Life from the Loam MTG Card


Card setsReleased in 10 setsSee all
Mana cost
Converted mana cost2
RarityRare
TypeSorcery
Abilities Dredge,Mill

Key Takeaways

  1. Gives consistent land drops essential for landfall and graveyard interaction decks.
  2. The dredge ability offers alternative draw, maintaining hand resources.
  3. Flexible use with instant-speed spells enhances strategic plays.

Text of card

Return up to three target land cards from your graveyard to your hand. Dredge 3 (If you would draw a card, instead you may put exactly three cards from the top of your library into your graveyard. If you do, return this card from your graveyard to your hand. Otherwise, draw a card.)


Card Pros

Card Advantage: Life from the Loam offers a unique type of card advantage by allowing players to return up to three land cards from their graveyard to their hand each turn. This recurring effect ensures a steady land drop, which can be pivotal in many MTG strategies, especially those involving landfall or graveyard synergies.

Resource Acceleration: The dredge mechanic on Life from the Loam provides an efficient form of resource acceleration. Instead of a traditional draw, you can keep fueling your hand with land resources while simultaneously filling your graveyard with potential, creating more opportunities for plays each turn.

Instant Speed: While Life from the Loam is a sorcery, its synergy with other instant-speed spells cannot be overlooked. It allows players to play lands retrieved with its effect during their turn and keep mana open for instant-speed interactions during their opponents’ turns, making it a versatile component in many strategic sequences.


Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Life from the Loam involves getting cards back from the graveyard, which means you are at times forced to discard other potentially useful cards to fuel its dredge ability.

Specific Mana Cost: This card has a mana cost that demands green mana, which could be restrictive for decks not steeped in green mana or multi-colored builds not focusing on green.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: Although its casting cost is relatively low, to fully exploit Life from the Loam’s capabilities, it requires further investment into strategies that support repeated cycling of land cards, which might necessitate a higher mana curve than some more streamlined strategies.


Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: Life from the Loam offers a unique effect, allowing players to return lands from their graveyard to their hand. Its flexibility makes it a vital piece in various strategies, from enabling landfall triggers to ensuring land drops each turn.

Combo Potential: This card pairs excellently with cards that benefit from cycling lands back into the deck or graveyard, opening doors to powerful synergies and engine-like plays that can outvalue opponents over time.

Meta-Relevance: As metagames ebb and flow with graveyard strategies often being popular, Life from the Loam maintains its relevance. It is particularly effective in formats where resource management and long games dominate, continually providing utility and staying power.


How to beat

Life from the Loam is a versatile Dredge card that presents a resilient strategy in Magic: The Gathering. It enables players to repeatedly retrieve lands from the graveyard to their hand, ensuring a constant land drop every turn. This card can fuel land-based strategies and graveyard synergies, making it a linchpin in many decks.

To effectively counteract Life from the Loam, disrupting the player’s graveyard is paramount. Graveyard hate cards like Rest in Peace or Leyline of the Void can prevent lands from returning to the battlefield by exiling them altogether. Additionally, cards that can exile Life from the Loam directly, such as Scavenging Ooze, hinder its recurring capability. Bojuka Bog is another excellent card that can be strategically played to exile the opponent’s graveyard at a crucial moment. Preventing the Dredge mechanic by replacing the draw with graveyard exile effects can stymie an opponent’s strategy, making your chances of victory higher.

Denying your opponent the advantage that Life from the Loam grants requires specific countermeasures that target their graveyard-centric tactics. By integrating such measures into your deck, you enhance its resilience against this powerful recursion strategy in the game.


BurnMana Recommendations

Mastering MTG gameplay goes beyond just understanding the value of powerful cards like Life from the Loam. It’s about crafting winning strategies and evolving with the ever-changing MTG landscape. As a player looking to deepen your battlefield tactics, it’s vital to assess and incorporate cards that align well with your deck’s needs. Given Life from the Loam’s unique abilities, integrating this card can offer robust synergy and enhance overall deck potency, especially if you’re maneuvering through resource-heavy or graveyard-based strategies. To navigate this intricate path and gain a competitive edge, we welcome you to discover more and meticulously tailor your deck to triumph in every duel. Embark on the journey to perfect your deck with us.


Cards like Life from the Loam

Life from the Loam is a distinctive card that offers a recurring way to retrieve lands from your graveyard in MTG. In terms of functionality, it shares similarities with cards like Crucible of Worlds, which allows you to play lands from the graveyard directly onto the battlefield. Yet, Life from the Loam has the added benefit of dredging, which can potentially fill your graveyard with more lands to return to your hand.

