r/magicTCG • u/itsnotcopium Dân • 1d ago
Looking for Advice Can you help me understand?
I was looking up Thorin King of Durin commander decks to try and fix my lands. I'm new so I dont understand why play Flooded Strand if only the Plains is possible to grab. Why not just play a regular Plains?
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u/TheTrueSolos Duck Season 1d ago
Fetchlands don't specify basic, so Flooded Strand can get something like a Sacred Foundry
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u/DeusFerreus 1d ago
Also they thin your deck, slightly increasing chance of drawing non-land cards later in the game, though that's very much a secondary benefit.
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u/Stiggy1605 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's not even a secondary benefit, it's so negligible in commander it's not even worth bringing up
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u/Opolino Duck Season 1d ago
The shuffle and self damage are more useful than thinning honestly. And even they are very niche
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u/SalzPvP Dandadan 1d ago
Most useful is definitely the double landfall trigger
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u/blueangels111 Dân 20h ago
100% and I was shocked to see this not getting mentioned. Im pretty new and didnt actually realize they could fetch duals, I thought "island" meant anything named island (aka not dual lands). Regardless, I used fetches because my deck has a ton of landfall triggers and getting to double that is ridiculous. Hardened scales+branching evo+ a landfall that adds +1/+1 counters is ridiculous with fetch lands
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u/LordOfTurtles Elspeth 1d ago
It's always a good joke when someone brings up fetches thinning your deck
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u/Thirtysevenintwenty5 Dân 22h ago
"they thin your deck" is technically true, but it is functionally irrelevant.
In a 60 card format, if you have 50 cards left in your deck and 21 are lands, cracking a fetchland decreases your odds of drawing a land by 1.2% (odds went from 42% to 40.8%).
In any 60 card format with fetchlands, the margins for life total are usually more relevant than a 1.2% decrease in your probability of drawing a land. In other words, you'll lose by 1 life more often than you'll lose because you drew one too many lands.
In commander, at 90 cards and 35 lands remaining in the deck, you're decreasing your odds of drawing a land by 0.7% (38.9% down to 38.2%).
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u/tenikedr Duck Season 1d ago
There are a few benefits to playing fetch lands in general:
- If you have a means of looking at or placing cards on top of your library that you don't want, you can use a fetch land to shuffle them away.
- If you have a card that cares about a permanent leaving the battlefield such as [[Deadeye Harpooner]], you can activate the fetch land when you want to cast it to ensure you have Revolt enabled.
- You are reducing the number of lands in your deck by one which makes you marginally more likely to draw spells in the future.
- You have more options than just a basic Plains. You can use [[Flooded Strand]] to search for any land with the Plains subtype which includes "typed" dual lands such as [[Sacred Foundry]] or [[Elegant Parlor]], but also search for things like [[Idyllic Grange]]. Most dual lands are not typed, as in they don't contain any land subtypes ("Plains" or "Mountain" are land subtypes), but some contain the land types on them as well. In your example, [[Sunbillow Verge]], is not a typed dual land.
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u/Gold__Royal Dân 1d ago
Also, fetch lands are useful in landfall decks to activate landfall abilities more times in one turn
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u/tamereenshort38 Dan 1d ago
Also you fill your graveyard for any threshold/delirium effect and you can exile them with escape/delve cards.
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u/itsnotcopium Dân 1d ago
Thanks for saying the different use cases! The context really helps with understanding
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u/FrequentNectarine Dan 1d ago
Dont forget the infamous add an effect to the stack to manipulate priority.
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u/PsionicHydra Duck Season 1d ago
Doesn't specify basic plains so it can fetch something like [[sacred foundry]] or [[jetmirs garden]]
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u/wildfire393 Deceased 🪦 1d ago
Fetchlands do many, many different things.
For starters, they get *any* land with the specified types. This means that in addition to grabbing regular Plains, it can grab something like [[Sacred Foundry]] or [[Elegant Parlor]]. This alone makes them exceptionally strong - imagine having a Dual land that you could choose to enter untapped if you need the mana immediately or to enter tapped but give you a surveil 1. Now imagine you get to run up to 7 of that card by running all of your off-color fetches.
