Spoiler season for Magic: The Gathering's new set Secrets of Strixhaven is in full swing, class is in session, and we've seen loads of great cards and commander precons already. The latest addition to the library is a new land card, Petrified Hamlet, which was revealed late in the day on April 6.
This land doesn't play nice with others. In fact, it's a hate card for other utility lands, shutting down activated abilities that aren't mana abilities and letting them tap for colorless instead.
At first I thought this card would slay in Modern, where fetchlands tend to make up as much as half the mana base of any deck in the format. But actually, this isn't ideal for a couple of reasons…
Firstly, your opponents can crack their fetchlands in response to Hamlet's triggered ability, making it ineffective against any that are already on the field.
And secondly, you have to pick one card name to stifle, so if Petrified Hamlet sees play, Modern players will just mix up their fetches. A Simic deck could run Flooded Strand, Scalding Tarn, and Polluted Delta to search up islands, for instance.
Just because it isn't the ultimate format-warping fetchland killer doesn't mean Petrified Hamlet won't be an impactful card. There are loads of other good lands this card could be used against, from the Channel lands like Otawara, Soaring City to the premier land removal card Wasteland.
It could even be useful in Commander - putting an end to popular, pesky tricks like Maze of Ith.
While it's a little narrow in what it can deal with (it doesn't do jack to Field of the Dead, for instance) land hate that can be played preemptively is pretty cool tech. I'm also wondering if there's any way to take advantage of the colorless mana generation, perhaps by naming a basic land? Possibly I'm dreaming too big here…
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