To Fetch or Not to Fetch

Well, that's certainly a question.

A better, more complete question might be: is there a good enough set of reasons to run off-color fetch lands in a mono-color deck?

Let's use my mono-black control deck to contemplate this question.

My deck runs about 30 basic swamps. What I am considering is swapping out 4 of the swamps for 4 fetch lands.



Right off the bat, we are making the deck thematically inconsistent (ugly) since we are running lands that really have no stylistic business being there. For a lot of commander players, the image on the basic lands you put in your deck is part of your personal expression in deckbuilding. For example, I play only the full-art Unhinged swamps. But, making style choices is not what this thought process is about.



Another thing to consider is that by swapping in a bunch of fetch lands, you are necessarily increasing the frequency of shuffling. While not a thematic crime, shuffling takes up a lot of time. I find shuffling cards therapeutic, but if you wait until the last possible second to fetch, you are adding a lot of non-play time to the clock for everyone else. But, again, that's not what this thought process is about.

First up, let's look at what we get by making the 4 card swap. Consider two different turn one plays.

Turn one with a basic land:
Play a swamp.
Have an untapped basic land in play that taps for black.

Turn one with a fetch land:
Play a Polluted Delta.
Tap, sacrifice the Polluted Delta, pay 1 life.
Search library for a swamp and put it into play.
Have an untapped basic land in play that taps for black.

The fetch land turns takes longer, that's for sure. But besides that, you end up in same spot with a few important differences. Your library is shuffled. You have a fetch land in your graveyard. You have one less life. And you have one less land card in your library to draw.

This is where things get interesting.



Your library is shuffled.

Why does this matter? Well, cards like Sensei's Divining Top get better when we shuffle since we get to look at three new cards. This is a two-edged sword since there are times when you are forced to shuffle (to get a land that taps for mana) when you otherwise want several of the cards on top. Even so, manipulating your library is super powerful since it makes your deck more consistent.



You have a fetch land in your graveyard.

Cards like Crucible of Worlds that allow you to replay that very same fetch land from your graveyard mean that you are less likely to miss a land drop. A fetch land in the graveyard, plus Crucible in play, means fetching out land after land, turn after turn. This also gives you two "lands come into play" triggers for landfall. Ob Nixilis, the Fallen loves this synergy. And don't forget that this helps to power up delve, too.



You have one less life.

My mono-black control deck is more than willing to give up life to get ahead. That's what black does. Check the color pie if you don't believe me. With a starting life total of 40, losing a few life here and there is not significant. I don't often lose to a single point of damage. I lose to big life swings from massive creatures, combos, or infinite mana. In other words, when I lose the game, it's not because I lost a few life fetching out lands.



And you have one less land card in your library to draw.

You start the game with a 100 card deck. Your commander is in the command zone, leaving a 99 card pile. You draw 7 cards to start, leaving 92 cards. Your deck probably has somewhere between 35 and 40 lands, so no matter how you slice it I can't believe that fetching out one of those lands from the 92 card pile in front of you is going to noticeably affect the statistical significance of drawing either a land or non-land card in subsequent draws.

I'm sure that someone, somewhere, has done the math. That said, I'm not sure what the percentage would have to be to convince me that this is a good enough reason to run fetch lands without some other synergy like landfall triggers or shuffle-on-demand.


Okay, so let's say that you make the switch to fetch lands. What else can you do?

Crucible of Worlds seems like a good first step. In the games where you get this artifact out - and it sticks around - you can repeatedly play the same fetch land from your graveyard every turn to make sure that you never miss a land drop. This has the added benefit of giving you some protection from land destruction on your utility lands. Losing Cabal Coffers sucks.



Rings of Brighthearth is another good step. There's more setup here to make this work, but the payoff is double the ramp for double the fun. It looks like this.

Turn three, tap out to play Rings of Brighthearth.
Turn four, play a fetch land and use it, paying 2 mana to copy the ability with Rings.
Search for 2 swamps, putting them into play untapped.

You are still down one mana that turn from where you would have been, plus you missed turn three entirely by playing the Rings in the first place, but you just got three landfall triggers and set up an even bigger turn five. Playing Rings has the added benefit of making your planeswalker activations crazier too. You don't double the loyalty counters, but you do double the effect.

Oh, and before anyone calls me out on this, yes, you can totally copy a fetch land activation with Rings. Fetching is not a mana ability.



The fetch lands I'm talking about here, with the tap-sac-pay-a-life deal, are not the only fetch lands that work. The Panorama lands can also work here, but not as well. For each single color deck, there are 3 Panorama lands that will fetch out the relevant basic land. The problem is that, although the Panorama lands come into play untapped and can be tapped for a colorless mana, they cost mana to activate and put the newly fetched out land into play tapped. It's probably too slow given that running basic lands in these slots works pretty well already.

Turn sequence without a Panorama:
Turn one, play a basic swamp.
Turn two, play a basic swamp.
At this point, I have two basic swamps in play, untapped.

Turn sequence with a Panorama:
Turn one, play a basic swamp.
Turn two, play a Panorama, tap the swamp for a mana, crack the Panorama.
Search library for a basic swamp and put it into play tapped.
At this point, I have two basic swamps in play, but I'm tapped out.


A good problem to have.

Listen, I get that talking about adding $20 and $30 cards to your deck is a good problem to have. This isn't something that everyone is going to do, just because it might, maybe, make for a slightly more optimized and synergistic deck. In a mono-colored deck, basic lands do a good job of getting us there. This is especially important in mono-black where Cabal Coffers is a thing.



So, what's the answer?

With only 4 fetch lands that get Swamps, not counting the other lands that do something similar but that are too slow for my tastes, there isn't a compelling reason to jam in cards like Crucible or Worlds of Rings of Brighthearth. At least, not simply for this interaction. That leaves me with a pretty small bang for my buck. That extra shuffle may only be noticeable in a handful of games.

So, with nothing else going on except the swap for the fetch lands, the answer is: I guess?

There aren't a whole lot of situations where running those particular 4 fetch lands makes things much worse. But, there aren't a whole lot of situations where it makes things better, either.