You can find our full rankings including many more lands here: i.imgur.com/ezEZ8V2.png

I will never understand how sometimes I completely disagree with Crim, and other times he is the only voice of reason.

4:05 - Temple of the False God 21:53 - Vesuva & Thespian Stage 31:38 - Strip Mine 40:25 - Castle Cycle 51:06 - Dryad Arbor 56:59 - War Room 1:08:40 - Scavenger Grounds 1:16:32 - Hideaway Land Cycle 1:25:18 - Reliquary Tower 1:31:13 - Field of the Dead 1:32:36 - Artifact Lands

I never thought I would again be happy with Temple of the False God in a deck, until I built Orvar. More than once I have played it and copied in order to turn both of them on. Potent.

Re: Temple of the False God, I've got two deck lists that run it successfully. One, as Seth mentioned, is a colorless Eldrazi deck, where I run enough lands that waiting to drop this on turn 5 is totally fine for the extra mana. The other is an Izzet storm deck that focuses on reducing the mana cost of instant and sorcery spells and playing things like Snap, Frantic Search and Rewind. Having an additional land that can tap for 2 and generate extra value off of being untapped has never been a downside. The biggest thing to be cautious of is keeping a sketchy opening hand with this land in it, or a hand with 2 or 3 land where you REALLY have to draw a not-Temple of the False God land. It hasn't been a problem in any of the games I've played with these decks. I don't think it's good in the majority of decks, but there can be uses.

I play Mosswort Bridge (the green hideaway land), in my simic sea monsters and mono-green voltron decks and that card does a lot of work. Being able to cheat a huge 7-9 mana sea monster into play for just 2 mana at instant speed is amazing. The fact that hideaway works around the spell's timing restrictions is super underrated.

I would like to see part 2 on utility lands there are so many good ones an bad ones that wasn't in the spotlight in this episode.

I'm with Tomer on Scavenger Grounds, that card has blown me out a ton. Also pretty toolbox fetchable with map or crop roto.

"B is for cards that are good in certain kinds of decks." Tomer: I think this works in [one kind of deck], so I give it a B. Everyone else for like 15 minutes: this card is NOT an A what are you talking about!?

I feel like you could've talked about High Market, Myriad Landscape, Homeward Path, Path of Ancestry, Bonder's Enclave, Rogue's Passage and so many more... Just reinforces the point that there's very many these days and choosing can be hard. Here's one you might not know yet: *Tower of the Magistrate* It enters untapped, taps for a colorless, or you can pay {1} and {T}ap it to give target creature protection from artifacts. Doesn't sound useful? This can completely shut down Voltron players. Forever (while you keep paying {2}). Just activate it in response to them trying to put Swiftfoot Boots on their commander, or trying to equip something high value like Sunforger. It'll stop that equip ability, and they can't do it again for the rest of the turn. If you have Voltron players in your pod, this card is so worth it, I can't even count how often it made the matchup favorable for me any more. And nobody notices the card, too. Oh, and it can also make you able to block Blightsteel Colossus or whatever other big artifact threat is coming your way. And some players still use artifact interaction like Unstable Obelisk, etc. And as a cherry on top, you can disable blockers like Solemn Simulacrum with it. It is also inexpensive. Highly recommended.

I feel like they generally are underrating the castles because the opportunity cost is pretty low. So long as it isn't your first or second land they are basically basics with upside if you don't have much to do with your turn

I always listen to these podcasts while aim training for fps games. Thank you for making this experience enjoyable, you all have great personalities.

I feel like if we get more cards like urborg and yamivaya, temple of the false god could see more play and be better. I would play it specifically in golgari since I auto include both those lands and making the downside way less

This topic definitely needs to have a part 2. Too many good utility lands to end here.

I feel like the low opportunity cost of the castle cycle was undervalued a bit in this assessment. Very easy for them to be untapped and then a minor/medium effect as an instant-speed option? Pretty good imo

I am now convinced that Blood Moon is a must play judging from you guys obsession with utility lands, Tomer is the only responsible person who has clearly had the fear of the Blood Moon instilled in him.

