Storage land can refer to a member of three cycles of lands or City of Shadows. Each of these lands can gain storage counters in one way or another, and later be tapped to remove any number of storage counters and add that much mana to the mana pool. Usually, that mana is colored. Early versions of these lands are popular in Card blind formats in which the ability to produce large quantities of mana is rare. The Time Spiral cycle of storage lands also saw significant Standard constructed play in reactive control type decks and combo decks such as Dragonstorm.
The first storage land was City of Shadows from The Dark, which could build up counters by exiling creatures and did not require removing counters to produce mana, but could not produce mana any other way.
In the next set, Fallen Empires the first cycle of Storage lands was created. They enter the battlefield tapped and their controller can choose not to untap them during their turn and put a storage counter on them.
In Mercadian Masques, storage lands were revived. Though they function almost identically to the ones from Fallen Empires, they have a much cleaner template.
Storage lands were last seen in Time Spiral which significantly improved upon the original design. The lands could tapped for colorless mana on their own, they could produce either of two allied colors of mana from the stored counters rather than just one, and they did not have to tap themselves produce the stored mana so they could work as a sort of mana fixer. However, all this advantages were counterweighed by the fact that adding storage counters cost one additional mana.
- Calciform Pools (
/) - Dreadship Reef (/)
- Molten Slagheap (/)
- Fungal Reaches (/)
- Saltcrusted Steppe (/)
Similar to Storage lands
A number of artifacts and enchantments have similar effects to storage lands, though they do not use storage counters. Most notable is a cycle of Mana Batteries from Legends, which actually precede the storage lands. White Mana Battery, Blue Mana Battery, Black Mana Battery, Red Mana Battery, and Green Mana Battery.
Other cards include Kyren Toy, Iceberg, Petalmane Baku, Gemstone Array, Mana Cache Rasputin Dreamweaver, Shrine of Boundless Growth, Ventifact Bottle, Coalition Relic, the last two of which only stores one counter at a time and remove them during the next turn of its controller. Mirrodin's Core, Ice Cauldron and Jeweled Amulet also have a charge-up mechanic, but can never produce more than one mana per turn.
See also
- Depletion lands