Theros temples get upgraded to dual land status and surveil. Seems good for anybody running Temples or looking for a budget alternative to duals / shocks / triomes.
Surveil 1, while an upgrade over scry, is not enough of an upgrade to play lands that have to CIPT. These are not THAT much better than the temples as the number of times you actually get a benefit from being able to bin the top card of your library blind is very small, and the number of times you'll be able to set up the top of your library then play one of these is also tiny.
Edit - I missed that these were fetchable. These are substantially better than the temples, but still don't crack the top 6 of land cycles imo
With the triomes very clearly sitting in the top 4 of land cycles with the fetches, duals, and shocks, 2 full cycles of creature lands, and various ETB untapped options now, I don't even know how many cycles of lands I'd need to be running to consider these. 8?
That being said, these are nice lands to see and are probably great for slower environments and, yes, are strictly better than that temples. I just don't think they're getting in on power level in a normal cube.
I think being able to fetch for card selection is actually pretty formidable. Tapped is brutal though, for sure. I think these might be the best always comes in tapped after triomes and some top manlands, and the top fetchables after abur shock triome —- which, yeah, isn’t going to cut it in 360 or 450 these days but maybe cracks some 540s with the right wants (gy/domain etc)
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I primarily play limited, so most of my spoiler season comments view cards through that lens.
With the triomes very clearly sitting in the top 4 of land cycles with the fetches, duals, and shocks, 2 full cycles of creature lands, and various ETB untapped options now, I don't even know how many cycles of lands I'd need to be running to consider these. 8?
I think its peak is top 5-6 depending on the guild. Once you go beyond fetch / dual / shock / triome, anything goes really. Being fetchable really helps mitigiate the ETB tapped clause. I can see this being an attractive holdover for color combinations that either don't have a great manland and / or don't have a Horizon Canopy (hopefully MH3 fixes that this year). I'm thinking about testing a handful of these at 540. Extra duals are always good for color fixing / domain support, and this adds card filtering / graveyard fuel to boot.
I think its peak is top 5-6 depending on the guild. Once you go beyond fetch / dual / shock / triome, anything goes really. Being fetchable really helps mitigiate the ETB tapped clause. I can see this being an attractive holdover for color combinations that either don't have a great manland and / or don't have a Horizon Canopy (hopefully MH3 fixes that this year). I'm thinking about testing a handful of these at 540. Extra duals are always good for color fixing / domain support, and this adds card filtering / graveyard fuel to boot.
Yeah I'm counting the Triomes in my count of cycles even though it's not a guild cycle just because it's also a cycle of 10 for counting land additions in cube. Since I'm only running 4 lands per guild + the triomes, though, there's no way this gets in for me at least.
I think that the juice here IS worth the squeeze, though not every deck or even color combination is going to want one or more of these. Might be wise to do a partial cycle with these and fill the rest of it out with fastlands or something. Though, maybe that's imposing too much will over how people draft.
I run 9 sets of duals, and am considering adding a couple of them, but not all of them. I definitely rate it below ABUR/fetch/shock/Horizon lands and most manlands, and pathways/painlands for entering untapped, but am going to probably play:
Meticulous Archive over Irrigated Farmland (or maybe Seachrome Coast)
Undercity Sewers over Fetid Pools (or maybe Darkslick Shores)
Commercial District over Rockfall Vale
I think all the other lands I'm running are better on average for their respective guilds.
I do think these are probably better if you're playing multiple sets of fetchlands, but I don't do that so am not confident in how much better they are.
These are not in the top land slot, but they have niche appeal.
These will almost certainly settle to be fairly cheap like the other ETB tapped fetchables. And with a hint of graveyard matters, I'd be happy to throw one or two of these into a cube.
Interestingly enough, you can EOT fetch into this, Surveil and decide to keep/ bin depending on the situation. I feel this interaction would be powerful enough that this could see some play in Modern/ Legacy as a fetchable land in the mid to late game.
I would be paying closer attention to the Green-Blue land for this reason, but I doubt it will make that big of a difference.
I did a bit of Theorycrafting/ testing today on these lands and I believe they ARE strong lands for constructed, with high potential for Modern/ Legacy play but may cut short for Cube.
I personally play a Grixis Deck in Legacy with a Watery Grave instead of Underground Sea. I found that having a Surveil land in your deck can be incredibly strong as you can opt to EOT Fetch -> Surveil depending on the board state. In fact, I found this interaction to be so strong that I'm planning to play 2 Surveil lands as a starting point for testing.
The problem in cube is that if you only have a single set of fetch lands, this interaction comes up significantly less AND with the Triome cycle competing for a similar design space. Plus, several individuals also pointed out the problem with ETB tapped lands, and thus my instinct is it's unlikely we're going to play the entire cycle as-is.