Ok, I will have to take a moment to defend my pal Crim here when it comes to Castle Vantress, this card has saved me so many times, flash decks just love it, you get to use your mana when your counters didn't find a target and can be a life savior if you were gonna get flooded and you really needed some interaction to save your skin. Also, I am biased cuz I play a LOT of Fires of Invention and since you never tap your lands to cast things you can easily use Vantress to scru for 2 at the end AND at the beginning of your turns since you never need your lands to casts stuff, I believe the ability to never burn your mana and using efficiently, even if it is to scry 2, it is worth it, in top deck mode? oof Letme scry for my answers while you are praying to the gods to not flood and keep getting lands *chef kiss* Castle Vantress is my crib, baby!

The one deck i run temple of the false god in is Gishath which costs 8 mana. Ive got 36 lands + 15 ramp spells that fetch lands. A third land that taps for 2 mana is huge to get closer to gishath.

"Green already has ramp, why does it want this?" Because it's a *utility land.* Tomer's swayed me on this, and I'll be putting this in Brinelin / Gilanra + Keruga.

Seth's sad like "nooo" when Crim bumped his Strip Mine rank down at 36:53 was so adorable

I’m 100% on the run more basics train. I can’t add up the amount of times I’ve never activated these lands while they were on the battlefield. Also, Scavenger grounds is the best!!!

Right off the bat I agree with Tomer on Temple of the False God. I only play it in green decks with multiple sources of land ramp. It does very well in my Titania deck, which basically any utility land I have in there does lol.

War room, endless atlas, and staff of nin are mono color auto incudes for draw power. They are budget friendly too since all 3 will run you under $12 total. In mono red loreseeker stone is clutch and in mono white gift of estates is heavily slept on among other budget land tax effects.

great video but PLEASE add Phil to the commander clash crew podcast! He'd fit so well with the group, as we've seen throughout his time on the Commander Clash gameplay :)

I liked seeing recognition for the hideaways! Windbrisk Heights and Spinerock Knoll (white and red) are as playable as everyone said, but I want to further support Mosswort Bridge (green). The condition is so easy to meet in a green deck in commander, and even if it's not a go tall deck like the mentioned Xenagos, any 4+ mana value card is a great outcome, and I'm pretty sure the effect lets you play a land outside of the one-per-turn limit too. Even smaller cards are coming off the top of the library instead of your hand (similar to red's pseudo-draw effects), and even if you get NOTHING playable, it gets a clump of cards you didn't need out of the way.

The misunderstanding of Mosswort bridge is astounding. You don't need a 10/10 for it to work. It reads total power so 5 2/2s works. It's my favorite tapped land

Heavily agree with Tomer on the Scavenger Grounds vs Strip Mine debate. The amount of times that the graveyard is how someone is comboing off, or even just using to get some insane value. Way more common than when someone is accruing that much value off a land. Especially when you’re playing the Vesuva type land copiers. I’d much rather have that be my way to just propel my game plan with that broken land than sacrifice one of my own to bring down one opponent.

