Lair Delve MTG Card

Mana cost
Converted mana cost	3
Rarity	Common
Type	Sorcery
Released	2012-05-04
Set symbol
Set name	Avacyn Restored
Set code	AVR
Number	184
Frame	2003
Layout	Normal
Border	Black
Illustred by	Jason A. Engle

Key Takeaways

Lair Delve provides essential land cards, ensuring a smooth mana flow in your game strategy.
Its instant speed and tactical adaptability can give you a significant advantage during plays.
The card serves as a strategic tool for decks that exploit land utilization and top-card synergy.

Text of card

Reveal the top two cards of your library. Put all creature and land cards revealed this way into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.

"The fiends have fled. Well, good riddance. Nothing I like more than an empty lair."

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Lair Delve offers a unique approach to filtering through your deck. It allows you to reveal the top two cards of your library and put all land cards into your hand, ensuring that you gain the lands you need to maintain a steady pace in the game.

Resource Acceleration: By potentially retrieving lands from the top of your library, Lair Delve helps you avoid missing land drops. This increase in land resources can significantly accelerate your mana base, allowing for more significant plays earlier in the game.

Instant Speed: The ability to cast Lair Delve at the end of your opponent’s turn adds a layer of tactical depth to your gameplay. Should the situation change or necessitate a different response, you have the flexibility to adapt on the fly without having committed resources during your own turn.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Lair Delve requires a player to toss aside another card in their hand, a potential downside for those already clutching at precious few options.

Specific Mana Cost: The card demands both red and green mana, a combination that fits snugly into only certain types of decks, potentially limiting its adaptability.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: With a cost that asks for three total mana, including one of each aforementioned color, Lair Delve’s ability to fetch a land might come a tad too late, especially when other options could secure an advantage sooner.

Reasons to Include Lair Delve in Your Collection

Versatility: Lair Delve offers a dual functionality that is advantageous for decks focusing on utilizing land cards and filters through the deck to access crucial forest or mountain cards.

Combo Potential: By revealing the top cards of your library, Lair Delve synergizes with library manipulation strategies, enhancing play with the top-card mechanics like Oracle of Mul Daya or Courser of Kruphix.

Meta-Relevance: In a game that rewards efficient resource management, the capacity to fetch additional lands with Lair Delve ensures a stable mana base against a variety of meta strategies, keeping your plays consistent and competitive.

How to beat

Lair Delve, a card that beckons players into Magic: The Gathering’s deep caverns of strategy, offers a mix of exploration and resource accrual. Functioning akin to a cantrip, Lair Delve allows players to reveal the top two cards of their library and then choose one card that fits the criteria of being a land or a creature card, putting it into their hand. The simplicity of its green and red mana requirement facilitates its incorporation into Gruul decks or other multicolored strategies.

To effectively outmaneuver Lair Delve, understanding the archetype it benefits is key. Control-oriented decks, with their plethora of counter spells, can nullify Lair Delve’s impact by preventing it from ever resolving. Aggressive strategies can also prove formidable by pressuring the opponent to defend rather than spend turns setting up their mana base or creature lineup. Incorporating graveyard disruption like Tormod’s Crypt or Scavenging Ooze might also mitigate the advantages gleaned from additional draw, making it pivotal to understand the importance of timing and the role of disruption when facing cards like Lair Delve.

Ultimately, countering Lair Delve hinges on thwarting the player’s broader strategy. By cutting off the synergy it provides, one can diminish its potential value and keep control of the game.

Cards like Lair Delve

Lair Delve is an intriguing card offering players a unique way to utilize their deck’s lands and creatures within Magic: The Gathering. When compared to other green cards like Adventurous Impulse, Lair Delve stands out by allowing players to look at the top three cards of their library. Whereas Adventurous Impulse is a one mana spell that limits the player to the finding of a creature or land card, Lair Delve’s ability to potentially draw a creature and a land with one card gives it a different level of utility.

Exploration is another card that shares the theme of manipulating lands but does it by granting extra land drops rather than drawing cards. Lair Delve, on the other hand, caters to a slower, more methodical game plan, giving the player added value over time. Moving onto Seek the Wilds, players get a similar effect to Adventurous Impulse but with an extra choice at the cost of an additional mana. Lair Delve again differs by drawing the additional card, which could be a creature, adding more substance to your hand.

Assessing these comparisons shows that Lair Delve can be a versatile choice for players who are looking to draw into more gas for the game ahead while making the most out of both creatures and lands in their library.

Cards similar to Lair Delve by color, type and mana cost

Rosethorn Acolyte // Seasonal Ritual - MTG Card versions

Lovestruck Beast // Heart's Desire - MTG Card versions

Gift of the Gargantuan - MTG Card versions

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Lair Delve MTG card by a specific set like Avacyn Restored, there are several reliable options to consider. One of the primary sources is your local game store, where you can often find booster packs, individual cards, and preconstructed decks from current and some past sets. They often offer the added benefit of a community where you can trade with other players.

For a broader inventory, particularly of older sets, online marketplaces like TCGPlayer, Card Kingdom and Card Market offer extensive selections and allow you to search for cards from specific sets. Larger e-commerce platforms like eBay and Amazon also have listings from various sellers, which can be a good place to look for sealed product and rare finds.

Additionally, Magic’s official site often has a store locator and retailer lists for finding Wizards of the Coast licensed products. Remember to check for authenticity and the condition of the cards when purchasing, especially from individual sellers on larger marketplaces.

Below is a list of some store websites where you can buy the Lair Delve and other MTG cards: