Evaluating Fertile Thicket

The full visual spoiler for Battle for Zendikar is now available, but before I offer some thoughts on the set and get to work on my review for Standard Pauper, I need to finish up my post from last time concerning the new Common cycle of spell-lands.

Interestingly enough, the full spoiler also revealed Swell of Growth, a Green Common which allows you to play any Land onto the virtual battlefield at Instant speed. This is a considerable boon, as it allows you to potentially play any of these spell lands at Instant speed.

For today, I want to consider Fertile Thicket, the last of the five spell lands. In Alex Ullman's article that I reference last time, he seemed optimistic about this card's ability to almost guarantee your ability to find a Land that gives you access to a second color. Since this ability is tied to a Land card and not a spell, it would greatly increase the ability for aggressive decks to run multiple colors. However, there are two important caveats I'm not sure he considered.

First, this card itself enters the battlefield tapped, which is exactly the situation that hyper aggressive decks are trying to avoid. Second, Fertile Thicket can only search up basic lands, which means it doesn't work well with any of the other Common dual lands or Evolving Wilds.

As such, I fail to see how Fertile Thicket significantly improves the ability for aggressive decks to get access to multiple colors without having to slow down their access to mana. Yes, it's great when you desperately need to find one more land and can reasonably expect that you have a basic land in your next five cards. But outside of that scenario, you're not getting much value for the penalty of having Fertile Thicket come into play tapped.

If this placed the basic land into your hand, that would be be pretty decent value. As is though, I'm just not excited at all about this card.

Spell Lands in Battle for Zendikar

In case you somehow missed it, we now have a confirmed new "Spell Lands" cycle at Common in Battle for Zendikar:

Alex Ullman has an excellent review of this new cycle over at GatheringMagic.com, and I highly recommend you check it out. He seems cautiously optimistic about these cards seeing some play in Classic Pauper, especially thanks to the fact that Crop Rotation creates the possibility of turning these into Instant speed tricks. But what about in Standard Pauper?

Both Sandstone Bridge and Looming Spires are fairly good value, providing not only a small boost to Power and Toughness but either Vigilance or First Strike as well. However, since Red and White both tend to be fairly aggressive, the fact that these enter the battlefield tapped is not to be ignored. Between Evolving Wilds and the Common Dual Lands that enter tapped, we already have a glut of lands that aren't available to use when they come into play. It will take some significant testing to figure out how many of these such decks can afford to slot in.

Skyline Cascade is a perfect fit for a Blue or Izzet tempo deck looking to use bounce and other tap effects to keep opposing creatures at bay long enough to finish off an opponent. Keep in mind that it doesn't actually tap the targeted creature; it merely keeps it tapped for an additional round. So this won't function as much of  a combat trick, since your opponent will already know that the creature will be tapped on your turn. Still, for a spell effect that you get 'for free' from a Land, this is still good value.

Mortuary Mire is a bit of a puzzle to me still. Reclaim will always be a terrible card, since you're both giving up a card and your next draw to get a single card back into your hand from your graveyard. But when you're getting that effect on a Land, the cost of doing so is significantly reduced. Still, would it really have been too good to allow you to return a creature to your hand instead? As is, the creature you are returning needs to be among the best in your deck to make this an attractive option.

And as for Fertile Thicket...I think I'll save that for next time. :)