Pattern Recognition #353 - Fetching Opinion

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

22 January 2025

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Hello Everyone! My name is berryjon, and I welcome you all to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.Net's longest running article series. Also the only one. I am a well deserved Old Fogey having started the game back in 1996. My experience in both Magic and Gaming is quite extensive, and I use this series to try and bring some of that to you. I dabble in deck construction, mechanics design, Magic's story and characters, as well as more abstract concepts. Or whatever happens to catch my fancy that week. Please, feel free to talk about each week's subject in the comments section at the bottom of the page, from corrections to suggested improvements or your own anecdotes. I won't bite. :) Now, on with the show!

And welcome back! I first covered today's subject back in Feb 2018. Yeah, it's been a while, so I figured why not?

Let's talk Fetch Lands.

Fetch Lands is not a formal term for this type of card but rather a community-derived one that has reached a certain degree of common parlance. For the people new to the game - and yes, I have to remind myself and most of my compatriots that every day is someone's first, and every pack is someone's first - a Fetch Land is a land that when you tap and sacrifice it, you search your library for another land and put it into play. Here, let me give you an example.

Evolving Wilds

These are not to be confused with Creatures that search for lands, like Wood Elves, Sorceries that search for lands, like Cultivate, Instants that search for a land like Natural Connection or artifacts that search for lands, like Wayfarer's Bauble. Fetch Lands are just that. Lands.

So let's start with what makes that important. As a land, this effect becomes (almost) protected. No, I'm not talking about how cards like Stone Rain used to be more common, but rather Wizards has made Lands and Land-based abilities more protected from interaction as time goes on. Yes, this does include dialing back the Land Destruction a lot, but that is a different subject for a different time. Rather, because all the other effects are spells, they can simply be countered. Or dealt with in interesting ways, such as being Duress'd out of your hand. But Lands have slowly become less and less intractable.

There are entire generations of players who have grown up playing Lands and thinking they are safe!

Rather, Lands represent a way to act without running into the vast majority of interaction. Not just Counterspell, but also in terms of resources. A Land is something that goes into every deck, and playing it is one of those actions that cannot be responded to. When it happens, it happens. The active player still has priority.

Which means that playing, then cracking a Fetch Land is an action that happens and cannot be prevented or reacted to. And because of that, that means that the player who has this land now in play can still have the initiative and activate their land's ability. Which means that barring special cards like Disallow, which can hit activated abilities, a Fetch Land can be played and used without any opponent reacting to it at all!

Yes, I have seen a Turn 1 Fetch get hit with a Stifle. That was... something I tried to stay out of as it was very messy.

So this is the most important part you have to understand going forward. Fetch Lands, over all other effects that do something similar, are intended to be immutable. This allows you to do everything else that I will be talking about.

But before I get there, let's talk about the two - broadly speaking - types of Fetch Lands that are out there. Depending on how narrow you define it. The first is the one most people have in their collection, and that being the Limited Fixer. These are Fetches that appear in common or Uncommon, and are cards that when sacrificed, go for a Basic Land with a Type (No Wastes!). This is a selection that includes Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse. These are types of Fetches that basically allow you to get a single basic land and put it onto the battlefield tapped.

I say 'Basically', because there are caveats that I should step back and explain here and now.

Namely, why the heck would anyone play Fetches when they can just put in more lands that actually make mana?

Well, the first and most important aspect to Fetch Lands is that they Mana Fix. Let's take these basic Fetches and let me give you an example. Let's say that you're playing my favorite deck, . Now, you have an opening hand that has two Plains and a single Evolving Wilds. Do you play the Plains on your first turn with nothing to do with it? And in doing so, hope you draw one of your Mountains before you need it?

No!

You play the Wilds first, then use it to get the Mountain so that next turn, you can play the Plains and you can do what you needed to do. And if your hand consisted of two Mountains and no Plains? Well, go fetch your Plains instead!

Even if you took out the fetches and replaced them with the lands they were searching for - in this case, a set of four Wilds with two each of and - then there is still no guarantee that the Wilds you would have drawn would have been replaced with the colour that you wanted or needed.

