More than just mana producers

I've been on Holiday, thus no blog post last week.  My apologies for that if you were expecting one.

It also means I haven't yet finalised my build for Grimgrin, Corpse Born. That shall be the topic of next weeks post.

For this weeks post I thought I would talk about utility lands. A little more specifically I'm going to look at lands that come into play untapped, can tap to give you 1 colourless mana and also have one or more other abilities as well.

Let's look at an example; Strip Mine

If you play Commander then this card probably needs no introduction. You get to use it to give you mana but the moment someone plays a land or starts to use a land in a way you don't want them too. Then you sac the Mine and they sac their land.

The beauty with this is that it lets you Destroy any land so long as you can target it.

Encroaching Wastes is a more recent take on the same theme.  Notice how this costs 4 mana and it will only Destroy nonbasic lands.  To be honest the nonbasic part in Commander is of little import the lands you want to destroy WILL be nonbasic.  It's the extra 4 mana that shows you how powerful Strip Mine is.

Wizards do not like Land destruction in general, although it continues to be a 'thing' in Magic the Gathering they consider it to be highly detrimental to the fun of the game and so Land destruction in the current era is always expensive.

Another example of this is Ghost Quarter, sure you get to destroy target land but your opponent gets to go and fetch a basic land from his or her library. Of course if you make this a less than pleasant thought by playing Ob Nixilis, Unshakled for example maybe they'll think twice.

On the other hand you have a card like Skarg, the Rage Pits. This came from Guildpact and isn't that bad.  Giving a creature +1/+1 and trample is great in Commander, especially in Voltron decks. Voltron decks try to make a single big Commander to win the game via Commander damage.

Compare it though to the more recent Kessig Wolf Run. In a game like Commander, where playing Green means you are going to have plenty of mana a card which gives +X/+0 and trample to one of your creatures is a step above the +1/+1 of the Rage Pits. 

There's an argument of course that would say if you're playing Green/Red Voltron put them both in the deck and I wouldn't disagree to be honest.

These are great examples of two different types of utility land. Those that can be used to repeatedly boost your creatures and those that can be sacrificed for an effect.

Reliquary Tower taps for 1 colourless mana, however, it also has a permanent effect; 'You have no maximum hand size.' 

In many EDH decks this is probably a shoe in. Its price, given that it has been in a recent core set and is only uncommon, is great demonstrator of this. Cathedral of War has a similar global effect but it is of less general use and it enters the battlefield tapped something I'm trying to avoid in the examples given here.

Another great archetype are man-lands, or those lands that turn into a creature while still remaining a land. Their are a couple of highly used man-lands but a recent release included Mutavault which has quickly become a commander favourite. 

It's especially good in tribal decks. However, it could be argued that the best man-land is actually Inkmoth Nexus.

In Commander ten poison counters still kills your opponent. So an Inkmoth Nexus powered up by a Kessig Wolfrun can spell game over for one of your opponents.

One of the beautiful things about Utility lands is the fact they let you do the same thing turn after turn. It's the equivalent of casting the same spell every turn in a singleton format.

A great example of this is Vault of the Archangel.

Giving your creatures either Deathouch or Lifelink each turn would be great, giving them both is fantastic. And you can do it every turn or you can save it keep it untapped with the required 4 mana and watch your opponents squirm as they try to decide whether to attack into a wall of creatures that may or may not have Deathtouch. If you play it right and have other options to spend the mana on the Vault can be a potent threat without ever being used.

Gavony Township also has a reusable effect but it's less useful on it's own.

Team it up with some other cards, like Primal Vigor or Enduring Scalelord, to name a couple of examples, and suddenly it's starts to become a much more useful card.  

So many of these utility lands depend not only on the colours you are playing but also the type of deck you are playing as well.

For example the artifact recursion abilities of Academy Ruins are pretty useful in a normal deck, but it a deck made with artifact recursion in mind they become something far more potent.

In complete contrast to this a card like Homeward Path might actually benefit everyone, well everyone except the Blue player that has stolen all your creatures.

There are so many more lands like this and those above that I would love to cover but I simply don't have the time or the space. 

You can, however, find a comprehensive list of the lands I've covered above and those that I haven't here.

You might note that I chose to steer completely clear of lands that deal with mana like the mana-battery lands. This is because there's a time and place for that and that is in another thread.

Hopefully though I've given you food for thought, I've made you realise that lands aren't just about tapping for mana. Also in a singleton format many of them have abilities that can be reused with a reasonable amount of reliability.

One last thing, don't forget if you are looking for lands for your Commander deck it pays to check out Manabase Crafter.