TEMPLE OF THE FALSE GOD: Okay, after having the day off work and spending some time conducting my own research and thoughts, I want to give my own thoughts on this card, provide my own research numbers, and then give an overall opinion. I'm going to break this up into multiple sections, starting with: THE REPUTATION: Temple of the false god has a very bad reputation, ranging from humorous hyperbole to straight up overblown detest. Recently, I put together a mono blue stompy sea creature deck with Nezahal as the commander. Being a mono blue deck with a high mana curve and a commander costing 7 mana, I decided to run Temple as one of my lands. Anecdotally speaking, the card has worked wonderfully. And every time I play it, someone at the table always cracks the same joke. "I've never seen it work before" Like the fact that I got it down with four or more lands was an impressive feat. I love that kind of banter but it got me thinking: People are far too salty about this card. The fear of Temple not working has blinded everyone into thinking that getting it to work is difficult and this has lead to a player base that is taking their criticisms of this card WAY TOO FAR and way off in the wrong direction. This is why I am here to give you: THE FACTS: probability is a huge factor in what makes this card what it is. What is the probability that you will have four lands in play on turn four, thereby allowing you to play this on turn five and activate it. Here are my findings: Let's say you're running a 37 land hand and you have three lands in your opening hand. That's seven cards right there. Then you need to get to turn 5. That's four draw steps and then on turn five you play temple. For the sake of these numbers, we are going completely on one card draw a turn. Of course, if you run a ramp spell or card draw or even scrying effects, these percentages fall far more in favor of temple. You have roughly a 12% chance that Temple shows up in your opening hand or in the first five cards you draw. Beyond that you draw it later at which point I hope to god you have enough lands to make it work. So going from there, with three other lands in your opening hand, you need to draw one land in four turns. The odds of you not drawing a single other land on four straight draw steps in a 37 land deck are 15.8%. drawing one more card reduces it to 10%. One more card and you're down to 6%. so in the average deck, one with no card draw being played in the early game, no ramp spells being cast, no scrying, etc. you have a 12% chance of having a 15.8% chance of failure. That's 15% of 12%. The vast majority of the time it's either coming down active or you never draw it. And this is the average build. If you're running a deck with a lot of card draw, looting effects, or ramp, your percentages are so far in your favor that chances of failure are marginal. If you're keeping opening hands with low land counts or playing decks with low land counts, you're putting yourself in a position to get mana screwed and that's on you. Also, playing temple on turn four and top decking a land on turn five isn't the worst thing in the world. For one, you aren't missing your land drop, and two, that next land puts you right back ahead in total mana available to you. It feels like playing a tap land but it's far better than missing the land drop altogether. SO SHOULD YOU PLAY IT? Do you want free ramp? Then maybe. Colorless eldrazi decks have no choice. You need a ton of mana and you need to get it by any means necessary. This card will show up in every kozelik deck for the rest of time. decks where your commander costs 6 or more mana should consider it as it can get your commander out a turn early. Obviously color intensive decks don't want a colorless land so I wouldn't for a five color deck unless that deck has a nasty mana curve that forced you to play a ton of ramp. And decks that ramp hard want temple because they're also running big spells and if they can get away with running temple safely and casting haymakers quicker then why not? Asking why mono green ramp decks need temple is like asking why control decks need counterspells or why elf ball decks need elves. It's what it does. Run it in a commander deck based around casting spells with (X) in the casting cost. Those kinds of decks are happy to draw temple super late as it makes their win con X spells super splashy, while drawing a tapland feels really bad. Also run it in decks where the commander has an activated ability that can be triggered multiple times. Emiel decks would love temple super late because it would nearly pay for a whole blink on it's own. These are decks that have abilities to sink as much mana into that they can and that makes temple a welcome draw at any stage of the game, whereas a super late temple isn't great in some decks that have nothing to do with it. WHEN YOU GET DOWN TO IT: Temple is a free ramp spell. Unlike most ramp spells where you invest your mana into a rock or into a kodama's reach in order to have more mana in the future, temple is a play and pay kind of card. Grip it and rip it. No mana investing needed. And that's the beauty of it. And me personally, I like playing more "fun" decks and sometimes this means running cards with higher CMCs. Truthfully, I can't even count the number of times Temple has let me get away with running jank builds. Ramping me for free in the mid game so I can play my big stuff in the late game. These are the cards I want to play and I refuse to lower my curve to play cards that don't make me happy. IN CONCLUSION: Be responsible with your landbase. Treat your landbase as if temple of the false god is always in your deck. Because if you're missing land drops consistently on turn four like all of the Temple haters seem to do, then you seriously need to play more lands. Really ask yourself. "How many times am I mana screwed with only three lands in play?" and that'll give you a good idea on how consistent temple would be in your deck. Anyways, that's my take. To anybody who made it this far, I hope you enjoyed my perspective and I hope I made you look at this card differently. And thank you guys for the great Magic content. Love what you do.

My personal assessment of utility lands generally focuses around the mana/opportunity cost involved and the effect produced. Personally, I think many people overvalue utility lands because they envision having a ton of extra mana or not needing the land to be untapped or able to produce a color. However a well-built deck generally is able to make near full use of their mana every turn. Making a lot of use of your utility lands (outside of a dedicated Lands Deck) is generally a sign that your build is not as optimized as it could be. Colorless lands is a huge opportunity cost once you get into 3 colors. Having more than 3 tap lands in a deck that looks to curve out or sink mana every turn is another huge cost. Any land that requires 3+ mana to activate needs to at least give you one card's worth of value. Any land that requires you to sacrifice it needs to give you a card and 3-4 mana worth of value.

