Let's rank ALL the fixing lands

[PrimevalCommander]

I seriously don't understand low rating of tangoes and bicycle lands. I will always run them before anything if I can make it work. Constantly annoying that those cycles are half finished

100% agree. Though I like Tango's better than Bicycles since I still do a decent bit of basic ramping. Both cycles need to be completed.

I'm also in the Lorwyn Filter land camp, where I think they are very good lands. Yes, they take colored mana to activate, and I won't use them in anything over 3 colors, but they can turn one into in a pinch. Good for those triple pip spells or ultimatums. Once or twice I got burned by them being the only colored land in my opener and kept it anyway. Don't do that. Otherwise, they are great.

The Slow Lands and Battlebond lands are also very good. I am waiting for the slow lands to rotate and get cheaper as I would like a set of those. But once the Tango land cylce is complete, I probably won't ever need to invest in two-color lands again other than buying more fetches

I honestly was very surprised to even see the Triomes printed at all. I never thought we would get triple-typed lands. I'm happy to have them, but there are other land cycles waiting to be completed for years already.

[DirkGently]

In a 4c manabase you almost always should be on the main color pair bond land (eg the simic or dimir one usually lol). But off color bond lands aren't good enough. Basically you play the one that lets you cast your fixing tutors and dorks. And you play the main color pair canopy land if applicable usually.

Other than that it's rainbow and fetches shocks and duals.

Yeah that's fair, it's not crazy to go deeper on some primary colors within a 3+ color manabase.

I'm surprised you rate the pathways so highly. They're better than a basic most times, sure, but fifth best dual? Really?

They're the only dual bar ABUs that are strictly better than a basic (in a vacuum). They do drop off a little if you're playing greedy, but I think the vast majority of the time being able to pick one of two colors gives you sufficient flexibility. Entering untapped always is a big deal imo. Checklands have too likely of a failure case to be higher ranked imo. If you have a basic typed land it's probably because you fetched, in which case you're already doing well on fixing. I'd rather have duals that save me from disaster situations rather than ones that are only good when I'm already doing well.

The slowlands are, for most EDH decks, only bad on turn 2, assuming you're not playing cantrip or mana dork tribal. And it's not like them entering tapped is a death sentence on turn 2. I think they're roughly equal with painlands and checklands and slightly worse than bondlands.

I think increasingly it's important to be able to make plays on 1 and 2. And yes entering tapped on turn 2 - "the ramp turn" - is preeeettty bad. I think by the time you've got more than a handful of lands the flexibility compared to a pathway becomes basically irrelevant anyway, so it's not that wide a window where slowlands are better. Early they're much worse than pathways, and mid-late they're basically the same.

I seriously don't understand low rating of tangoes and bicycle lands. I will always run them before anything if I can make it work. Constantly annoying that those cycles are half finished and the dimir cycling duals is for some reason kinda pricey.

Bicycles are okay but honestly 2 is a lot for cycling. 2 is a lot and 1 is too cheap. It's a hard mechanic to balance these days. Tangos just suck. The only decks that want to play a bunch of basics are mono and maybe some really ramp-happy green decks - and even then, probably fewer than people use. They never enter untapped early which is the most important time, and basics are bad in multicolor decks anyway.

Typing is really relevant for the first one, kinda relevant for the second one, and basically irrelevant after that. If you aren't sufficiently fixed after fetching 2 of the same color pair, wtf are you trying to do? So I see very little reason to run anything after ABU and shock. If budget forbids ABU then probably bicycle over tango. The existence of trilands also means there's a lot less room for bad typed duals anymore. Fetch a triland, fetch a dual, you should be set by that point.

I like triomes okay too but just haven't worked up to trading for them.

Didn't they come out over 3 years ago? That's quite a working up.

I most likely would rather run a basic than a pathway

Why?

[yeti1069]

Just stumbled across this thread. Interesting takes. I'm surprised that the Bond lands are ranked lower on some lists, since their only downside comes late game when you're 1v1, if that happens at all. Otherwise they are always untapped duals with the only downside being they aren't fetchable.

I don't own ABURs, and out side of my one cEDH-tuned deck, I don't proxy cards I don't own a copy of already, so those are out. I rate the Tangos slightly higher than the Bicycles in decks that are running a decent number of basics and/or those that have a fair amount of basic land tutoring since they have a chance of coming in untapped occasionally. The only time I don't run all of these available is when I'm leaning heavily into typed lands for tutoring purposes and don't have much room for generically good, untyped lands beyond the utility stuff (ie., my Korvold lands deck).

I hate the OG filter lands. Do people play those? I feel like I've played them a handful of times when I run a new precon unmodded a time or two, then they're one of the first cards I swap out; too often I've found them to be awkward. The newer filters tapping for colorless have been much better for me, even if they, too, have presented problems on occasion. I like running them in 2-color decks, but not so much in 3- or more, unless the deck is very heavy on a single color.


