Jumpstart: Historic Horizons

 

This release is not overly relevant to cube, or paper ones at least. If there is a card I really want to play with in a cube I am sure I can find or make a suitable proxy with which to do so with. I think largely I am glad that there is a release I can mostly ignore in terms of thought, effort, and obtaining. If arena can take away some of the intensity of card releases that is bonus. I get all the intrigue and excitement of a new release with interesting new cards complete with the ease of a reprint set. 

As for the concept I am also all in favour. One of the advantages of an online game is a greater range of design space and it would be a waste not to explore it. That was one of the few things I liked about Hearthstone and basically the only thing it ever had over Magic. I am liking some of the initial mechanics I am seeing. I play very little Magic on Arena (I last did a couple of Kaldheim drafts when it came out) and this release is almost certainly going to get me back involved, if only for a bit. 

As an aside one of the other advantages of an online version of the game is that you can fix things with card rebalancing. While that is very awkward when running online and paper formats in concert like standard any format involving Jumpstart: Historic Horizons can implement fixed cards without issue.

 

I am excited to see the rest of the set and how they make use of this new design space. I love how classic and iconic cards like Stormfront Pegasus and Lightning Bolt can be made relevant without direct power level concerns. I am also fine with some of the more random elements given the foolish dice stuff we have just been handed. This set seems like a win on all fronts and one of the few things I am wholly positive about that Wizards have done over the last few years. It might however be too much to hope that this is a turning point and the company is getting back to making good long term choices..

Mono Coloured Non-Basic Lands Part VI

 

Depletion Lands 6/10

A lovely little cycle of lands from Masques block that have a broad range of uses. These are both ramp and burst mana and have some cool synergies going on as well. Typically it is the combo and heavy synergy decks that want these but not exclusively. I have certainly played them to good effect in some midrange/control decks, often red. Prison decks can use them effectively too. As far as mana output these can give 4 over 3 turns thus providing that burst. They can also give you two turns of ramped mana which is pretty perfect for a lot of combos. You need five turns with a conventional untapped land to provide more mana than that which one of these offers. I love the way these lead to dynamic curving and the many interesting choices that come with that. I love the tension on mana with a limit on use thus making me question the value of plays more precisely. An interesting and option rich set of lands that I think add a lot to the game and design process while remaining really appropriate in terms of power level (for cube at least, I can easily imagine these being abused all day long in modern...). My absolute favourite use of these lands is with proliferate effects. With enough proliferate you just have a land that taps for two coloured mana which is a delight! 

The hideaway lands all enter tapped and let you chose a card from the top four of your library that you get to play for minimal cost should you fulfil a condition. These are quite open to abuse as you physically get to cast the card that you find thus triggering Eldrazi titan on cast effects and those like it. Assuming you expect to fulfil the condition the cards are very powerful even when you are not setting up free Emrakuls. Just playing the best card from the top four for two mana (plus one extra if you count the entering tapped to begin with) is massive. It is generally tempo positive ie playing a spell costing more than three as well as being great card advantage and selection. The quality of these lands is really down to the places you can sensibly play them and the kinds of thing you get to play with them. 

Howltooth Hollow 6/10

This isn't all that hard to achieve just by playing out your own stuff and forcing discards on your opponent. You can even do it quickly with a myriad of symmetrical discard such as Liliana. You do need the discard support to play this otherwise your opponent can simply lock you out of using it by holding something back. Despite the relative ease of turning it on the payoff is on the lower side. The kinds of deck playing enough discard to support this will be the kinds of deck that operate well in a low resource game and as such Hollow will generate less impressive mana value. It is still pretty free and still well worth playing when you have appropriate decks but it is too narrow to be of interest in draft.

Mosswort Bridge 3/10

This is really win more. Either your 10 power should quickly win the game or you are somehow in a board stall in with your ten power. In that case you should have more than enough mana to win with a more appropriate or versatile utility land. Kessig Wolf-Run springs to mind but I am sure here are many others more suitable than Mosswort Bridge. Mosswort Bridge has better odds of getting out a fatty than most of the others in the cycle but it does so at a less useful stage in the game.  

Shelldock Isle 9/10

This over performs the design spec in cube by at least double. Cube decks being powerful like constructed decks but only 40 cards means you naturally have Shelldock active pretty quickly. Too quickly. There is so much draw, cantrip, looting, fetch lands, and cycling in cubes that Shelldock feels like it is fairly consistently turned on naturally by one or other player by around turn 7. Putting in effort to do so will get you there sooner. Blue also has more library manipulation than other colours allowing for more reliable top tier hits. Shelldock has the inevitability of being turned on while the others in the cycle really don't. Blue also benefits hugely from the ability to cheaply deploy something. If you can hold up extra mana for counters while making a significant play it is often a deathblow. I banned out Shelldock a fair while ago just because people were getting fed up with the free wins it frequently gave. Random big hits or just that extra card and couple of mana all being too much. A land shouldn't be that consistently advantageous on all fronts and in 40 card lists Shelldock is just that. An errata to 10 cards left in a library would be fairer but would still result in a fairly polar card that wasn't adding a great deal to the play experience. 