I agree with tomer on the temple of the false god. I think the problems with the discussion in the video are 1, the table isn't really listening what tomer is trying to relay (he gave it a B, it's good in a specific subset of decks - and it's not even a small subset by his arguments) and 2, tomer didn't really defend his point as well as he could have. In a green deck that really wants to ramp, if you have temple of the false god and can cast any 2 OR 3 mana land ramp, you get to 6 mana on turn 4. Any 2 cmc on t2 gets a 4drop on 3 and 6 drop on 4, which is the best case, but any 3 mana also gets you to 6 mana on t4. And any time you get it after you have 4 lands it is also free ramp if you add it as a spell rather then a land it's still pretty good.

Crim's thought process strongly involves hating green and its so funny.

Great timing for this episode, as I just recently embarked on my first colorless deck. Interesting to hear the discussions regarding color-based lands, but the non-color lands are even more relevant to me at the moment. Very helpful info! (I for one do also like the longer episodes like these.)

Temple of the false god is not a utility land in the first place, it is fast mana in a slow slot. Utility lands do something other than generate mana for you or do something as well as generating mana for you. Gaea's Cradle isnt a utility land, Ancient tomb isnt a utility land, so why is this suddenly utility? Scavenger Grounds isnt in the same classification as Strip mine, strip mine goes 1 for 1 to remove a single land threat, Scavenger Grounds goes 1 for 10+ cards minimum at instant speed for 3 mana, on top of this, if you are running Scavenging grounds and you opt to use its exile effect, you probably already assessed that your graveyard is nowhere near the threat level that your opponent's is, so you already know you losing your graveyard is worth what your opponent is losing twice over.

Mosswort Bridge is great in most creature heavy green decks, cause it’s total power 10. So ten 1/1s, two 5/5s, etc turn it on. Super good in my Gishath deck

My two favorite utility lands are scavenger grounds and thespian sage(Richard has shown me the ways)

I can tell I have a different style of play from the crew. I love big mana decks (like Zaxara, Gishath) and Temple of the False God is legitimately one of the best lands I can draw.

The pendulum has gone too far against Temple of the False God. I've told everybody for years that it is bad in most decks, and I still agree. However, I recently built Kogla and Wort back-to-back, which ramp a lot with lands like Tomer explains, and yeah, it outperforms. Temple is one of the best lands in those decks, especially when late-game I play effects that make me fetch any land. With high-cost commanders that you will need to replay with the tax, Castle Garenbrig is not enough, you want all of those ramp-lands.

I agree with Crim 1000% on the Castle cycle. EoT activation for no opportunity cost is worth it. White, Black and Blue castles are gas.

Commander Clash Crew: “Why would you run a land that does nothing until you have 5 lands? You’ve already lost by then! What about all my bounce lands and Urza’s Sagas and other decks without green ramp?” Also Commander Clash Crew: “Field of the Dead (a land that’s literally a tapped wastes until you have seven unique lands) is the best land ever printed! Run it in every commander deck ever!”

I feel like the hideaway lands are really good. The green white and red ones are so easy to trigger you can almost always get the card. In any mono or two color decks it's probably worth it to run them.

The math is sound however, as a GREEN LANDS player, I will say, Temple of the False God is FANTASTIC…at starting fires…just tear it up a little bit to get some papery edges, they catch fire quick and act as great kindling. Temple does not go in any deck in my collection, temple only goes in my fireplace to keep me warm in the winter.

I feel like Dryad Arbor is a weird include on this list. There's a long list of lands that were excluded, really prolific ones that see more play. I'd really like to see a part 2.

Castle ardenvale feels really good in a Kyler deck, where it's like 5 mana to put out a 4/4, put a counter on Kyler and pump the team

I agree that Reliquary Tower is overrated, but the “pick the best seven” argument is, too. Why have to choose when you can keep them all? If you draw 50 cards and discard 43 of them, you might end up discarding something you didn’t need at the time, but will wish you had before your next turn. Counterspells stop a lot, but not everything. Now if you know you can win the same turn you draw those cards, yeah, it’s pointless. And if you don’t think you’ll be drawing that many cards in most games, also pointless, especially in 3+ colors. But I have several decks that draw a lot of cards and don’t usually win that turn. It’s nice to hold onto everything just in case.