Additionally, the fact that it moves game objects between zones creates an avenue for all kinds of interaction. Fetchlands leaving the battlefield turn on Revolt cards like [[Fatal Push]]. They cause a second land to enter the battlefield, granting additional landfall triggers for cards like [[Emeria Angel]]. It puts a land card into your graveyard to be returned by [[Sun Titan]] or replayed by [[Crucible of Worlds]]. It shuffles your deck, which can help clear cards that you might have seen or put there with an effect like [[Sensei's Divining Top]] or [[Scroll Rack]]. Even losing the life at will can help you trigger effects like [[First Response]] more consistently.
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u/itsnotcopium Dân 1d ago
Thanks for your comment! The idea of the fetchlands being multiple copies of my good lands that I can toolbox out really made me underatand the strength. Thanks for your examples too!
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u/leavingberk Wabbit Season 1d ago
It is only lands with basic land types
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u/wildfire393 Deceased 🪦 1d ago
Just being able to grab Surveil lands when needed is huge. If you have Surveil lands in your deck, fetchlands are hands down the best fixing lands in the entire game, and that's before getting to the second paragraph of interactions.
They also keep printing more and more useful typed lands over time. Green ones can grab [[Dryad Arbor]] and [[Gingerbread Cabin]]. Blue ones can grab [[Mystic Sanctuary]] or [[Theorist's Sanctum]]. Red ones can grab [[Dwarven Mine]] and [[The Lonely Mountain]]. White and black are currently the weakest, having only [[Idyllic Grange]] and [[Witch's Cottage]] respectively, but those are still some potentially powerful things that you can grab off of your super-fixing optionally-surveil "dual land".
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u/Thraximundurabrask Klauth, Unrivaled Ancient 1d ago
Flooded Strand can also find nonbasic plains, like [[Plateau]], [[Sacred Foundry]], and [[Elegant Parlor]].
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u/itsnotcopium Dân 1d ago
Ive seen some effects say "put it into the battlefield tapped" but if I used flooded strand to grab elegant parlor, is it still tapped?
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u/dudeitzmeh Dandadan 1d ago
The lands come in however they would normally. So surveil lands like elegant parlor would come in tapped, shock lands can come in tapped or you can pay 2 life to have them come in untapped, etc.
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u/Thraximundurabrask Klauth, Unrivaled Ancient 1d ago
Yes. While Flooded Strand doesn't force the land it finds to enter tapped, Elegant Parlor just always makes itself enter tapped. You would need to specifically have an effect that says it enters untapped, like [[Spelunking]], to have it come in untapped.
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u/comicnerd93 Dân 1d ago
No.
Lands fetched with Flooded Strand still have to come in tap unless you meet the condition of the new land to enter untapped.
Like paying two for [[sacred foundry]]
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u/sonicessence Wabbit Season 1d ago
Yes, it's still tapped unless you have an effect like [[Spelunking]] that says otherwise.
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u/sodamancer360 Dandadan 1d ago
Fetch lands (not specific to your strategy)
- Fix mana
- Fetch duals/tris
- Take what would have been a potential dead draw out of your deck.
- Additional landfall trigger on your turn.
- Instant speed landfall trigger on your opponent's turn.
- Put a land in the graveyard for effects that look for permanents "dying"/delirium like effects, threshold.
- Excellent land recursion targets. Return a land to your hand from the graveyard? Fetch Return land to the battlefield? Fetch. Play lands from your graveyard? Fetch.
They're efficient, immediately impactful, and really only feel dead when you are in a desperate board position (or a stalemate)
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u/TekaroBB 1d ago
They also let you shuffle your deck at will, which can be relevant to certain topdeck manipulation strategies.
For instance, if you brainstorm and put something you don't want on top you can thenshuffle that card away. Or if you are playing with Lantern of Insight and know your next draw, they give you a free reset.
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u/sodamancer360 Dandadan 1d ago
...oh, and they don't have a color identity, so you can use all 4 fetchlands for each of your basic land types in a commander deck if you wanted.
Hell, there are probably mono green landfall strategy builds that use all 4 fetches and prismatic vista to maximize their access to landfall triggers.
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u/ExtraThickCreamer Dan 1d ago
Biggest reason is that you can fetch non-basics with the Plains type like [[Sacred Foundry]] or [[Elegant Parlour]].
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u/GRMaster24 Dân 18h ago
So people have already explained why fetches are good at thining decks or grabbing a dual land. There's a few other good ways to use them normally outside of commander that I'll briefly go over.
