For a deck using the rare lands from Ravnica, like Temple Garden, this is very handy because you're not looking for a Basic Forest or Plains.
TreeTrunkMaster
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(6 votes)
I don't think this is at all bad in a {G}{W} deck.
To add to what Etregan was saying you could also find many (7 to be exact) dual lands which produce {W} or {G} such as Tropical Island, not to mention some random cards like Dryad Arbor, Murmuring Bosk, Sapseep Forest, and Mistveil Plains.
By the way, just to clarify, there are shock lands in each of Ravnica's sets that are useful with this card, not just Ravnica. (the sets in the block are Ravnica, Dissension, and Guildpact)
There are 22 different lands this card could fetch in total.
Quang
★★☆☆☆ (2.2/5.0)(6 votes)
Type your comment here.
Aradimar
★★★☆☆ (3.8/5.0)(2 votes)
white mana accel, pretty much a white lay of the land, green gots better though so with green I probally wouldnt play it unless using explore
vsasntore
★★★☆☆ (3.7/5.0)(3 votes)
this is great with landfall in a casual deck
Aaron_Forsythe
★★★★☆ (4.7/5.0)(17 votes)
Aaron’s Random Card Comment of the Day #60, 2/7/11
In retrospect, doing two heavy hybrid-mana sets (Shadowmoor and Eventide) was more difficult than I had hoped. I anticipated there being ample design space in that mechanic for that many cards but let’s face it: the color pie isn’t compelling because of all the overlap. Doing as many hybrid cards as we did forced us to make a bunch that were overpowered, underpowered, or blurred or outright broke the color pie. There just wasn’t that much elegant to be had.
Take this card as an example. There is some overlap in green and white when it comes to searching up lands--green does it all the time in all sorts of ways, and white gets it in tiny drops whenever we get the urge to riff off of the old card Land Tax (white has several different “catch up” mechanics). The problem is that the colors' ability to search lands are at such disparate power levels that any hybrid card that is even remotely attractive as a green card is going to be completely absurd as a white card, and any “fair” white card is going to be insulting as a green card.
We tried an instant version that read, “If an opponent controls more lands than you, search your library for a basic land card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle your library.” That was actually kind of interesting--it “taxed” like a white card, and let you Lay of the Land as an instant in green… sometimes. The problem was that “sometimes”--in games where you went first, the card was almost certainly a blank. So we opted for this card which, like a lot of hybrid cards, doesn’t feel quite natural.
As a green card, this pales to Lay of the Land, except you can cast it for white mana, which matters. As a white card, it’s kind of like a plains cycling card that can also get Forests. Pretty weird. The fact that it can get dual-typed lands give it some legs in formats like Commander, but in my mind this card lays bare more problems than it solves.
Trust me, another heavy-hybrid set is not high on my list of things to make.
Kryptnyt
★★★★☆ (4.5/5.0)(1 vote)
Its greatest application would be in a Gloryscale Viashino deck, I think, if you have room for it.
ong312
★★★★☆ (4.2/5.0)(6 votes)
@Aaron Forsythe
To make good hybrids, you need to know how to blend the cards... If this card said:
SORCERY Search your library for a land card, reveal that card and put it into your hand. If :W: was spent to cast CARD NAME, you may search your library for an additional land and put that card into your hand. If :G: was spent to cast CARD NAME, put a land from your hand onto the battlefield tapped. Do both if :W: and :G: were spent.
It would be very elegant and playable. You know where you get good Hybrid design that plays up what each color does? FIRESPROUT. You do one thing for each color or something AWESOME if you spent both colors. 1W for two lands is like a better Gift of Estates. 1G for a a land into hand and getting to play an additional land this turn is like a better Explore or Rampant Growth. :W::G: for BOTH is like a better Cultivate or Mini Knight of the Reliquary/Primeval Titan.
I am not meaning to be rude, but maybe it's just deciding which cards to blend that got lost along the way. Slagstorm easily could have been a RB Hybrid card with B doing 3 to players and R doing three to creatures.
the313
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
@ong312: There's no way that would fit inside the text box although you're on the right track.