I feel Crim’s energy on castle ardenvale so much, because if having enough basics isn’t an issue, what’s the downside to it?

For a group that is dissatisfied with the RC being inconsistent you guys are also wildly inconsistent

I run Temple of the False Gods in my Arixmethes deck, now is that a flavor include and a specific deck that's likely to get a lot of lands out fast (especially since the commander is a land) yeah, but hey, it's pretty good there

For me the question with the castle cycle is "Are they worse than a basic?". I probably wouldn't play them in four or five color, they would come in tapped too often.

I went in thinking that temple of the false gods was pretty alright and Tomer’s B seemed pretty reasonable, but the amount of times he pushed the land ramp is good made me realize how underwhelming it really is. I don’t think two colorless makes a difference on turn 4 if you’re going to ramp at all

Been listening back through these cuz theyve got fun banter, and i think itd help soooo much changing C tier to include "super niche include" as opposed to having every episode involve a 20 min argument of someone trying to talk the crew up to a B on a card that ONLY sees play in the Kaldra every equipment deck or something, because it sees play in that one specific deck. I feel B should be for cards that can go into Decksss, plural.

Ardenvale is best for equipment decks. It's a land that also acts as a creature when you get wiped. It turns back on your engine when everyone is down on resources. Embereth can also end the game by entire turns which is very important because it prevents your opponents from getting answers.

Hell yes! Just when I needed to procrastinate

Anecdotally, the last gaming session I activated both Locthwain and War Room, on the same turn, also went on to win. This was an Orzhov deck. My philosophy is same as Seth's-- better to include them and never be in a position where you can't draw. Digging wins games, even drawing nothing helpful gets you to the good-stuff underneath. These are cards that stealthily win games.

Castle Vantress is interesting. Like Crim mentioned, its very good in control decks and some control or hell stax decks can abuse it to nauseating degrees. Especially intersting is that it could be a second Divining Top for a Counterbalance stax, brutal card.

I love when Tomer says "Leave a comment down below" when discussing temple of the false gods. TOo funny! haha

I agree with Tomer here on Temple of the False Gods. It is great in decks using efficient land ramp because the numbers are very much in your favour. Even moreso in a landfall deck where you have 40+ lands. Just mathematically it's tough not to agree. That being said, I still don't run it in many decks. I think Ancient Tomb's appeal (not that I own one) is that it adds 2 mana fast. It will do something in turn 1-3 which is when you want to be ramping which offsets the fact that it adds colourless mana because it's helping you cast other ramp that has minimal colour requirements. Playing a colourless land in turn 4-5 is not ideal because that's when the demand for colour is greater and it's less likely to be trying to just cast signets or Cultivate that only needs one green pip.

I run Temple of the False God in Muldrotha and Roon because they are high cost commanders, and Roon even has the 2 mana activated ability. I think i've had it be dead once or twice in easily 20+ games.

I don’t think the situations Crim’s talking about where someone plays incidental artifact removal and your artifact land is the only target come up very often in most groups. At an average table, by the time someone plays Reclamation Sage, _someone else_ probably has a rock. Rocks are everywhere in EDH. I do think artifact sweepers like Vandalblast or Hour of Revelation are too risky though. Not that there are a lot of those, but they do hurt when they show up. I don’t know if it outweighs the benefits they provide enough to not run them, but it makes you consider it.

I can't believe that Scavenger Grounds is so rated so low... why compare it with Bojuka bog? Not everyone plays black!

Hideaway lands : red ­­> green > white. The red one can be triggered by oponents.

Temple of the false god always works in my omnath deck because it is basically half lands and the other half is ramp/payoffs. Two ramp spells and then turn 3 onward it’s like a sol ring that procs landfall. Tomer is right you just need a lot of land ramp to virtually eliminate the downside to play it, otherwise keep it out

The fact they were arguing over which castles were better shows how good all of them actually are lol.