Fetch
ABU (out)
Shock
Bond
Triomes (if the deck is heavy on fetching land types and is a little slower to develop)
Pain (this goes down if the deck tends to be greedy with its life without having much life gain)
Check (this goes down if the deck is very low on basics/basic fetching)
Bicycles (this goes down if the deck is light on type fetching)
Newer Filter (this goes higher if the deck has heavy 3+ pip requirements, or early dual pips, or a lower number of basics/basic fetching)
Slow (this goes down if the deck is very focused on developing the first couple turns)
Pathway (I find that I'd often prefer a basic in this slot unless the deck has very little basic tutoring and nothing/not much that cares about land type)
Fast (this goes up if the deck is very focused on developing the first couple turns, such as in Yuriko)
Reveal (bleh)
Filter2 (bleh)

[duducrash]

Pathways are not fetchable, do not get searched for after PoE effects, and I have to carry them separated with a marked proxy or keep reesleving it back and forth.

[pokken]

Tangos just suck. The only decks that want to play a bunch of basics are mono and maybe some really ramp-happy green decks -

Once you've got 11 fetchlands and 6 ABUR dual+shocks, you can absorb a *ton* of basics if you're disciplined about pips. I'm usually on like 10-16 basics in a 3 color deck. Tangoes work great in most of my manabases, with the ability to painlessly fetch a second land being really useful quite often. In 2 color decks they're fantastic, since they give you a 3rd or 4th fetchable dual.

I've had them negatively impact me, but a lot less often than they help having extra fetchables.

I do play a lot of fetch shenanigans though; loam/Brought Back et. al.

[DirkGently]

I hate the OG filter lands. Do people play those? I feel like I've played them a handful of times when I run a new precon unmodded a time or two, then they're one of the first cards I swap out; too often I've found them to be awkward.

Being able to filter colorless can be pretty powerful for decks running a fair number of utility lands. I think they're pretty solid, though ofc competition is increasingly fierce.

Pathways are not fetchable

That's only relevant if you're literally running out of lands to fetch. Are you? How many fetchable/rampable lands are you running? How many fetch/ramp effects are you running?

do not get searched for after PoE effects

PoE? Do you mean PtE?

PtE is the only card I can think of that gets commonly played and forces basic tutoring upon you from outside, so at most that adds perhaps 1 basic to the deck. Ofc if you're running basic-only ramp within your deck then you should probably make sure you have enough targets that you don't run out, or only run out late enough into the game that it's not very likely or relevant. Ofc every deck will have its own incentives to build its manabase in a particular way, but as a general principle I don't think you need very many basics in a multicolor deck to cover your bases.

and I have to carry them separated with a marked proxy or keep reesleving it back and forth.

If you find the logistics annoying that's fair enough but that doesn't seem relevant to a discussion of power rankings as it's purely personal foible.

Once you've got 11 fetchlands and 6 ABUR dual+shocks, you can absorb a *ton* of basics if you're disciplined about pips.

Can? I guess. But why would you want to?

I've had them negatively impact me, but a lot less often than they help having extra fetchables.

If you're already running a ton of basics why do you need extra fetchables? If you've got ABUs and shocks and a triland, you've already got 3 targets for a specific color pair. One you fetch when you want an untapped source, one that's more powerful but can only be tapped, and one that can can optionally enter untapped for a cost. If you've already got all 3 of those out, how is your fixing not good enough? Especially if you're "disciplined about pips"?

I do play a lot of fetch shenanigans though; loam/Brought Back et. al.

I don't think you need to go THAT deep on fetchables for loam tbh. Every time you dredge it you're likely to put at least 1 land into the grave, and if you're building a loam deck you're probably also recurring at least 1 cycling land of some kind, ideally 2. Sure, in the early game you want fetches since they can easily be put into the grave before you dredge and they guarantee targets while you're hitting land drops and finding your cyclers etc, but by the mid-late I think you can commonly ignore fetches. Crucible, on the other hand, relies a lot more on fetches since it doesn't stock itself and doesn't have as much synergy with cycling etc.

Brought back is a fine card but even in the ideal case (which is honestly always harder to set up than I want it to be) you're only getting +2 fetches. I can't see that justifying running 10+ basics in a 3c deck.

It bears repeating - if you look at competitive legacy/vintage/etc decks, they usually run very few or zero basics. And these are decks being played in metas that obviously have no compunction against nonbasic hate. Basics are just not good lands. Run some if you like basic ramp effects, or maybe a couple if you want outs to BM and/or targets for PtE, but unless you've got a good reason I really wouldn't run more than a couple in a 3c deck. No matter how many basics you *can* absorb, your manabase will be more consistent if you don't.

[pokken]

when you run off color fetches having more typed duals is super helpful. And I run out of duals and basics all the damn time. Like every third game with breena I run out of plains and every thrasios game I run out of forests.

If you're looking to really take optimal advantage of fetchlands you need more targets. The slight sacrifice in mana consistency adds a lot of inevitability and also engine reliability. With no swamps and only 4-5 swamp targets your hand with marsh flats as the only fetch can become a trap really fast.

Commander is not competitive legacy or vintage. The games are much grindier. There's a lot more life and a lot more resets.