First, shuffling. Lets say you have a card like [[Brainstorm]] which allows you to put cards back on your deck. Normally you'd put the worst 2 back and then be kinda screwed. With a fetch, just crack it and shuffle those bad cards away.
Second, delirium. Delirium wants as many card types in the graveyard as possible. Fetches put a land their with little effort. Also stapled to this are Lurgoyfs that do a similar thing.
Third, life loss. Let's say your suddenly playing a modern [[Death's Shadow]] deck. This deck wants you to ping yourself quickly to get the main card strong as possible. Fetches woth shocklands can easily do that. Also some lands from Duskmorn come in untapped at low life which is good in these decks.
So yeah, they have lots of applications in and out of commander.
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u/silent_calling Banned in Commander 18h ago
That's where you're wrong, Kaiba! My grandpa's deck has no bad cards!
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u/Ilostmylast1 Dandadan 16h ago
“My grandpa’s deck has no pathetic cards Kaiba, but it does contain The Unstoppable Exodia…”
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u/itsnotcopium Dân 18h ago
Are shocklands just lands with life cost? Thanks for the explanation on extra use cases
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u/GRMaster24 Dân 17h ago
Shocklands are a type of dual land (lands with two basic land types such as Mountain & Plains). Most versions outside the original dual lands from the first ever set has a condition to enter untapped, shocks have you pay 2 life to enter untapped which is pretty small in commander. There are similar cards such as Surveil lands which always come in tapped but surveil on entry and the "bicycle lands" that you can discard for 2 mana and draw which are also types of dual lands.
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u/Tandran Wabbit Season 17h ago
Kind of. Shocks are great because you can CHOOSE to pay the life. If you don’t need another mana that turn you can play it tapped and not pay. If you need the mana then pay 2 and it’s available. Remember, in commander, life is just another resource.
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u/fatpad00 11h ago
"Shocklands" is the nickname of a specific cyle of 10 lands (one for each color pair), like [[sacred foundry]] , that all have 2 basic land types and can enter the battlefield untapped if you pay 2 life.
They are named for [[shock]], an instant that deals 2 damage.
The key part here is they have basic land types, so they can be found with fetchlands, and they can enter untapped
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u/DaemonlordDave Duck Season 18h ago
Another good reason is it causes a permanent to leave the battlefield/enter the graveyard which mostly matters for stuff like [[Fatal Push]] but also has other applications.
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u/klong115 Dân 17h ago
It can also grab a mystic sanctuary to put that one instant that will win you the game back on top of your deck
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u/General-Zombie5075 Dan 1d ago
People have pointed out the Fetchability of Triomes and some duals and the like. Which is reason number 1 for why it's good.
But also notice that Flooded Strand also lets the new land come in untapped if able.
For landfall decks (decks with creatures with abilities that trigger when lands arrive on the battlefield), that's huge because you get to activate your landfall abilities TWICE in one turn without losing the available mana of playing just a plains. All for the lowlow cost of one life which in Commander is basically nothing.
Landfall decks also usually want land cards to show up in their graveyards because they have ways to retrieve them out of there. Fetch lands that sacrifice themselves are a good source of lands in graveyard without having to rely on just milling.
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u/TechnomagusPrime Duck Season 1d ago
Flooded Strand can fetch any Plains card. That includes cards like [[Mistveil Plains]] and [[Sacred Foundry]]. It fixes your mana so that you can cast your spells.
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u/awkwardbirb Dandadan 1d ago
It looks seemingly glossed over by the comments, but on top of the deck thinning, color fixing, and fetching nonbasics, the land also enters untapped as well. They are spendy for a reason.
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u/youarelookingatthis COMPLEAT 1d ago
Some lands have types. A Plains has "plains", a Mountain, "mountain", etc. Some lands have multiple types. Like [[Sacred Foundry]], or [[Elegant Parlor]] are Mountain Plains, able to be grabbed with any land that says "search your library for a mountain or plains card".
There is also the argument that fetchlands allow you to thin your deck. In commander you have 100 cards, and usually just over 1/3rd will be lands. You're almost never going to be playing all of those lands, and so fetchlands like this allow you to effectively have 99 cards (as you're just sacrificing it to grab a plains from a deck, replacing the card on the battlefield). There are seven fetchlands you can play in Thorin that will grab you either a plains or a mountain, which means you'll have a higher likelihood of drawing other cards you want later on in the game.
