Hey there! I’m Scott from the top four of last year’s Great Designer Search 3. Welcome back to another installment of Deadly Designs, where we talk about Magic card design from an outsider’s perspective.
Last time we had to step out of our designer-comfort-zone to do an article on Historic’s implementation on Arena. But this time we’re back, and with the recent release of the Commander 2019 decks (and the Brawl decks too), I want to talk about lands for the Commander format.
Because let’s be honest, Simic Guildgate and Naya Panorama aren’t the most exciting parts of the pre-made Commander decks.
Every year the Commander pre-made decks are packed with cool new creatures and spells, but the lands always fall short. I’m not saying that they should reprint fetchlands or ABUR dual lands (although one can wish…), but I think there’s still plenty of room for innovation.
We have tons of quirky creatures and spells in Magic, why can’t we have some quirky lands too? And in a format where one-ofs are the name of the game, quirky one-of lands could be a lot of fun.
So here’s twelve lands I’ve brainstormed that could be fun to see in Commander pre-made decks in the future. They’re made with the Commander format in mind, with an effort to make them not become staples in Legacy/Vintage. We don’t want their prices getting jacked up, making them unavailable for Commander players.
There’s three categories of lands, so let’s start with:
#1. Lands That Play Better In Commander
Let’s get some of the obvious designs out of the way first. Lands like Cloud Haven would be great in Commander with the 40 life starting total, and not very good in pretty much any other format.
The “enters the battlefield tapped unless” clause has a lot of untapped potential. In most sets, dual lands are a cycle of five or ten, and they need to function well in most decks, not leaving the designers a lot of options.
But in Commander, where those restrictions don’t apply, I think we could see a lot more liberal use of the clause in new ways, and to make some “strong” lands too since it’s a significant drawback. We’ll take a look at some of these later.
Of course entering the battlefield tapped doesn’t have to be the only downside. Something like Plundered Ruins would be hard to justify running in Legacy/Vintage where an extra mana could mean the difference between life and death, but in Commander it’s an interesting drawback. With multiple players, you get to pick who gets the token, potentially earning you brownie points for later, or helping a friend cast their spell they otherwise couldn’t.
If the Treasure token drawback isn’t enough, then having the chosen opponent draw a card could also work. It also might be interesting to have the text just say “another player” instead of “an opponent” so that way you could give your teammate the token/card in Two-Headed Giant games. Lots of knobs to turn on these lands that deserve to be twisted!
Getting your lands blown up by Armageddon or Jokulhaups sucks. Those cards aren’t often played in other formats besides Commander/Cube, and something like Restorative Marsh can help you recover more quickly.
Maybe it could return more lands, but three seems like a good starting point to test. It being able to return itself might not be a good idea, but the life loss clause makes it appealing to return different lands, and if an opponent is using recursive land destruction, then I think they had it coming.
Flagstones of Trokair is decent at helping you rebuild from a similar effect, but it can trigger from your own spells/abilities leading to combos like with Smallpox, whereas Restorative Marsh only triggers based on what your opponent does. It’s a nice “emergency” card that can’t really have any crazy combos built around it, since it depends on your opponents.
(Edit: The current wording of this card doesn’t work since you losing the game causes your permanents to leave the battlefield. Perhaps an exception could be made, such as: “You losing the game doesn’t cause Pyramid of the Corpse-Pharaoh to leave the battlefield.” If that doesn’t work, then it could just give the bonus to someone and then leave with you when you lose. Less flavorful, but at least functional!)
And here’s a card that basically only works in multiplayer Magic. There’s nothing sweeter than getting revenge on the player who killed you by enshrining your own corpse on another player’s battlefield and helping them get your revenge.
While the land could lead to board stalls with no one wanting to kill a player with the land out, I think there’s enough land destruction in Commander between Strip Mine, Wasteland, Vindicate and more to deal with it if necessary.
Plus, just like when there’s a Standstill on board, sometimes you just gotta crack it.
#2. Lands For the Late Game
It’s no secret that Commander games go long. I think lands that play into this fact could make them useful in Commander while not very playable in Legacy/Vintage.
Lands like Abundant Glade are an obvious design. They’re essentially the opposite of the Scars of Mirrodin “fast lands” like Darkslick Shores, and could play into Commander’s typical game length.
There are plenty of other possibilities: coming into play tapped unless you have Threshold (seven or more cards in your graveyard), coming into play tapped unless your opponents control X or more permanents than you, etc.
There’s a lot of things that could work here in Commander that would be hard to release in a Standard-legal set, so we should take advantage of them!
Of course, there are other possibilities to play for the late game rather than just “coming into play tapped” clauses.
Something like Overflowing Bog would be extremely hard to trigger in a one-vs-one Legacy/Vintage game, but in a three-way Commander game it’d happen by around turn seven, a four-way game would have it around turn five, and beyond that is just gravy.
Another way to encourage the late game is by having expensive activated abilities.
Something like Razing Fields is extremely powerful, but not only does it essentially cost seven to activate (including tapping itself), but players have at least a whole turn cycle to answer it, similar to Nevinyrral’s Disk.
You’re going to see it coming, so you can play around the tentacles/razing.
#3. Specialized Lands
Lastly, I feel like Wizards is missing a big opportunity each year to put in a land that plays into the themes of each deck. Here’s some examples for the decks this year:
For the Naya-colored Primal Genesis deck.
Hatching Grounds is just a low-hanging-fruit design that could slot right into the deck. If the theme is populating tokens, why not have a land that populates as well?
For the black/red Merciless Rage deck.
With the entire deck based around discarding and madness value, it kind of sucks to have 40 lands in the deck that don’t play into the theme. At least with this one, it would be only 39 instead!
For the Sultai-colored Faceless Menace deck.
I’m not sure on the wording, but something like this would make paying morph, megamorph, and manifest costs even more appealing.
For the Jeskai-colored Mystic Intellect.
Similar to Hidden Stream, this one plays into the flashback theme of the set. The extra “five land” clause is on the end there to prevent it from going crazy in Legacy/Vintage, though it might not be absolutely necessary.
And finally, just for fun, a Tropical Island/Breeding Pool for the Faceless Menace deck (though there could be a similar one in each deck). I think these kinds of lands could be a lot of fun. They’re powerful in the right deck, but come with a heavy restriction. If having an extra, fetchable dual land encourages players to make cool Snake, Naga, and/or Hydra decks, then I say go for it.
I feel like this is the exact kind of quirky land I’d love to see more of. Everyone would benefit from more options for lands. Invested players can have more choices beyond just a “perfect” fetch/shock/dual manabase, and newer players won’t feel bad when they can’t afford the “best” lands because they’d have more affordable choices that could play into their deck’s themes.
We get plenty of unique creature/spell cards each year like Atla Palani and Aeon Engine,
so why can’t we get a similarly weird/cool lands every now and then too?
So what do you think? Would you like to see more new lands in the Commander decks? Or do you like things the way they are?