Not every deck should run my style of manabase. Not even all mine do. But a lot of decks can fit the full white emeria plus Cosmic Intervention package.

Brought Back is stupid good. Its typical floor is rampant growth with instant. It's ceiling is an infinite combo piece that is also double rampant growth and a defensive board protection spell. If you're in Wx two color the brought back package is objectively the best manabase you can be running. And you should have enough fetch targets to go off with a triple cosmic intervention because it happens regularly (that means 9 fetchables at minimum).

It's good enough I would mix ci brought back with loam and exploration in a selesnya deck.

[DirkGently]

when you run off color fetches having more typed duals is super helpful. And I run out of duals and basics all the damn time. Like every third game with breena I run out of plains and every thrasios game I run out of forests.

I think you're looking at this from a very biased perspective. The vast vast majority of decks are not running very many ways to recur their fetches, or not many times per game. If you're seeing, say, 20 cards in an average game with ~10 fetches, you only use 2 targets. Even if the game goes longer and you see more cards, or you reuse a fetch a couple of times, a typical manabase runnning ABUs (or a budget replacement), shocks, and a triome will be fine with 5 targets for an off-color fetch, and that's without any basics. Plus you're unlikely to draw multiple off-color fetches that hit the same color, given than for a 3-color deck, for a single color half your fetches are on-color and half are on-color. So for example if you're playing Mardu and you've already drawn Polluted Delta, the only fetch in the deck that hits black only becomes Verdant Catacombs, with the other 2 black fetches hitting your other colors.

If you're building for some particular recursion plan then sure, that may push your manabase in an atypical direction, but for the vast majority of decks that are focused primarily on ensuring they get their colors on time, more than 2-3 dual targets is completely unnecessary.

You've said you're running 10+ basics plus abu duals plus shocks, that's minimum 16 lands. If you're actually running out of lands to fetch, surely you can just...win the game?

If you're looking to really take optimal advantage of fetchlands you need more targets.

I don't think this is a good way to think about deckbuilding. You should be focused on making the manabase - if not the entire deck - as strong as possible in totality, not focused on maximizing some particular aspect of it. Running bad typed duals makes fetchlands marginally better, yes, but at the expense of the rest of the manabase.

With no swamps and only 4-5 swamp targets your hand with marsh flats as the only fetch can become a trap really fast.

I have no idea what you're talking about here. You play marsh flats, crack it, and grab either a triome or the dual/shock in whichever colors you need most. Where's the trap? Are you presupposing that you're recurring marsh flats 3+ times? That is....very atypical, to say the least.

Commander is not competitive legacy or vintage. The games are much grindier. There's a lot more life and a lot more resets.

Of course, but the principles of a consistent manabase don't really change that much.

Brought Back is stupid good. Its typical floor is rampant growth with instant.

I think it's a decent card but there are a lot of fail cases even for the fairly humble rampant growth play. You need a second white source and you need to draw a fetchland. With ~10 in the deck, that's less than a 2/3 chance by my math, hardly guaranteed. And only a 22% chance for 2 of them. Plus sometimes you really want to play your fetch as fixing on T1 and this line precludes that. Not saying it's a bad card, I'm just saying it's underperformed as ramp for me.

If you're in Wx two color the brought back package is objectively the best manabase you can be running. And you should have enough fetch targets to go off with a triple cosmic intervention because it happens regularly (that means 9 fetchables at minimum).

I'd love to see some evidence for this, since hardly anyone (cEDH or otherwise) is focusing on this line to the extent that you seem to afaik. At the end of the day, regardless of how much you love these two cards, they're only 2 in the 99, so I can't see warping the manabase around them so much to be justified.

I do like the triple cosmic intervention fetch though, that's cute. Although drawing 3 fetches is pretty unlikely, unless it's late-game enough as to lose a lot of its impact. Plus you need to just kinda sit on the fetches doing nothing (barring Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth or whatever, but then you wouldn't even need to fetch a third time) until you can fire it off. And even if you do pull it off, that's 9 targets you need, so if you've got a triome + abu + shock, that's already 7 targets. If you've got at least one basic in each color you should be fine, you don't need trashy tango lands. It's not like your fixing is going to need help after that turn. Anyway we're already looking at a pretty narrow subset of games where you draw one card in the 99 and then also 3 fetches, so we're talking about tiny percentages here. I would do very little to modify my manabase in order to facilitate this play.

[pokken]

Recurring marsh flats >3 times happens in one turn all the damn time. It's an entire archetype and one of the most popular.

I think the bb/ci/sevinnes package hasn't caught on cos fetches are stupid expensive. It's still quite popular. Take my word for it or don't I don't care. It's very powerful, fairly reliable, and super resilient. Fun as heck too.

[yeti1069]

I for sure run out of fetchable lands regularly across a few decks:
Henzie can pull 3 Forest cards at a time with Seedguide Ash, and the deck is mana hungry enough that I miss not being able to reuse that for another 3 (or another 3).
Korvold ran powerful utility lands, or lands with a land type as it would regularly run through all of the fetchable targets and need more basics to fill out the options.
Queen Marchesa runs out of Plains all the time with cards like Deep Gnome Terramancer in the deck, among others.
Sefris is running a higher number of basic Plains than I would want to otherwise in order to keep fuel for Emeria Shepherd--fetch, Plains with that out is huge value.
Yuriko on Pact mana base runs out of targets fairly often, but can't afford to run any ETB (or maybe ETB) lands.

[DirkGently]

Recurring marsh flats >3 times happens in one turn all the damn time. It's an entire archetype and one of the most popular.

Which archetype are you talking about? I don't believe you've been specific.

I think the bb/ci/sevinnes package hasn't caught on cos fetches are stupid expensive.

Marsh flats is currently $10.

It's still quite popular. Take my word for it or don't I don't care. It's very powerful, fairly reliable, and super resilient.

I don't think I've ever seen it in person (aside from myself using BB sometimes), and the EDHrec use rates for those cards are fairly low. As far as I can see there's very little overlap between those cards and fetches, but honestly that seems suspicious since fetches are pretty popular. Maybe they aren't categorizing them correctly as fixing lands? Is there a way to just directly compare the overlap rate for 2 selected cards besides looking through the synergies list for one of them?

Anyway, if you enjoy the synergy then by all means use it, but you do get that it sounds pretty pretentious to say your (to the best of my experience and research) uncommon strategy "is objectively the best manabase you can be running" don't you? Especially when you're also saying "I'll just play 26 basics and some karoos or some %$#%." It does not give off the impression of reliability, to be frank.

I haven't run CI very often but I've run BB plenty of times and it's usually been just okay. Again, not a bad card, but quite far from "objectively the best manabase".

I for sure run out of fetchable lands regularly across a few decks:
Henzie can pull 3 Forest cards at a time with Seedguide Ash, and the deck is mana hungry enough that I miss not being able to reuse that for another 3 (or another 3).
Korvold ran powerful utility lands, or lands with a land type as it would regularly run through all of the fetchable targets and need more basics to fill out the options.
Queen Marchesa runs out of Plains all the time with cards like Deep Gnome Terramancer in the deck, among others.
Sefris is running a higher number of basic Plains than I would want to otherwise in order to keep fuel for Emeria Shepherd--fetch, Plains with that out is huge value.
Yuriko on Pact mana base runs out of targets fairly often, but can't afford to run any ETB (or maybe ETB) lands.

I see a lot of people bemoaning that the format has become so much faster from power creep and cEDH encroachment. I have a very hard time squaring those statements with people talking about fetching half their lands into play and still needing more. With 5+ targets, even with zero basics, seems like you'd generally have you bases covered for most of those cards?

As I said before, the specifics of the deck might pressure you to run an atypical manabase. I'm obviously not telling someone they shouldn't run basics in their Karametra, God of Harvests deck. But I'm not ranking lands based on corner cases, I'm ranking them for a typical deck that just wants reliable fixing. That said, I wouldn't want to warp my manabase very much in order to accommodate a single card in the 99 like emeria shepherd or DGT. If DGT sticks around long enough to ramp 5 plains to play, I'd just count that as a win and move on.

[Mookie]

Some thoughts I'll throw out there:

• The longer a game goes, the less it matters whether or not a land enters tapped - losing one mana in a game that ends on turn 4 is massive, but trivial for a game that ends on turn 10... and that's before accounting for nonland mana sources.
• Many decks are capable of absorbing a tapland because they don't have 100% mana utilization the first place - if you don't have a 1-drop on turn 1, then playing a tapland is totally fine.
• Even if a given shockland or fetchland is 'only' $10-$20, I would say your manabase will be more improved (and thus your money better spent) by buying 5-10 $1-$2 duals first. This is even more true for ABU duals - you can easily finance an entire deck or two for the cost of a single Volcanic Island. I don't think it's worth it to fully optimize a manabase unless you're doing cEDH or proxying (well, ignoring MTG finance / investment reasons, or if you expect to cut those lands in the future due to power creep).
• A three-color manabase with 30 basics and five Arcane Signet / Manaliths will have just as many pips of each color as a deck with 45 basics, or a deck with 15 Command Towers and 15 Wastes. The more nonland fixing you run, the less reliant you'll be on your manabase for fixing, which frees up slots for untapped basics (or utility lands).
• The more mana-hungry your deck is, the less likely you are to want to cycle Scattered Groves and other cycling lands, which means they aren't much better than Radiant Grove / other tapped duals.
• I tend to run lots of basics and tangos in my decks... which may be because I also tend to play Thaumatic Compass // Spires of Orazca everywhere.
• The correct number of basics / fetchables to run is 'enough'. If you only regularly spend 6-7 mana per turn, you probably only need seven fetchables. If your deck is built to spend 15+ mana, that's when you should think about cutting non-fetchables for basics / weaker fetchables. Running out of fetchables doesn't matter if you don't have anything to spend it on. (and if you are doing that much ramping, fixing is probably less important anyway) (also: recognize the difference between mana you 'want' and mana you 'need')

[DirkGently]

The longer a game goes, the less it matters whether or not a land enters tapped - losing one mana in a game that ends on turn 4 is massive, but trivial for a game that ends on turn 10... and that's before accounting for nonland mana sources.

I disagree. Sometimes, sure, but maybe having an untapped island for your counterspell is the reason WHY the game ended on turn 10 instead of to a combo on turn 4. You can't judge the moves in a game based solely on the ending. It's like how Jon will go "oh, Dirk won, I knew I should have killed him first". If you did that, Jon, you would have lost to Mike several turns earlier.

Many decks are capable of absorbing a tapland because they don't have 100% mana utilization the first place - if you don't have a 1-drop on turn 1, then playing a tapland is totally fine.

True, but unless you're on a tight budget I don't think there's a need to allow many always-etbt lands into your manabase just for fixing purposes.

Even if a given shockland or fetchland is 'only' $10-$20, I would say your manabase will be more improved (and thus your money better spent) by buying 5-10 $1-$2 duals first. This is even more true for ABU duals - you can easily finance an entire deck or two for the cost of a single Volcanic Island. I don't think it's worth it to fully optimize a manabase unless you're doing cEDH or proxying (well, ignoring MTG finance / investment reasons, or if you expect to cut those lands in the future due to power creep).

When working on a budget, I completely agree, but personally the gremlins in my brain are happier when my manabase is optimized even if the deck itself is dumb jank. Helps ofc that I already have them all and just move them around so I don't spend any new money.

A three-color manabase with 30 basics and five Arcane Signet / Manaliths will have just as many pips of each color as a deck with 45 basics, or a deck with 15 Command Towers and 15 Wastes. The more nonland fixing you run, the less reliant you'll be on your manabase for fixing, which frees up slots for untapped basics (or utility lands).

I don't think this is true. If the only question you're interested in is "how often do I have X color" then yes, but often the important questions are more complicated. If all your fixing is concentrated into fewer sources, it makes it less likely that you can pay multiple colors in the same turn - i.e. a forest and a plains can cast llanowar elves and STP in the same turn whereas command tower and a wastes can't. Also it makes your manabase make likely to produce an extreme result - with 20 forests 20 plains, you're just as likely to not have green as with 20 savannah 20 wastes, but you're more likely to have both colors or have neither. Personally I'd rather have a manabase that gives consistently decent results than one that sometimes gives excellent results and sometimes gives poor ones.

Also ofc I do not condone cutting lands for ramp. If your deck wants to ramp, it probably also wants to hit its land drops. If there's a proper ratio of lands you can cut per ramp piece, it's probably something like 1:8.

The more mana-hungry your deck is, the less likely you are to want to cycle Scattered Groves and other cycling lands, which means they aren't much better than Radiant Grove / other tapped duals.

There are plenty of reasons you might cycle a land even in a mana-hungry deck (say you're running loam, or you have enough draw power to guarantee land drops). I will agree that it's a less important aspect of the card than I have previously thought, though. I still think it's usually better than tangos if you think you need an additional fetch target and can't afford ABUs. Both the tango untap clause and the cycling are fairly minor upsides though.

I tend to run lots of basics and tangos in my decks... which may be because I also tend to play Thaumatic Compass // Spires of Orazca everywhere.

I don't think that's a good justification. Compass stops fetching basics after a couple hits most of the time (unless you're not playing them). But I do like compass.

The correct number of basics / fetchables to run is 'enough'. If you only regularly spend 6-7 mana per turn, you probably only need seven fetchables. If your deck is built to spend 15+ mana, that's when you should think about cutting non-fetchables for basics / weaker fetchables. Running out of fetchables doesn't matter if you don't have anything to spend it on. (and if you are doing that much ramping, fixing is probably less important anyway) (also: recognize the difference between mana you 'want' and mana you 'need')

I agree strongly with this. Though commander is varied enough that it can be difficult to tell what's "enough". Ten games end on turn 7 and you're nowhere near running out, and then another one drags on for 25 turns and you've got everything in play. But ofc I would then agree that, while you might "want" more mana at that point, you probably don't "need" it.

[yeti1069]

I for sure run out of fetchable lands regularly across a few decks:
Henzie can pull 3 Forest cards at a time with Seedguide Ash, and the deck is mana hungry enough that I miss not being able to reuse that for another 3 (or another 3).
Korvold ran powerful utility lands, or lands with a land type as it would regularly run through all of the fetchable targets and need more basics to fill out the options.
Queen Marchesa runs out of Plains all the time with cards like Deep Gnome Terramancer in the deck, among others.
Sefris is running a higher number of basic Plains than I would want to otherwise in order to keep fuel for Emeria Shepherd--fetch, Plains with that out is huge value.
Yuriko on Pact mana base runs out of targets fairly often, but can't afford to run any ETB (or maybe ETB) lands.

I see a lot of people bemoaning that the format has become so much faster from power creep and cEDH encroachment. I have a very hard time squaring those statements with people talking about fetching half their lands into play and still needing more. With 5+ targets, even with zero basics, seems like you'd generally have you bases covered for most of those cards?

