Dark DepthsDark Depths | Mathias Kollros

Hello! Welcome back to 60 to 100, a series where we convert beloved decks from 60-card formats to Commander. When I first got into Magic, I wanted to see what all of the formats were about. I voraciously consumed all of the content I could find of the game's best players playing decks and formats that my inexperienced mind couldn't even begin to wrap my head around. In this time, Legacy very quickly became my favorite format to watch.

It felt like there was a deck for every conceivable type of strategy. From beating down your opponent with a Delver of SecretsDelver of Secrets backed up by DazeDaze and Force of WillForce of Will, to sacrificing Academy RectorAcademy Rectors to put Overwhelming SplendorOverwhelming Splendor, DovescapeDovescape, and Curse of Death's HoldCurse of Death's Hold into play, just about anything seemed possible.

In this article, I want to take a look at one of Legacy's most unique and most beloved decks: Lands. Living up to it's name, Lands is a deck that wins by playing lands and assembling combos with them. Let's have a look.

Breaking Down Legacy Lands

There've been a lot of variants of Lands through the years. I wanted to show off this version from 2019, before the banning of Wrenn and SixWrenn and Six, as it's the most iconic build in my mind. The primary win condition of this deck is using Thespian's StageThespian's Stage to copy Dark DepthsDark Depths. The copy of Dark DepthsDark Depths won't have any counters on it and you'll end up sacrificing both the original Dark DepthsDark Depths and the Thespian's StageThespian's Stage (one to the trigger and the other to the legend rule) to create a 20/20 Marit Lage token. This isn't all the deck is up to, though.

Like many decks in Legacy, Lands is also looking to disrupt the opponent's mana with cards like WastelandWasteland and Ghost QuarterGhost Quarter. Most players will fetch for their one or two basic lands to play around WastelandWasteland, but that will leave them with no additional basics to fetch off of Ghost QuarterGhost Quarter's ability. Both WastelandWasteland and Ghost QuarterGhost Quarter can be recurred with Life from the LoamLife from the Loam and Wrenn and SixWrenn and Six, so in a long game, someone playing against Lands could find themselves in real danger of losing all their mana sources.

My favorite interaction in the deck is between Grove of the BurnwillowsGrove of the Burnwillows and Punishing FirePunishing Fire. Punishing FirePunishing Fire is a burn spell that's good for picking off small creatures or finishing off an opponent with a low life total. Its ability to return itself to your hand when an opponent gains life is exploitable with Grove of the BurnwillowsGrove of the Burnwillows, a land that can force your opponent to gain life. This offers another form of inevitability as you can deal an opponent two damage and then give them back one life to do it over and over again.

The rest of the deck is what I like to call a Crop RotationCrop Rotation toolbox; you have a land for every situation. The Tabernacle at Pendrell ValeThe Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale shuts down creature decks, Field of the DeadField of the Dead provides inevitability in the late game, KarakasKarakas can keep problematic legends off the opponent's board (and bounce opposing Marit Lage tokens in the mirror match!), the list goes on. You may have noticed that every card mentioned in that list is either a Game Changer or on the Commander ban list. To get this one done, we might have to move up to the Optimized (4) bracket.

The Commander

I deliberated on a commander for this deck for a long time. There are a lot of good contenders across many colors, like The NecrobloomThe Necrobloom, but I was pretty set on a Gruul () commander so I could include red cards like GambleGamble, Wrenn and SixWrenn and Six, and Punishing FirePunishing Fire. Radha, Heart of KeldRadha, Heart of Keld offers a couple advantages that piqued my interest: she gives you access to lands on the top of your deck, like a Courser of KruphixCourser of Kruphix that you can play on turn three every game; and she acts as a backup win condition in the command zone.

The Lands

Unsurprisingly, I've included the Dark DepthsDark Depths and Thespian's StageThespian's Stage combo we went over earlier. Even though putting a 20/20 creature into play isn't as powerful in Commander as it is in 1v1 20-life formats, it's still pretty impactful. We can pull off this combo fairly early in the game and get straight to taking out opponents in two attacks. The ceiling for this combo is eliminating players, and the floor is having the world's best blocker in play. That's good enough for me.

Plus, with the high amount of recursion we're running, it should be fairly simple to replace your Marit Lage token if someone points a Swords to PlowsharesSwords to Plowshares at it.

Borrowing from a different archetype, Modern ScapeshiftScapeshift, this deck does include Valakut, the Molten PinnacleValakut, the Molten Pinnacle and a copy of Dryad of the Ilysian GroveDryad of the Ilysian Grove. Dryad of the Ilysian GroveDryad of the Ilysian Grove gives all land types to all of your lands. One of those land types happens to be Mountain, which will allow you to deal three damage to something each time a land enters with a Valakut, the Molten PinnacleValakut, the Molten Pinnacle in play. I'm not sure that you'll ever use this combo to kill the table all at once, even with a ScapeshiftScapeshift, but you can certainly use this to kill a player or even use it as a board wipe. For additional damage, VesuvaVesuva can enter as a second copy of Valakut, which may be enough to get the job done. If FastbondFastbond were legal, we'd easily be able to kill the table with this combo, but alas, that will have to be saved for formats like Canadian Highlander.

