The single most important thing about winning and playing Magic is having a good mana base. Everything from what cards you can include due to mana costs to deck construction to play is about mana. We have epic stories about mana flood or mana screw or color screw. Mana is the foundation on which we summon creatures, lash out with sorceries, use artifacts, and battle as planeswalkers. Mana is both the least sexy and most important aspect of playing Magic, and you have to control it and understand it to function.

Land fetchers are vitally important because they help to ensure that you have enough lands and that they are of the right colors. Additionally, if a card puts a land directly into play, it accelerates your mana development, which is also crucial. Therefore, good land fetchers make most decks better. Today, I will consider each card in the context of casual only. Land fetchers that are good in tournaments are not necessarily the bombs in Causal Land.

I created a list of twenty-five cards I felt were the best at doing this job from all across the spectrum and then narrowed into a Top 10. Like all of my articles, I have three Honorable Mentions that are numbers thirteen through eleven. Are you ready? Let’s begin!

Honorable Mention #0 – Crop Rotation

It can also be used in response to targeted land removal if you sacrifice the land that was going anyway. It’s better than Harrow despite the fact it retrieves just one land—it grabs any land, and that’s a rare and beautiful thing. (I forgot a card on the list and included it later when editing my article. This dropped everything below it, and Crop Rotation fell off, making it number 14, but I left this paragraph here, already written, so you could see what card was next).

Honorable Mention #1 – Realms Uncharted

This is a card that’s not what we thought, but it is still quite good. You do need to play it in a deck that has a lot of different lands in order to best abuse it. Take one of my Commander decks: It has Command Tower, Tropical Island, Breeding Pool, and Misty Rainforest all in it. This can net me two of those cards. Even in a depowered deck, you can find Salt Marsh, Jwar Isle Refuge, Frost Marsh, and Secluded Glen to make the other colors in a deck built around The Mimeoplasm or something. And don’t forget that you are in the color of cards such as Cartographer and Tilling Treefolk.

Honorable Mention #2 – Sakura-Tribe Elder

There was a time when I think we would all seriously consider an argument that STE was one of the top five land fetchers of all time. That’s no longer the case. Sure, a lot of decks would want STE over other cards, such as a Landline deck or a Snake deck, but the fact is that STE dominated Standard and our hearts for a while, but it never really stood the test of time. Now that you can’t put damage on the stack when you block or attack and want to sac for a land, its value drops even more. It’s still a fine card for a lot of decks, but I see it less and less at casual night, and no one misses it.

Honorable Mention #3 – Veteran Explorer

The Explorer is a brilliant mana accelerant for several reasons, but the card disadvantage of giving away so many lands to others can hurt. Don’t forget that he snags you two fresh basics into play and untapped. There are many combo decks that are built around that. Add a simple Skullclamp and Enduring Renewal to draw most or all of your deck. From there, any small combo can win the game. That’s just one combo off the top of my head, and there are many more here.

However, where this guy really shines is in multiplayer, where he often draws a Terminate or Rend Flesh, and then dies to give everyone two lands. He’s like a green Duress that strips out removal and quickens the game by two turns—you ramp to the good stuff faster. He can, no joke, speed up a game by about five minutes. That’s an awesome feat for a little guy!

10 – Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds

Are you ready for the Top 10 list to begin? Well, let’s start with the best fetch lands for Casual Land. Sure, the pain fetches rule the roost in competitive formats built around land bases with a ton of dual lands, but outside those formats, these two guys are the best fetches you’ll find in the land box. Since they retrieve any basic land for you, they can fit into any size deck from two colors on up. They guarantee a land that makes the color that you need the most. They are also cheap to find and available by the hundreds for your card stock. There’s no reason not to add them to dozens of decks, and they are a great choice for casual players everywhere.

9 – Far Wanderings

There is nothing grander than three lands for 3 mana right onto the battlefield. No spell or creature betters that. Therefore, Far Wanderings deserves a space on this list, but the early-game restriction really pulls it down, and I think the 9 spot is a nice place to put it. In a post-Innistrad world with a lot of ways to fill your graveyard quickly, this has really improved in value.

8 – Weathered Wayfarer

The first card on the list that is neither green nor colorless is this wonder from the old days. The ability to spend 1 white mana and this guy to search your deck for any land and place it into your hand is keen. However, you opponent must have more lands than you in play to use the ability. Without that restriction, this is a top-three card. Even with it, this card is awesome because you can tutor for any land. My favorite trick is to include it in decks with cycling lands. I find Secluded Steppe and then cycle it for 1 white. I turned this into a 2-mana Jayemdae Tome. Since I didn’t play the land, I can tap the Wayfarer again and again to use that trick as well. You can also use it to grab a utility land such as Kor Haven or Emeria, the Sky Ruin.