Cycle cards like Tilling Treefolk also provide a way to return lands from your graveyard to your hand, but Life from the Loam’s low mana cost and dredge ability often make it a more versatile option for decks that capitalize on land strategies. Ramunap Excavator functions like a Crucible of Worlds on a creature, but it lacks the ability to dredge for additional value beyond playing lands from the graveyard. Though both cards allow similar strategies, the recursiveness and card advantage potential of Life from the Loam often gives it an edge in decks looking to exploit lands.

Altogether, Life from the Loam stands out among MTG cards that interact with lands in the graveyard, thanks to its combination of low cost, dredge, and strategic depth for various deckbuilding approaches.

Crucible of Worlds - MTG Card versions
Tilling Treefolk - MTG Card versions
Ramunap Excavator - MTG Card versions
Crucible of Worlds - World Championship Promos (PWOR)
Tilling Treefolk - Eventide (EVE)
Ramunap Excavator - Hour of Devastation (HOU)

Cards similar to Life from the Loam by color, type and mana cost

Regrowth - MTG Card versions
Superior Numbers - MTG Card versions
Summer Bloom - MTG Card versions
Elven Rite - MTG Card versions
Verdant Touch - MTG Card versions
Rampant Growth - MTG Card versions
Gaea's Blessing - MTG Card versions
Monstrous Growth - MTG Card versions
Nostalgic Dreams - MTG Card versions
Nylea's Intervention - MTG Card versions
Sylvan Scrying - MTG Card versions
Wildcall - MTG Card versions
Revive - MTG Card versions
Weird Harvest - MTG Card versions
Farseek - MTG Card versions
Living Wish - MTG Card versions
Channel - MTG Card versions
Explore - MTG Card versions
Nature's Spiral - MTG Card versions
Savage Punch - MTG Card versions
Regrowth - 30th Anniversary Edition (30A)
Superior Numbers - Mirage (MIR)
Summer Bloom - Double Masters 2022 (2X2)
Elven Rite - Stronghold (STH)
Verdant Touch - Stronghold (STH)
Rampant Growth - Fallout (PIP)
Gaea's Blessing - Mystery Booster (MB1)
Monstrous Growth - Eighth Edition (8ED)
Nostalgic Dreams - Torment (TOR)
Nylea's Intervention - Magic Online Promos (PRM)
Sylvan Scrying - Explorer Anthology 3 (EA3)
Wildcall - Magic Online Promos (PRM)
Revive - Magic 2013 (M13)
Weird Harvest - Ninth Edition (9ED)
Farseek - Doctor Who (WHO)
Living Wish - Judge Gift Cards 2008 (G08)
Channel - Strixhaven Mystical Archive (STA)
Explore - The Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander (LCC)
Nature's Spiral - Magic 2011 (M11)
Savage Punch - Jumpstart 2022 (J22)

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Life from the Loam MTG card by a specific set like Ravnica: City of Guilds and Magic Online Theme Decks, 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 Life from the Loam and other MTG cards:

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Printings

The Life from the Loam Magic the Gathering card was released in 7 different sets between 2005-10-07 and 2024-01-12. Illustrated by 4 different artists.

#ReleaseNameCodeSymbolNumberFrameLayoutBorderArtist
12005-10-07Ravnica: City of GuildsRAV 1722003normalblackTerese Nielsen
22010-11-08Magic Online Theme DecksTD0 A792003normalblackTerese Nielsen
32012-09-07Duel Decks: Izzet vs. GolgariDDJ 692003normalblackTerese Nielsen
42013-06-07Modern MastersMMA 1532003normalblackTerese Nielsen
52018-12-07Ultimate MastersUMA 1722015normalblackSung Choi
62019-12-02Secret Lair DropSLD 82015normalblackDan Mumford
72024-01-12Ravnica RemasteredRVR 1482015normalblackSung Choi
82024-01-12Ravnica RemasteredRVR 3501997normalblackSung Choi
92024-01-12Ravnica RemasteredRVR 4342015normalborderlessAyuko
102024-01-12Ravnica RemasteredRVR 350z2015normalblackSung Choi

Legalities

Magic the Gathering formats where Life from the Loam has restrictions

FormatLegality
CommanderLegal
LegacyLegal
ModernLegal
OathbreakerLegal
VintageLegal
DuelLegal
PredhLegal

Rules and information

The reference guide for Magic: The Gathering Life from the Loam card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.

DateText
2013-06-07 Dredge lets you replace any card draw, not just the one during your draw step.
2013-06-07 Once you decide to replace a draw using a card’s dredge ability, that card can’t be removed from your graveyard “in response.” (Replacement effects don’t use the stack.)
2013-06-07 You can’t use dredge unless you’re going to draw a card and the card with dredge is already in your graveyard.

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