Cheza
★☆☆☆☆ (1.3/5.0)(5 votes)
@ Aaron:
First of all, I am no fan of green land tutoring effects like Rampant Growth. Green creatures tend to be territorial and not really on the lookout for more lands. On the other side, this means blue, search spells fit to blue, since it's pure control of your library and blue is for me the color of metroplexes and "kingdom of a thousand isles". All you have to do is to restrict blue in such a way that it can't put the lands onto the battlefield, since blue isn't the color of mana acceleration. But for me, one of the best blue spells would be Sylvan Scrying, since it enables you to get non-basic lands as well, and a Urza's Power Plant isn't really that natural or green at all.
As I've written in other comments (see Fact or Fiction, Stone Rain or Ley Druid), I would give blue all kinds of search effects, since these are limited to the library and truly give some meaning to "control color".
I believe that green has many other ways to accelerate mana to compensate the loss, since it would get Fact or Fiction and Gifts Ungiven in return. Effects like the new Druidic Satchel might show a good way (as well as Ancient Stirrings being on the lookout for a land card).
For the white part, I would shift Lush Growth, Wild Growth and Fertile Ground towards white, granting a wonderful way to represent the Garden of Eden (or mundane agriculture) and to support the white aura focus.
GatesDA
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(2 votes)
@ ong312:
That's pretty complex for a common, and this particular design would have to be even wordier since you have to shuffle and — if you used white — reveal the extra land:
SORCERY
Search your library for a land card, reveal that card and put it into your hand. If :W: was spent to cast CARD NAME, you may search your library for an additional land card, reveal it, and put that card into your hand. If :G: was spent to cast CARD NAME, put a land from your hand onto the battlefield tapped. Do both if :W: and :G: were spent. Then shuffle your library.
All the Shadowmoor/Eventide cards of this style are uncommon, and for good reason: they're all three-way if-else branches. This is more complex, since it has fixed effects before and after the branch. You could eliminate the shuffling after by turning the white effect into an "instead" clause, but that's even longer since it repeats the shuffling:
SORCERY
Search your library for a land card, reveal that card and put it into your hand, then shuffle your library. If :W: was spent to cast CARD NAME, you may instead search your library for two land cards, reveal them, put them into your hand, then shuffle your library. If :G: was spent to cast CARD NAME, put a land from your hand onto the battlefield tapped. Do both if :W: and :G: were spent.
alextfish
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(1 vote)
@ong312: Firespout is the opposite of an elegant hybrid card. It's a fairly elegant mirror card, certainly, but hybrid cards are meant to be an effect that both colours get access to. It's like saying Tattermunge Witch is a great hybrid card. The Witch cycle and the Firespout cycle always felt to me like cheating padding to get the numbers up. Neither of them is playable to full effect in a mono-red deck or a mono-green deck.
I think you're right to say "You need to know how to blend cards", but I think it seems like the Shadowmoor and Eventide design and development teams know that rather better than random posters on the internet. Which is of course as it should be: for us this is a hobby, but for them it's their 9-to-5 job, and one they're passionate about.
DacenOctavio
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Pale Recluse? {G}{W} is good at creature recursion, so I'd go with that.
BlandBoy
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Just re-reading the text. When it says Forest or Plains card. That refers to land only, or meaning any card with Forest or Plains in its mana cost? I am confused by the text because it does not specifically say Land card.
Lash_of_Dragonbreath
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(2 votes)
I feel kinda sorry for the development team for cards like this that apparently took a lot of work to make but no one ever thought about using outside limited. That said, I'd totally pick it up in limited of I were in W/G. Minor mana fixing, minor deck thinning (one card can make a difference in a 40-card deck if you have few win conditions) and possibly boosting Safehold Duo isn't that bad.
@Cheza: Dude, I've seen a bunch of your comments in cards like M12 Oblivion Ring, and it seems like any sort of effect or ability that remotely fits a control strategy should be blue to you. Exile effects? According to you, they' should be shifted from white to blue. Land Destruction? Again, you want it in blue. Land tutoring? Blue... Blue can't have everything. And that also wouldn't make sense flavorfully. Blue isn't exactly "the control color." Blue is supposed to be "the manipulation color" or "the subtle color". Straight up exiling or blowing stuff up may be control, but it's as subtle as standing up and falcon punching your opponent in the face. As for land searching - it's flavor-wise connected to green due to that color's connection with nature. Lands are supposed to be something natural (okay, maybe there's Urza's Power Plant, but it's one exception among hundreds of perfect examples of my reasoning, and even then you can still argue that a power plant isn't so unnatural, after all it's obtaining energy from natural sources in a similar way in which an autotrophic organism would. And it's a plant! :P).
psychichobo
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
I'll never understand Cheza's comments. Good thing they're several years old!
