MTG Salvation

Hanweir Battlements
Land
T: add 1 to your mana pool
R,T: target creature gains haste until end of turn
3RR: meld



I really liked this card for some reason, I think I'd definitely include it if it produced red instead of colorless.
Slayers stronghold was great but ultimately proved to be too narrow as the RW cost seemed a lot to pay when most of the time it was played all I cared about was the haste. I run one utility land per color and to me this seems like the best of the bunch for my purposes, though I might be missing something as it seems this card was completely written off by most people, is there already a better haste granting land out there?

You effectively have to make your creature cost 2 extra mana to give it haste. I don't want to wait 2 more turns to play my creature just so it can attack that turn. I think this is only good late in the game but its an effect I want early.

It could be useful when you're playing off the top in a midrange deck, but I don't see that offsetting having to run a colorless land. You would only ever run it for the meld, so I wouldn't include it in the cube except as a bonus with the Garrison.

It doesn't do enough to justify tapping for colorless mana. Losing the other bonuses makes this land a lot worse than Slayers' Stronghold. There are several other red-aligned lands that I think are better than this.

We also have 1 utility land per monocolor. We preferred Barbarian Ring to Flamekin Village, but found the village pretty useful, so we were going to test whether battlements was better than village until we decided to just bundle the meld cards.

The comparison to Slayers' Stronghold really puts this card into perspective. Looking at those cards, I think what Hanweir Battlements needed was a +1/+0 boost on top of the haste.

The red nonbasic slot is the weakest though, so running this card is not out of the question. It does help aggressive deck in the topdeck phase of the game. Plus, including it would allow for some pretty cute achievement. I mean, we are all running Hanweir Garrison, right?

Heck, the other options are so weak, I might actually give this a try. I mean, since red got a push in the artifact synergy department, I am running Great Furnace in this slot. Battlements would at least be less narrow than that. Running half a dozen C-cost cards is another argument for it.

I'm going to try this card out for a while. I want someone to live the meld dream in cube.

Quote from Sliver Lord »

We also have 1 utility land per monocolor. We preferred Barbarian Ring to Flamekin Village, but found the village pretty useful, so we were going to test whether battlements was better than village until we decided to just bundle the meld cards.

By bundle the meld cards do you mean that if you draft Hanweir Garrison you automatically get the Battlements?

Quote from DSF »

Quote from Sliver Lord »

We also have 1 utility land per monocolor. We preferred Barbarian Ring to Flamekin Village, but found the village pretty useful, so we were going to test whether battlements was better than village until we decided to just bundle the meld cards.

By bundle the meld cards do you mean that if you draft Hanweir Garrison you automatically get the Battlements?

That would make them a much better card.... If I wasnt a purist I would do it myself.

Quote from DSF »

Quote from Sliver Lord »

We also have 1 utility land per monocolor. We preferred Barbarian Ring to Flamekin Village, but found the village pretty useful, so we were going to test whether battlements was better than village until we decided to just bundle the meld cards.

By bundle the meld cards do you mean that if you draft Hanweir Garrison you automatically get the Battlements?

Precisely. Or as we think of it, if you draft Hanweir, the Writhing Township you get both front faces. Same policy for Brisela.

Cool. Not my style personally, but I get the appeal.

Hanweir Battlements is basically one of those "second half of a two-card combo" cards... you likely wouldn't draft it on its own, and would only take it if you already had Hanweir Garrison. Flamekin Village is not in my 360, so this won't be either.
That said, the Garrison is in my 360 at the moment, and I'm looking at filling my Lore Seeker booster full of Eldrazi stuff... and I think this is probably a good candidate for that flex section, just to let someone live the dream.