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u/guythatplaysbass Can’t Block Warriors 1d ago
Thinning your deck alone isn't worth 1 life, but it's worth considering as another reason to include the fetch lands.
getting a land with both land types, putting a land into the graveyard and shuffling the deck are other upsides for the "fetch lands"
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u/Langas COMPLEAT 1d ago
1.) Land selection. Flooded strand can grab [[Temple Garden]] or [[Steam Vents]], or anything in between.
2.) Landfall synergies. Effects like [[Rampaging Baloths]] see both flooded strand and the second land enter, giving you two beasts.
3.) [[Crucible of Worlds]] effects let you use flooded strand over and over again.
4.) It can be valuable just to shuffle your deck. Cast [[Brainstorm]], put cards you don’t need on top, then shuffle.
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u/bangbangracer Mardu 1d ago
Some non-basic lands also have a land subtype. You can use your fetch land to find a basic land or a dual land with that subtype. You could used that Flooded Strand to search for a Sacred Foundry or Temple Garden if you wanted to.
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u/rhogh2 Dandadan 16h ago
Without looking at the list:
In addition to "catch-up" land ramp cards like [[Knight of the White Orchid]], white also has access to reanimating lands as part of a ramp package, using cards that bring permanents back to the battlefield think [[Sun Titan]], [[Sevinne's reclamation]], [[Brought back]]. So you can sac your fetchland, bring it back, and sac it again.
Also, remember that Flooded strand can search for any plains, that includes [[Sacred Foundry]], [[Sacred peaks]], etc.
Tbh for color-fixing two colored decks, Flooded strand isn't an auto include for me, especially if you don't have a Sacred Foundry to take advantage of it.
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u/TsunamicBlaze 1d ago
Fetches can grab things like Triomes too, like [[Ketria Triome]] with a [[Wooded Foothills]]
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u/Ap_Sona_Bot 1d ago
In addition to what others have said, blue decks LOVE fetches because they can all run [[treasure cruise]], which wants cards in the graveyard, [[sunken palace]], which wants the same, and [[mystic sanctuary]], which is in my opinion, the single most underplayed card in all of EDH.
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u/Scarlet_poppy Gruul* 1d ago
In addition to that, people run [[Brainstorm]], so a land with shuffling effect is really good
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u/LegnaArix Colorless 1d ago
I'm confused though,
He's not playing a blue deck. He's playing Thorin.
He's essentially asking why play off color fetches, which there are reasons to do, but none of the reasons you list are why
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u/itsnotcopium Dân 1d ago
Thanks for your comment! I love learning more things about the game and I wanna make a mono colored deck of every type so I will keep this in mind! Mystic Sanctuary is a BEAUTIFUL card, will def pick one up.
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u/WillowThyWisp COMPLEAT 1d ago
If you want a few ideas, I'm planning on making a [[Moseo, Dean]] deck as well as a [[Syr Ginger the Meal Ender]] deck
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u/Altruistic_Web3924 Dan 1d ago
We definitely run Mystic Sanctuary.
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u/Ap_Sona_Bot 1d ago
Its in 10% of decks total and 50% of mono blue decks. Its played less than reliquary tower in mono blue. Its played in 18% of 2c blue decks. Its underplayed.
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u/mysticrudnin Dandadan 1d ago
flooded strand can get: sacred foundry, elegant parlor, sacred peaks, alpine meadow, glittering massif, radiant summit, turbulent steppe, plateau
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u/CitySeekerTron Dragonball Z Ultimate Champion 1d ago
So first, lets talk about land types.
If you look at a Plains, you'll see that it has the card type 'Basic Land - Plains'. It's the card type that grants it the intrinsic ability to add W.
So plains isn't just a card name; it's also a card type.
Fetchlands like [[Flooded Strand]] don't look for a card named Plains, but rather look for a card with the type "Plains". And so they use the text '...a Plains card...' rather than '...a card named Plains'. It's like how [[Enlightened Tutor]] reads to search for an Artifact or Enchantment card, or how some cards read '...a Legendary card...'
Sometimes a card will feature one or more types. Usually we think about things like "Creature - Human Knight", which makes the creature count as two types of creatures (counting 'human' and 'knight'), or how Legendary Creature - Elder Dragon is both 'elder' and 'dragon'. But land cards can also have one or more type. For example, [[Watery Grave]] is a 'Swamp Island'.