Spinerock Knoll 3.5/10

Doing seven in a turn is quite hard to setup and fairly mana intensive. It also gets harder to do as the game goes late or in the early portions. By the time you can achieve it you will not have an extra two spare mana to activate this. By the time you do have that extra mana you will have had to consume some of those resources to stay in the game and as such you will be unable to hit that 7 bar and will likely lose the card you hid in the Knoll. 

Windbrisk Heights 5/10

This got a lot of cube action some years ago when white really struggled to find sources of value. Those are easier to come by now and so white does not have to lean on cards with a fairly win more component to them. Token lists are the best place for this as you can avoid an over extension to turn it on. Being an EtB tapped land in an aggro deck it is not that well suited. Also cheating out a card for no mana is at the lowest return in the aggro decks. Still fine but not the powerful and broadly played card it once was. Certainly too clunky and unnecessary for my cubes these days. 

The Memorial lands arrived in Dominaria and represented the last cycle in the era of generally tame powered utility lands. These look OK relative to much that is covered in these lists but put in the context of the escalating power creep at that time these lands look pretty shaky. In order to keep up pace and remain even a consideration the utility lands since these have been a notable notch up in power. These lands are bad because they enter tapped and get sacrificed in order to use them. The effects are not that impactful and the costs to use them are well above the going rate. 

Memorial to Folly 1.5/10

Despite being substantially worse than Mortuary Mire on terms of efficiency the flexibility on timing does make this a more playable land that gets back a dork. Only playable when you need key creatures and so very narrow in addition to the low power but just about remaining at least theorectically playable. 

Memorial to Genius 1/10

If you include the cost of this entering tapped it is seven mana extra for those two cards. This is laughable in the face of Horizon lands. Slow decks want to keep their lands and quick decks want their lands to make mana immediately. No one wants this. 

Memorial to Glory 0/10

This doesn't just look bad next to Castle Ardenvale it also manages to look bad next to Westvale Abbey or Kjedoran Outpost. Without a lot of scaling perks this fails to even be that relevant by the time you can activate it. Six mana and a card for a pair of 1/1 tokens? If that sounds good then Raise the Alarm is going to blow your mind. If it is the luxury of being able to tap for mana before you get royally ripped off for your tokens then you should be playing the basic Plains. If you really must have both these things combined then play any of the other token producing lands mentioned at the beginning. 

Memorial to Unity 1.5/10

Commune with Nature is a one mana spell and not even that great of one. It is more of a dodgy tutor than card selection as it is so restrictive on type. This charges you five total mana for your Commune. In principle it is nice to be able to cash in lands for more gas as the late game draws in and you are reaching your mana cap. I do prefer this to Memorial to Genius what with it activating for less and having a better shot at hitting the right sort of action but it is still the same kind of ballpark bad card that fails to compete with Horizon lands along with other styles of utility land. Mostly it is the entering tapped that is so discordant with decks that want to ultimately cash in land cards for value. I would like to see more future cycles of utility lands not tied to the same kind of drawback such as pain or entering tapped so that this kind of issue can be avoided and we don't get random near unplayable wastes of card.

Memorial to War 1/10

Seven total mana to Stone Rain something? I could blow up all your lands twice for that price! In a world with Field of Ruin and Wastelands and like, just Stone Rain, there is no real hope for this as a general use tool. Where it might have some mild application is in a lands theme deck things that can play lands from the bin and other things than play multiple lands per turn that is trying to lock someone out of the game. Very very narrow and hardly impressive at that either.

Oboro, Palace in the Clouds 4/10

A means to avoid Choke or to ensure you always have a landfall trigger should you want. Sometimes  cute to do things like activate Land Tax but not the best line often or even the best way to perform the dodgy line. A very low cost land but one with little in the way of things to offer. 

Tomb of Urami 4/10

If you want to go all in this is certainly a way to do it. You certainly couldn't describe this card as lacking impact. Sadly that impact is not all in a positive way for you! Mostly this is a land you can use as bit of a Lava Axe to get those final few points of damage through. It is a very extreme take on Ramunap Ruins. You can lose the game with this should they have some way to answer it but the payoff is large when you judge things correctly or they kindly tap out and broadcast a clear path. If you are aggressive and don't need the life for other things then this is a worthy include. Usually black decks want to spend life on other things like card draw and so this tends to get left on the bench. 

Rustic Clachan 2/10

I do like the design on these tribal lands where by they enter untapped if you can demonstrate you are holding the appropriate tribe. There is some tension between playing this early while you are still holding kithkin so that it is untapped and holding Clachan so that you can potentially use the reinforce mode but it is interesting tension rather than bad tension when you have that option. It is nice to have a proper instant and concealed trick on a land but neither are good value if Clachan isn't reliably able to enter untapped. As such I wouldn't play this outside a kithkin or changeling list, neither of which really feature in any kind of singleton. The tension however between the effect being one you want in an aggressive tempo based deck and the entering tapped on the other hand does rather ruin this cards chances elsewhere. 