7 – Armillary Sphere

This is a great card for so many decks because it nets you two lands, right now, for any color. Sure, it’s 2 to play and 2 to sacrifice, and green would rather play other cards that put lands into play for that mana level, but beggars can’t be choosers. If you aren’t playing green, this is among the best options for you.

Like most of the cards on the Top 10, the Sphere is card advantage for casual decks, no matter whether they are duels or multiplayer. I like them in mono-colored decks as well—two lands for one card is never out of style, especially when I am playing a deck that really wants a bunch of lands. It likes friends such as Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle or mono-blue control.

6 – Expedition Map

Another common sacrifice artifact from a recently printed set arrives at the 6 spot. It is the highest-charting card that is not card disadvantage. If you want to tutor for any land, the best green can do is a 2-mana sorcery called Sylvan Scrying. This is a 3-mana total investment, and any deck can tutor for any land. The ability to grab Cabal Coffers or Urzatron lands in any deck is quite powerful. Anything from Cloudposts to creature lands are in season with this guy. When you are color hosed, he can secure you a needed color (or more than one; a common target is Command Tower in my Commander games). Expedition Map enables a lot of decks. Now it’s time for the top five; are you ready?

5 – Yavimaya Elder

You invest Tidings-like mana and reap one card, one creature, and two lands. To this day, it’s among the best card-drawing cards in green. If you don’t spend any mana to sac it for a card, you still fetch two lands when it croaks.

You can drop it early and use it as a speed bump or just watch it die to the very common mass removal and seize two lands from it. It combos well with cards such as Obliterate. This is a powerful card to this day that will make decks hum.

4 – Solemn Simulacrum

Our highest-charting colorless card is this classic card affectionately called many names. I prefer to call it by the name Emo Robot. Any deck can benefit from dropping it on turn four, grabbing a land for the battlefield, and then passing the turn. You don’t mind chumping or attacking in a suicidal rage, either, since you’ll receive a card from its death, making it an interesting two-for-one. Just like Eternal Witness is usually more powerful that Regrowth because you can abuse the creatureness of it, you can flicker, bounce, or recur this for more and more lands (maybe even cards!). Many decks use this reliably, and I can only imagine how many more would do so if it were printed as an uncommon or common. It would be in the running for the most commonly played uncommon of all time. All right: Top three time!

3 – Land Tax

It has the weakness of many white card-searching cards that your foe has to have more lands than you. However, when that happens, you will annex three cards a turn with your taxes, every turn, for no additional investment beyond the initial white mana it took to play the card. It works with everything from Fastbond and Exploration to Scroll Rack and Seismic Assault.

You often fuel combo decks or control decks with it. It also strips out many lands from your deck, and over a few turns, it dramatically reduces your chances of drawing a land, thus increasing card quality from the rest of your deck. This is a powerful card that deserves its spot in the top three.

2 – Krosan Tusker

I really like to look at Krosan Tusker as a split card. On one hand, you have a 6/5 creature for 7 mana, which is obviously on the slow side, but it is certainly pertinent to the red zone. On the other hand, you have an instant for that draws a card and tutors a basic land for your hand. That’s an amazing card for green. Obviously, you’ll play that side more than the other, but when you need it, you have the 6/5 boar beast ready to pounce. It’s like Order // Chaos. I play Order ninety-five percent of the time, but when I play Chaos, I’m glad I had it. The same is true of Tusker. The ability to always grab two cards (and usually avoid counterspells in doing so) is nice.

You also fill up your graveyard with a creature as you’re doing so. A lot of decks and strategies like that—such as Living Death, Nature's Resurgence, and Boneyard Wurm. The combination of Tusker’s value in specific decks as well as the general usefulness and card advantage of the cycling ability to obtain cards cheaply, combined with the versatility of the card to swing and block in the red zone, creates a card so powerful that it almost made the top spot on today’s list, and at one point in time, it was there . . . until the first of our top cards was printed. So let’s take a look at your co-rulers.

1 – Kodama's Reach and Cultivate

Sure, some decks may be designed around something else, such as Far Wanderings or Sakura-Tribe Elder abuse, but the vast majority of decks with green in them want Cultivate or Reach. There’s really not a lot I can say in their defense because in my mind, they so obviously belong here. Nothing else reaches this level of awesome. I hope that Wizards will someday print this card:

Double Forest Love Common Sorcery Search your library for two Forest cards and put them onto the battlefield. Then shuffle your library.

That’d be an awesome card, but it’d probably be broken due to dual lands, so you might have to make it fetch two basic Forests instead, which would still be mega-rocking.

I know that talking about lands and fetching them may not be your favorite topic of all time, but we have to have a good foundation of mana to play any deck. These cards help you achieve the goal of winning or having fun. After all, you can’t play that super-awesome, giant creature if you don’t have the mana for it. I hope that you enjoyed the rankings, and let me know what you think in the comments!

See you next week,

Abe Sargent