I've always really liked these lands. Lands that
come into play tapped are often held to favor
slow decks, and since so many dual land cycles
use the Invasion lands as their template, this
leads to many of those cycles being held to
favor slow decks as well. It was interesting to
see a cycle that seemed generally better for
aggressive strategies; the painlands had rotated
out not long before Scars of Mirrodin was
released, and these fit right in the place they
had vacated (at least for the relevant color
combinations). I also appreciated a certain
touch that some people didn't notice at all:
they all had flavor text. If it were up to me,
I'd give every card flavor text; if nothing
else, it's nice to have something to read when
you're hanging around in between games, or you
want to imagine what the air smells like over
the Quicksilver Sea.
I would love to see this cycle completed one
day, but I really don't know whether or when
we're likely to return to New Phyrexia. I'm not
sure it was as popular as Innistrad, much less
Ravnica or Zendikar, and it was almost too good
at what it did - it's terrifying and horrifying
and disturbing and confronting, and that's what
I remember about it more than any of the
mechanics.
Today's cards of the day are the Scars of
Mirrodin dual lands which enter play tapped if
you control more than two lands. These are
of course excellent at the beginning of the game
having no drawback until later on and that can
be reduced by certain points of the mana curve
relative to the cards in hand. Like other
choices these are usually better than the
generic enters play tapped lands and can fit
into any allied multicolor deck.
Great in early game, terrible late game. The
kind of lands you want to really budget yourself
on because otherwise you run into problems later
on when being able to fix, or being able to get
that extra mana that turn can win you the game.
it's balanced, but it feels like something's
missing in these guys.