It shows that you all haven't been exposed to enough blood moon + ruination + back-to-basics. I constantly push for mass basics and fetchs when playing any URx decks so I can run ruination and back-to-basics and every time I pop one of those two off it almost always ends well for me.

Reliquary Tower as a safety net against Cyclonic Rift is, I suspect, an important part of its appeal. Having to discard down to handsize even after replaying your board can hurt, and Tower sidesteps that. I still think it's overrated in other contexts. Also, you've sold me on Temple in Mono Green and any deck with lots of card draw. I'll try it.

Temple of the False God is a budget Ancient Tomb which means it will be played in real life paper decks.

I'll play vasuva in decks that run cards like lotus field which is all my white decks without green because White's catchup game is great when you can artificially put yourself behind in lands and not mana. Scorched Ruins and the bounce lands are other amazing cards to copy but without those I'll avoid them.

The floor with vesuva is so bad though since its a tap basic, but yeah the ceiling is decent. I just dont see it as cedh worthy and too weak for casual were lands arent always powerful like ancient tomb. Idk i would run vesuva but would consider thespians stage.

Seth is right about Temple of the False God, ramping when you already would have 5 mana isn’t great unless you have a commander at 6 or something specific to hit with that. It’s the slowest possible fast mana.

On TotFG the pro argument was well thought out. The anti argument was “uh it’s 2024! We don’t play this card anymore!” They didn’t present any good reasons why he was wrong and almost seemed to not even hear what his reasoning was.

There's also something you're missing on the discussion of temple of the false god. I actually run it in over half of my decks. The downside becomes dramatically less important when you're running effects like Urborg, Yavimaya, chromatic lantern etc... I even jam it into decks with bouncelands as you can tap it for mana with the bounceland trigger on the stack to get the mana benefit. For me, this is a free ramp spell most of the time and very rarely does it do nothing.

the temple of the false god discussion was frustrating, and I completely agree with Tomer. if you are in a land ramp deck it is just free mana, and I really don't understand why the others were trying to argue that 1 extra mana isn't good in a green deck. My personal tech is to play it with hour of promise and it is very easy to make that card ramp 4 if you are playing ancient tomb as well. I wouldn't play it outside green or at higher budget, but that is still a significant chunk of decks and I would also argue it is decent if you have a lot of card draw or looting

Keep it up, these podcasts have been really good! It's refreshing to see all the genuine disagreements, hot takes and everything in between when too often content is all safe and sterile.

Having reviewed it, Temple of the False God needs to be in my Gargos deck, because its ramp is geared towards untapping lands for multiplicative effects.

I think there's a big difference between thespian stage and vesuva Thespian stage enters untapped and doesn't copy etbs. Visuva always enters tapped and copies the etbs. Of you thespian's stage a bounce land or a lotus field you are ahead and if you vesuva a thespian's stage or bounceland you still have to bounce/sac a land. Also always entering tapped is a big downside compared to thespian's stage I put stage in many decks but I don't put visuva in very many decks.

I am split alongside Crim and others with the Castle Cycle. The decks that have cards like Zirda, Hearthstone, Training Grounds and even Biomancer's Familiar will love this cycle of lands for value. I've seen many games where a couple turns of an animated Castle from a Nissa etc. can pull that player ahead. Being abilities that are generally safe and a land slot in the deck feels great.

On temple of the false gods: Tomer gives an argument based on facts, rest of the crew...but emotions!

One hot take: temple of the false god in a land ramping deck is frequently online in turn 3 or 4, where it's basically a sol ring. It's also quite good when you're running something like weathered wayfarer, which can tutor it whenever it's actually online. I would absolutely not keep it in my opening hand if it was one of my two lands. Vesuva/Thespians stage: I think vesuva is A tier at best, as it's wholly situational as to whether or not it's actually relevant. Thespians stage is A because it's always able to become relevant.

Another bonus to hideaway lands is even if you get Seth's terrible Land-Land-Mana Rock-Mana Dork when attempting to Hideaway, well you just buried 3 of those four cards on the bottom of your library.