The World Tree 5/10

Late game fixing and very late game potential value. The fixing is interesting, the fetching of gods is rather narrower. You might have one or two but at the 11 mana mark it is hardly a power play. There are certainly some decks where the convenience of the fixing alone makes this well worth it. Those decks often pack a load of cards like Explore, Uro, Golos, Primeval Titan, and other things that put non-basic lands into play and perhaps find them for you. It is rare that you can use the mana from those effect all that often and so entering tapped lands are less of a burden. In the tailored decks this is great but in a cube you are better off running cards with a broader range of potential homes such as Vivid lands or things like City of Brass and Mana Confluence. 

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth 7/10

This is a great land with an array of cool uses. The best of those being support for Cabal Coffers and Lake of the Dead and sometimes even Bubbling Muck. It is kind of fixing but in a reverse way. It doesn't fix itself but it helps other things fix for you. It isn't fixing if you only have single black mana symbols in costs and has an element of the filter lands about it. It can let you play more cards with only black mana requirement while running a risky colourless land or two. It can even turn on your own swampwalk creatures! It can turn lands like Ancient Tomb and Horizon lands into painless mana sources which is most pleasant. Really versatile and convenient land but one that doesn't really do anything without other cards and as such too narrow to be a worthwhile inclusion in drafting cubes. 

Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth 7/10

All the same things that apply to Tomb of Yawgmoth also apply here. The synergy cards are obviously different but there are still plenty of good ones. Rofellos, Nissa Who Shakes the World, Beacon of Creation to name a few. Despite being effectively part of the same incomplete cycle these lands do operate rather more differently than other equivalent cycles. This is because these depend on the things you are playing with them to determine their power and that is wildly effected by the colour of your deck. Blue and red versions of these would likely be a bit oppressive in some of their uses while a white one feels like it would be the least exciting. That being said, it doesn't take too much to change the value of these cards. They are never bad but they can easily be made naughty. They are the kind of thing that can limit future design space so it seems reasonable that they have printed them sparingly and not given us all five. At least with Cradle of Growth we can expect Rofellos to be the most naughty card you could pair it with and we are very unlikely to see him or a card that like him again. 

Thriving and Vivid Lands

These are another couple of sets of closely related lands that are very much in the grey area in regards eligibility for this list. They are both dual lands/fixing rather than utility lands, they just also both happen to be rooted in one colour and thus have the appearance of being a single colour utility land. Where both of these lands really shine is in their space efficiency. One land from either of these cycles represents four dual lands from another more conventional dual land cycle. Thriving Lands are better in two colour lists and Vivid lands are better in those that are more than two colours. Entering tapped dual lands with no upside like scry however is a big old cost to pay for the space efficiency. As such these don't really cut it in the higher powered cubes but for those that are budget or toned down these two cycles would be some of my go to lands. I have a set of the Vivid lands in my combo cubes because it is really common to wind up in loads of colours splashing the odd card here and there. It is also a cube very sensitive to size due the inherently parasitic nature of combos and trying to draft them. The fewer wasted or bloated slots you can have in such a cube the better and Vivid lands can take a lot of bloat out of your fixing. 

Thriving Lands 5/10

Vivid Lands 6/10

Teferi's Isle 3/10

This is a massive delay on mana production and thanks to the phasing it is averaging less mana per turn than other EtB tapped lands. There are a couple of reasons you might play this. The first is burst. If played early this will allow you to power out something above curve like a four drop on turn three or a five drop on turn four which can be quite swingy. The other reason to play this is when you have a bunch of effects that untap lands. That can get quite fun but mostly you are just playing basic Islands to work with High Tide and so this sits on the bench. The nice thing about this with untap effects is that you can start using it right away and can empower going off out of nowhere.

Having now covered all the lands I feel like there needs to be a conclusion which is probably just a top 3-5 list per colour, per cube type, of the most appropriate lands that are good to run. The MDFCs complicate that somewhat as there is pretty significant overlap as far as cube design goes. As such I will look to complete an article covering the MDFCs and then consider the conclusion article rounding up everything. There is also some overlap with colourbound colourless lands such as Volrath's Stronghold. It only produces colourless however it requires black mana in order to be useful. The cost of running it in a deck is very different to the cost of a land that produces black mana however the cost of including it within a cube is much more akin to that of a black utility land such as Hive of the Eye Tyrant. Both are lands you typically play a basic land in place of and both are only considerations in black lists. These are some of the narrowest lands on offer being hard to include, being narrow, and being pick that doesn't count towards your needed playables. The actual narrowest are the gold versions of these colour-bound colourless lands like Kessig Wolf Run. Luckily there are not all that many lands in this group of colour-bound colourless lands and with them being such luxuries very few manage to make waves in cube. The Wolf Run is likely the most all round playable of the lot. I think I shall likely just cover relevant ones of those in the conclusion, at least to begin with. Reviewing all of them before the conclusion seems a little over the top as so few feature in cubes. Stay tuned for the upcoming MDFC breakdown and conclusions. 

