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By: SpikeBoyM, Alex Ullman
Dec 15 2015 1:00pm
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How should one approach leaks? Once a card makes it out into the world the text cannot be unseen. Magic content is a hungry beast and both consumers and creators constantly crave new fodder for articles. Leaks, therefore, can be seen as a Good Thing as they feed this beast.
Yet leaks undo months of planning and years of design. One does not have to completely agree with the way Wizards reveals new cards but they do have decades of experience in building hype for a new set. My work on other sites have shown me the amount of care that goes into showing off a brand new card for the very first time. I’ve been lucky enough to have a few cards to preview and once my spoiler was leaked days before my article went live. It stung. It also meant the work I had done to try and excite people about a card was for naught. A Bad Thing.
So where does that leave me today? There are new cards to discuss but this is not information that we should have.
And yet we do.
To ignore the information is to be willfully ignorant. Does discussing it make me complicit?
I do not condone the leaks - personally I think that such events are a net negative for Magic. However to ignore new information in the pursuit of discussion serves no one.
So let’s talk about two new common lands from Oath of the Gatewatch


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Crumbling Vestige enters the battlefield tapped and adds one mana of any color to your mana pool. It is also able to tap for a single colorless mana. Let’s break this down.
Tapping for a colorless is going to take on a whole new meaning. While there has been no indication that every set from here on out will be using the offset diamond, it is now a weapon in R & D’s arsenal, so we can expect to see these costs matter in the future. If the leak is to be believed, then Oath of the Gatewatch may be heavy on colorless required activations. Taking this into account, the second ability could very likely matter quite a bit early on.
The first ability - a one shot dose of any color - presents an enticing option. One of issues keeping two color aggressive decks down in Pauper is the inability to reliably have both colors on turn two. The available options - Gates, Gain Lands, and Evolving Wilds - make amazing turn one plays but are a huge tempo hit on the second turn. Crumbling Vestige solves this for the second turn. A Gain Land or Wilds into a Vestige makes it so that a two color deck could conceivably cast a powerful gold creature on the second turn. As someone who has spent many hours trying to make Putrid Leech work, this is exciting.
There are more options, of course. Tron decks already attempt to minimize the number of colored mana symbols in their deck. Relying on Chromatic Sphere and Chromatic Star to help filter colorless to color, Crumbling Vestige does work by helping to cast these cogs, Expedition Map, and Ancient Stirrings. Here Crumbling Vestige helps to cast key spells like Flame Slash while not hindering the overall plan. It would not surprise me to see Tron decks adopt this card and use it to diversify some of the spells they run. I do believe that it would preclude these decks from running Capsize or Disturbed Burial and similar color intensive cards in the sideboard.
Other decks that could benefit from Vestige are ones that focus on a primary color but have important spells on the splash. Traditional Hexproof comes to the front of my mind. These decks tend to minimize the number of white spells main to just Armadillo Cloak and Ethereal Armor. While I advocate some number of Blossoming Sands and Plains, it is far more popular to just hope for Abundant Growth, Utopia Sprawl, and Manamorphose to work out. Crumbling Vestige gives the deck a strong opening by casting Abundant Growth and drawing a card on turn one, setting up excellent mana for the rest of the game. In fact, such an opening is one of the better first turn plays available to Hexproof in the post Oath of the Gatewatch world. It is possible another largely monochrome deck could utilize the new land, but for now the most obvious aggressive home is in Hexproof.


Source

Holdout Settlement is a “free” Springleaf Drum. While the Drum is a staple in Affinity for its ability to discount multiple spells by a generic mana while also tapping for any color, Holdout Settlement does not provide the same blanket reduction that comes with Myr Enforcer and Somber Hoverguard. Instead it is a more resilient card type that can find a home in more decks.
Springleaf Drum does not see more play in part because it costs a spell slot. Affinity can mitigate this because of its explosive openings and thanks to Atog. Settlement does not take up the space of a spell. As a land it simply adds to a robust mana base.

Let us examine a deck like Elves. This deck is already used to tapping creatures for mana thanks to Birchlore Rangers. Elves benefits almost immediately from Settlement as it can replace Island for Distant Melody while still being able to tap for a green. Using Nettle Sentinel to produce a single green for another Elf nets another creature and allows the Sentinel to untap.
Reducing the reliance on lands that produce a single mana could allow Elves to try some interesting cards that allow the deck to attack from a different angle, including Mob Justice and Foul-Tongue Shriek. Including a (Kaervek’s Torch) or Rolling Thunder is not outside the realm of possibility either.
Similarly, White Weenie Tokens could stand to benefit from Holdout Settlement. The same Foul-Tongue Shriek could make an appearance as a supplemental anthem. Harsh Sustenance also provides additional reach while pulling double duty as a removal spell. In any deck with a plethora of creatures, Holdout Settlement can make a splash that much easier.
Control decks represent a less obvious home. Counterspell warps mana bases to its power and many control strategies benefit from the ability to just say no. When the format encourages blocking, then the need for a two drop goes up. In these instances a card like Augury Owl or Omenspeaker could come down early and sculpt draws while also giving some mana flexibility in conjunction with Holdout Settlement. The possibilities are not endless, but there are certainly a myriad of options out there for the as yet released land.

So there we have it: Illicit information explored. Without a greater context of new cards we do not know all the options for these cards. Simply looking back, however, indicates the Crumbling Vestige and Holdout Settlement should be finding their way into the land column of Pauper decks in the New Year.


Keep slingin’ commons-
-Alex

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