Moving on to Castle Locthwain, first notice that all of these are expensive functions, and that you have to account for the 1 extra mana that you are losing when you tap this land. This card is effective under a very specific set of conditions: First, that your hand count is low or empty, so that you aren't killing yourself too much; and secondly, that you have no other need of the mana that you are spending. Ideally, you'll want to wait through your opponent's turn (keeping mana available either as a threat, or to some defensive purpose), and tap out for this draw at their end step. An extra card can be a big bonus for a deck that plays out its cards quickly, so that is the kind of design in which you'll find this card has relevancy. The primary difference in a card like this to Castle Garenbrig, is that you can wait until the opponent's end step to use it, rather than needing to use most or all of your available mana to utilize its function. That is what makes Locthwain, and as we'll see, Vantress useful cards, in certain situations. The fact that they are mono-oriented makes them even more difficult to use effectively, so having a perfect mana scheme is essential to getting the most out of them. |
