Pointed Discussion

School of the Unseen was an uncommon, but I don't want to complain.

So was Henge of Ramos.

Its decent and probably pretty easy to get your hands on considering its a common.

Solid mana fixing for pauper/people on a budget. Leagues better than SotU/HoR, and almost exactly equivalent to Unstable Frontier. Not all of us can afford City of Brabuttocks.
I traded for a foil Grotto, and the trader had a low opinion of this card. The dialogue went something like this:
Trader's friend: Dude, are you sure you want to trade that shiny Shimmering Grotto?
Trader: Yeah, why wouldn't I?
Trader's friend: Dude, it's shiny.
Trader: Dude, it's Shimmering Grotto.

@ ClockworkSwordfish, Unstable Frontier is better than this card because it can target nonbasic lands such as Misty Rainforest. Although of course if you are playing just basic lands then it is equal as you said.

This card fits a very critical role in casual Magic: the good but not super good five-color mana fixing common land. A fine-tuned land base has no use for a card like this, but when a player can't spend three digits on one deck before even adding spells, this is an awesome alternative, not unlike Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds. Its weakness is obviously that you risk slowing down early, but the cool thing about this (unlike with the common fetchlands) is that it's perfectly realistic to have completely smooth early game land drops with this.

Strictly better than Henge of Ramos, and it's even a common!

Unlike Unstable Frontier, this is a common.

As many have said, a good mana fixer for pauper, on a budget, or in limited. Not really constructed tourney standard though.

3.5/5

This is good for decks who just need a splash of another color. Or maybe have something like Obelisk of Alara and x3-4 of these in a mono deck.

They don't come into play tapped, and tap for colorless so its not even going to hurt your game unless your super unlucky. And you can take advantage of an awesome card like the Obelisk.

This produces colored mana if and when you need it but at a cost. If you don't need the colored mana you get colorless mana with no drawback. This may be the most balanced multicolor land in the game.

@clockwork swordfish

I don't usually like foil cards but a shimmering grotto that actually shimmers is kinda neat.

So, to be clear on why this is worse than City of Brass, and the other cards like it. In the early game, because of your lack of lands, you have a problem with getting the right colors, but late game that is not a problem because of the amount of land that you have. This cuts of your numerical amount of mana early game to provide you with colored mana, but that is often undesirable then losing 1 life. Remember, the only life that counts is your last.