Price$3.50 – $11.32
Buy on TCGplayerCastle Locthwain
Land
LegalCard DrawRank #737
This land enters tapped unless you control a Swamp.
: Add 
.
, : Draw a card, then you lose life equal to the number of cards in your hand.
Why is this card good?
Castle Locthwain is a near-free inclusion in almost any mono-black or black-heavy deck. It's a Swamp that taps for , and its only real cost is entering tapped if you don't control another Swamp — trivial in dedicated black decks.
The real value is the repeatable card advantage. Black struggles to refill its hand outside of life-payment effects, and Locthwain turns excess mana into cards every turn. The life loss scales with your hand size, so you want to activate when your grip is low — ideally one or two cards. Done right, it's a reliable engine that grinds out long games.
Best in: mono-black control, midrange, and aristocrats/Mono-B commanders like Korvold, K'rrik, Sheoldred, or any deck that empties its hand and wants gas. Lifegain and life-payment shells (K'rrik especially) love it.
Skip it in: heavily multicolored decks where consistently controlling a Swamp is hard, or fast combo decks that win before card advantage matters. The activation cost is also stiff early.
, and its only real cost is entering tapped if you don't control another Swamp — trivial in dedicated black decks.
The real value is the repeatable card advantage. Black struggles to refill its hand outside of life-payment effects, and Locthwain turns excess mana into cards every turn. The life loss scales with your hand size, so you want to activate when your grip is low — ideally one or two cards. Done right, it's a reliable engine that grinds out long games.
Best in: mono-black control, midrange, and aristocrats/Mono-B commanders like Korvold, K'rrik, Sheoldred, or any deck that empties its hand and wants gas. Lifegain and life-payment shells (K'rrik especially) love it.
Skip it in: heavily multicolored decks where consistently controlling a Swamp is hard, or fast combo decks that win before card advantage matters. The activation cost is also stiff early.Related cards
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Printings (5)
Played by these commanders
Nalia de'Arnise100% of 1
Rulings (3)
- 2019-10-04
No player may take actions between the time you draw a card and the time you lose life.
- 2019-10-04
Once the common lands (such as Mystic Sanctuary) enter the battlefield tapped, there's no way to untap them with a spell or ability to make their last ability trigger.
- 2019-10-04
Although the common lands have basic land types, they aren't basic lands.