Til next week, shuffle well my friends.

Phil

The Zombie Legend Showdown

From time to time I check my Commander decks, review them see if  want to change them, dismantle them or in this case change the commander.

At the moment I have a Zombie Tribal deck resided over by Thraximundar but I've been toying with replacing him with Grimgrin, Corpse Born.

So this week I present to you:

The question is should I switch from Thraxi to Grimgrin?

With a CMC of 5 vs a CMC of 7 Grimgrin gets off to a great start. But he is only UB whereas Thraximundar is RUB. That extra access to Red is what made me choose Thraximundar originally and I'll discuss this more a little later on.


For now though being able to cast Grimgrin so much earlier and recast him for the same cost means it's round one to the challenger.

Round 1 to Grimgrin (1/0)

They are both Legendary Zombies the fact that Grimgrin is a Warrior and Thraximundar is a Assassin is neither here no there for the purposes of this Commander deck so this round is a draw.

Round 2 is a draw! (1/0)

First up Thraximundar (6/6) clearly punches harder and can take a bigger whack the the face than Grimgrin (5/5). So in a straight out slug-fest Thraximundar wins.

Round 3 to Thraximundar.  (1/1)

The also enter the battlefield in very different states. Thraximundar has obviously been drinking energy drinks pre-fight and comes into play with Haste read to enter the fray that turn. Grimgrin on the other hand comes into play tapped and doesn't untap during the untap step. He obviously needs a kick up the backside to get him going.

Round 4 to Thraximundar. (1/2)

To untap Grimgrin you need to sacrifice a creature and in doing so you also get to add a +1/+1 counter to him. It's important to note here that he doesn't have to be tapped. If I have 5 2/2 Zombie tokens on the battlefield I could sac them all to Grimgrin making him a 10/10 (5/5 + 5 * +1/+1 counters). Thraximundar has an alternate ability to this but in this round he looses out.

Round 5 to Grimgin. (2/2)

Round 6 is an interesting dilema you get to choose between;

"Whenever Grimgrin attacks, destroy target creature defending player controls..."

or

"Whenever Thraxminundar attacks, defending player sacrifices a creature..."

These are both powerful and similar effects. But, there are major differences as well and the problem is that it's situation within the particular game you are playing.  If they have an indestructible creature making them sacrifice it is great. If the have 20 Saproling creature tokens in play making them sacrifice one of them is not so great. Because of this I'm calling this a draw.

Round 6 is a draw! (2/2)

On the final part of their card text we have:

  

"...then put a +1/+1 counter on Grimgrin."

or

"Whenever a player sacrifices a creature, you may put a +1/+1 counter on Thraximundar."

This is really Thraximundar's response to Grimgrin sac to pump ability.  There's a lot going on here as well. Firstly it states 'whenever a player' that means you as well so if you play Fleshbag Marauder in a four way game, that's going to result in four +1/+1 counters being added to Thraximundar. If you have Grave Pact in play then Thraximundar is going to get very big very quickly.

This ability also means that Thraximundar thrives when Grimgrin's ability is used. While the reverse is not true.

Round 7 to Thraximundar. (2/3)

Now we've finished looking at the cards themselves the discussion has to turn to the colour pie. With Grimgrin only being Black and Blue it looses access to the Red part of the pie. But what does that mean?

Primarily you loose direct damage, but black has life drain to offset that.  So what you really loose is access to cards like these:

Anti-artifact cards! Blue can use counters and black has one artifact hate card and some ability to force opponents to sacrifice permanents but Red rocks when it comes to artifact hate. 

There is an argument to make that by sacrificing a colour you'll find the means to cast certain cards more easily.

Zombie Trailblazer, for example, is BBB making it a hard card to cast early game but by the time your 7+ rounds into a Commander game I'd expect you to have enough non-basic lands in play not to have to worry about this.

It should not be forgotten that this is a Zombie Tribal deck and there are no red zombie lords, that is creatures that boost other zombie's power and toughness.

 

On the counter side to this is the fact that there are some decent Zombies that require red mana that you are loosing access to. 

There are however any number of Blue and Black zombies and associated cards that the biggest argument against Red is the dilution of the deck.

It means you can play more cards that you want to play but couldn't make room for a in an RUB build

Overall I think loosing red could be argued to be a bad thing so that's another round to Thraximundar.

Round 8 to Thraximundar. (2/4)

And the winner is:

Which just goes to show I must be wrong because I am still going to swap the deck around and build a Grimgrin deck called Clone of the Zombies.  Next week I'll deconstruct the deck and show you what I ended up building.

Phil