The new duals, finally revealed!

[Bastian]

I'm a bit disappointed... I think that those 2 life are still quite too much, but at least more acceptable than the initial 3 I heard about. Either way I think that in a format as reach in direct damage as Legacy I'm not hoping to see them get played a lot... except for one or two to smooth certain mana bases...

Oh, here's the link!

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/arcana/887

[forests failed you]

Well, honestly cards are designed with standard and limited in mind; so these are about as good as we could have hoped for.  Apparently, dual lands are just too good to be in type two.  However, we all knew that they were not going to be anywhere near as good as the originals, so at least we got some good cards for standard and block.

[Godot]

I actually really like these, especially in extended/budget legacy.  You can still fetch them out and so long as you fetch EOT you can mitigate the drawback.  I think they did a good job.  Its not like there was ever any possibilty of these being used in Type 1 anyway.

[Anusien]

These shocklands help facilitate budget Vintage the same way they do budget Legacy, as well as making the non-Eternal formats nuts.  Besides allowing decks with awful manabases to load up on duals, they can be a sort of entry-way into the format - Food Chain Goblins with shockTaigas instead of regular Taigas is getting cheaper and cheaper.

One of the concerns of Vintage was always that even with 10proxys, without a set of duals it was difficult to get into the format.  Now that entryway is reducing; you can have an almost equally as competitive manabase for a quarter of the price.  If you're going straight U/G for example, your first fetch is for a Tropical Island, and everything after that you can fetch EOT for the shockTrop.  I'm psyched.

By the way, the new Standard/Extended is going to be nuts, with the painlands, shocklands, fetches (extended), UrzaTron, Weathered Wayfarer, Sakura Tribe Elder and Kodama's Reach.  As it was said on #TMD, you no longer need basic lands (although these are Titanable, where painlands aren't).

By the way, it is confirmed that these will come in enemy flavors too, right?

[dandan]

As it was said on #TMD, you no longer need basic lands (although these are Titanable, where painlands aren't).

Basic lands are no longer needed in formats that don't have Wasteland. TMD doesn't really talk about such formats.

[Bastian]

Besides allowing decks with awful manabases to load up on duals

Load on these? These aren't Onslaught's fetchlands which only take out 1 point of life. These take double as much. Meaning that...

Play 1 dual: 2 damage
Play 2 duals: 4 damage
Play 3 duals: 6 damage
Play 4 duals: 8 damage
...

Depending on how long a game goes, are you really going to load on these? Just three take more than a quarter of my life. A full set can nearly take me half and all to have a dual in play? These are not game winning or changing effects to warrant these prices. I can see these getting used in decks that are 2-color, and even so... but I'm definitly not seeing how can these be good enough for certain formats like Legacy, where the player doesn't really want to be helping the opponent to win: let's face it: neo dual+bolt= 5 damage.

These are scenarios assuming that you'll play these untapped. You might fetch one of them on the end of turn, but the other way you're forking over a good ammount of life...

EDIT: I just realized a mistake on my argument. The ability to play this either tapped or untapped is what makes it worth the trouble. Sometimes you want to play this untapped, but sometimes you really don't have anything to play meanwhile so you can really just play them tapped. That way they DO make a lot more sense, although I wouldn't have minded that the life payment was lesser than the one they put...

EDIT2: Rancored_Elf at mtgsalvation.com just got the names of the remaining dual lands:

Overgrown Tomb (Land - Swamp Forest)
Sacred Foundry (Land - Mountain Plains)
Watery Grave (Land - Island Swamp)

It's quite likely that the other duals will only come out on the other sets, so, until then... wait.

[rvs]

The background seems to have the new guildmana symbol. Hot!

[Matt]

Even if these always CIPT I would be happy to see them (though not at rare). I've played more games with Salt Marsh than I suspect most of you, and I can tell you that not counting as an island was often as big a drawback as CIPT. This is because of things like fetches and Land Grant. For a while I owned a Bloodstained Mire, but no dual lands. Had Salt Marsh counted as a swamp, my mana would have been much, much better.

[BigMac]

The fact that they are fetchable make them a lot more playable. And lets face it, in most matchups lifemanagement is not the first thing you think about when looking at the way you want to win. So the drawback is not that big an issue as most of you make us believe.

[Bram]

One fetches at EOT half the time, anyway, thereby negating the drawback (as has been said before). Either way, if you for some reason want to fetch at any other point than EOT (or possibly actually want to cast something off it rightaway), one could simply fetch a real dual. I could see one or two of these in the right deck in Vintage, complementing actual duals ofcourse.

[BurningIce]

As well, life is a resource, like anything else.  Some decks play with 4 city of brasses and they are much more life intensive than this.  I can see a couple fitting in certain vintage decks.  They are certainly a huge improvement over painlands.

[Eddie]

Too bad we even have to cut a number of the original duals to run enough basics. There is no reason to run these if you have a hard time supporting 4 duals. I see some decks running 1 or 2 though.

[BigMac]

another draw back i have not seen mentioned yet is the fact it is susceptible to sundering titan. That could seriously hurt it in several formats.

[ELD]

Wow, that is way stronger than anything I pictured them printing.  I'm actually shocked. 

[forests failed you]

Yes, but Titan leaves Standard at the same time the new duals enter it, and there is no Teen Titans deck in post rotation extended.  It is interesting though that the good land type hate cards got weakend down from eighth to ninth.  Possibly because these suckers are going to see lots of play...

[Bram]

To give credit where credit is due:

another draw back i have not seen mentioned yet is the fact it is susceptible to sundering titan.

(although these are Titanable, where painlands aren't).