However, I could see myself cutting certain lands for these lands in colors I feel the EOT fetch, Surveil AND land type will show up - As a starting point, I'm willing to swap out the UR Fast land for a Surveil Land.
I did a bit of Theorycrafting/ testing today on these lands and I believe they ARE strong lands for constructed, with high potential for Modern/ Legacy play but may cut short for Cube.
I personally play a Grixis Deck in Legacy with a Watery Grave instead of Underground Sea. I found that having a Surveil land in your deck can be incredibly strong as you can opt to EOT Fetch -> Surveil depending on the board state. In fact, I found this interaction to be so strong that I'm planning to play 2 Surveil lands as a starting point for testing.
The problem in cube is that if you only have a single set of fetch lands, this interaction comes up significantly less AND with the Triome cycle competing for a similar design space. Plus, several individuals also pointed out the problem with ETB tapped lands, and thus my instinct is it's unlikely we're going to play the entire cycle as-is.
This is overthinking things, IMO. These are more than good enough for any cube that is willing to tolerate ETB tapped manland. It's just a matter of having / finding space for them.
I think people aren't giving enough consideration to these being fetchable. That's a huge boon. Some cubes have broken singleton to run more fetches, creating a more balanced land base of fetches and fetch targets. And I think the Surveil lands will be great includes in environments like that.
Frankly in my cube most manlands are borderline unplayable. You never get a chance to activate them. Ill be trying several of these out. Being fetchable and counting as those land types is also huge.
I think the Dimir one (Undercity Sewers) is a tier above all the rest, because fetchable surveil is much stronger in Reanimator and blue can also stack the deck in response to the trigger, e.g. with Brainstorm. In Dimir I think it's actually competitive with something like Creeping Tar Pit.
The other colors are a lot worse, probably the Rakdos one is second best for Sneak & Reanimator, but it seems a a good amount worse than Dimir one.
Frankly in my cube most manlands are borderline unplayable. You never get a chance to activate them. Ill be trying several of these out. Being fetchable and counting as those land types is also huge.
I feel that about the BW manlands - Shambling Vent / Restless Fortress, however, I've found the majority of the manlands fairly reasonable.,
Frankly in my cube most manlands are borderline unplayable. You never get a chance to activate them. Ill be trying several of these out. Being fetchable and counting as those land types is also huge.
Agreed. A lot of cubes don't play manlands in every guild, and I think these are better than all but the best manlands since they're fetchable. Surveil duals will generally outperform most manlands in most games, IMO.
I think the Dimir one (Undercity Sewers) is a tier above all the rest, because fetchable surveil is much stronger in Reanimator and blue can also stack the deck in response to the trigger, e.g. with Brainstorm. In Dimir I think it's actually competitive with something like Creeping Tar Pit.
I think this is overblowing the value of milling 1-2 cards in reanimator. Milling is much more valuable for things that care about critical mass (delve / escape / delirium / threshold / etc). Reanimator is much more concerned about specific cards being in the graveyard, not necessarily having a critical mass of things there. Things like Thought Scour / Mental Note / etc are no substitute for actual discard outlets. While Brainstorm + any surveil effect can potentially be a set up, the impact these have on reanimator holds very little weight and shouldn't be used to make or break a deal between this and another land, IMO.
Agreed. A lot of cubes don't play manlands in every guild, and I think these are better than all but the best manlands since they're fetchable. Surveil duals will generally outperform most manlands in most games, IMO.
I'm also testing them out over all but the top-tier manlands to see how they do. I expect them to perform better in a lot of situations too.
Agreed. A lot of cubes don't play manlands in every guild, and I think these are better than all but the best manlands since they're fetchable. Surveil duals will generally outperform most manlands in most games, IMO.
I'm also testing them out over all but the top-tier manlands to see how they do. I expect them to perform better in a lot of situations too.
I look forward to hearing about the results. I could see several of the weaker manlands (roughly 5 of time) will be cut for Surveil lands in the future.
These have been playing well so far. I'm a big fan of card selection, and fueling the graveyard is a nice bonus too. What I've come to realize is that I probably don't want BOTH the surveil duals and triomes in the long the run since that's a bit too many ETB tapped lands than I'd like. Going forward I'm going to test these in the place of triomes. The combination of lower pip requirements and better mana fixing (more / better fetchable lands, better mana dorks and rocks, land cyclers, initiative fetching a basic, etc) has made me think that maybe the triomes might be overkill for me at this point. They're great for domain, but I can easily get by without any domain cards. If the mana fixing of the triomes is superfluous, than the surveil lands will often just be better a majority of the time. They lack cycling, but triomes are probably cycled like 10% of the time while being played / fetched the other 90%.