Mono Coloured Non-Basic Lands Part V

The Urza's Legacy manlands were the first such cards to tap for coloured mana. The only manland to predate them is Mishra's Factory (unless you count Stalking Stones which I don't). Their cost is entering tapped rather than being colourless. All of them cost two to activate making them fairly cheap to use. Some suffered with this due to being meagre dorks and thus low impact but others went in the other direction and became high impact as you could relevantly use them in the midgame to control planeswalkers or usefully spend mana without extending into something nasty. 

Faerie Conclave 7/10

Evasion is the key to this being good. Just nipping in for a nice uncontested two can take the game and it certainly does good work deterring planeswalkers. Low toughness along with high land demands for most blue decks do make it a bit scary to use. Polar performance (in addition to the ever present tension on cube space) lead me to cut this rather than underperformance. It can be beastly against silly green players while being a bad island against red with their burn and white with their plentiful good for blocking with fliers. There is a long history of high tension moments in cube where a player goes to equip an animated Conclave with a Sword of Something or Other. 

Forbidding Watchtower 2/10

This was always laughed at and reasonably so. Yes, it is a good defender relative to most lands but the strength of the creature land is not being a creature in the face of sorcery speed interaction. If you are blocking with them then you are vulnerable. Equally decks looking to make walls are not looking to tap a bunch of mana in combat so that they have less action in the 2nd main phase. Really Watchtower only has any hope when you have a lot of buffs. It is cheap enough to activate and durable enough that you can realistically pair it with equipment. A deck jammed full of Anthem effects also has some interest in this. I guess a Doran deck might as well but it would be fighting with lands that can fix and that don't suck when you haven't got your appropriate synergy cards in play. 

Ghitu Encampment 4/10

Playable but quickly outclassed and rendered unable to usefully attack. Mutavault and Mishra's Factory are both generally preferable options in aggressive red decks. Being untapped hinders tempo less and the lower cost to animate makes them a more mana efficient damage outlay. The lower cost and higher tempo mitigates the issue they share of being 2 power non-evasive dorks that are quickly outclassed on the board. Encampment looks like it should be better than it is but has consistently underperformed for decades. 

Spawning Pool 2.5/10

This has much the same issues as Forbidding Watchtower. It is rubbish on offense and inherently ill suited on defence. Especially as it costs extra mana to keep safe. Pool can hold off bigger threats and is somewhat safer in the face of removal spells as well. Given you are typically using these later the regenerate just about pips the four extra toughness on Watchtower but barely. It also has less in the way of things that might support than Watchtower and so fails to do much scaling up. Pool is pretty gross against a trampler! One day there will be a skeleton deck and on that day this will still won't be the best creature land for that deck. 

Treetop Village 7.5/10

The best of the bunch being a very efficient cost to size package. Village outputs a good amount of damage and the trample does loads of work. You can't just keep walkers safe with 1/1 tokens, you need proper dorks to handle a Village. Any buff effects go nicely with the trample on Village as well, notable Umezawa's Jitte so as to stop naughty sac effects fizzling your charges. Green also has things like Primeval Titan and Cavalier of Thorns that incentivize playing useful utility lands. Village poses more threat on average than Conclave while also being generally safer to use. Also much better defensively when needs must. Further to that green is weaker to over extension than most other colours and thus stands to gain more from threats hidden in lands. Village is not only more potent than Conclave but contextually better suited as well. 

Adventure manlands are the most recent offering of this kind and they blow the competition out of the water. This is entirely thanks to the bodies being of comparable power and relative animation cost to other good coloured manlands while also having the unique attribute of being able to enter untapped. These lands are highly relevant and impactful as other good manlands are, indeed they are the most commonly sought after and played type utility lands, and one of the few things people will stomach entering tapped lands for in my cube. The Adventure manlands however come at a fraction of the cost to your build than any alternatives. You can pretty much just play these. Their cost is not nothing, they do enter tapped a bit over 50% of the time but it is the time that matters rather less. When you start with them in hand it isn't a problem and later down the line you are better poised to be able to solve any issues their entering tapped might cause. Indeed not having any issues early is a great way to ensure you are well poised further down the line as falling behind early can snowball. I have not played much with these as yet but I have played enough to know they are great. They do need to be on this list too as they are clearly some of the best options on utility lands for cube. I would say the best as far as mono coloured utility lands go. Play this cycle first and then consider more. Not only are animatable lands the best suited kind of utility land in general for cube these ones are weighted fairly nicely. The actual things they turn into all manage to be rather more relevant than a bog standard vanilla dorks like the Urza's cycle ones. They are unlike some of the cheaper manlands that get outclassed on the board quickly but for this they do forgo the ability to easily nip in to help out in the start of the midgame. 

