The Ravnica Bounce Land: is it right a) for you, and b) for your deck?
Look, in answer to both questions, yeah, it probably is. I'm a firm believer in what Golgari Rot Farm and co. can do for your deck, and have been for years. Not every deck wants them, and not all the time - you can't just cram the maximum number in and laugh all the way to the winner's podium - but in the decks that do want them, their strengths are highlighted. On the other hand, the local metagame will make a huge difference as to their playability, more than any other factor. But first, a little history.
The lands first appeared in the Ravnica: City of Guilds expansion in one of Wizards of the Coast's more memorable releases. The landscape of drafts in general had a large shift with the printing of these lands, as they were the first to cover two important qualities a) they were common, and b) they reliably and consistently made two colours of mana. Previous expansions, e.g. Invasion and Odyssey were printed with lands that sacrificed fix mana. This, of course, was further highlighted due to the multi-colour nature of the expansion and the necessity for mana-fixing. But the weakness of the bounce lands was also highlighted at the same time by the presence of this card, which became a huge fixture in the block constructed format that was competitively played at the time:
Yeah it was everywhere, and we still played the bounce lands, sometimes six or eight to a deck. So let's go over the pros and cons of making use of these.
Bounce lands ARE weak to land destruction!
When you play a bounce land, you are compacting or compressing your resources. You'll have three lands in play making a total of four mana, and if someone destroys or locks down your bounce land, you are a LONG way behind. Check your local metagame before cramming a bunch of bounce lands into your deck; if Molten Rain, Wrecking Ball, Beast Within, Generous Gift, Icequake and Sinkhole are prevalent, then yeah you likely would prefer a basic.
Bounce lands enter the battlefield tapped!
To be fair, so do a lot of other lands which see play; scrying temples, Bojuka Bog, and many other useful utility lands enter tapped, and some lands that see widespread play (Maze of Ith) don't even tap for mana. Again, this is mostly a metagame thing! If your local playgroup is full of Statis, Winter Orb, or taxing effects like Grand Arbiter Augustin IV, then having your lands enter tapped is most likely a luxury you can't afford. But having lands enter untapped is always great, and if making plays on-curve is essential to your deck's function, then bounce lands probably aren't for you.
Bounce lands are an absolutely terrible play on turn one!
But you shouldn't be keeping a one-land hand anyway, right? This will rarely affect you, but I won't pretend it doesn't affect the range of hands you can keep
Some decks want to maximise the number of cards in hand or otherwise have lands in hand, and bounce lands assist with doing that!
Some cards, e.g. Maro, Psychosis Crawler, Venser's Journal, have statistics or abilities that are altered based on the number of cards in your hand - and playing a bounce land doesn't reduce this number for more than a trigger space. Cards like Abolish and Foil can be played for free by discarding certain basic lands, and Lord Windgrace absolutely adores bounce lands - play one, return a land to hand, then discard it to his +2 ability to draw two cards! If cards like these are in your deck, you may want bounce lands in there as well.
Bounce lands make you discard to hand size if you play them on turn two!
Sometimes this is a negative, but usually a positive thanks to the amount of cards that are either active in the graveyard or that can return a card from the graveyard to the battlefield. Discarding Genesis, Anger or Brawn to hand size on turn two is awesome! Discarding a Rune-Scarred Demon on turn two, only to play Animate Dead on turn three, is also awesome! Bounce lands can help you make plays like this, so if your deck is very graveyard-active, consider running them
Bounce lands let you re-use the enter-the-battlefield ability of other lands!
Bojuka Bog and Seriji Steppe both come to mind as lands that you might want to play more than once for their effects, and bounce lands let you do this. This is balanced by having to play that land tapped again, making it slow, but having spell-like abilities in your mana base is great
Bojuka Bog and Seriji Steppe both come to mind as lands that you might want to play more than once for their effects, and bounce lands let you do this. This is balanced by having to play that land tapped again, making it slow, but having spell-like abilities in your mana base is great
Bounce lands let you save your commander from being Imprisoned in the Moon or turned into a colourless Forest!
This might sound a little, um, niche...but it's actually happened to me twice, and each time the opponent has been utterly shocked after the play was made. Like most players, I don't run very much in the way of land destruction and didn't have any enchantment removal handy - but a quick land drop later, my commander was free to wreak havoc! These enchantments are a great way of dealing with a commander with a nasty ETB ability, or one that scales with re-casting, such as Marath, Will of the Wild.
So keep in mind what your deck wants to do - and where you're going to be playing it - before including those bounce lands. But don't simply write them off, as they can do a lot for you!
