Pointed Discussion

funny how it asks for a swamp and not a forest too or something like that.

I really like this land, and am glad I stumbled upon it. It is strange that it only wants a swamp rather then both a forest and\or a swamp, but I am not complaining. I look at this as the perfect splash-in card. If I want to splash in a little bit of green, I can drop this guy in, along with Overgrown Tomb. Most of the time, I'll have a swamp in hand, and I play that first tun, then play this guy next turn to use the green mana.

It's not strange when you consider the context. Torment, the set it was printed in, was a Black-heavy set - it actually had 40 black cards, versus only about 30 blue and red and 20 white and green cards. The theme was of darkness taking over and infecting everything, and so these lands are extensions of that theme.

Also look at the "Posessed" series - Posessed Aven, Posessed Barbarian, Posessed Centaur, Posessed Nomad - and look at the other cards in this little cycle; note there's no Swamp equivalent.

Yes, it's because of the theme of Torment. What color in Magic is associated with tainting something? Black. Hence why all the tainted lands require a Swamp...they're tainted with the corruption of black mana.

surprisingly they never had a tainted taint.
: Add
: Add or to your mana pool, activate this only if you control a taint.

tainted wood?
tainted love.

it's a dual land with the words taint and wood in it.

that's flavor.

I wonder if this cycle was in R&D's mind when they created the M10 Dual lands...

The tainted lands have the best money to playability duals for casual players.