We’ve talked about one-mana activation costs for creaturelands – Inkmoth Nexus is, like Mutavault and Mishra’s Factory, essentially a 2/2 thanks to infect, but this one has flying. This card was the centerpiece of Modern Infect, and also played a big role in Standard back when it was legal. If you tallied up all the games that have ended thanks to creaturelands, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Inkmoth Nexus at the top of the list of total kills. I’ve become the very thing I shamelessly mocked. But there was a time, young one, that Celestial Colonnade was a $50 Magic card, oh yes, and we had to activate it in the snow, uphill, both ways! …oh no. Nowadays it’s competing for space with cards like Castle Vantress and maybe even Hall of Storm Giants. Things have moved on since then, and these days you’re lucky to find two copies of this once-mighty card in a Modern control deck.
Celestial Colonnade used to be so powerful and so dominant, particularly in Modern, that control decks would play a full four copies of it, tapland or no. This card, despite having the most expensive activation cost of the lot, was a perfect win condition for control decks, which tend to be based in white and blue anyway. The best of the cycle, however, was undoubtedly Celestial Colonnade. Raging Ravine, Creeping Tar Pit and Stirring Wildwood all maintained a good presence in Modern for years and years, while Lavaclaw Reaches… was a card that was legal to put into a deck. Worldwake brought us a cycle of creaturelands that were, in many ways, the most powerful ever seen. Back in my day, we had to activate our creaturelands in the snow, uphill, both ways! Okay, grandpa, let’s get you to bed. These days, Wizards has leant into the joke a little more heavily: Time Spiral brought us Assembly-Worker, with the creature type Assembly-Worker, and there have been six more printed since then.īut none are as iconic as the original, Mishra’s Factory, which any self-respecting Magic boomer will tell you was a terrific card for their day, back before you had your Treetop Villages and your Dens of the Bugbear.
Much like Mutavault, it offers a 2/2 for just a single generic mana, and can even buff itself on blocks (or buff other copies of itself).įor the longest time, it was the only reason that “Assembly-Worker” was a legitimate creature type in Magic’s rules, even surviving through the Grand Creature Type Update of 2007 (RIP Ali-Baba, which used to be a creature type you could name with something like Patriarch’s Bidding). Mishra’s Factory has been around a lot longer than any other creatureland, first printed in Legends almost thirty years ago. The original and the best! Well, at least half of that is true. Maybe it will even eclipse Mutavault as the changeling creatureland! While it has a much more restrictive activation cost, of course, it has already been a centerpiece of aggro decks in Standard for a few months – and now, with its game-winning (or at least game-non-losing) combo with The Book of Exalted Deeds, Faceless Haven is in the spotlight more than ever before. This control deck initially played Elspeth, Sun’s Champion as a win condition, but many people cut the Elspeths and just relied on Elixir of Immortality and a few Mutavaults to get the job done.Ī spiritual successor to Mutavault is the more recent Faceless Haven. Quite aside from the fact that many of the top decks were monocolored (it was just after the devotion mechanic had been printed for the first time), one particularly dominant deck was White-Blue Control. It was reprinted into Standard in 2013, and did a lot of work in that format. Mutavault is notable as it’s one of those creature lands with a miniscule activation cost: just a single generic mana! It’s at its best in tribal decks, of course, as it has every creature type, and so it used to see play in various decks built with tribal synergies (I believe it got a run in Modern Merfolk decks, when people were trying to make them work).