This card does have excellent application now that the Return to Ravnica block's back with all its shocklands. This can tutor SEVEN different shocklands, which definitely isn't bad. I made a theoretical Scion of the ur-dragon EDH deck, and with the original dual lands that's a total of fourteen different lands this card can hunt for. Not even counting the other weird forests like Bosk Banneret and Dryad Arbor.
It's also excellent Deck Filtering material. Costing 1 mana sucks for that purpose, but like Street Wraith and Terramorphic Expanse you can use it, albeit riskily, to cut through your deck to increase the chances of getting to the cards you want.
Comments (17)
To add to what Etregan was saying you could also find many (7 to be exact) dual lands which produce {W} or {G} such as Tropical Island, not to mention some random cards like Dryad Arbor, Murmuring Bosk, Sapseep Forest, and Mistveil Plains.
By the way, just to clarify, there are shock lands in each of Ravnica's sets that are useful with this card, not just Ravnica. (the sets in the block are Ravnica, Dissension, and Guildpact)
There are 22 different lands this card could fetch in total.
In retrospect, doing two heavy hybrid-mana sets (Shadowmoor and Eventide) was more difficult than I had hoped. I anticipated there being ample design space in that mechanic for that many cards but let’s face it: the color pie isn’t compelling because of all the overlap. Doing as many hybrid cards as we did forced us to make a bunch that were overpowered, underpowered, or blurred or outright broke the color pie. There just wasn’t that much elegant to be had.
Take this card as an example. There is some overlap in green and white when it comes to searching up lands--green does it all the time in all sorts of ways, and white gets it in tiny drops whenever we get the urge to riff off of the old card Land Tax (white has several different “catch up” mechanics). The problem is that the colors' ability to search lands are at such disparate power levels that any hybrid card that is even remotely attractive as a green card is going to be completely absurd as a white card, and any “fair” white card is going to be insulting as a green card.
We tried an instant version that read, “If an opponent controls more lands than you, search your library for a basic land card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle your library.” That was actually kind of interesting--it “taxed” like a white card, and let you Lay of the Land as an instant in green… sometimes. The problem was that “sometimes”--in games where you went first, the card was almost certainly a blank. So we opted for this card which, like a lot of hybrid cards, doesn’t feel quite natural.
As a green card, this pales to Lay of the Land, except you can cast it for white mana, which matters. As a white card, it’s kind of like a plains cycling card that can also get Forests. Pretty weird. The fact that it can get dual-typed lands give it some legs in formats like Commander, but in my mind this card lays bare more problems than it solves.
Trust me, another heavy-hybrid set is not high on my list of things to make.
To make good hybrids, you need to know how to blend the cards... If this card said:
SORCERY
Search your library for a land card, reveal that card and put it into your hand. If :W: was spent to cast CARD NAME, you may search your library for an additional land and put that card into your hand. If :G: was spent to cast CARD NAME, put a land from your hand onto the battlefield tapped. Do both if :W: and :G: were spent.
It would be very elegant and playable. You know where you get good Hybrid design that plays up what each color does? FIRESPROUT. You do one thing for each color or something AWESOME if you spent both colors. 1W for two lands is like a better Gift of Estates. 1G for a a land into hand and getting to play an additional land this turn is like a better Explore or Rampant Growth. :W::G: for BOTH is like a better Cultivate or Mini Knight of the Reliquary/Primeval Titan.
I am not meaning to be rude, but maybe it's just deciding which cards to blend that got lost along the way. Slagstorm easily could have been a RB Hybrid card with B doing 3 to players and R doing three to creatures.
