Fetch lands how do they help?
General forum
Posted on Jan. 6, 2015, 9 a.m. by themanofhat
Ok so fetch lands are awesome I get that but I don't understand why people run them in a mini colored deck, are the odds not exactly the same as if you just put a swamp or a plains or whatever color you are running. For example Jim Davis runs Polluted Delta in his UW control deck yet doesn't not have one swamp. So how does the delta help him? It seems like he is just taking a life for no reason.
BboyGeologic says... #3
You can run them to thin your deck of lands to increase your probability of drawing spells. Also, with delve being a thing right now, you see players like Jim running extra fetches because they help fuel the graveyard for Dig Through Time. He has enough gain life lands in his deck that it really doesn't hurt him in the long run and lets him play digs earlier.
January 6, 2015 10:03 a.m.
themanofhat says... #4
Ok but having fetch lands in the place of lands doesn't decrease the chance of drawing lands? If you are running a mono colored deck one fetch land equals one land.
January 6, 2015 10:17 a.m.
themanofhat A fetch land is effectively two lands. When you are cracking a fetch land you're reducing the number of lands in your library by one. For instance, you're 20 card library with 10 spells and 10 lands would then have 10 spells and 9 lands, making it more likely to draw a spell than a land. This is the deck thinning folks are talking about.
However, the actually statistical effect of this is often way over-inflated. In most normal circumstances deck thinning only results in a spell rather than a land being drawn every hundred games or so. Let's say you have 50 cards in your library and 20 of those are lands. Which means your chance of drawing a spell is 60%. Fetching a land out of the deck only increases that to 62%. It's certainly an improvement, but that alone is not a good reason to run fetches. That UW control deck obviously feels that the life loss is worth having more cards to delve with.
January 6, 2015 10:37 a.m.
After what Slycne said is true, it must be mentioned that they also have the stretegic value of finding the "right" land at the right time. You have a Bloodstained mire in play and a Dark Betrayal and Magma Spray, you can wait till your opponent plays a creature untill you decide to fetch the appropriate land to kill it with
January 6, 2015 11:15 a.m.
It must also be pointed out that a pro player is obviously going to play hundreds and hundreds of games so a 2% increase to them is MASSIVE. Like thats the difference between reaching top 8 in an event or not.
January 6, 2015 11:43 a.m.
It is generally considered not worth it to play fetches for deck thinning in any deck apart from potentially burn decks. 1 life point is not worth the effect. In this case the deck thinning is just a bonus on top of that fetch basically being worth two mana for one turn because of delve. Think about it like this:
Pay 1 life, gain 1 mana of B or U, then also gain 1 colourless mana. After this just gain either B or U for the rest of the game.
If there where lands that said that everyone would play it even for mono decks. Without delve its not really worth it.
January 6, 2015 12:02 p.m.
1 life point and a marginal chance for drawing into a non land card is worth it for every super aggro deck.
January 6, 2015 12:07 p.m.
fluffybunnypants says... #10
Delve is also a thing. The more cards in the yard, the easier it is to fire off your Delve cards.
January 6, 2015 12:08 p.m.
lemmingllama says... #11
Another thing that hasn't been mentioned is the ability to fetch shocklands (Stomping Ground for example, a land with two basic land types) and ABUR dual lands (Tundra for example, another land with two basic land types). You can fetch a shockland or dual land even if you are using an off color fetch, and if you do it at the end of the turn then you can also migitate the damage from the shockland. This isn't really relevant to standard, but in Modern and Legacy this is very useful.
For something more Standard oriented, they fuel Delve for Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time. Being able to cast these for 1 and 2 mana respectively is a huge bonus, and if you are able to do that a turn or two earlier by using fetchlands, it can help you find the cards you need when you need them.
January 6, 2015 12:14 p.m.
Hjaltrohir says... #12
Things like modern burn sometimes run Wooded Foothills, Scalding Tarn and Arid Mesa even if they are only mono-colored or splashing 1 shock of 
or 
to increase their chance of drawing the land they need and to lessen the chances of getting flooded...
January 6, 2015 12:35 p.m.
awesomeguy37 Even in the case of mono-colored burn however they getting additional value as they are relying on fetches in order to hit landfalls for Searing Blaze on the opponents turn. A straight deck that gets nothing but thinning shouldn't be running fetches. It doesn't take much, but you need some extra value to make the life loss worth it.
January 6, 2015 12:53 p.m.
runningwithbeers says... #14
Besides the thinning and mana fixing aspect they can also be useful for shuffling the library . For example if you've you've dug through time or had one of your answers sent to the bottom of your library via Vendilion Clique.
January 6, 2015 12:59 p.m.
What's been said about fixing, landfall and delve is all good and correct. Also the shuffle effect is sometimes very important, especially with cards like Brainstorm in legacy or even if you scried a card away that you need in standard.
January 6, 2015 3:03 p.m.
Fetches are great, but like some people have already said, deck thinning(which is usually cited by people as the biggest benefit) is actually not that noticeable statistically unless you play countless games. Even then, it is still random. You could shuffle your deck like any other time and still draw a hand with 7 lands in it or no lands in it.
But to summarize:
Allows you to get the proper colors(since dual lands count as both types, you can get a color that isn't specified in the fetch land so long as it shares a type with one on the fetch)
Landfall. Not used in every deck, but things like Lotus Cobra make excellent use of having multiple lands enter the field.
Fills graveyard. This means it can be abused with delve, Tarmogoyf, Crucible of Worlds and several other things that require a target in the graveyard.
On demand shuffling. If you know what cards are on top and none of them are useful, fetches are essentially "Pay 1 Life, Shuffle your library" in addition to the land.
Takes cards out of your deck, or "deck thinning". Again, not that noticeable in a game by game basis, but does statistically raise your chances, albeit slightly, of drawing what you want(unless what you want is more land).
If you are contemplating whether you should buy them, unless you are playing a multicolored deck(tri or more, dual colored decks can usually get away with no fetches), landfall deck, graveyard reliant deck, or one that consistently looks at the top of library and needs a way to rearrange options beyond scry, you probably don't need to worry about getting them. Fetches gain the most value when you take advantage of several of these abilities, however if your sole purpose is deck thinning, then you're probably not gonna see a noticeable difference compared to just running basics.
Boza says... #2
Simple - reduces the probability of drawing a land. 4 fetches are not enough in some decks, so they run extra for the more important colors.
January 6, 2015 9:12 a.m.