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This is a list of a competitive deck that uses fetchlands in a mono-colored deck: Goblin 8 Whackers.

I don't see the reason someone might build something like this, aside from a slight bluffing that you might be using another color aside from your main one.

Is there an advantage to losing one life and fetching a mountain? Maybe to shuffle your deck?

Pacha
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6 Answers6

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One reason is that it thins your deck.

It is generally known that smaller decks work better than larger decks, which is why almost everyone uses the smallest legal size of 60 in constructed.

Cards that draw you cards when you play them (cantrips such as Gitaxian Probe) turn your 60 card deck into an effectively 59 card deck. Fetchlands do the same thing. After using a fetchland, you have removed a card from your library.

Note that unlike "draw a card", searching for a land specifically removes a land from your library. This means that you are more likely to draw a non-land card after you have used a Fetchland. So it effectively changes the land to non-land ratio of your deck slightly.

So the deck in the example has 19 lands. If they were all Mountains, then after you play your first mountain (pretending you had 0 cards in hand or anywhere else), you would have a 18 out of 59 chance that the top card of your library is another Mountain. If instead you play a Bloodstained Mire first, and use it, then after that you have a 17 out of 58 chance that the top card of your deck is a Mountain. More chance of drawing non-lands instead.

In that particular deck, the loss of life is not very relevant; that type of deck is hoping to win the game before the opponent can deal 16 or so damage to you. So having 20 life instead of 16 isn't going to save you. In a different type of deck, they might use Evolving Wilds or Terramorphic Expanse instead. They have the same deck-thinning effect, but instead of losing life, you would lose tempo because the fetched lands enter play tapped.

GendoIkari
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    "Draw a card" would still be better for thinning out your deck. But using fetchlands to make your effective land count smaller does give an advantage, and is cheaper. – Arthur May 01 '18 at 05:23
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    One can sum up some of this by saying that it front-loads your land drawing. – PLL May 01 '18 at 10:03
  • The advantage of deck thinning took people a long time to appreciate. Land Tax was completely broken from the day it was printed but saw little use at first. – JollyJoker May 03 '18 at 12:56
  • Drawing a card happens, but pulling out lands means each 'draw a card' instance has a higher chance of getting spells, not lands, which is what most decks need... – MarsJarsGuitars-n-Chars May 03 '18 at 19:56
  • @MarsJarsGuitars-n-Chars I believe my fourth and fifth paragraphs address that directly. – GendoIkari May 03 '18 at 20:02
  • Right. I was addressing this to @Arthur but didn't tag. 'Draw a card' does not thin. – MarsJarsGuitars-n-Chars May 03 '18 at 20:22
  • @MarsJarsGuitars-n-Chars A card-draw does effectively give you a smaller deck. Sure, it doesn't thin out the deck in the sense that it doesn't (on average) change the ratios of the deck composition. I still say it's generally preferable. Thin out a land, then draw a card isn't as good as draw a card, then draw a card when it comes to the probability of getting a useful spell or creature. A land tax trigger isn't an ancestral recall. That is what I meant by my comment. – Arthur May 03 '18 at 21:46
  • @Arthur That is true, but the point Gendo makes is the fetchland thinning is 'free' in the sense of using a card draw instance. You play the land, then get a land. It removes a land from the deck, thus thinning. A fast tempo deck needs to draw non-land cards. – MarsJarsGuitars-n-Chars May 03 '18 at 21:49
  • @MarsJarsGuitars-cn-Chars An extra draw is still better, especially in a tempo deck. But land thinning is usually a lot cheaper and easier to come by, – Arthur May 03 '18 at 21:53
  • "So it effectively changes the land to non-land ratio of your deck slightly." That by itself isn't useful (if you wanted fewer lands, you could have put in fewer lands to begin with). What your answer suggests but doesn't explicitly state is that you can put more lands in to begin with, and then if you get a hand with a lot of lands, you can use your fetchlands to increase the chance that the next card you get will be a non-land. – Acccumulation Dec 23 '22 at 18:35
  • Deck thinning is by far the least relevant aspect of using fetchlands, it's strange that this answer is the accepted one over all of the other responses that are much more important. – Brady Gilg Aug 11 '23 at 17:21
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A third reason, not mentioned by either of the other answers, is to have a way to shuffle your deck for a very low cost. This is most commonly seen in Legacy, where cards like Ponder and Brainstorm are powerful selection effects, but might leave undesirable cards on top of the deck; shuffling replaces those cards with (hopefully) better draws. Modern doesn't have either of those cards, but there are still occasional effects that allow a player to see the top of their deck such as Mishra's Bauble and Courser of Kruphix and the timing of fetchland use when those effects are available is certainly something to think about.