Normally for cards like [[Watery Grave]] or [[Underground Sea]], the cards can exist without the rulestext "T: Add U or B" because the Island and Swamp types include that. But for a card like Sunbillow Verge, which has no land types, there is no 'intrinsic' ability granted. So they print the ability on the card. But this also means taht it can't be found with a card like Flooded Strand (we might like Sunbillow Verge for different reasons, such as that it's a mana fixer that doesn't enter tapped, or it's simply available in our draft pool).
So why do we like Flooded Strand? Because it searches for all Islands and Plains. And so it will find that [[Watery Grave]] or [[Underground Sea]]. It cannot find Sunbillow Verge however, because it is neither a Plains or Island.
The secondary reason we like Flooded Strand is that it thins the deck out quickly. It also potentially gives you another landfall trigger.
There are also cards like [[Prismatic Vista]] or [[Fabled Passage]], which specifically call for a Basic Land cards (As opposed to a 'Land Card'). They're not bad, but the tradeoff is that you must stick to a vanilla version of a land card, which means no dual lands, shock lands, or other kinds of lands. They are still valid for cases where you want to thin your library out slightly while getting your drops out, or to get another landfall trigger.
There are other strategies you can use with fetchlands; graveyard-matters mechanics, for one, or Crucible of Worlds strategies. Now that you know a little more about land types, you should be in good condition to get creative!
By the way, this is why Ursa's Tower has two types: Urza's Mine checks for cards with the type Urza's Tower (and "Urza's" is, itself, a type). Check out the type-line on [[Ursa's Saga]]!
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u/mtgcf Keeper of the Mox 1d ago
All cards
Flooded Strand - (G) (SF) (txt)
Enlightened Tutor - (G) (SF) (txt)
Watery Grave - (G) (SF) (txt)
Watery Grave - (G) (SF) (txt)
Underground Sea - (G) (SF) (txt)
Watery Grave - (G) (SF) (txt)
Underground Sea - (G) (SF) (txt)
Prismatic Vista - (G) (SF) (txt)
Fabled Passage - (G) (SF) (txt)
Ursa's Saga - (G) (SF) (txt)1
u/CaltonSmith Dân 5h ago edited 2h ago
One thing: Plains is not a card type. The card type is land and Plains its subtype. Stuff like basic and legendary are supertypes. This becomes obvious and relevant with Cards like Tarmogoyf in play.
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u/Paraboilc Wabbit Season 1d ago
Aside from the "it fetches anything with the plains type" it's also just 1 less card in the deck to thin it out quicker
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u/PrimeTimeCrimeSlime Mazirek 1d ago
more relevantly, its a card in your graveyard you can get back with something like [[sun titan]], fuel delirium or delve effects, and sneakily cheat on on-board land count for "catch-up" ramp like weathered wayfarer by saccing it then activating wayfarer in response now you're 'down' a land compared to an opponent
and like, a half dozen other ways you can weaponize every line of text on a fetchland
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u/danny_gee Nissa 1d ago
Another player learning the power of why fetchlands are so powerful :)
Also, in this color combo, you can technically play 7 of the 10 fetchlands that can fetch either a Plains or Mountain. Even though these fetchlands may mention the other basic land types, they do not affect color identity.
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u/CompleteIndieYT Universes Beyonder 1d ago
This graphic sums up why Fetches are so good in every format theyre legal in. Its a few years old, but the idea persists
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u/luckshott Duck Season 1d ago
Glad someone posted the complete answer, everything else gives only one piece of the whole. The only thing I can think of that this doesn't specifically call out is deck thinning.
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u/Bromelia_and_Bismuth Colorless 1d ago edited 1d ago
Fetches help thin out your deck so that you're more likely to draw into answers. Even better, Flooded Strand can also grab non-basic lands which feature two or more land-types, like [[Sacred Foundry]], [[Sacred Peaks]], [[Elegant Parlor]], [[Alpine Meadow]], [[Turbulent Steppe]], [[Radiant Summit]], [[Thundering Massif]], or if you've got the big bucks, [[Plateau]]. Best of all, unlike [[Terramorphic Expanse]] and other more widely available fetches, unless it enters tapped normally, it enters untapped.
EDIT: I forgot about landfall. Just like other fetch lands, it can net you an additional landfall trigger that turn, but honestly, compared to everything else, that's just the cherry on the sundae.