Cave of the Frost Dragon 9/10

My personal top pick of the cycle thanks to broad appeal. This is great for control and for aggro. It just does everything in a really rounded and measured way. It is safe, it is threatening, it provides options, it can be used to control a game or push to end a game. If you are at all white you should be playing this if you can. 

Den of the Bugbear 8/10

Being just a 3/2 this is the most easily negated by the board state. Den makes up for it in two ways. Firstly red players are good at clearing the path of things that can trade well with this. Secondly this is foolishly efficient at ending games as far as manlands go and it does so will generating 1/1 token value as well as Castle Ardenvale! It has been feeling like all you need with this is one hit so as to do game ending amounts of free damage. I have used this instead of curving in the midgame so as to just eek out a bit of extra value and mitigating extension and that felt great where as doing so with most other manlands would feel like falling behind. Going forwards I think Den will be one of those kinds of card that you have to prevent being able to freely hit you pretty much ever. 

Hall of Storm Giants 8/10

The least activated so far but the most relevant when it is rather making up for that. This hits very hard and ends games quickly or at least threatens to one shot most planeswalkers. Fast acting is desirable when it comes to manlands getting used as it is often a sign of resources dwindling. Fast acting minimizes risk of losing to a top deck. The weakness of Hall is to small chaffy dorks that can just chump it. Luckily Wrath effects solve this issue nicely! This roughly translates to Hall being better in or against control decks than it is for midrange lists. Aggro ones will play it and it will be free power for them but they will activate it the least of the lot by a reasonable margin. 

Hive of the Eye Tyrant 8/10

The least good of the bodies being just a medium old Hill Giant. Menace helps to up the threat and relevance of the card while Hive distinguishes itself with disruptive utility. When you can use your land to snipe away a nasty looking Uro it is good times. All the other creature lands are just things to get involved in combat with. That is plenty of utility but Hive goes above and beyond offering utility on top of utility and can steal you games in multiple different ways as a result. 

Lair of the Hydra 8/10

Versatile and threatening. This can nip in early to help answer a walker or it can smash in later and close out the game. Always nice to have a relevant mana sink on a land. Perhaps the least exciting of the bunch but certainly not the least powerful. Thus far the most played and activated of the cycle. As mentioned, green has most support for these as well as the most desire to run them. 

Legends Lands

A cycle of legendary lands from legends with no drawback beyond the legend rule. So free were these lands to run that we have seen very few like it since. Some have effects so minor they are barely playable outside of being "historic" cards or avoiding Choke style hate. Others in the cycle are rather more worthy of play in what is another one of the most polar cycles. It is not too shocking land cycles wind up being polar as lands all have the same cost to deploy and thus have the least scope for tuning. As you might expect, the earlier iterations of land cycles such as this one from Legends are the worst offenders.

Hammerheim 1.5/10

Perfectly playable but very little reason to do so. This ranks about as low on the impact scale as it is possible to do with barely any landwalk effects found in cube. 

Karakas 10/10

About as good as it gets as an overall package. Super high impact and super low cost. You don't even need legends yourself for this to be good, indeed it is best when ruining the life of opposing legends. I effectively banned this from my unpowered cube as it was stifling design. Cube just has such a high proportion of legends and is increasing that ratio all the time. Karakas was played every time it was picked and picked highly whenever it was seen, often by non-white players. As such any costly legends, especially those without immediate effects were simply unplayable. Have fun with Kalitas as he turns my Karakas into a card with 8 times the efficiency of a Rishadan Port! Despite being incredibly powerful Karakas is still less powerful than some cards that I have not banned. It was just too free to be good fun, a bit like Lutri is. A good balance to Karakas should you really want to play it is allowing it to only target your own dorks. I actually played this as it is written for a while and let it bounce any legend which was even more oppressive. You couldn't play things like Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth without risking a beating from Karakas. If you neither ban or errata Karakas at least use the oracle text! In powered and combo cubes Karakas is almost a necessity as a means to combat the myriad strategies that cheat out fatties like Eldrazi. As soon as you move towards unpowered cubes the card becomes oppressive.

Pendelhaven 6/10

Likely the most on point in terms of power and impact for the cycle. Pendelhaven is by far and away the most often missed on board trick in my cube. So many 2/2 dorks have needlessly died to Llanowar Elves. Being overlooked does increase the performance of the card but it feels wrong to account for that in the rating of it. I don't enjoy winning a game because someone made a daft misplay. Once the trick aspect is removed the card is rather lower on the impact. It usually has targets but it doesn't often do that much. It isn't always an auto include as green decks can either specifically want a very high forest count or they can be struggling to fit in enough forests for their other cards while also having the desired dual lands. 

Tolaria 1.5

This has less targets than Hammerheim. I would have given it a 1/10 but then Choke (Boil/Tsunami) is rather more played than Conversion...

