in two different storm decks, and other swamps-matter cards like crypt ghast and liliana of the dark realms do exist. Farseek is one of the best 2-cmc ramp spells in the format, and it can't get luxury suite.
Excluding the fetch-land assistance, there are other situations where blood crypt is better. I run bubbling muck in two different storm decks, and other swamps-matter cards like crypt ghast and liliana of the dark realms do exist. Farseek is one of the best 2-cmc ramp spells in the format, and it can't get luxury suite.
Yes, there are definitely instances where having basic land types is important. I'm not denying any of that. And I'm not saying don't play Blood Crypt either. Blood Crypt is obviously a damn good card, and it would be hard to fault most players for playing it. All I'm saying is that, in a vacuum, Luxury Suite is better than Blood Crypt at manafixing. Now, once you throw synergies into the mix, all bets are off since the worth of any one card will then be dependent upon the rest of the cards in the deck. Not every deck is going to play cards like Crypt Ghast and Farseek though, — and even those that do may not necessarily care about having additional dual lands with these basic land types after they've included the ABU duals — so it's important to recognize that Blood Crypt isn't universally better than Luxury Suite. It is, in fact, worse than Luxury Suite when the kinds of synergies you mentioned don't need to be factored in.
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I think you would greatly benefit from rereading my previous post. Nobody wants their lands to come into play tapped. After including your color's ABU duals though, you have to give something up in order to get untapped colorfixing. In the case of shocklands, it's life. In the case of Battlebond lands, it's the risk associated with it possibly coming into play tapped.
Throughout most of the game, if not the entire game, Battlebond duals will enter the battlefield untapped. It's only in extremely rare instances where you have a Battlebond land in hand, AND you only have one opponent left, AND you could use every point of mana you could make that turn, AND you have no other land you can play that turn that the Battlebond lands falter. And even in those highly unlikely circumstances may the consequences not even matter.
The argument for the Battlebond lands is that the circumstances in which they are poor are so rare that it's safer to take the risk associated with playing them than it is to play some other land that can always enter the battlefield untapped (like a shockland). To make an analogy, playing a shockland in place of a Battlebond land is a lot like buying insurance on a used game you purchased at GameStop. Sure, in the unlikely scenario the game you purchased was defective, you'll be in the clear. Most likely the insurance was just a waste of money though. As such, the better-safe-than-sorry approach isn't really mitigating risk. It's just displacing it somewhere else, somewhere less advisable.
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
Overall, I rate the two colour lands like this:
1 - Fetches: Their effectiveness is dependent on what other lands you have in your deck, but if you have the support, they're easily the best. Being able to get any of your deck's colours, no matter how many of said colours you have, for the cost of one life is unparalleled, and there's several widely played cards (e.g. Top) which synergise fantastically with the shuffle.
2 - Duals: No ingame drawbacks (outside of a game, cost is a thing...) and fetchable. Simple but great.
3 - Shocks: A pretty small drawback in a 40 life format (which, if the game state allows, you can even avoid if you don't need the mana now) for a fetchable land.
An easy top three, but after them, things are less clear cut and more dependent on the deck.
4a - Tangos: In a two colour deck, or possibly a green heavy 3 colour deck I like these a lot (although for the latter I'd still drop them down the list). They're fetchable (and tutorable with the green soceries) and outside of a few decks with really awkward colour requirements (Krond the Dawn-Clad for example), I would always run a good number (probably 17-18) of basics in a two colour deck, as you don't really need the fixing of the non-basics and Blood Moon effects are a very real thing in this format, so the drawback is often not relevant. Plus you can often get around the drawback simply by fetching them when you don't need the mana that turn. Of course, if you're not running a full set of 7 fetches in your 2 colour deck, they become worse.
4b - BBDs: In a 3+ colour deck, Tango lands' drawbacks become far more pronounced and outweigh the benefits of being fecthable. So what are the next best land? Well, the ones that almost always ETB untapped when relevant and have no other potential drawbacks. In pretty much every scenario that matters, they work out as a non-fetchable dual. Which is still very good.
4c - Painlands: The drawback isn't that severe, especially if your colour requirements aren't that high so you can use the alternative mode. In most decks these are worse than at least one of the two previous, but there are some decks that do really like to have the ability to make colourless mana, even if it's just for a couple of cards, so these can be a good source of it with a pretty minor drawback on an always untapped two-colour land. For decks that don't want the colourless, I'd move them down a couple of places - they're still good, but there are better.
5 - Checklands: Between basics and basic typed non-basics (which you want some of for fetching), these are usually a two colour land that ETBs untapped. Again, particularly good in two colour decks these are great fixing without anything fancy.
6a - Lorwyn/Shadowmoor Filters: They produce colourless like the painlands, and can help with awkward colour requirements, but not producing colour on their own, and needing specific colours of mana as an input make me dislike these in typical 3+ colour decks and I don't often need that much fixing in a 2c deck.
