Wasteland – Fallout
Date Reviewed: March 14, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 5.0
Casual: 3.25
Limited: 3.00
Multiplayer: 3.75
Commander [EDH]: 4.25
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Whatever else you might think about Universes Beyond, its sets have given Wizards of the Coast opportunities to reprint cards that we would probably never see anywhere else. Wasteland is perhaps the premier example of such a card: it’s way too powerful for any of the smaller formats, if by smaller formats you mean everything up to Modern. But it fits so well thematically in Fallout that we probably should have predicted it months ago. And now a lot more people will get a chance to experience fear in a handful of dust. If you’re new, you may find that it actually swings somewhat in power between one matchup and the next. Some games you’ll lock someone out of a color or a key utility land early, and cruise to victory. Others, you’ll draw your Wasteland too late, or they’ll have so many redundant non-basic lands that taking one out doesn’t actually make that much difference. But when it works, there is nothing else like it.
Constructed: 5 (everything above is even more true when you have four)
Casual: 3
Limited: 3
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 3.5
One of the things I’ve talked about over the years is that a weaker version of a good card can still be good. Wasteland is, more or less, a weakened version of Strip Mine, a land from Antiquities that might be one of the most powerful lands ever printed (as shown by a ban in Legacy and a restriction in Vintage)…so, it turns out, a land that hits most of the key targets that you’d want to hit with Strip Mine is excellent.
Wasteland is, I would argue, one of the backbones of Legacy as a format, and it’s also a valuable card in Vintage. Land destruction helps rein in decks like “Lands.dec” and even more straightforward things like Gaea’s Cradle in Elves, as well as being good at keeping yourself ahead in a tempo situation. It’s a pretty simple land, but it’s a workhorse that puts a lot of work in where it’s legal; since land destruction in spell slots is at a premium (usually 3+ mana, usually sorcery speed), having the ability to pop a land without having to deal with the sorcery speed lock or using a spell slot is huge.
Wasteland defines Legacy as a format, and it would completely warp Modern and Pioneer if it were to ever come back to, say, Standard. It’s not going to be the solution to every problem, but you’ll very rarely regret having it around; even when it can’t pot a land, it’s still a land that taps for mana, and that’s more valuable (usually) than having a card that might be all but dead.
Constructed: 5
Casual: 3.5 (decks are rarely as sharply tuned here, but you may have valuable targets you need to pop)
Limited: 3 (rarely the best card you can take in a pack, but it might save you in a pinch)
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 5
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