Urborg 3.5

First stike is a thing cube creatures have and removing it is no bad thing. A near free land with a minor but not irrelevant effect. Rarely worth the bother despite feeling like a boss when you do bother and it does come up!  

Pain Deserts 

This cycle of utility lands enter untapped and tax you life instead. Unlike the Odyssey lands however these have a painless colourless mode making them far more palatable in slower decks. One of the main things I find myself using these lands for is to play Battle for Zendikar spells that require you to specifically have colourless mana. These can effectively be dual lands when used as such. Sadly the effects are all a bit inefficient thanks to the very low cost of including these card in a list. The impact is medium at best and the cost to obtain that medium impact effect is well above the going rate. One nice, but rarely relevant in cube aspect of these cards is that the sacrifice ability can sac any desert rather than just itself and so you can get multiple uses out of these.

Hashep Oasis 3.5/10

One of the more played from the cycle but primarily because I have found Eldrazi green to be one of my favourite pairings for when I want to pack Thought Knot Seers. The pump effect is unexciting thanks to sorcery speed.

Ifnir Dreadlands 2.5/10

Almost all the same issues that Cabal Pit has with the extra bonus issue of being a really expensive Disfigure as well. A mild chance of me wanting to play this with counter synergies like Hapatra and Generous Patron...

Ipnu Rivulet 4.5/10

I have seen this played both to mill yourself and to mill the opponent, as well as an Eldrazi blue support card too of course. Nice free utility for when you want this sort of thing. The one hit nature of it makes it more impactful than other mill lands even if it doesn't have the same ongoing capacity. This on top of being a far lower cost inclusion makes it the best of the mill lands. The general low relevance of a small one off mill also allows this to cost little to activate compared to the others in this cycle which has the reverse effect of greatly increasing the impact of the card when you are in those instances where mill is useful. 

Ramunap Ruins 6.5/10

This had a tier one deck named after it which is always a sign something is pretty good. That was a standard deck however and standard is one of the less comparable formats to cube. The high mana activation cost on this makes it less appealing reach to alternatives, both spell and land based. Ruins might well be on theme but red does not lack for that. The failing here is low utility and option density on top of unimpressive efficiency. That latter point means this is pretty much always the last thing you do and that in turn means you frequently end up not using it either winning or losing before you reach the end of the que. It remains perfectly playable, good even, just neither interesting nor all that impactful. 

Shefet Dunes 2.5

One of the weaker offerings as it suffers from the combined problems of all of the cycle starting with not being very exciting for an Eldrazi deck. It is sorcery to activate ruining the combat trick aspect. It is expensive to activate. Situationally useful to activate and scales with you either over extending or just being a bit win more. Absolutely play this in your aggressive white decks where it costs you no picks but you are going to struggle to exhaust the pool of more useful cards than this in a draft setting! 

Mono Coloured Non-Basic Lands Part IV

 

Dryad Arbor 5/10

A highly unique card that forms a strong partnership with Green Sun's Zenith akin to Stoneforge and Batterskull or Cabal Coffers and Urborg. While still a strong pairing in cube it is a lot weaker in 40 card singleton lists. Half the time you draw the Dryad and that is not ideal. As a land the card is slow and incredibly vulnerable and is not what you want. It needs to be cheated into play or left in the deck for nice trickery. Being a forest makes this kind of trickery easily possible. The classic is voiding an Edict removal spell by using a sac land to find the Dryad etc. Only run this in your cube if you have the Zenith also available and even then it is a bit on the narrow side. Much more of a constructed tool. 

Kamigawa Legendary Cycle

These are some of the most free lands you can run, with zero functional drawback compared to basic lands in a vacuum. Certainly they have those minor issues as with all non-basics when you account for things like your own check lands and Koths etc and their Wastelands and Settle the Wreckage etc. Sometimes these lands are played just to avoid things that hose basic land types. The effects these lands have are surprisingly not all that minor thanks to the ratio of cost to effect. The cost is low meaning seemingly more minor effects can do a lot of work on the tempo side of things. The issue is much more to do with how situational these are. You need a legend in play as well as the right board state for the buff you have on hand to be relevant. When you force an awkward combat or kill a planeswalker in the midgame thanks to one of these lands it is amazing. That just doesn't happen very often. Having the legend isn't even the hard part, cube has a lot of those. These are as such a fine example of incredibly playable cards that fail on the impact side of things. My personal favourite use for these is in combination with cards like Board the Weatherlight for their historic properties. 

Eiganjo Castle 4/10

One of the more played of the cycle but also one of the weakest in effect. The play has been historically down to there just being more cheap white legends than in other colours and so this had a higher instance of doing something. Typically keeping Isamaru alive! 

Minamo, School at Water's Edge 5/10

The outlier of the cycle being more about combos than combat. Typically found doing things like untapping Tolarian Academy for loads more mana. This is narrower than the rest as you don't just need a legend but also one worth untapping. Minamo offsets the narrow in its rating by having the best ceiling on offer.

Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers 3.5/10

The worst of the cycle with it being a fairly minor effect that doesn't do all that much in the way of scaling. Arguably more powerful than the white one but less well suited thus resulting in a worse rating. Green likes forests and tends to have legends that are already perfectly big enough! A fine low cost card you play here and there in constructed decks but far from worth it elsewhere.

Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep 5/10

A certain little monkey really upped the stock in Shinka recently. Red has a bunch of small legends, a bunch of which have relatively high power to toughness ratios suiting first strike nicely. First strike or not is quite a big difference to combat outcomes and can make things very tricky. The best thing about Shinka is that you rarely have to activate it, mostly opponents will respect the fact you will use it and just act as if your legends already have first strike. 

Shizo, Death's Storehouse 5.5/10

Shizo has the most impactful effect being able making a something into a really awkward threat. Shizo is great against planeswalkers and offers a surprising amount of reach. It is certainly the only one of the cycle that can be said to offer reach. The thing keeping this in check is that black has a bunch of stuff that specifically likes swamps. They also don't have that many legends that are all that empowered by fear, either they have low power or simply already have some evasion. Shizo is much more exciting for giving Ragavan fear than it is for any black cards. Even so, it is hard to deny that a land with decent power, decent impact, and near zero cost is anything but good. 

With Basic Land Types

There are two cycles of mono coloured utility lands that also have the corresponding basic land type. The first was from Shadowmoor and their drawback was entering play tapped. The second set is from Throne of Eldraine and they would enter tapped and without other effect unless you have three basic lands of the type already. Three of a basic type is a big hoop to jump through but if you can manage it then it is well worth having that free value. Rather than the effects themselves these lands have two massive perks going for them. The first is that they are easy tutored for with fetch lands, and plenty of green ramp spells too. The second is that they don't harm other synergies that want you to have basic land types which helps to lower the cost of inclusion. The Eldraine cycle are not only better for potentially entering untapped but also thanks to higher impact effects, all of which are one off immediate ones when they enter play. All the Shadowmoor cycle have a tap to activate effect with impressively low impact! They also all have a prerequisite condition of having two permanents of the associated colour in play in order to activate them. This pretty much places them about as low as possible on the impact meter. Without the basic types these would all be rated substantially lower.

Leechridden Swamp 2/10

Some very tame reach or perhaps a spectacle enabler. Not impressive as the latter being two mana to use and spectacle often seeming like it is just a two mana discount! I would play this in some aggressive or attrition based black decks but I am not expecting much return for doing so. It is hard to see how the ability is going to make up for the land entering tapped in well tuned lists. 

Madblind Mountain 2/10

Really cool ability that isn't entirely unique in magic but is certainly hard to find and rarely on a card so playable. The best use for this is with Divining Top and cards like Brainstorm and Ponder. Even at the budget cost of two mana to use Madblind that still turns those cheap card quality spells into expensive card quality spells. It is also not common to be flush with red permanents when you are running those sorts of card. I also quite like it in green for Sylvan Library and the many things that let you play lands or dorks off the top of your deck. Sadly again the activation cost and prerequisite just make this a really impractical thing to pull off.  

Mistveil Plains 3/10

I play this pretty frequently but it doesn't achieve all that much. In singleton 40 card lists it is not at all uncommon to simply run out of gas or just to not have enough time left to win win the game. This is a really nice way to make yourself feel safe. It gives you a degree of inevitability. You never get decked nor run out of the tools you need. It is at least the easiest to have active, even if you are playing it in control lists with relatively few permanents. A card like Elspeth, Sun's Nemesis can fairly reliably and easily turn this on. Most white walkers achieve this for that matter even if they can't come back to life from the bin.  

Moonring Island 2/10

I have played this in a cube iteration of a Lantern of Insight control deck. It wasn't great but it felt great having found a suitable home for it! Information is powerful but this is expensive for what it offers and probably the hardest of the cycle to have online. 

Sapseep Forest 2.5/10

Two mana for one life just isn't enough for any sort of normal use. Thanks to some very recent green additions to the lifegain matters archetype there is some renewed hope for this as triggering all your Pridemates on a land you can tutor up has some appeal. I have played Kabira Crossroads in lifegain decks and I prefer the effect of Sapseep Forest. You just need a way to reliably have two green cards in play in a predominantly white deck...

Dwarven Mine 6/10

As your 4th mountain this is nutty value essentially being both a mountain and a Memnite all at once. A cantrip Memnite or mountain are pretty big deals even if beyond turn 4 it is hard to get excited about a 1/1 token. Mine is of most use in Polymorph style decks trying to cheat out a fat Eldrazi. It is decent in any mono red deck wanting and expecting to curve to four each game. The issue there is being very restricted on playing any non-mountain cards. This might be the most efficient of the red utility lands but it isn't the greatest impact and so it tends not to make the cut without significant token synergies. You are just going to play cards like Barbarian Ring and Mishra's Factory first by which point your Mountain count is too low for this to be without cost. 

