Ash Barrens MTG Card


Card setsReleased in 24 setsSee all
RarityCommon
TypeLand
Abilities Basic landcycling,Cycling,Landcycling

Key Takeaways

  1. Basic Landcycling ensures mana consistency and reduces the risk of color-lock in crucial moments.
  2. While offering instant speed adaptability, the card must be discarded to activate this ability.
  3. Ash Barrens adds versatility and synergy potential to various MTG decks and strategies.

Text of card

: Add to your mana pool. Basic landcycling (, Discard this card: Search your library for a basic land card, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle your library.)


Card Pros

Card Advantage: Ash Barrens may not let a player draw cards directly, but its Basic Landcycling ability offers strategic selection, ensuring land drops or aiding in finding the right mana needed for crucial plays.

Resource Acceleration: This land itself accelerates your mana resources by enabling better mana consistency, significantly reducing the chances of being color-locked at critical game moments.

Instant Speed: Ash Barrens’ Basic Landcycling can be activated at instant speed, allowing a player to adapt to the evolving board state and search for the required basic land type on an opponent’s turn or in response to an action.


Card Cons

Discard Requirement: While Ash Barrens provides flexibility in mana fixing, it necessitates the discard of the card itself to activate its Basic Landcycling ability. This can potentially reduce hand advantage, particularly in formats or decks where preserving card count is crucial.

Specific Mana Cost: Accessing the Basic Landcycling of Ash Barrens requires a generic mana investment. Although this might seem trivial, in the early game stages or in mana-tight situations, having to pay even a single mana might delay other plays or disrupt intricate mana curves.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: When considering the opportunity to put the land directly into play, Ash Barrens’ entering the battlefield tapped presents a slower alternative to other land options. Competing cards may offer untapped land access immediately, allowing for a more efficient and aggressive tempo.


Reasons to Include Ash Barrens in Your Collection

Versatility: Ash Barrens provides a rare level of flexibility for land cards, able to ensure you have the right color of mana exactly when you need it. Its Basic Landcycling ability makes it a reliable choice in decks that are mana color-intensive or for those looking to avoid being mana-locked at crucial game moments.

Combo Potential: The ability of Ash Barrens to fetch a basic land is not just good for fixing your mana; it can also be used to synergize with landfall abilities or other mechanics that are triggered upon lands entering the battlefield, thus enhancing various strategic plays.

Meta-Relevance: In any MTG format where the meta shifts rapidly and decks need to adapt quickly, Ash Barrens stands out as a staple that can adjust to the changing demands of the gameplay, maintaining its place as an effective tool in various competitive playstyles.


How to beat

Ash Barrens is a unique land card in the world of Magic: The Gathering that provides mana fixing capabilities essential for diverse and multicolored decks. Unlike basic lands, its Basic Landcycling ability allows you to search for a basic land card and put it directly into your hand for a nominal fee, ensuring that you get the color of mana you need exactly when you need it.

To effectively counter Ash Barrens, strategic use of land destruction or denial tactics can be quite effective. Land destruction cards disrupt your opponent’s mana base, potentially leaving them unable to utilize the specific mana they fetched. Cards that prevent players from searching their libraries, such as Aven Mindcensor or Stranglehold, can also prove to be valuable as they negate the Basic Landcycling advantage provided by Ash Barrens.

Considering the key role mana plays in any match, controlling your opponent’s ability to manage theirs can be a decisive move. When you hinder their search with Ash Barrens, you meet not just a land card but a broader strategy head-on, maintaining the upper hand as you play your game.


Cards like Ash Barrens

Ash Barrens is a dynamic land card in Magic: The Gathering that stands out for its Basic Landcycling ability. This feature allows players to exchange the card for a basic land of their choice, ensuring they get the mana they need at a critical moment. Comparable to this is the Evolving Wilds card, which also optimizes mana fixing. However, Evolving Wilds puts the land onto the battlefield tapped, whereas Ash Barrens gives the choice to bring it into your hand or play it untapped for a flexible mana boost.

Terramorphic Expanse is another card that echoes this land-search motif, yet with the same limitation as Evolving Wilds, requiring the fetched land to enter the battlefield tapped. While both share a similarity in fetching a basic land, they lack the immediacy and choice that Ash Barrens offers. Conversely, the card Myriad Landscape elevates land fetching by allowing for two basic lands to be put onto the battlefield tapped, doubling the land output but at a higher activation cost and slower setup compared to Ash Barrens’ direct approach.

Comparing these options, Ash Barrens surely has a unique spot in terms of agility and mana smoothing capabilities, making it highly regarded among players who value flexibility and speed in their land base.

