Has anyone adopted the new, Surveil dual lands? My commanders are squabbling over cards and I'm being pressured to make changes to my mana-base and these new lands seem as if they might be worth a thought.
Recently, I sent
Cavern of Souls to my Tribal Knight Pioneer deck. It didn't really seem critical for Varina so it seemed reasonable to make that move. In it's place, I added a beat-up old copy of
City of Brass I picked up at a nice discount.
Rowan, Scion of War immediately started gripping about this and she has a fair point; Rowan actually
wants to pay life for mana. She craves it, in fact. So, I may have to move that there to get Rowan off my back.
Will, Scion of Peace still has a number of poor-quality, tapped dual lands and is constantly harping on me to upgrade. The one thing that I can see that Varina might share to improve Will's mana base is
Fabled Passage. It's not a great card, but I think it'd be a step up for Will and no big loss for Varina.
The question is, of course, what to replace these cards with.
The surveil duals just don't really seem quite good enough for me. I've already got three lands that always enter tapped, but they do better things; at least, I like the things they do well enough to use them despite the drawback. I don't thing the surveil lands hit that bar for me.
Two Swamps may very well be the right answer as
Land Tax runs out of gas very quickly with only six basic lands available. There really doesn't seem to be much of a downside with adding one or two more Swamps except the possibility of putting off
Field of the Dead a turn - or two.
Another Plains might be nice, but I certainly don't want another basic Plains. Another fetch-able Plains-Swamp dual would be quite nice indeed, but a tapped dual is not really what I'm looking for.
Treva's Ruins would be fun, I think. There's perhaps not enough benefit to counter the draw back, but I just have a soft spot for janky old stuff. It could actually get an extra FoD trigger once in a while. Not on the same turn, but one eventually runs out of lands to drop.
Cabal Pit doesn't seem terrible. It's a cool old card but the activated ability may not sufficiently compensate for the drawback.
Anyway, I'm interested in hearing what you think of the surveil duals; am I undervaluing them? Would just one more tapped land be that big of a deal?