Spotlight: Life from the Loam

Life from the Loam is one of those cards that seems simple on the surface, but there's a lot going on here.

Before we get into all that, let's break down the card and take a look at what it does.

For two mana, 1G, you get to return up to three land cards from your graveyard to you hand.

If that's all this card did, it would be a pretty good deal. Three-for-one and protection against land destruction.

But of course, Life from the Loam is so much more.

Dredge is a cool ability that lets you replace a card you would draw with, in this case, Life from the Loam. In other words, if you are going to draw a card, you can instead use Dredge to get this card back.

Oh, and lookie here, you get to mill three cards into your graveyard. What can we do with that?



As it turns out, being able to consistently mill yourself enables a lot of cool strategies including Replenish, Open the Vaults, Planar Birth, Nighthowler, Bonehoard, Living Death, Patriarch's Bidding, Jarad... the list goes on.

And if that's all Life from the Loam did, it would be a pretty darn good deal.

But of course, Life from the Loam is so much more.

The dream set up is Life from the Loam in your hand, with one fetch land in your graveyard and two one-mana cycling lands.

Why?

Check this out.



Let's say you are holding Life from the Loam in your hand with Misty Rainforest in your graveyard along with Tranquil Thicket and Lonely Sandbar.

Okay, that's three lands in your graveyard, right?

Step 1: Spend 1G to cast Life from the Loam and return Misty, Thicket, and Sandbar.
Step 2: Play Misty and crack it to put an untapped land into play.
Step 3: Cycle the Thicket off the untapped land to draw a card.
Step 4: Cycle the Sandbar, using Dredge to replace the draw, putting Life from the Loam back in your hand. Mill three.

You now have a land in play (from the Misty), an extra card in hand (from the Thicket), and Life from the Loam back in your hand (from the Sandbar). The three original lands are back in your graveyard. You are up one card and one land in play for the low-low cost of 1G+G+U, but one mana you spent came from the land you got with the Misty.

In other words, for 3 (or 4) mana, you have a consistent way to play a land every turn, draw an additional card, and mill three more cards into your graveyard. As I mentioned before, putting cards into your graveyard enables lots of different strategies.

The engine is super-flexible, too. You can cycle twice if you need to draw something right now. You can even Dredge twice with a little planning if you are trying to fill up your graveyard. Restart the engine on your next draw step if Life from the Loam gets stranded.



Since there are one-mana cycling lands for every color, this setup also works for non-Blue decks. Red/Green, Black/Green, or even White/Green, using Life from the Loam, now have access to repeatable card draw with upside.



But if you do happen to have access to Blue, track down a copy of Intuition to get this party started right. By searching for Life from the Loam and two cycling lands, no matter what card your opponent gives you, the engine is started. You can always cycle to get back Life from the Loam.



Life from the Loam can similarly be used to punish or lock down decks by repeatedly using it to return Strip Mine or Wasteland. Use this strategy at your own peril - people hate this - but it's certainly an option. Be one of the good guys that uses this to take out other utility lands around the table.

If you are already running Life from the Loam, let me know what you use it for in the comments. Post a link to your decklist so that we can check it out.

Myriad Landscape vs. Thawing Glaciers vs. Wayfarer's Bauble vs. Evolving Wilds

It's a cage match for the ages.

Four cards enter the ring. Who will emerge victorious?

Myriad Landscape vs. Thawing Glaciers vs. Wayfarer's Bauble vs. Evolving Wilds



What we have here are four cards that do something similar: put basic lands from your library into play tapped.

(Terramorphic Expanse is Evolving Wilds' twin brother, so we can think of them as a team in our cage match.)

Because every one of these cards is colorless, every one of these cards can be used in any commander deck you have laying around. But, which of these cards should you use, if any?

It depends.

Are you looking to color-fix in a two, three, or more colored deck? Any of these cards will do that for you, to one degree or another. Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds are probably the most straightforward cards in the group for color-fixing since you get a basic land into play tapped without dealing with other funny business.

But what if you want to do more than just color-fix? What if you want to ramp, too?

Now, Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds aren't going to get us there. The other cards give us more to consider.

I like to look at what you give up for running a card in the first place, where it leaves you after you use it, and what are some of the other effects (good and bad) you can build around to get extra value out of a card.

To make this simple, let's take a look at a mono-colored deck.

Turn 1 plays. 

Statistically, there are a lot more turns that aren't turn 1 than there are turns that are turn 1. That seems obvious, but some of these cards will work well in the early turns while others will not. The early turns of a Commander game tend to be where the ramp makes all the difference. You can really put yourself out in front with strong early ramp.



Terramorphic Expanse / Evolving Wilds
Turn 1: Evolving Wilds, tap and sacrifice to search for a Swamp
Turn 2: Swamp
You have two Swamps in play, both untapped

In a mono-colored deck, this isn't a great scenario by itself. You didn't get to do anything turn 1. And you didn't actually ramp. You do get the benefit of a shuffled deck, a land in your graveyard, and one less land in your library.



Thawing Glaciers
Turn 1: Thawing Glaciers
Turn 2: Swamp, pay one and tap the Thawing Glaciers to search for a Swamp
You have two Swamps in play, both tapped, and Thawing Glaciers in your hand

Again, by itself, this isn't great. You were not able to do anything on turn 1 or turn 2 other than search out that Swamp. You do get a shuffled deck, and one less land in your library. But, unlike with Evolving Wilds, this time you end up with Thawing Glaciers back in your hand to do it all over again.



Wayfarer's Bauble
Turn 1: Swamp, Wayfarer's Bauble
Turn 2: Swamp, tap two and active Wayfarer's Bauble to sacrifice, search for a Swamp
You have three Swamps in play, all tapped

This is the first card that actually ramps us. We have three lands in play on turn 2, ready to untap and potentially play another land for four mana on turn 3. Your deck is shuffled, and you have one less land in your library.



Myriad Landscape
Turn 1: Swamp
Turn 2: Myriad Landscape
Turn 3: Swamp, tap two and activate Myriad Landscape to sacrifice, searching for two Swamps
You have four Swamps in play, all tapped

This card also ramps us, setting up a turn 4 with up to five mana if you make that next land drop. Your deck is shuffled, Myriad Landscape is in your graveyard, and you have two less lands in your library.

Without taking any other interactions into consideration, Wayfarer's Bauble probably edges the rest of the cards out. Myriad Landscape comes into play tapped, but actually taps for mana if you decide not to activate it. That's not nothing.


Okay, but here's the neat thing about Magic.

Are you sitting down?

The neat thing is that other cards exist.



Rings of Brighthearth changes the math.

Statistically, most turns in the game are not turns 1 through 3. You are going to have a lot more games where later turns matter. Rings lets you double up on the activations of these cards. For an extra two mana, you get double the effect. Thawing Glaciers searches for two lands instead of one. Myriad Landscape searches for four lands instead of two.

Crazy right?

These aren't mana abilities, so Rings can copy them.

The truth is, you aren't going to have a particular card, like Rings, in most games you play. I mean, if you are tutoring for cards, you could make it happen in a lot more games. But we are still dealing with 99 random cards.

But when it works, it works!

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.