First of all, I am no fan of green land tutoring effects like Rampant Growth. Green creatures tend to be territorial and not really on the lookout for more lands. On the other side, this means blue, search spells fit to blue, since it's pure control of your library and blue is for me the color of metroplexes and "kingdom of a thousand isles". All you have to do is to restrict blue in such a way that it can't put the lands onto the battlefield, since blue isn't the color of mana acceleration. But for me, one of the best blue spells would be Sylvan Scrying, since it enables you to get non-basic lands as well, and a Urza's Power Plant isn't really that natural or green at all.
As I've written in other comments (see Fact or Fiction, Stone Rain or Ley Druid), I would give blue all kinds of search effects, since these are limited to the library and truly give some meaning to "control color".
I believe that green has many other ways to accelerate mana to compensate the loss, since it would get Fact or Fiction and Gifts Ungiven in return. Effects like the new Druidic Satchel might show a good way (as well as Ancient Stirrings being on the lookout for a land card).
For the white part, I would shift Lush Growth, Wild Growth and Fertile Ground towards white, granting a wonderful way to represent the Garden of Eden (or mundane agriculture) and to support the white aura focus.
That's pretty complex for a common, and this particular design would have to be even wordier since you have to shuffle and — if you used white — reveal the extra land:
SORCERY
Search your library for a land card, reveal that card and put it into your hand. If :W: was spent to cast CARD NAME, you may search your library for an additional land card, reveal it, and put that card into your hand. If :G: was spent to cast CARD NAME, put a land from your hand onto the battlefield tapped. Do both if :W: and :G: were spent. Then shuffle your library.
All the Shadowmoor/Eventide cards of this style are uncommon, and for good reason: they're all three-way if-else branches. This is more complex, since it has fixed effects before and after the branch. You could eliminate the shuffling after by turning the white effect into an "instead" clause, but that's even longer since it repeats the shuffling:
SORCERY
Search your library for a land card, reveal that card and put it into your hand, then shuffle your library. If :W: was spent to cast CARD NAME, you may instead search your library for two land cards, reveal them, put them into your hand, then shuffle your library. If :G: was spent to cast CARD NAME, put a land from your hand onto the battlefield tapped. Do both if :W: and :G: were spent.
I think you're right to say "You need to know how to blend cards", but I think it seems like the Shadowmoor and Eventide design and development teams know that rather better than random posters on the internet. Which is of course as it should be: for us this is a hobby, but for them it's their 9-to-5 job, and one they're passionate about.
When it says Forest or Plains card. That refers to land only, or meaning any card with Forest or Plains
in its mana cost? I am confused by the text because it does not specifically say Land card.
make but no one ever thought about using outside limited. That said, I'd totally pick it up in limited of I were in W/G. Minor mana fixing, minor deck thinning (one card can make a difference in a 40-card deck if you have few win conditions) and possibly boosting Safehold Duo isn't that bad.
@Cheza:
Dude, I've seen a bunch of your comments in cards like M12 Oblivion Ring, and it seems like any sort of effect or ability that remotely fits a control strategy should be blue to you.
Exile effects? According to you, they' should be shifted from white to blue.
Land Destruction? Again, you want it in blue.
Land tutoring? Blue...
Blue can't have everything. And that also wouldn't make sense flavorfully. Blue isn't exactly "the control color." Blue is supposed to be "the manipulation color" or "the subtle color".
Straight up exiling or blowing stuff up may be control, but it's as subtle as standing up and falcon punching your opponent in the face. As for land searching - it's flavor-wise connected to green due to that color's connection with nature. Lands are supposed to be something natural (okay, maybe there's Urza's Power Plant, but it's one exception among hundreds of perfect examples of my reasoning, and even then you can still argue that a power plant isn't so unnatural, after all it's obtaining energy from natural sources in a similar way in which an autotrophic organism would. And it's a plant! :P).
This card does have excellent application now that the Return to Ravnica block's back with all its shocklands. This can tutor SEVEN different shocklands, which definitely isn't bad. I made a theoretical Scion of the ur-dragon EDH deck, and with the original dual lands that's a total of fourteen different lands this card can hunt for. Not even counting the other weird forests like Bosk Banneret and Dryad Arbor.
It's also excellent Deck Filtering material. Costing 1 mana sucks for that purpose, but like Street Wraith and Terramorphic Expanse you can use it, albeit riskily, to cut through your deck to increase the chances of getting to the cards you want.