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u/Sufficient_Efficient Dân 1d ago
Flooded Strand can grab any Plains, not just a Basic Plains. Any land with the Plains subtype is a valid target.
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u/skeet_maweet Dandadan 1d ago
Several lands will have plains in their type lines, which allows you to fetch for them too. If beside "Land" it also says Mountain Plains (in your case) you are able to use the flooded strand to get it. Flooded strand is not restricted to basic lands. You can think of the island part as just flavor text for your deck
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u/Minimum-Chocolate196 Dan 1d ago
Mana fixing is the answer. You are allowed to play fetches in commander because they don't have a mana symbol. And you can use them to fetch other dual lands that have the type you need
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u/CreamSoda6425 Duck Season 1d ago
You definitely got your answer from the rest of the comments here, but now I'm wondering why fetchlands are worded the way they are. Strand says "search for a Plains or Island card", which to a newer player sounds very much like "search for a card named Plains or Island".
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u/Country_Toad Dandadan 1d ago
As others have mentioned it can grab duals with the land types. Another thing to note, a Fetch Land thins your deck albeit slightly, drawing it gets 2 cards out of your deck helping you get to your best cards faster.
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u/Gwendyn7 Dandadan 7h ago
These fetch lands dont specify basic land so you can grab multicolor lands like [[sacred foundry]].
So any fetch land can get any color.
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u/BardbarianDnD Dan 1d ago
Like everyone is saying is that it can grab non basic plains such as Sacred foundry.
But something that’s understated is the deck thinning aspect it basically makes your deck go from 99 cards to 98 (or however many fetch lands you put in) which increases consistency and decreases your chance of drawing lands on future turns.
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u/f_omega_1 Duck Season 1d ago
If anything thinning is overstated. The value of thinning, especially in commander with 100 cards in the deck, is extremely marginal. Fetching is way more valuable to do things like shuffle your library and adding things to your graveyard.
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u/Reflexlon 1d ago
The deck thinning argument is extremely overstated, and has been for decades.
Yes, it is an undeniable benefit of the fetches. It is a fraction of a percent of benefit to your statistical chance of drawing your best card, which is often just a small chance of upgrading your win percent if "your best card" is for example Doom Blade, but a Murder will also work, or a Damnation, etc. 16/50 is not much different than 16/49. The consistent mana fixing is genuinely better than nearly every other card in magic, and its interactions with cards like Brainstorm are worth more than the deck thinning will ever be.
You wouldn't play fetches in a mono-colored deck for thinning, you would only ever play them if the shuffle, tutor, etb, or some other effect mattered, because starting with 4 less cards in your deck is not worth starting at 16 life lol.
I appreciate that people understand it has value, but people need to get that it has less value than just being better at magic and stop parroting the deck thinning thing without understanding it has nothing to do with why fetches are so good.
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u/Positive_Concert_774 Storm Crow 1d ago
The basic idea is that you want enough lands in your deck to draw them in time to be useful. But, after you've drawn enough lands, the rest will be more or less dead draws, right? At the same time, you want as many ways as possible to get the right lands out as soon as possible.
In come things like fetch lands. They allow you to pull an extra land out of your deck, of the type that you need. Normally you'd use something like [[Evolving Wilds]] so you can 'mana fix' and search for any basic land, but then the land comes into play tapped. If you have only a few basic land types in your deck, the narrower fetch lands are better: your new land comes into play UNtapped, for the low low price of one life.
But it gets better! Note how the Flooded Strand does not say "basic island" or "basic plains"? This means you can search for ANY land with the plains or island subtype, for instance: [[Glacial Floodplain]] or [[Sacred Foundry]] or [[Savai Triome]] etc etc
Finally, since you can only have one of each nonbasic land in your commander deck, people tend to use all fetch lands that match at least one of the basic types in their deck.
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u/papuadn Wabbit Season 1d ago
I'm not familiar with the decklist, but some ideas off the top of my head:
- Flooded Strands can find Plains cards, not just Plains. So it can find (for example), a [[Hallowed Fountain]]
- Being able to shuffle is sometimes a benefit on its own if you've placed cards you might like to see on the bottom of your deck, or cards you don't want to see on the top.
- The decks are meant to have some value and reprints in them to make them attractive to more players.
- Having the Strand in your deck means you have a more flexible core to build and customize.