What Fetches are intended to do, and what they do well, is fix your mana available bu allowing you to pull out the colour you need with barely a drawback. Mostly. Tempo is not something to argue here. And in decks with multiple colours in them - three or four or five - being able to reliably get what colors you need, when you need them.

There, now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

After those basic fetches, there are some that do additional things. The Panorama cycle, such as with Bant Panorama, don't have to be used to fetch up a land of a specific type (or types), but rather you can just tap it for regular and be done with it. The Landscape Cycle from Modern Horizons 3, Deceptive Landscape, can be Cycled for a card draw for all three relevant colors of mana. The lands from New Capenna - Maestros Theater automatically trigger when they enter, and you gain a life when it happens.

But these all have the drawback of only being able to get a basic Land. And believe me, I wish that wasn't the case. But the problem isn't here.

But when people talk about Fetches, what they tend to mean outside of Limited, is the cycle of Fetch Lands from Onslaught and Zendikar (or Modern Horizons 2) that for the cost of a single point of life, you can search your library for one of two types of land, like say Polluted Delta can get you an Island or a Swamp. Except... not.

As of the time of this writing... Contaminated Aquifer, Fetid Pools, Ice Tunnel, Sunken Hollow, Undercity Sewers, Underground Sea, and Watery Grave. All of these are dual lands that don't have the Basic supertype, but also have basic types. Which means that unless your Fetch specifies that it has to go for a Basic land, these cycles become legal and valid targets. And what does this mean?

Well, with Fetch Lands and mutli-type lands, mana fixing becomes perfect. A Misty Rainforest can be used to get a Watery Grave - it doesn't have to be limited to both types on the Fetch. For a Fetch designed to get two colours, you can use one of those colours as your target and then stretch out into a third colour!

Look, there's a reason why these Fetches are banned in Pioneer, Explorer and Historic. Because if they weren't banned, they'd be Modern Decks.

So we wind up with the slower Fetches. The ones with drawbacks and limitations. Yes, they can still make them, but Fabled Passage is the new type of Fetch, with Prismatic Vista being the alternate. Limited in scope, with a drawback, and not being able to enable perfect mana bases.

That's what Chromatic Lantern is for now!

The point behind Fetch Lands is a good one. They allow players to play a little more fast and loose with their mana bases, to be able to risk more and gain more by pushing the colours of their decks even further. Two-colored decks are reliable and commonplace, three coloured decks can be supported with a good (expensive) mana base of traditional mana producers and rocks. But Four colours? Five? You best be packing Fetch lands to start digging through your deck for what you need because you will quickly find that without them, your ability to play your cards becomes severely hampered.

No, you don't want to know the mana base my brother has for Reaper King, nor I for Horde of Notions. It's ugly. And ridiculous. And expensive.

I come from an era before Fetch Lands. I had to learn the hard way how to balance my mana bases and my mana curves. The optimal orders in which to play lands to maximize their efficiency. I adored Hybrid Mana for that freedom it gave me, and yet I still focused squarely on mono-colored decks, with occasional forays into two-colored. I never touched three or higher decks as it just wasn't feasible to have the mana base for them

Fetches changed that. Fetched made mana bases easy. They made them, I dare say, unskilled that people could substitute actual deck building understanding for just throwing in fetch lands (including the ones intended for Limited) and just not worry too much about their mana base because it's all self-correcting. The Fetches will solve the problems for them!

Stifle, Disallow, Shadow of Doubt, Mindlock Orb, Stranglehold, Aven Mindcensor, Blood Moon...

Stop depending on the cards to solve your problems, and solve them yourselves! Fetches are a tool, not a solution!

They're not as good as you think they are. In many ways, they are worse. They have a place, yes, but the obsession with them is something that makes me wail and gnash my teeth.

I use them. I respect them. I pulled 3 Marsh Flats from the half-dozen MH2 packs I got. It just means I'm prepared to not need them.

Thank you all for watching, and let me know how this worked out for you! I'll see you next week when I reveal my choice for Slow Grow, and make plans on how to update it.

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job (now), but more income is always better, and I can use it to buy cards! I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!