Gingerbread Cabin 3/10

Forests are certainly the easiest thing to tutor up and indeed to amass so as to turn this on. Sadly a food isn't impressive without having a good reason to want a token, some life, or even the food specifically! Few archetypes can both support this while also wanting what it offers and so it gets little play. 

Idyllic Grange 5/10

Being a fetch land target means this land can offer an instant speed combat trick and that makes it impressive. An auto include in most mono white aggro decks looking to curve to four but yet still too narrow and low impact to be worth running in drafting cubes. There are at least a few less exciting options on non-basic lands as far as aggressive white players are concerned helping to bump this up the rankings rather. In principle I prefer the Dwarven Mine but in practice this less often ruled out by insufficient type counts. It does however lack the combo applications which lowers the overall utility of the card.

Mystic Sanctuary 8/10

A somewhat oppressive land able to combo with a wide array of things or just be generically good with plenty. Soft lock people with Cryptic Command or Deprive. Ruin lives with Time Walks. When good this is fairly crushing, when not it is still fine. The way it plays is a bit of a turn off for me but mostly it is that the card is very late and very blue intense. There are less powerful but more playable and fun cards I would run over this in most cubes. When it comes to combo and powered cubes there is a much bigger and better argument for including this powerful tool. A lot of constructed decks pay attention to this card as well and use it for loads of fairer reasons as well as the broken ones. It is nice to be able to recur combo pieces or just have a 2nd go on a strong card.

Witch's Cottage 2/10

There are multiple other lands that do this effect. They are generally less demanding on your list and as such get most of the little action this might otherwise have had. Heavy swamp black decks are a thing and this does fit in them quite well, it is just not all that common that they actually want this fairly minor slow Raise Dead effect. 

Flagstones of Trokair 7/10

A rare one off land that has some very nice combos and synergies. It is a good way to retain advantage when using symmetrical effects like Armageddon. You can also use cards like Cleansing Wildfire to efficiently ramp your mana. Rampant Growth was good without slapping draw a card onto it! There is basically no cost to running Flagstones however there is also no return either without the appropriate supporting cards. Too narrow for most drafting cubes but a unique and powerful tool that gets a lot of constructed attention. 

Flamekin Village 3/10

Another one off land that hails from the commander product. While this might look quite appealing the card is pretty bad for general use and not even all that exciting in an elemental build. Paying two mana to give something haste typically lowers the tempo of your play. It is only good with a few well suited dorks or when you would otherwise be wasting that mana. These small upsides don't offset the high chance it is entering tapped or in the case of elemental lists, the mere fact it isn't producing multiple colours. 

Gaea's Cradle 9/10

Technically part of a cycle but one which is asymmetrical in design and polar in power to say the least. The whole cycle doesn't even qualify to be on this list because apparently Shivan Gorge was too good to produce red mana... The rest technically might not either as they can fail to function as mana producers at all. Cradle is a very powerful land that retains power in most kinds of cube. It is a little bit win more thanks to scaling with a developed board but it is sufficiently powerful that you barely notice. Just play creatures, Cradle, and some mana sinks and watch those god draws crush your enemies. I cut it from my cube as it was on the cusp of a number of iffy properties. Nearly ban worthy levels of power, on the narrow side, and polar in performance. You can be left with a land that literally taps for nothing and lose or have a land tapping for loads and win. That doesn't lead to fun or high quality games all that often. Like Karakas this goes from being near oppressive in unpowered cubes to a necessity in powered ones. 

Serra's Sanctum 6/10

Lots of potential power like Cradle but a little harder to achieve and a little harder to then utilize. Sanctum is slower to get out of hand and runs out of things to do more quickly. Mostly it is unplayable in a limited setting as you cannot hope to have enough enchantments. In a build around sense the card is powerful but nearly as narrow as it gets. 

Tolarian Academy 8/10

A well known bomb of a card. Similar to Cradle in how it works but far quicker and far more abusive thanks to being blue. Aaand Cradle is plenty abusive already. Artifacts are cheap, easily deployed, and critically have no summoning sickness. I have seen more turn one wins with Academy in cube than any other card. Generally good in powered cubes but it can be a trap as you really do need a critical mass of support. Also great in combo cubes but basically unplayable in all other kinds of cube. Often banned out of singleton constructed events too! Good fun (for one player) when it isn't banned. 

Phyrexian Tower 7/10

Another land that is a little bit of a grey area for inclusion given that it isn't tapping for black mana in a conventional sense. At least compared to the other three from this "cycle" here it does always produce some kind of mana... Tower is a great support card that should be in most lists that want to sacrifice creatures and in some lists that just want some burst. It is a really option rich and clean utility card. A bit too cute for most cubes but an impressive constructed card in many an archetype. It might not have the same silly scaling as the previous three but it makes up for that with ease of use, convenience, and plenty of synergy support. Cradle, Academy and Sactum are payoffs while Tower is a support cards that allows you to obtain the payoffs more easily from other cards. Such an odd cycle.