Next, we have lands that help keep us alive. This deck's strategy is fairly vulnerable to opponents deciding they've had enough and just swinging at you. In order for this deck to compete, particularly at the Optimized bracket pods it's looking to play in, some ways to keep the life total up is needed.

Glacial ChasmGlacial Chasm is fairly easy to maintain in this deck. You can decline to pay the cumulative upkeep and then recur it with Wrenn and SixWrenn and Six, Crucible of WorldsCrucible of Worlds, Life from the LoamLife from the Loam, and others like them. You can also play Glacial Chasm post-combat so your creatures can still attack. Playing more with this card has definitely proven to me that it deserves its status as a Game Changer.

Maze of IthMaze of Ith acts as a miniature Glacial ChasmGlacial Chasm. The way Maze of IthMaze of Ith plays in Commander is very funny to me. In theory, this card stops one attack per turn cycle. In practice, it often ends up keeping three attackers at bay because opponents don't want to risk getting their attacker neutralized by it. More hilarious to me is that even though I'm aware of this pattern, I still don't attack into the player with an untapped Maze of IthMaze of Ith as often as I probably should.

Potentially the least casual component of this deck is land destruction. It isn't as impactful as casting something like an ArmageddonArmageddon, but with Crucible of WorldsCrucible of Worlds and additional land plays each turn with cards like ExplorationExploration and Oracle of Mul DayaOracle of Mul Daya, you can remove a lot of lands from play each turn cycle. Even if you can't remove all opposing mana sources, you can usually cut off access to one of your opponent's colors for an equally devastating effect. If you were looking to power this deck down to play at more casual tables, this might be the first package I'd remove after trimming the lands that are Game Changers.

One of the potential weak points of this deck is the limited number of card draw effects. I'm hoping to mitigate this slightly by including lands with cycling that can be recurred with Life from the LoamLife from the Loam or Wrenn and SixWrenn and Six. Additionally, these cycling cards can be used to dredge back Life from the LoamLife from the Loam rather than drawing a card. In later stages of the game where you have access to a lot of mana, this can be used to see a lot of cards.

Tutors

This deck has a very high density of tutors to ensure that you can search out the lands you need for any given scenario. Crop RotationCrop Rotation is the best land tutor. It's only one mana, it puts the land into play untapped, and works at instant speed. GambleGamble is a bit of a fun one here. The deck plays so much recursion that any land you search for will become more accessible to you even if it gets discarded by GambleGamble. It's also particularly good at getting Life from the LoamLife from the Loam, a card that retrieves itself from the graveyard.

Realms UnchartedRealms Uncharted is essentially a Gifts UngivenGifts Ungiven for lands. My preferred targets with Realms Uncharted are Echoing DeepsEchoing Deeps, Shifting WoodlandShifting Woodland, Dark DepthsDark Depths, and Thespian's StageThespian's Stage. This gives you the Dark DepthsDark Depths combo no matter what your opponents choose to send to the graveyard.

Recursion

Land recursion is key to this deck's ability to function, so it has quite a bit of it. Crucible of WorldsCrucible of Worlds and Conduit of WorldsConduit of Worlds let you play lands directly from your graveyard. Life from the LoamLife from the Loam returns up to three lands to your hand and recurs itself with dredge. Wrenn and SixWrenn and Six is a recursion spell that can also kill creatures with one toughness and creates an emblem that isn't quite as back-breaking in a deck with so few instants and sorceries, but can still be relevant for recasting tutor spells like Crop RotationCrop Rotation.

On top of all that, we have additional recursion cards to get back our land recursion cards. Timeless WitnessTimeless Witness is at its best here, as you end up milling a lot of cards, and this one works just as well in the graveyard as it does in your hand.

Alternate Win Conditions

Finally, if you're looking for ways to win the game that let you go wide with a plethora of creatures, I've included two options. Titania, Protector of ArgothTitania, Protector of Argoth makes tokens whenever one of our lands hits the graveyard while also providing a way to recur one land. Omnath, Locus of RageOmnath, Locus of Rage is one of the few cards in the deck that cares about lands entering the battlefield, a rarity in land-centric strategies in Commander. Omnath spits out creature tokens when your lands enter and even does some burn damage when your creatures die.

I'm not entirely sure if the deck needs these effects at all, but both cards are incredibly fun to play with and I enjoy it when my decks have a diversity of ways to win the game.

Wrap Up

This was an incredibly fun one to work on. The test games I played with this deck were an absolute blast. There's some primal urge that lies within many Magic players that can only be satisfied by Strip MineStrip Mine locking an opponent.

If you've constructed your own take on Lands in Commander, I'd love to hear about it.