The importance of land in magic the gathering is often overlooked by people especially as they begin to play the game of magic. This is made even more true when the land is not at all what they are used to. And I think that is why the lands in the time spiral block were generally overlooked. This is because many of the lands I this block are very odd and since there is not a cycle each type of land only fits into a specific type of deck.

River of Tears is a rare land from the future sight expansion set of magic the gathering. It is one of the stranger dual lands, but in the right circumstances could be one of the better ones since it has the potential of producing two different colored mana with no loss of life and not coming into play tapped.

The card reads "Tap add one blue mana to your mana pool. If you played a land this turn then instead add one black to your mana pool."

The first thing that you have to be aware of when playing this card is that you can not count on having it play black mana. This is because, except for the first turn, you can always have it tap for blue, but only have black when you have another land, but the good news is that even on those turns when you play a land you can still tap it for black mana.

Also of considerable value is the idea that this will always produce blue mana on your opponent's turn. This is a good thing since it is far more likely that you will want to produce blue mana at that time to pay for counter spells.

Drafting lands in limited is generally a bad idea early on. There is such a limit of good cards and even with lands like this you will want to shy away from playing more than two colors so you are better off allowing it to go around the table and pick it up on the second trip by if there isn't anything else you want.

I can understand why this card never gained any true popularity. As a dual land it is too unreliable to be truly useful, but in a blue deck that has a few powerful black spells and wants just a little more black mana on occasion it could be useful.

Learn more about this author, Elton Gahr.
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