The rule
Every check land reads the same way. Using Glacial Fortress as the template:
Land
Glacial Fortress enters tapped unless you control a Plains or an Island.
Note what it checks for: basic land types, not basic lands. A Plains is a Plains, but so is Hallowed Fountain, and so is any nonbasic land with the Plains type. This distinction is the entire reason the cycle is playable.
The check happens once, as the land enters, and the result is locked in. If it enters tapped and you then play a Plains, the check land does not retroactively untap.
The ten check lands
Prices here make the argument better than any paragraph can: the whole cycle costs less than a single premium dual.
| Card | Type | Price | Why it is here |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sulfur Falls | Land | $0.39 | Checks for an Island or a Mountain. Izzet, and the most played of the cycle. |
| Clifftop Retreat | Land | $0.62 | Checks for a Mountain or a Plains. Boros aggro wants untapped lands, so the condition matters most here. |
| Dragonskull Summit | Land | $0.84 | Checks for a Swamp or a Mountain. Rakdos. |
| Glacial Fortress | Land | $0.50 | Checks for a Plains or an Island. Azorius, and the example used throughout this page. |
| Isolated Chapel | Land | $0.78 | Checks for a Plains or a Swamp. Orzhov. |
| Hinterland Harbor | Land | $0.36 | Checks for a Forest or an Island. Simic. |
Prices are the market price for the most representative paper printing, from the daily Scryfall snapshot. They move constantly, so treat them as a guide rather than a quote.
The probability that actually matters
The only question worth asking about a check land is: how often is it untapped when I need it?
The turn it matters most is turn two, because that is when you first want two mana and when a tapped land actually costs you a play. On turn one it is nearly always tapped and rarely matters. By turn five it is nearly always untapped and also rarely matters.
Rough turn-two reliability, given how many of your other lands carry a matching basic type:
| Matching type lands in deck | Chance a check land is untapped on turn two |
|---|---|
| 8 | Poor, well under half the time |
| 12 | Around half |
| 16 | Roughly two thirds |
| 20 | Around three quarters |
| 24 | Over eighty percent |
The threshold to aim for is around eighty percent. Below that, the check land is functionally a land that enters tapped when you most need it untapped, and a land that always enters untapped for one life is simply better.
In practice this means check lands want a deck with a lot of basics or a lot of typed nonbasics. A two color deck with ten basics and four shock lands hits the mark easily. A five color Commander deck with two basics does not, and should not be running them.
The dependency chain
Check lands are the clearest example in Magic of a card whose power comes entirely from other cards in the same deck.
The chain works like this. A shock land has two basic land types. That single shock land satisfies check lands in both of its colors. So one shock land can turn on several check lands, and the two cycles compound.
This was deliberate. The cycles were designed to be played in the same Standard formats, and the combination produced mana bases that were fast, cheap, and only lightly painful:
- Shock lands provide the basic types and enter untapped for two life
- Check lands read those types and enter untapped for free
- Basic lands provide types at no cost and no risk
The result is a mana base where the expensive land pays the life and the cheap land rides along free. That is why check lands hold value in Pioneer and Standard: they are a cheap multiplier on lands you already own.
Take away the typed nonbasics and the chain breaks. In a deck with no shock lands and few basics, check lands are the worst duals available.
Check lands against the alternatives
| Card | Type | Why it is here |
|---|---|---|
| Check land | Conditional untapped | Free when the condition is met, tapped when it is not. Best in decks with high basic type density. Costs no life at all, which is its real edge. |
| Shock land | Untapped for two life | Always available untapped if you pay. Fetchable. Turns on check lands. The most flexible and the most expensive to buy. |
| Pain land | Always untapped | Enters untapped every time and charges one life per colored mana used. Better than a check land in a deck that cannot meet the condition. |
| Fast land | Untapped if few lands | The mirror image of a check land: great on turns one to three, tapped later. Pairs well with check lands because their weaknesses do not overlap. |
| Surveil land | Always tapped, surveil one | Always tapped, always gives value. Better in slower decks and in graveyard decks. Fetchable, which matters more than the surveil for many decks. |
| Gain land | Always tapped, gain one life | The budget floor. Always tapped, tiny upside. Perfectly adequate in Commander and almost free to acquire. |
The pairing worth noticing is check land plus fast land. A fast land enters untapped only when you control three or fewer other lands. A check land is most likely to enter untapped once you have several. Their failure modes are opposite, so a mana base running both is untapped far more consistently than one running four of either.
