One of the most complicated and rewarding formats inMagic: The Gatheringis Legacy. Giving players access to virtually every card that has ever been printed from Magic’s history, there are tons of viable decks to take to tournaments with.
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Narrowing down all the best Legacy lands is a difficult task since so many decks require very specific cards, or some lands might only see play in a very narrow range of decks. Generally speaking, though, these lands represent some of the best Legacy has to offer.
10Mystic Sanctuary
Some of the strongest lands in Legacy are ones that provide you with some extra ability or effect added onto it. Mystic Sanctuary fits this mold with a great enter the battlefield trigger to return an instant or sorcery to the top of your deck from your graveyard.
Mystic Sanctuary also has the basic land type Island, meaning you can find it with any of the Blue fetch lands. This lets you crack a fetch land at the end of your opponent’s turn, find Mystic Sanctuary, and then put your spell on top of your deck for you to draw it on your turn.
9City Of Traitors
Any land that adds more than one mana to your mana pool has the potential to add an incredible amount of power to your deck. City of Traitors has a fairly steep downside; if you play another land while City of Traitors is in play, you have to sacrifice it. But even with that cost, it remains a powerful card.
When paired with other cards that add mana for zero cost, like Lotus Petal or Simian Spirit Guide, you have access to three mana on your first turn. You have the potential to play a turn one Show and Tell to take over the game before your opponent even gets a turn.
8Dark Depths
Some lands are so powerful in Legacy that entire deck archetypes have been built around them, and that’s what happened with Dark Depths. This snow land originally was designed to be a slow burn since it comes into play with ten ice counters, and once they’re all removed, you get a 20/20 indestructible creature.
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But when paired with Thespian’s Stage, a land that lets you copy another land you control. Since the copy doesn’t have any counters on it, you automatically get a Marit Lage token that is incredibly hard to remove, all but giving you the win on your next turn.
7Cavern Of Souls
An incredibly powerful land for any deck that relies on specific creature types, Cavern of Souls is a necessity for sticking a creature in the face of some of the best counterspells in Magic. Cavern of Souls lets players pick a creature type when it comes into play while also tapping for mana for those creatures and making them uncounterable.
Cavern of Souls is essential for decks like Death and Taxes and Mono-Red Prison when you need to ensure that cards like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, and Magus of the Moon make it into play to start disrupting your opponent’s plan.
6Urza’s Saga
One of the more unique lands on this list, Urza’s Saga is both an enchantment and a land and is only around for a few turns. Despite this limitation, Urza’s Saga provides several strong effects for your deck.
In the first chapter, Urza’s Saga gains the ability to tap to add a colorless mana to your mana pool, the most basic thing a land can do. The second ability is fine, but the real power comes from the final chapter, tutoring up an artifact with a mana cost of either zero or one and putting it directly into play.
5Ancient Tomb
Much like City of Traitors, Ancient Tomb adds two generic mana when you tap it. More importantly, it doesn’t self-destruct when you play another land. Instead, you deal two damage to yourself when you use it to tap for that two colorless mana, which is completely fine.
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Ancient Tomb is played in a ton of decks since it enables so many powerful cards to be played early on. You can follow up an Ancient Tomb with a turn one Chalice of the Void, or even power out a turn one Painter’s Servant.
4Karakas
If you’re having issues with an opponent’s legendary creature, then the land you’re going to want is Karakas. This legendary land has a very cheap activated ability where for just one mana, you can return a legendary creature back to its owner’s hand.
Karakas is great for bouncing an opponent’s Marit Lage token to permanently deal with it. You can even use it defensively, bouncing your own legendary creature back to your hand to save it from a removal spell or to block an attack but keep your creature around.
3Fetch Lands
This collection of lands goes a long way in Legacy. There are generally ten lands that fall under the Fetch land category, a cycle split across the Onslaught fetches, and the Zendikar fetches. Each of these cards lets you tap them and pay one life to go grab a card with a basic land type and put it into play.
These lands are also vital in Legacy for the ways they let you manipulate your deck. Since they sit on the battlefield until you need to use them, you can sit on them in case you need to shuffle your library for any reason. If you find out what the top card of your deck is but don’t want to draw it, you can crack a Fetch land to shuffle it away and try and draw something better.
2Dual Lands
The bread and butter of just about any Legacy deck, the collection of two colored lands called Dual lands all come from the Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, and Revised sets. These lands count as two land types and have no downside to playing them, unlike other lands that have other conditions.
The vast majority of Legacy decks will play these lands if they’re two or more colors since the mana fixing is vital to being able to play your early cards. These lands are somewhat restrictive, however, since their limited availability and importance make them a hot commodity among Legacy players.
1Wasteland
If you don’t like your opponent’s lands, you can always just blow them up with a Wasteland. This land produces only colorless mana but can be tapped and sacrificed to destroy any other nonbasic land in play.
While doing so also puts you behind a land, it can be used strategically to deny your opponents resources by removing the only land they have that produces a specific color of mana or to shut down any utility land players might try to use.