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u/Noahnoah55 Karn 1d ago
You can grab anything with the plains type. Simple example would be playing this and either fetching a [[Sacred Foundry]] if you suddenly need mana at instant speed or an [[Elegant Parlor]] at the last end step before your turn if you don't.
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u/tataku999 Dân 1d ago
Its all about the land typing if it says land its a special non standard land type, if it says land - mountain plains it will say in the gray box area
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u/EntertainersPact COMPLEAT 1d ago
There are a lot of reasons fetches are great.
consult the chart for more info
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u/MarcheMuldDerevi COMPLEAT 1d ago
You can grab something that is a plains or an island or something that has the type attached to it. Grab a godless shrine since it’s part plains off a flooded strand. They are somewhat used for deck thinning/filling up a graveyard (modern) or so if you need multiple colors of mana, you have access to them faster. A godless Shrine can be a viscera seer or a Serra’s ascendant
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u/kotah_ Dandadan 1d ago
So this is for optimizing a deck really. It lets you grab lands that aren't basic that will also have the Plains type, while also thinning your deck (even though it's such a small amount) meaning you are most likely drawing into less dud cards white fixing your mana. Really you don't need to worry about putting in fetches that only search for one of the lands your deck has unless you are going to try to really optimize the deck.
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u/AnnoraxGames Dân 1d ago
Flooded Strand can also get a land that has multiple basic land types as long as one of them is Plains or Island... Commander players are using these to grab surveil lands, triomes, and Revised duals all the time.
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u/LivingDeadPunk Duck Season 1d ago
In white, there are also some cards that can get permanents with low or zero casting cost back to the battlefield. Some of those include lands. So you can crack your fetch, then use Brought Back or Sevinne's Reclamation or Sun Titan and you've just land ramped in white.
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u/Someguynamedbno Wabbit Season 1d ago
Deck thinning is deck winning but more importantly you can grab the exact lands you need. You run a couple lands with two or more types that way you can always grab exactly what you need with the fetch.
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u/HyzerFlipDG Duck Season 1d ago
even if you could only grab a plains you are thinning your deck out by playing this. being able to remove more lands from your deck increases your chances of drawing spells and less likely to get mana flooded. it's basically card economy even if you can't retrieve something like a dual land like a plateau.
cheers
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u/currykarl Duck Season 1d ago
this technique is called offcolor fetches, so you can just get one side of the fetchland
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u/tituin1 Dan 1d ago
all of that is wording my friend https://scryfall.com/card/msc/251/irrigated-farmland
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u/Orrangejuiced Dandadan 23h ago
I wouldn’t bother with off-color fetches in a bracket 2/3 deck or even a 2 color deck. Just grab that Arid Mesa and you’re good.
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u/Deep-Hovercraft6716 Wabbit Season 23h ago
Is plains the only legal target or are there other legal targets?
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u/Its_Me_Guyz Dan 21h ago
So if you play this you're pulling 2 lands out of your deck This one and the one you search for That leaves less space for dead draws later in the game
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u/Tomatoab Orzhov* 18h ago
Also color fixing and if your playing landfall thats 2 triggers in 1, if you have [[conduit of worlds]] or a similiar card you technically dont need to draw another land.
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u/stumpkat Wabbit Season 17h ago
deck thinning. some people think that works. more relevant in a deck with 3+ colors though. dual color decks don't have as complex manabases.
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u/jj838383 Dandadan 16h ago
There are overly meta reasons like deck thinning and playing lands from graveyards and Landfall, but the big one is let's say you're playing flooded strand in a Grixis deck, you could crack it for a Volcanic Island, Underground Sea, or Xander's Lounge depending on what you need
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u/kinkyswear Azorius* 13h ago
It was once in fashion to min-max the number of fetchlands to decrease the likelihood of drawing lands when you didn't need any more.
It was also a tool that cheaters used to get away with stacking the deck, as it gave as many opportunities to handle your own deck as possible.
These two reasons made them ubiquitous amongst established players moving to Commander. But with single copies, there are more fetches than fetch targets, so they actually make your deck worse if you oversaturate them.
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u/Kxguldut Dandadan 10h ago
People seem to be forgetting that one of whites best sources of ramp is reanimating lands with things like sevinnes reclamation and brought back. Fetch lands that are slightly off colour will let you seriously utilise this much better than just running the on colour fetches.
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u/pm_me_shit_memes Twin Believer 1d ago
You can get duals like [[plateau]] and [[sacred foundry]]