That said, this is probably not the case for an 8-whack deck, nor do I know of any particular mono-color modern deck that runs fetchlands specifically for that purpose. If there was one I would expect it to be mono-blue to take advantage of Jace, the Mind Sculptor's effective Brainstorm, though I haven't done an exhaustive search of all cards which would benefit from free shuffling.

Kamil Drakari
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In addition to the excellent answer already posted, there are times that a deck wants to have multiple lands enter the battlefield. This particular deck does not benefit from this, but there are others that do.

Any deck with the 'Landfall' mechanic will want to have the ability to drop lands, and instant speed is a big plus, for example to activate Lotus Cobra's ability. In a different Red Deck, a player might use Searing Blaze, which also benefits from Landfall.

Granted, Lotus Cobra is usually seen in multi-color decks, but the concept of Landfall is there.

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A fourth reason is cards that benefit from having lands in the graveyard, such as Tarmogoyf, Barbarian Ring, Crucible of Worlds or Splendid Reclamation

JollyJoker
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  • Or to a lesser extent, just cards that benefit from having any cards in the graveyard, such as Threshold. – GendoIkari May 03 '18 at 14:14
  • I love the Crucible of Worlds synergies with fetch lands, but I only use them in EDH. Very good deck thinning though, especially with cards that let you play more lands each turn. – The Man Feb 18 '19 at 18:48
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The minimum deck size in Magic the Gathering is 60 cards for constructed formats, each fetch land you play effectively lowers that minimum deck size by 1 card, since you will be using that land to pull another land out of your deck right into play as if you had played it instead, at the cost of one life.

This means also that you have less land left in the deck, once you're at your right number of lands for a deck, drawing more lands means you haven't drawn anything to use the mana those lands make, slowing you down.

A third reason is in specific decks, though they are not usually mono colored, landfall. The landfall mechanic triggers whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, using a fetch land means that effect will trigger twice, once when you play the fetch land and once when the land it fetched comes into play, allowing you to double up on some of the effects. Landfall decks used fetch lands to make more use out of cards like Lotus Cobra or Steppe Lynx in a single turn.

Andrew
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    Not sure that this doesn't add anything to the question that isn't in the accepted answer. – Joe W May 03 '18 at 16:25
  • JoeW & @GendoIkari : yet it does something useful - it mentions how to have Lotus Cobra "double up" speed. One of the other answers mentions "instant speed is a big plus", but didn't explicitly mention the word "double" which specifies just how much extra speed is instantly available. (That one word, along with "trigger twice" earlier, salvaged this answer for me.) – TOOGAM May 16 '18 at 09:06
  • @TOOGAM One of the answers is all about the Landfall mechanic; and uses Lotus Cobra as an example of Landfall. That other answers say "multiple lands"; I'm not understanding why the word "double" makes it clearer or better than "multiple". – GendoIkari May 16 '18 at 13:51
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Another reason not yet mentioned: you can fetch utility lands. Examples are Mystic Sanctuary and Dwarven Mine. It's not common to run these lands in monocolor decks, but it's possible.

The deck you linked has none of these synergies; it is running fetchlands to thin the library.

Allure
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