As I said before, the specifics of the deck might pressure you to run an atypical manabase. I'm obviously not telling someone they shouldn't run basics in their Karametra, God of Harvests deck. But I'm not ranking lands based on corner cases, I'm ranking them for a typical deck that just wants reliable fixing. That said, I wouldn't want to warp my manabase very much in order to accommodate a single card in the 99 like emeria shepherd or DGT. If DGT sticks around long enough to ramp 5 plains to play, I'd just count that as a win and move on.

The assessment that something like DGT is worth it if it ramped 5 lands into play assumes none of those targets were out of the deck beforehand--if you have 2 of your 5 targets in your opening hand, and draw a 3rd, now it's ramping 2, which is decent, but falls far short of what it could be doing.

EDH has absolutely gotten faster. That doesn't mean decks can't slow the game down. Most of my decks are packed to the gills with removal, which tends to slow things a bit. That said, Henzie wants to be out on t2, t3 at the latest, and churning out blitzed creatures on t3 or t4. It has several creatures that can fetch multiple lands at a time, some of which can get typed nonbasics, and wants as much mana as it can get--certain thresholds move the deck from deploying 1 blitzer a turn to 2+, and it has a fair amount of recursion. It's always disappointing when it uses Seedguide Ash once, has the ability to recur it, but then doesn't have enough targets left in the library for it to be worth it.

Korvold was a lands deck, had the ability to put a lot of lands into play quickly, and was drawing enough cards that it could never have enough resources available/always wanted more.

Queen Marchesa is a psuedo-control deck, and those need mana to be able to address problems. It's fairly low on fetchables, and frequently runs out too soon in longer games.

For Emeria Shepherd in Sefris, I wouldn't warp the mana too much, but it becomes a choice of whether it's worth running the card or not. It's a powerful effect, but if half the time you see it you have no way of triggering the stronger clause, it's not really worth running.

[duducrash]

PtE is the only card I can think of that gets commonly played and forces basic tutoring upon you from outside,

Assassin's Trophy
Cleansing Wildfire
Ghost Quarter / Demolition Field
The initiative / The undercity
Settle the Wreckage


It's often relevant. I just don't think its worth running the modal lands

[yeti1069]

Winds of Abandon

[Mookie]

The longer a game goes, the less it matters whether or not a land enters tapped - losing one mana in a game that ends on turn 4 is massive, but trivial for a game that ends on turn 10... and that's before accounting for nonland mana sources.

I disagree. Sometimes, sure, but maybe having an untapped island for your counterspell is the reason WHY the game ended on turn 10 instead of to a combo on turn 4. You can't judge the moves in a game based solely on the ending. It's like how Jon will go "oh, Dirk won, I knew I should have killed him first". If you did that, Jon, you would have lost to Mike several turns earlier.

"Matters less". Topdecking a tapped land and being unable to cast a key spell can certainly be the difference between winning or losing... but the slower your meta is, the less impactful any individual tapped land will be.

• If you hit every land drop until turn 4, that's 10 mana - a single tapped land means you miss on 10% of your mana, which is pretty significant.
• If you hit every land drop until turn 10, that's 55 mana, and a single tapped land is only 1.8% of your mana, which is less consequential.
• If every land enters tapped until turn 10, you miss on 18% of your mana, which is even worse than the shorter game.
• The numbers even out if 5.5 of your lands enter tapped - in other words, 1/4 of your lands entering tapped in a T4 meta is equivalent to a bit over half of your lands entering tapped in a T10 meta, in terms of overall mana efficiency.

[TheGildedGoose]

I seriously don't understand low rating of tangoes and bicycle lands.

Oh, I forgot about these two. I love tangos and loathe bicycle. With fetchlands, tangos have a decent chance of either a) hitting untapped or b) hitting tapped when it's irrelevant. They're pretty good, but a stretch in 3 color decks where other duals, untyped or not, become better. Bicycle lands are horrible. They're fetchable, which is a big upside, but always entering tapped is a death sentence. I don't even care that they cycle. That is so niche (Loam decks, basically) as to be irrelevant.

I most likelly would rather run a basic than a pathway

Depending on the deck. I actually do largely agree with Dirk that basics aren't very good, and that I lose games because of my manabases being basic heavy due to fear of Back to Basics and Blood Moon. If you aren't recurring fetchlands I might run a pathway in a three color deck if it was my primary two colors.

They're the only dual bar ABUs that are strictly better than a basic (in a vacuum). They do drop off a little if you're playing greedy, but I think the vast majority of the time being able to pick one of two colors gives you sufficient flexibility. Entering untapped always is a big deal imo. Checklands have too likely of a failure case to be higher ranked imo. If you have a basic typed land it's probably because you fetched, in which case you're already doing well on fixing. I'd rather have duals that save me from disaster situations rather than ones that are only good when I'm already doing well.

Well, they're not strictly better, are they? Basic typing is a big reason they're good. Would you play a Pathway over, say, a Swamp in a Cabal Coffers Golgari deck?