Where they are worth playing
Pioneer and Standard. Their natural home. These formats have shock lands and reasonable basic counts, so the condition is met reliably, and the zero life cost is a genuine advantage over pain lands in a format with aggressive decks.
Commander, in two or three colors. Fine, and cheap. In a two color deck with a normal basic land count, a check land is close to a free untapped dual. Worth including.
Commander, in four or five colors. Skip them. Your basic type density is too low and they will enter tapped most of the time, at which point a gain land does the same job for less money.
Modern and Legacy. Rarely correct. These formats want fetchable lands, and check lands are not fetchable, so they lose to shock lands on the dimension that matters most.
The turn one trap
Worth stating plainly because it costs games: a check land as your only opening land always enters tapped.
You control no other lands, so nothing satisfies the check. Your first turn is spent playing a land that produces nothing.
Two practical consequences:
Sequence your lands. If you have a basic and a check land, play the basic first, then the check land untapped on turn two. Playing them in the wrong order costs you a full turn of mana, and it is a surprisingly common mistake under time pressure.
Weight your mulligan decisions. A hand whose only land is a check land is a turn slower than it looks. That matters more in a fast format than in Commander.
Counting your enablers correctly
Most people count enablers wrong, and the error always runs in the same direction: overcounting.
What satisfies a check land looking for a Plains or an Island:
- Basic Plains and basic Islands
- Any nonbasic land with the Plains or Island type, including shock lands, surveil lands, triomes, and the original dual lands
- Anything that has been given the type by an effect
What does not:
- Lands that produce white or blue mana but have no land type. This is the big one. A land that taps for any color but is typeless does nothing for a check land, and typeless fixing lands are extremely common
- Artifact lands, which have no basic land type
- Any land that only produces the right color through an activated ability
The practical consequence: a five color Commander deck full of typeless rainbow lands can produce perfect colored mana and still turn on zero check lands. Colors and types are different things, and check lands read types.
Before adding check lands to a deck, count the actual typed lands in your colors. If the number is under twelve, do not bother.
What to run instead when the condition fails
If your count comes up short, there are better options at similar or lower cost, and picking one of them is not a compromise.
Pain lands are the direct substitute. Always untapped, one life per colored mana. In a deck that would only meet the check condition half the time, a pain land is better on average and much more predictable, which matters more than the average.
Typeless tapped duals such as gain lands are the budget floor and are entirely fine in Commander. You lose a turn of tempo per land, which in a format that runs long is a smaller cost than a land that unpredictably enters tapped on the turn you needed it.
Triomes and typed tri-lands are the clever answer, because they solve both problems at once. They enter tapped, which is a real cost, but each one carries three basic land types and therefore turns on check lands in three colors. Adding a couple of typed tri-lands can flip a deck from “cannot support check lands” to “supports them comfortably”.
That last route is worth taking seriously in three color decks. Two or three typed tri-lands frequently do more for your check land reliability than four extra basics would.
Budget approach
Check lands are among the best value duals in the game, and the reason is straightforward: they are only good in decks that meet a condition, which suppresses demand relative to the unconditional cycles.
For a two color Commander deck, a check land does almost exactly what a shock land does, at a fraction of the cost, provided you run enough basics. If you are not running fetch lands, and most Commander decks are not, the shock land’s advantages largely evaporate and the price difference does not.
The order to buy in: basics are free, so get your type density up first. Then check lands. Then consider whether you actually need anything more expensive, because in a two color deck you frequently do not.