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Moxonomy

Cryptic Caves

Land

The trade lives in the second ability's fine print: this taps for colorless like any painless utility source until your land count reaches five, at which point it converts itself into a card. That threshold clause carries the entire design. A land that draws a card is a familiar idea, but the good versions have always attached friction (Horizon Canopy pays life, the cycling duals ask for their casting cost), and the friction here is a deckbuilding constraint rather than a resource one. You cannot cash it in early, when a spare card matters most and your development is thinnest; the payout arrives late, when you have already flooded and want an extra threat or answer instead of an eighth blank land. That timing inverts the usual worry about drawing lands: the fifth land onward, the ones that would otherwise sit dead, become the fuel that turns a mana source into a spell. It comes into play untapped and asks nothing in colors, so the cost of running it is a single colorless source in the early turns and a sacrificed permanent later. Modest by design, and honest about it: flood insurance that pays out exactly when the flood arrives.

Cryptic Caves (fdn)
FDN · #686uncommon
Pricing
Normal: $0.14
Foil:
Oracle Text

Rules text

Tap: Add Colorless mana. 1 generic mana, Tap, Sacrifice this land: Draw a card. Activate only if you control five or more lands.
Legalities

Format Status

Standard
Legal
Pioneer
Legal
Modern
Legal
Legacy
Legal
Vintage
Legal
Commander
Legal
Pauper
N/A
Brawl
Legal
Historic
Legal
Alchemy
Legal
Timeless
Legal
Standard Brawl
Legal
More formats
Old School
N/A
Premodern
N/A
PreDH
N/A
Pauper Commander
N/A
Oathbreaker
Legal
Gladiator
Legal
Penny Dreadful
N/A
Duel Commander
Legal
Future Standard
Legal
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
Legal
TLR
Legal
Printings elsewhere

Other printings

3 sets
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