MTG Salvation

Bala Ged Recovery // Bala Ged Sanctuary

Sorcery
Return target card from your graveyard to your hand

Other side is a green tapland

I'm not a fan of Regrowth since it's so weak in the early game, but this solves that problem for an extra colorless mana. I think this seems pretty good, and I'm certainly going to test this

I don't think this is the one (nor the white one that makes angels on the front half, which I actually like more), but I love the idea of these spell lands and hope one is good enough.

I run Regrowth now and I'm trying to decide whether to make the swap. Do you think Bala Ged Sanctuary//Bala Ged Recovery is a better Cube card than Regrowth?
Pros:
-- I think modal DFC lands should take up a land slot, not a spell slot, in your deck. Thus running Bala Ged Sanctuary//Bala Ged Recovery lets you play one fewer land in your deck, allowing you to use more of the cards you drafted.
-- Bala Ged Sanctuary lets you keep land-light hands that would not be keepable with Regrowth.
-- As mentioned above, Bala Ged Sanctuary is good in the early game before Regrowth would have a target.
-- Regrowth effects are naturally better in the late game, so the extra 1 may not matter as much as it would for an effect you always play on curve.
Cons:
-- Bala Ged Recovery costs 2G instead of 1G. This is a big deal, because the extra mana means you may not be able to immediately play the card you just got back from your graveyard.
-- Your deck has a land that comes into play tapped instead of a basic that would come into play untapped.

Regrowth seems better than this to me.

I think Regrowth is better but this is strong. The question is whether you need four of these effects or not. I'm glad to be playing Regrowth, Witness, and Protector, but I'm not sure I want more than that.

Cheers,
rant

heck yes.
It's hard to accurately assess the cost of a tapland, but the modality of land/spell is soooo powerful... and regrowth can be an extremly good late game effect.

Definitely testing.

I like this card. I think a tax of 1 is more than fair to have a land option stapled to the card, since I already really like Regrowth as a baseline.

I think this card is very good because as meltingsho said can replace the 17th land, this means in early game you play the land, at late game where you don't need lands you play regrowth option, at case where you don't need more lands that means you have the lands to play the spell. Also i see is very crusial cube has a lot of options at lands nowadays, it's better to have a nice toolbox land but many cards doing similar things for same slots. For this reason in my cube i have plenty lands to support decks from that ankle but have many similar cards that i will break my head at deck building which ones to use in case i can the work with any of the options.
Overall, i do think lands/spell cards will give more depth in cubes and make it more interesting, of course cards with power and no medicore craps..
What's your thoughts on subject?

Not feeling these land/spell split cards. I like Tranquil Thicket and its brothers much more, and I haven't run those even in my huge cube.

Thanks for the feedback. I keep thinking of more flexibility-related upsides of Bala Ged Sanctuary//Bala Ged Recovery over Regrowth:
-- The modal DFC lands decrease the percentage of unfun non-games due to mana screw. Mulligan decisions aside, sometimes you keep a reasonable two or three land hand but just don't draw the third or fourth mana source you need to enact your game plan (and you don't have a land in your graveyard to Regrowth back).
-- Even in the late game when your graveyard has some mid-game level Regrowth targets, there may be situations where the 7- or 8-mana bomb in your hand (Craterhoof, Ugin, etc.) is significantly better than anything in your graveyard, so you would still rather play the land to get that bomb out faster even though you're giving up some value.
-- Cube players tend to enjoy decisions that give them a feeling of agency over the outcome of the game.

I'm now sold on making the swap.

This is amazing. Other than the flip-duals, this is my favorite card of the set so far. I love this.

I do wish it were a land in the graveyard though...

This one has also grown on me. It may make the cut over Den Protector (which makes me quite sad).

The more I have been thinking about it, the more I think this is actually a better card than regrowth in the cube. The podcasts on the cultic cube data set showed there isn't a big discrepancy in how well the top aggro cards performed compared to the other cards similar to it. I think this card (and regrowth) fall into the same category. I think fewer games will be determined because you paid 1 extra mana to return a top-end card to your hand compared to hitting your land drops.

That's how I feel about it too. We cut Regrowth a while ago, but this card looks quite a bit better imo

Quote from Cythare »

This one has also grown on me. It may make the cut over Den Protector (which makes me quite sad).

Den Protector is just way too slow.

I just have a soft spot for it, and up until now, it was the third best regrowth effect imo.

I think this is about on par with Regrowth. 1 can be the difference between casting Regrowth and the card you return with Regrowth on the same turn or not. On the other hand, regrowth is generally not a card I want early in a game and a etbt land might be more useful.

Generally speaking, I'm not wild about the Land//XX cycle, they feel under-powered. All of the non-mythic MDFC guarantee lost tempo in the form of an overcosted spell or a etbt tapped land. The mythic cycle at least allows you to stay on curve as needed, but the spell sides are still over-costed even factoring in the flexibility provided. Perhaps play-testing will bear out that the flexibility of being able to play these in either mode makes these better than our existing competitively-priced options, but I think this will rarely be the case.

Side Note: Meloku the Clouded Mirror works really well with these. Bounce the land , play the spell.

I just want to say how happy I am about “card” and not “permanent card”. Wizards stopped doing that for years on these green sorceries & effects, and it feels so good to see it again on such a playable, eternally-visible card like this. Most likely cutting Den Protector for this, and then probably cutting a different non-creature spell for a hot new green creature.

Drafting Regrowth as a land slot seems interesting, As it is a medium to late pick anyway. So far I feel I want to keep Regrowth, but I am watching this.

Upon further evaluation of this card. I think the value of the land mode, even an etbt land, slightly outweighs the 1 mana "tax". The number of times the land will be crucial towards making sure you hit your land drops as needed outweighs the number of times you won't be able to double spell off of regrowth due to the "tax".

I don't find this to be true for all MDFC/Spells. A one mana tax on an effect like force spike is more detrimental than it is on Regrowth which is better later in the game anyhow -- generally.

I think currently the list of MDFC's I want for my cube are as follows:
All of the mythic cycle except Sea Gate Restoration.
Kazandu Mammoth
Bala Ged Recovery

I've come around on this one and will be testing it in place of regrowth. Yeah, it hurts the like 6 land turns where you could do regrowth -> 4-drop, but I think the number of hands it saves by being the 2nd or 3rd land more than makes up for that.

Card has been very good in testing in replacement of regrowth. If you care about maindeck percentages of cards you choose to include in your list, this has been doing a great job of making the main and being effective.

Now can we please get a mdfc disechant/naturalize land?

I been wondering about how far Grapple with the Past is from this and Regrowth.

I didn't realize this until recently - but Regrowth is legal in Modern/ Legacy but primarily only played in Vintage.

From my understanding, this card isn't that great, but its power level comes from being able to buy back incredibly broken power 9 / incredibly broken 1 offs in your cube deck?