6b - Fastlands: If you're playing a blisteringly fast cEDH deck, these are very good. If you're not....they're not.
7 - Cyclelands: Being fetchable is great. Being cyclable is great. Always ETBing tapped is....not so great. To be honest, if I'm getting to this point in this list and still need multicolour lands, I'm going to start looking at the gold ones, but in a green deck with enough fetches, I might want one more basic typed option.
8a - Temples: See Cyclelands but worse - were these fetchable, I'd like them a lot even ETBing tapped, but the scry alone doesn't make up for that drawback.
8b - Manlands: See Temples. There are a few decks where having access to another creature can be useful which will push these higher, but in a typical deck, again, the potential upside is outweighed by always ETBing tapped.
9 - Old Filters: Always ETB untapped, but do nothing on their own, needing support from other mana sources. Only needing generic unlike the later filters is nicer, but they can be rather awkward to use for many decks, and again, if I'm getting this far down the list and still need fixing lands, I'm going to be looking at things like City of Brass or Reflecting Pool
10 - Reveal lands: Clunky - in a two colour deck, you don't need to get this far down the list, and in 3+ colours, the chances of you wiffing on the reveal are too high for my liking.
11 - Ravnica Karoos: If you're on a very tight budget, these are good. If you can afford even a half decent manabase, don't go here outside of very specific combos.
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Landfall/ETB shenanigans (plus Amulet of Vigor) are what I meant by specific combos. But I do feel that, for the extreme budget decks (i.e. those that think spending £1 on a land is too much), they're a good option. I'd certainly run them over guildgates or the taplands that gain a life. The give pseudo-card advantage in that they let you play one more land before you stop hitting land drops and in the kind of meta those decks play in LD isn't really an issue (and frankly, the LD thing isn't really an issue anywhere, it's just something I see mentioned a lot - if someone's dumb enough to waste a strip mine on a karoo, more fool them. There are way more powerful lands in this format)
Nonbasic hate in commander is...overrated. Yes, blood moon is strong in modern, but that's because you can run 4x and sideboards exist. In commander you have one copy and there are a LOT of really really good nonbasics. Giving up most of those nonbasics so you can run 1-2 nonbasic hate card efficiently - which, depending who you're playing against, might not even be particularly good - is a pretty poor trade imo. You basically have to be mono-color, which is a pretty big sacrifice in itself. Not to mention, blood moon and b2b are often the sorts of cards that draw disproportionate hate while not necessarily accomplishing much - blood moon especially is really easy for most decks to handle with just a couple basics or color-fixing mana rocks.
So I don't buy the argument that you need to gimp your manabase to play around bm, b2b, and ruination. Ruination is the only one of those that's even good imo, and if you see someone is playing mono-red and you think they might be playing it, you can just fetch basics and be reasonably protected. Running a ton of fixing lands makes it much safer to play the format's plethora of amazing utility lands - yavimaya hollow, volrath's stronghold, ancient tomb, boseiju, who shelters all, hall of the bandit lord, riptide laboratory, the 2-color cycle from INN block...that's off the top of my head, but there's a ton more. Not to mention, for a 3+ color deck, it drastically reduces your chances of getting color screwed.
So imo running more than ~8 basics in a 2-color deck is probably a mistake unless you're building to a specific nonbasic-hate-heavy meta or you're trying to run a lot of green ramp. Which means tangos are usually just an etbt typed dual except in the very late game. Still maybe playable but I'd put them at the very bottom of the list.
Old filters really depend on deck, but if your commander costs no colorless mana I think they can be great for allowing you to play colorless lands and still drop your commander on-curve.
Karoos I think are seriously underrated. Yes, etbt is a significant downside, especially in cEDH, but effectively drawing you a land is a pretty enormous upside. Whether they're worth it depends whether you prefer tempo or value - cEDH will prefer tempo most of the time, but in most metas they work great. And yes, there's also the potential for re-etb or for palinchron shenanigans (and they also go great with exploration-type effects), but I think they're perfectly serviceable without any of that.
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Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
Excluding the fetch-land assistance, there are other situations where blood crypt is better. I run bubbling muck in two different storm decks, and other swamps-matter cards like crypt ghast and liliana of the dark realms do exist. Farseek is one of the best 2-cmc ramp spells in the format, and it can't get luxury suite.
Links to my most current deck lists;
Primary EDH; Rakka Mar Token Perfection, Crosis Mnemonic Betrayal, Cromat Villainous, Judith Gravestorm, Rakdos Empty Storm, Exava Artifacts, Bant Trash, & Fumiko Voltron!
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EDH (nostalgic/pimp/retired) in storage;
Latulla Burns, Akroma Smash, Jeska Voltron, Rakdos Storm, Bladewing Darghans, Lyzolda Worldgorger, Xantcha Steals your Heart, Jori Storm, Wydwen Permission, Gwendlyn Paradox, Jeleva Warps, & Sigarda Brick!
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