I'm not arguing that they're bad per se, I just think they're lower down the list than you rated them. Also, they're annoying as %$#% to use. I ain't got time to pull out and rotate a piece of cardstock. They're like Lorwyn filters in that they're just unpleasant to use.

I think increasingly it's important to be able to make plays on 1 and 2. And yes entering tapped on turn 2 - "the ramp turn" - is preeeettty bad. I think by the time you've got more than a handful of lands the flexibility compared to a pathway becomes basically irrelevant anyway, so it's not that wide a window where slowlands are better. Early they're much worse than pathways, and mid-late they're basically the same.

Playing it on turn 2 is so far and away a possibility that its fail state is irrelevant. If you're playing it on turn 2 instead of turn 1 and don't have any other lands to play the problem isn't the land, it's the pilot. I only mentioned its fail state to highlight just how small it is. As for flexibility, I mean, you're sacrificing long term strength for what, a mild advantage on the first few turns. I'd say that aspect as pretty marginal, but personally I prefer having perfect mana past turn 4 or 5. The big takeaway is that while the floor on slowlands is only lower if you play like an NPC, the ceiling is much higher than the pathways.

Tangos just suck.

Classic Dirk.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, this is kind of a silly exercise, innit? We all agree most of these are unplayable in "real" three-color manabases past bondlands or Lorwyn filters outside of a very splashed color where you play the Good Ones in your primary two colors, so the ranking is really for two color decks, in which you're going to play everything from fetches to checks to pains to bonds to slow to pathways.

[pokken]

EDIT: Now that I think about it, this is kind of a silly exercise, innit?
...
so the ranking is really for two color decks
...

The more I think on it the more I think its a silly exercise period. it's inseparable from the deck. I have never once built a manabase that was just a manabase and didn't have significant interaction with what the deck's strategy was, outside of hyper casual budget decks. It's a fetch ramp deck, it's high on basics to support Traverse the Outlands//Boundless Realms, it's high on filter lands to support Mana Reflection/Nyxbloom Ancient, whatever. There's lots of fetchables to support Field of the Dead. There's always something going on more than just use a heuristic.

Orzhov Basilica is *fantastic* in white cachup manabases. It's so damn good. it often represents +2 cards on a land (you play it, it acts like 2 lands, you do catchup ramp for an extra card). It's also fantastic in Archelos, Lagoon Mystic or in Kodama of the East Tree.

Ranking anything past pain lands seems pointless unless you're on a budget or a 2 color deck, like you said.

[Mookie]

EDIT: Now that I think about it, this is kind of a silly exercise, innit?
...
so the ranking is really for two color decks
...

The more I think on it the more I think its a silly exercise period.
...

I am insulted, offended, and outraged by your implications that there isn't some objective Truth that shows I am Right and others are Wrong. Your claims of nuance and context are heresy, I say! Renounce thy wretched ways and may thy Command Towers turn to Wastes.

...also, I have some marshmallows to roast, so I need a spicier flamewar. D:

[DirkGently]

The assessment that something like DGT is worth it if it ramped 5 lands into play assumes none of those targets were out of the deck beforehand--if you have 2 of your 5 targets in your opening hand, and draw a 3rd, now it's ramping 2, which is decent, but falls far short of what it could be doing.

Holy hell that's so unlikely lol. Drawing 3 out of 5 cards in the first couple turns?

I guess I'd want to put some numbers on this. I don't think it'd be crazy to run 2 basic plains in order to better support DGT. But if we're talking about running 6 basic plains then I think it's a mistake.

Assassin's Trophy
Cleansing Wildfire
Ghost Quarter / Demolition Field
The initiative / The undercity
Settle the Wreckage


It's often relevant. I just don't think its worth running the modal lands

Fair point, I didn't think about those offhand. That said, all of their EDHrec usages combined are significantly less than PtE (I guess depending how you count initiative, though from what I can see none of them are commonly played) with most of those usages coming from assassin's trophy.

I do think it's reasonable to include a couple basics both in case of PtE or others, and as a hedge against BM and B2B since they can be fetched. But that's only accounting for a couple slots. If your landbase is already loaded up enough that it's a choice between a pathway and a single basic, I can definitely see the argument for going for a basic. But looking at your decklists, you're consistently running double-digit numbers of basics. I don't think there's much risk of you getting PtE'd 14 times, and I don't think this argument holds any water.

"Matters less".

"trivial for a game that ends on turn 10"

Topdecking a tapped land and being unable to cast a key spell can certainly be the difference between winning or losing... but the slower your meta is, the less impactful any individual tapped land will be.

It's true that an slower, less powerful meta will put less pressure on early mana, but the number of turns in a game isn't necessarily a good indicator of how fast or powerful the meta is.

Oh, I forgot about these two. I love tangos and loathe bicycle. With fetchlands, tangos have a decent chance of either a) hitting untapped or b) hitting tapped when it's irrelevant. They're pretty good, but a stretch in 3 color decks where other duals, untyped or not, become better. Bicycle lands are horrible. They're fetchable, which is a big upside, but always entering tapped is a death sentence. I don't even care that they cycle. That is so niche (Loam decks, basically) as to be irrelevant.