Scavenger grounds is nice in my mill deck, exiling graveyards is really important in mill and having it on a land is very nice

My rating on same lands: Temple of the false god C. I agree on tomer use it on decks that have a lot of landramp and it has no downside, play it else where and its a D or worser. Esp green has a ton of those with 3 mana or less + put additional lands, so thats valid there but outside of green... Pls dont. Vesuva and thespian's stage A. Good but fair as long you dont tutor them, with potential combos/ insane value. Strip mine B. It at least gives mana but you want to use it as a last resort and it has to not count as removal. Castle green A, mana + is good. black B carddraw if screwed is cool, rest D. White is even below D cause you have animate lands and field of the dead. Driad is a D for disapointment arbor. It's good, outside of edh. Maybe. War room C at best. Just play more carddraw instead pls. It might help out if the rng-gods trolling you. Scavenger grounds S-tier. You need every gravehate. yeah there are other lands that do better, but still you need everyone of them as long you dont play rest in peace or leyline of the void to shut down graves completely sometimes even then its a good idea to also have every land that hates on graves. We have so much decks outside of reanimate that hard profit from having a grave and you dont allways have the space to hate them, outside of lands. So thats a cheap way. Maybe its cause if my own meta that i highly recommend to play at least every land that hates graves, but i feel on it like on the stripmine better have an answer then not in a format everything need an answer. Hide lands i give them an C. Most times you dont want to jump those hoops. Green again easyest but it still feels bad. Reliquary tower B. Neat having more options even if the mana doesnt help to play them all out. Bad if you want to discard cause you play with grave synergies. Field is S. Agree. Just free value and comes tapped as downside is a jocke. Artifact lands C. Outside of artifact decks not useable even the indestructable. Here take a 🍪. Thanks for reading. If you have other options or agree on some, feel free to share them :)

I have a draw engine in my orzhov lifegain deck that can allow me to draw half my deck by turn 3 to 5. It runs entirely off of lifegain/lifeloss draw effects, but the important part is not about how many cards I draw, though it does give me a huge edge. Rather, it allows me to turn my lifetotal into an aetherflux reservoir where I drain my life with a necropotence, an ad nausem, or a toxic deluge and I regain all that life with a children of korlis or a tainted sigil while maybe even draining someone out with a sanguine bond effect. In this way, I can get to my actual wincons without losing all my life while taking one person out of the game. Castle Locthwain is nice for this because it gives me card draw early in the game and allows me to turn on this aetherflux reservior drain (when I need it) without drawing out the rest of my deck. In some cases, I can even win the game this way, especially when combined with Orzhov Guildmage who drains all opponents and can stack her ability.

I think temple of the false gods was replaced by guildless commons if you're going for a budget. Then if there is no budget then you just play ancient tomb. At least guildless commons isn't a dead card after the turn you play

Overdrawing and discarding to hand size his the best mechanic in magic for a graveyard deck :D That's what my Kathril deck does.

Tomer: "You need rampant growth effects to make Temple of the False God work" Everybody else: "But it's sooo bad in mono-white!" :D I feel you Tomer. I run Temple in 2 Decks, Azusa and Kruphix. In the former, it's so easy to turn on on turn 3-4, and in the later i have a lot of untap effects to store more mana into Kruphix, so a land tapping for 2 is really valuable.

I am fully in the Reliquary Tower is trash camp. In my two decks that can reliably get more than seven cards I have plenty of ways to use the graveyard so discarding to seven is barely a downside. And I agree with Richard that if you can't win with the best seven you also can't win with the fifty or whatever.

One thing people used to do with dryad arbor is hide it in their land area so an opponent wouldn't notice then polymorph it into Emrakul for free and Vesuva is good for eldrazi decks when you use locus lands to hard ramp

Duuuuude could you imagine an MDFC basic land with Temple of the False God on the back side? That would be so busted lmao

There is another argument against Reliquary Tower: drawing *too many* cards. In my enchantress deck, I could be drawing 3 to 5 cards for ever spell cast. You gotta cast spells to win the game, but there comes a point where you will deck yourself before you can actually win. I took out reliquary tower because it isn't uncommon in my Sythis deck to dig thru every card in my library... *twice*, and if I didn't have any deck recursion, I'd deck myself. I found it to be crucial to be running a shuffle titan or elixir of immortality, and pitch cards from my hand into my graveyard, so I can have enough library to cast enough spells to win.