Evolving Wilds - MTG Card versions
Terramorphic Expanse - MTG Card versions
Myriad Landscape - MTG Card versions
Evolving Wilds - Rise of the Eldrazi (ROE)
Terramorphic Expanse - Salvat 2005 (PSAL)
Myriad Landscape - Commander 2014 (C14)

Cards similar to Ash Barrens by color, type and mana cost

Cathedral of Serra - MTG Card versions
Mishra's Factory - MTG Card versions
Bad River - MTG Card versions
Griffin Canyon - MTG Card versions
Ice Floe - MTG Card versions
Ghost Town - MTG Card versions
Urza's Mine - MTG Card versions
Hall of Tagsin - MTG Card versions
City of Brass - MTG Card versions
Bloodstained Mire - MTG Card versions
Zoetic Cavern - MTG Card versions
Grixis Panorama - MTG Card versions
Rupture Spire - MTG Card versions
Krosan Verge - MTG Card versions
Terramorphic Expanse - MTG Card versions
Tectonic Edge - MTG Card versions
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx - MTG Card versions
Springjack Pasture - MTG Card versions
Buried Ruin - MTG Card versions
Wasteland - MTG Card versions
Cathedral of Serra - Legends (LEG)
Mishra's Factory - Dominaria Remastered (DMR)
Bad River - Mirage (MIR)
Griffin Canyon - Visions (VIS)
Ice Floe - Fifth Edition (5ED)
Ghost Town - Tempest (TMP)
Urza's Mine - Masters Edition IV (ME4)
Hall of Tagsin - Magic Online Promos (PRM)
City of Brass - World Championship Decks 2002 (WC02)
Bloodstained Mire - World Championship Decks 2003 (WC03)
Zoetic Cavern - Future Sight (FUT)
Grixis Panorama - Commander 2013 (C13)
Rupture Spire - Magic Online Theme Decks (TD0)
Krosan Verge - Phyrexia: All Will Be One Commander (ONC)
Terramorphic Expanse - Commander 2018 (C18)
Tectonic Edge - Zendikar Expeditions (EXP)
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx - Theros (THS)
Springjack Pasture - Commander 2013 (C13)
Buried Ruin - Commander 2014 (C14)
Wasteland - Zendikar Rising Expeditions (ZNE)

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Ash Barrens MTG card by a specific set like Magic Online Promos and Commander 2016, 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 Ash Barrens and other MTG cards:

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Printings

The Ash Barrens Magic the Gathering card was released in 21 different sets between 2016-11-11 and 2024-03-08. Illustrated by 6 different artists.

#ReleaseNameCodeSymbolNumberFrameLayoutBorderArtist
12002-06-24Magic Online PromosPRM 699832015normalblackJohn Avon
22016-11-11Commander 2016C16 562015normalblackJonas De Ro
32016-11-16Treasure ChestPZ2 722015normalblackJonas De Ro
42018-03-16Masters 25A25 2362015normalblackJonas De Ro
52018-06-08Commander Anthology Volume IICM2 2352015normalblackJonas De Ro
62019-08-23Commander 2019C19 2272015normalblackJonas De Ro
72019-11-07Mystery BoosterMB1 16562015normalblackJonas De Ro
82019-12-02Secret Lair DropSLD 4692015normalborderlessPiotr Dura
92020-04-17Commander 2020C20 2552015normalblackJonas De Ro
102020-08-07Double Masters2XM 3102015normalblackJonas De Ro
112020-09-26The ListPLST CM2-2352015normalblackJonas De Ro
122022-04-29New Capenna CommanderNCC 3862015normalblackJonas De Ro
132022-06-10Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's GateCLB 8802015normalblackJohn Avon
142022-10-07Warhammer 40,000 Commander40K 2652015normalblackSergei Leoluch Panin
152022-10-07Warhammer 40,000 Commander40K 265★2015normalblackSergei Leoluch Panin
162022-11-18The Brothers' War CommanderBRC 1741997normalblackJonas De Ro
172022-12-02Jumpstart 2022J22 8092015normalblackJonas De Ro
182023-06-23Tales of Middle-earth CommanderLTC 2952015normalblackSergio Cosmai
192023-08-04Commander MastersCMM 4192015normalblackJonas De Ro
202023-10-13Doctor WhoWHO 2572015normalblackOliver Wetter
212023-10-13Doctor WhoWHO 8482015normalblackOliver Wetter
222024-02-09Murders at Karlov Manor CommanderMKC 2482015normalblackJonas De Ro
232024-03-08FalloutPIP 7812015normalblackSergei Leoluch Panin
242024-03-08FalloutPIP 2532015normalblackSergei Leoluch Panin

Legalities

Magic the Gathering formats where Ash Barrens has restrictions

FormatLegality
CommanderLegal
LegacyLegal
PaupercommanderLegal
OathbreakerLegal
PauperLegal
VintageLegal
DuelLegal

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