#mdfc

Our newest DLC Fighter, who apparently drops today!

The interesting thing about designing this card was that Pyra is fire-themed, which is Red, but does heavy hits, which is more White/Green, whereas Mythra is light-themed, which is White, but does fast hits, which is more Red. So, I did a little Yin Yang type thing, where they’re both RW, but in different concentrations.

Since you can choose who you start as, I made their card like the MDFCs as seen in Kaldheim (since Zendikari ones are just lands on the other side), but with the additional ability to transform into the other side (the card doesn’t have the right frame, but that’s because MSE2 doesn’t have it yet). This isn’t something that’s happened in Magic yet, and MaRo didn’t answer my ask as to whether it might be something to happen in the future, so we’ll see if I’m being prophetic.

Their non-transformative activated abilities are partly there to reinforce the Fire and Light themes, as Pyra has “firebreathing” (albeit a more expensive version than usual) and Mythra has White’s all-encompassing defensive attacks, which are typically drawn as beams of light.

i mentioned this before but the kaldheim mdfcs slap SO HARD

i especially love the barkchannel flavor text

also the art like DAMN

Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty is here and it brings one of the best cycles of lands ever printed in the channel lands. These are lands that are either just a good old land of the color they provide, or an almost uncounterable situational spell. But these got me stewing on the Zendikar MDFC lands. WHY DO PEOPLE LIKE THESE LANDS!? I remember when they were first spoiled, these cards were hyped up a lot. The Command Zone talked about their potential immediately, and on a recent commander clash podcast, the MTGGoldfish crew had a discussion on them as well, but they were split down the middle on using them or not. And I for one just don’t get it. I feel like I can confidently say that these cards are not generally playable.

But before I get into that, let’s talk about intent in Commander. Commander is about self-expression and social interaction. If you like these cards, please, play them. Commander should be exactly what you want it to be, and if these cards are how you like to play, you’re doing a great job. It is extremely hard to win consistently in Commander, so your desire when you sit down to play should not be to win with the most optimized deck possible. It should be to have a good time. Jank is cool. I love playing janky cards that are fun and not necessarily optimized, and there’s no problem with that. And just because these cards aren’t generically good, it doesn’t mean they can’t be good in certain decks. All of these cards will find value in a deck that synergizes with them, but that can be said of almost any card. Hell, 2/2 vanilla bears have a really awesome and powerful place in Commander, but that doesnt make them an auto include in every deck.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get into why I don’t like these cards. Some of The Goldfish crew mentioned that they are replacing lands in their decks with MDFC lands, because it functions as both the land and a spell. You can run 32 actual lands but technically have 37 lands in total. That sounds great, but that way of thinking about them seems completely backwards once I actually look at the cards and what they do.

Now, I’ll preface this by saying that the mythic cycle of these lands are really good, but that is due almost entirely to the fact that you have the option of having them come in untapped. These cards actually truly represent either a spell or a land in hand, and have great flexibility. Not to mention that the spell sides of these cards are just straight up powerful. These are pretty much an auto-includes in any deck if you can afford them.

The rest of the MDFC cards however, are pretty underwhelming. My favorite (or least favorite?) example of this is Tangled Florohedron. If you want, you can play it as a strictly worse forest that enters the battle tapped, or, you can play it as a strictly worse Llanowar Elves for 1 and a green. I can only think of 2 situations where running this thing is better than running either a forest or an elf. 1: your deck is landfall and you want as many triggers as possible, or 2: you’re playing elemental tribal and want a trigger off your Risen Reef attached to a mana dork. There is no other situation I can think of where this thing is the better option. If you see this in your opening hand, no worries, easy early turn play. As the game goes on though, I want to see these things less and less. No one wants to play a monocored tap land on turn 5, and it would be infinitely better if it was just the llanowar elf or basic land from that point on. Now this is a dissection of one card, but most of them are like this. Most of them are draft chaff spells on one side, and mono colored tap lands on the other.

The other major problem I have with these cards is that they have massively diminishing returns. Like I said before, turn 1, these are totally fine because you won’t always have a turn one play anyway. Turn 2 is where they really shine. Again, you might not always have a turn 2 play, but a lot of these can give you a card to play or, make sure you don’t miss a land drop. But every turn after that, both sides of the card get worse. A lot of these are instant speed, which sounds good in theory, but actually makes them harder to justify. A problem with so many of these spells is most of them are only situationally useful, but holding on to them and waiting for the situation almost defeats the purpose. If you need to already have another land in hand to be able to hold onto it, it isn’t actually doing you any favors. The point of the flexibility of these cards is that they can be a spell if you need, or a land drop if you need. But if you aren’t going to play the spell right away as you draw it, holding onto and not playing it as a land means you’re missing your (already slow) land drop if you don’t have another land in hand. I understand the argument that these cards reduce the chances of mana flooding and mana screw, which is true, but when the spells your drawing aren’t good and the lands your drawing are worse, I struggle to see the value gained.

As you get into decks with more than one color, these cards continue to lose viability. If you are playing a multi-colored deck, any land entering the battlefield tapped should be giving you at least two of the colors you need. Getting stuck with one of these when you need mana fixing only further slows down your plays. Now the land you play is tapped and useless the turn you play it, AND it only gave you one color.

So when I see the cards, I ask myself: would I have normally run the spell side in my deck if it didn’t have a land on the other side? If the answer is no, I wont put these cards in my deck. Instead of thinking of these as replacements to basic lands with upside, I think of them as replacements to other spells in my deck that can give me a suboptimal land drop in a pinch. If I need the land, there’s no situation where I would rather see this than a basic, and if I need the spell, 90% of the time there is a spell that does the exact same thing or better for less mana. These cards are bonus lands in a deck that already wants their effects, but are not good replacements for just good ol basic lands.

All this being said, I don’t actually want these cards to be better. The mythic MDFCs and the channel lands from Kamigawa are already auto-includes in mono colored decks as far as I’m concerned. It’s literally all upside. But if they continue to print better and better spell-lands, it will lead to a pretty significant homogenization of the format, and Magic as a whole for that matter. The MDFCs as they stand are about as good as I think should be allowed. We’ll see where the trend goes as we get further along in their design space, and how they shape the concept of what a land should do.