Hmm.. for me, I'd say I generally agree with our hosts here: * Temple of the False Gods: D (I don't think I'll even play it, even on a budget) * Vesuva/Thespian Stage: A (Agree with Tomer on it, I don't think I've ever actually used it and has some sound reasoning for why I should put it into my deck) * Strip Mine: A (I like having some unconditional answers) * Castles: C (I mostly like Castle Locthwain, only one I'm rating a B.. I actually don't like Castle Garenbrig because it only produces green and only for creatures, I can't quite put it into more generic decks or in multicolour decks as effectively, it might be okay in two-colour decks but very painful in three-colour) * Dryad Arbor: C (I know there's combos, but I don't play them, it's an expensive tapped Forest for me) * War Room: B * Scavenger Grounds: B (Even on Black decks with Bojuka Bog, I like to run it, it's definitely a top pick if you don't really interact with your own graveyard.. even better when there's multiple problematic graveyards) * Hideaway: C (Enters tapped, single colour, I'd rate the green a B, it's not too hard to setup and can be executed at any time during an opponent's turn) * Reliquary Tower: B (honestly, even dumping excessive cards in your graveyard isn't the worst, I do play it in decks that draw a ton of cards) * Field of the Dead: S (only knock against it is that it comes at the cost of a lot of basics due to deckbuilding construction) * Artifact Lands: D (artifact board wipes are a pain, the tapped Indestructible ones I'd consider a C though.. also with Farewell on the table now, I'd like my lands in tact) S = very strong, I need a reason against it to not play it A = solid, often play B = situational, good upside, still play C = situational, I need a reason to play it D = generally avoid

The Castle Vantress mana cost issue was totally fixed of course recently with Rivendell...same exact card abilities except you must control a Legendary Creature on the board for Rivendell...but just one blue, one colorless to Scry 2...definitely worth the cost comparatively

I'm still using Temple of the False God in most of my decks, basically as a budget Ancient Tomb.

run temple of the false god in a spell slot, if you play it as your fifth land, it's a mana crypt :)

Tomer's analysis is correct for Temple of the False God. If you are a green deck that is ramping on either turn 2 or 3 (or both) it will enter on turn 4 and give immediate value. If it's later in the game you're almost guaranteed to get value. No downside unless you're like, mono-green devotion and can't cast stuff with it.

I feel like temple of the false god is just generally good in control decks that have good card draw or even rummaging effects. I have seen it be very powerful in izzet-control with a spell-slinger subtheme.

I still play Temple of the False God bc of the math Tomer mentioned. I play it in a Sultai land reanimator deck with Zuran Orb as a jank win-con card: Tap for 2, sac and gain 2 life, recast off something like Ramunap Excavator, tap for another 2, sac again, gain another 2 life. Keep replaying it twice or more every turn, and if you have Marauding Blightpriest and/or Epicure of Blood, you drain your opponents for half the life you gain from Zuran each turn. Sanguine Bond is a more efficient, less budget choice, and the Exquisite Blood combo with it seals the game for you.

You can see really clearly here that Crim is the only true control player. His argument for the blue and white castle are spot on. I do understand the power is a little different in commander but Crim nailed it. I can't even count the number of times I've used the scry land playing control and felt good about it

With urborg and yavamaya you can run temple with an even higher chance of it being good since it can tap for whatever basic land type you add to it if it comes out early

Best case scenario I've had with Temple of the False God wasn't 6 mana on turn four. It was seven mana on turn 2. Getting Angry Omnath out when everyone else is still building out their board feels real good.

If you need to play around edicts and stuff like that, Dryad Arbor and Khalni garden become a very powerfull weapon if you have crop rotation in hand.

I think of all the castle lands, red is the most misunderstood. People say the blue one is okay because you play an instant speed deck but don't you rather play an instant speed spell? And the same counts for like the white one, the green and black ones are just good but the red one is different because you don't really add an effect that adds +1/+0 to your krenko deck for example but if it's on a land that you can sometimes use and get quite a lot of power out of I think it's actually really strong, so honestly in a deck like that I'd definitely include it.