I have come down a bit on bicycles as the format has sped up, 2 mana is quite a bit for cycling in 2023. That said, I can't understand liking tangos. In a strong 3c manabase, tangos will enter tapped so often that it's all-but-guaranteed. If you're running a lot of land ramp so that you're incentivized to run a fair chunk of basics, maybe it starts to look plausible, but even then it's never happening early. You've got to (1) have fetches (2) not have ABU duals (3) not have synergy with cycling (4) have a lot of basic-only ramp...and then they're still, at best, mediocre. If you've got a lot of basics + shock + triome I think you're typically fine on fetch targets.

Well, they're not strictly better, are they? Basic typing is a big reason they're good. Would you play a Pathway over, say, a Swamp in a Cabal Coffers Golgari deck?

"(in a vacuum)". Bro you literally quoted it.

I trust that people can understand that the specifics of their deck can alter the raw power level of cards. Not just as relates to basic typing either - llorwyn filters can have utility even in 4+ color decks if they have a lot of double/triple pipped mono-color cards, but if the mana requirements aren't as greedy they fall off a lot.

Also, they're annoying as %$#% to use. I ain't got time to pull out and rotate a piece of cardstock. They're like Lorwyn filters in that they're just unpleasant to use.

I won't argue with that. Though still preferrable to any land that uses counters. Stupid vivids...

Playing it on turn 2 is so far and away a possibility that its fail state is irrelevant. If you're playing it on turn 2 instead of turn 1 and don't have any other lands to play the problem isn't the land, it's the pilot.

The main fail cases offhand would be:
1) You have a 1 drop and a 2 drop with 2 lands in hand.
2) You have another land but it's not of the right colors for your turn 1 play.
3) You have other lands but they also etbt.

In general I agree that running a small number of etbt lands can usually find a turn to play them without compromising your plays, but every one you include makes every other one worse, and there are other lands with more utility beyond fixing that I think a lot of decks might prefer in those slots. I do think slowlands are good, absolutely, but the margins between a lot of these lands are pretty razor thin and somebody's gotta come out on top.

Now that I think about it, this is kind of a silly exercise, innit? We all agree most of these are unplayable in "real" three-color manabases past bondlands or Lorwyn filters outside of a very splashed color where you play the Good Ones in your primary two colors, so the ranking is really for two color decks, in which you're going to play everything from fetches to checks to pains to bonds to slow to pathways.

Eh, most conversation here is a silly exercise. I just think it's fun to talk theory.

Although I didn't necro this topic so don't blame me.

[duducrash]

you're consistently running double-digit numbers of basics

Oh yeah, my manabases are often non ideal, I'm just talking like from a theory stand point. If not for the flipping needed I would probably run over a mountain on Veyran, Voice of Duality . Unsure if would so in karador because I do fetch many basics there,

[PrimevalCommander]

One thing that diversifies my 3 color mana bases is that I only play on-color fetches. So I only get 3 fetches in a 3 color deck. This opens up another 6 spaces for some of the lower rated duals like Check lands, Lorwyn Filter lands, Tangos, and Basics. My fixing in 3 color typically looks like this.

10 basics
3 Fetch
3 ABU Dual
3 Shock
3 Check
3 Filter
1 Triome
1 Fabled Passage
1 Command Tower
1-2 Tango lands maybe
6-8 utility lands

Budget decks drop the ABU duals and Fetches for Pain Lands and Rav Bounce Lands, maybe Bi-Cycles depending on the colors and land tutor needs.

I'm looking into the Battlebond Duals and Slow lands, but don't have many of these right now. 'Bond duals would replace Pain lands in all relevant slots if I had a bunch of them.

Bounce lands have been working their way back into several decks after taking ALL of them out some years ago. MDFC lands and Kamigawa Channel lands have added so much extra utility to the land slots that picking up a turn 1 MDFC land to cast later is big upside. Don't sleep on these if you have some of the MDFC and Kamigawa lands along with Bog and Sanctuary.

Bi-Cycles have been really low for me. I think I only have 1 deck playing them now. Since my standard basic count for 3 color decks is 10, I usually meet the Tango's untapped clause maybe 75% of the time. Where Bi-Cycles enter tapped 100% of the time and I can probably count on 1 hand the number of times I have cycled one. My loam deck is also mono-green so now help there.

Green is my favorite color, so I will always be on the lookout for lands that are forests and lands that fetch forests.

[gsgfdf]

What do you think about Nimbus Maze?
If they ever complete this cycle I think it could compete with the bond lands.

[DirkGently]

What do you think about Nimbus Maze?
If they ever complete this cycle I think it could compete with the bond lands.

I think it depends what your manabase looks like. Personally I'm often running enough untyped duals that its failure rate is probably too high. I think they'd be fairly low for me tbh.

That said it cannot compete with the bond lands because bond lands are (for all practical purposes) zero-downside duals except for lacking dual types. Unless you need colorless sources for eldrazi stuff I guess. They're basically impossible to beat unless you have additional interactions (like fetches being functional 5c lands, and duals/shocks empowering them to do that).