Mossfire Valley – Fallout. Originally in Odyssey (2001)
Date Reviewed: March 28, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 2.5
Casual: 4
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
The reprint of the Odyssey filter lands also came with the first printing of the enemy versions of the lands, and it seemed like reasonable pretext to talk about the entire tranche of lands. As far as lands go, they’re…interesting. I’d say that the Shadowmoor filter lands are generally better…but generally doesn’t’ mean always, and these are notable enough to stand on their own.
Mossfire Valley and its ilk are simple: pay any mana, get two specific ones out. These do not naturally tap for mana without investment, and you only get two mana of different colors, but they turn any mana into those two colors. This makes them acceptable in decks where you generally need a wider swath of mana symbols or tend to play a lot of specifically multicolored things. They’re poor plays on turn 1 and can’t be searched, but s far as lands go, they do the job and do them well as lands that don’t hit play tapped. They’re great in Commander, a format where you want as many useful duals as you can get…though their weaknesses are usually too much for Legacy to want much to do with them.
Constructed: 2.5
Casual: 4
Limited: 4 (color fixing was bad in Odyssey, and while there were fewer multicolor payoffs, they could still benefit from a bit of color correction)
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4
The first set where I got serious with Magic – as in properly learned how the rules work, and what I was actually supposed to be doing – was Odyssey. Mossfire Valley’s original version blew me away, mostly because of its art. I had been around enough to know what the Beta dual lands and the Ice Age painlands were, but this was the first card that showed me just how many variants of the concept there were in the multiverse, waiting to be discovered. I actually wish they’d reprint variants like these more often, because the pressure of designing unique ones for almost every plane clearly gets to them at times.
The design is quite interesting and was iterated on with the Shadowmoor cycle, where we got all ten in the space of two sets. While many people prefer the later versions, those ones can be awkward in three-color decks, and a lot of people also like to play three-color decks. In most cases, Mossfire Valley and its brethren are just a dual land, and everyone finds themselves needing dual lands at some point. Perhaps they’ll get some more attention with the Fallout release, because they were oddly obscure for no good reason: they do what they’re supposed to and they do it all the time.
Constructed: 2.5
Casual: 4
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4
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