Price$12.31 – $16.69
Buy on TCGplayerShadowy Backstreet
Land — Plains Swamp
LegalRank #561
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This land enters tapped.
When this land enters, surveil 1. (Look at the top card of your library. You may put it into your graveyard.)
KeywordsSurveil
Why is this card good?
Shadowy Backstreet is a clean, no-frills upgrade to a basic dual in Orzhov decks. It's a true Plains Swamp, so it fetches with Prismatic Vista, triggers landfall-by-type effects, and works with cards that care about basic land types.
The surveil 1 is small but real value: it smooths draws and feeds the graveyard, which matters a lot in the archetypes that play black-white. Aristocrats, reanimator, and self-mill/graveyard-value decks all genuinely want that extra surveil to bin a creature or set up the top of your library.
The cost is that it enters tapped. In a fast or cEDH-adjacent Orzhov build, a guaranteed tapped land can be a real tempo hit, and you'd rather run untapped duals or fetch-friendly options.
Play it in midrange-to-grindy Orzhov decks (Teval-adjacent value, aristocrats, reanimator) that don't mind tapped lands and benefit from graveyard fuel. Skip it in low-curve, speed-focused lists where every tapped land slows your gameplan.
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