Im fine with running both in my cube. I like having Domain as a good option, and I like the tension of more of your lands coming in tapped if you want to play 4 or 5 color.
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StaffTheros temples get upgraded to dual land status and surveil. Seems good for anybody running Temples or looking for a budget alternative to duals / shocks / triomes.
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Edit - I missed that these were fetchable. These are substantially better than the temples, but still don't crack the top 6 of land cycles imo
With the triomes very clearly sitting in the top 4 of land cycles with the fetches, duals, and shocks, 2 full cycles of creature lands, and various ETB untapped options now, I don't even know how many cycles of lands I'd need to be running to consider these. 8?
That being said, these are nice lands to see and are probably great for slower environments and, yes, are strictly better than that temples. I just don't think they're getting in on power level in a normal cube.
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StaffI think its peak is top 5-6 depending on the guild. Once you go beyond fetch / dual / shock / triome, anything goes really. Being fetchable really helps mitigiate the ETB tapped clause. I can see this being an attractive holdover for color combinations that either don't have a great manland and / or don't have a Horizon Canopy (hopefully MH3 fixes that this year). I'm thinking about testing a handful of these at 540. Extra duals are always good for color fixing / domain support, and this adds card filtering / graveyard fuel to boot.
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Yeah I'm counting the Triomes in my count of cycles even though it's not a guild cycle just because it's also a cycle of 10 for counting land additions in cube. Since I'm only running 4 lands per guild + the triomes, though, there's no way this gets in for me at least.
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Meticulous Archive over Irrigated Farmland (or maybe Seachrome Coast)
Undercity Sewers over Fetid Pools (or maybe Darkslick Shores)
Commercial District over Rockfall Vale
I think all the other lands I'm running are better on average for their respective guilds.
I do think these are probably better if you're playing multiple sets of fetchlands, but I don't do that so am not confident in how much better they are.
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These will almost certainly settle to be fairly cheap like the other ETB tapped fetchables. And with a hint of graveyard matters, I'd be happy to throw one or two of these into a cube.
All that's missing is budget fetch alternatives.
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That way they'd be tapped in the early game to limit their power but untapped in the late game to make them more playable.
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I would be paying closer attention to the Green-Blue land for this reason, but I doubt it will make that big of a difference.
I personally play a Grixis Deck in Legacy with a Watery Grave instead of Underground Sea. I found that having a Surveil land in your deck can be incredibly strong as you can opt to EOT Fetch -> Surveil depending on the board state. In fact, I found this interaction to be so strong that I'm planning to play 2 Surveil lands as a starting point for testing.
The problem in cube is that if you only have a single set of fetch lands, this interaction comes up significantly less AND with the Triome cycle competing for a similar design space. Plus, several individuals also pointed out the problem with ETB tapped lands, and thus my instinct is it's unlikely we're going to play the entire cycle as-is.
However, I could see myself cutting certain lands for these lands in colors I feel the EOT fetch, Surveil AND land type will show up - As a starting point, I'm willing to swap out the UR Fast land for a Surveil Land.
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StaffThis is overthinking things, IMO. These are more than good enough for any cube that is willing to tolerate ETB tapped manland. It's just a matter of having / finding space for them.
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The other colors are a lot worse, probably the Rakdos one is second best for Sneak & Reanimator, but it seems a a good amount worse than Dimir one.
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I feel that about the BW manlands - Shambling Vent / Restless Fortress, however, I've found the majority of the manlands fairly reasonable.,
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StaffAgreed. A lot of cubes don't play manlands in every guild, and I think these are better than all but the best manlands since they're fetchable. Surveil duals will generally outperform most manlands in most games, IMO.
I think this is overblowing the value of milling 1-2 cards in reanimator. Milling is much more valuable for things that care about critical mass (delve / escape / delirium / threshold / etc). Reanimator is much more concerned about specific cards being in the graveyard, not necessarily having a critical mass of things there. Things like Thought Scour / Mental Note / etc are no substitute for actual discard outlets. While Brainstorm + any surveil effect can potentially be a set up, the impact these have on reanimator holds very little weight and shouldn't be used to make or break a deal between this and another land, IMO.
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I'm also testing them out over all but the top-tier manlands to see how they do. I expect them to perform better in a lot of situations too.
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I enjoy manlands and they are important for lands style decks as a mana sink (can play 18+ lands).
if I didn’t care about that and was trying to support say, domain decks, I think replacing manlands with these are reasonable.
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I look forward to hearing about the results. I could see several of the weaker manlands (roughly 5 of time) will be cut for Surveil lands in the future.
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