Magic: The Gathering - MTG Dual Lands

MTG Dual Lands (sometimes misspelled duel lands) are undoubtedly some of the most sought after Magic : The Gathering cards ever. They provide an enormous advantage to any deck that is not solely one color (which means most decks!). There are 10 MTG dual lands in all. Each one counts as two different basic land types, and can be tapped for one mana of either of two colors. The fact that there is no cost for this ability (as there is with many similar, but less sought after lands) is what makes the original dual lands so powerful. Why would you want a basic land when you could have a dual land? If you have a Dual Land and want to know what set it's from, here's a tip: Alpha Dual Lands and Beta Dual Lands have a black border, while Unlimited Dual lands and Revised Dual Lands have a white border.

Even though the dual lands have basic land types (like mountain and swamp), they are not basic lands. This means a few things in terms of play and deck design. First off, in most formats of Magic you can only have up to four of any card that is not a basic land, including dual lands. That means you can't replace all the lands in your deck with duals, as convenient as that might be! Also, effects from other cards that search for basic lands in your library (such as Civic Wayfinder or Explosive Vegetation) may not be used to find dual lands. However, an effect that checks to see if a basic land type is in play will count a dual land that has that basic land type (for example, if you control an Underground Sea and an opponent has a creature with islandwalk, you can't block the creature because you control a land with the basic land type island). These few disadvantages aside, dual lands are still great cards to have!

The information on this page only refers to the original Dual Lands from Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, and Revised. There are other kinds of Dual lands in Magic, but they all have some sort of disadvantage associated with them (i.e. they damage you when used, or come into play tapped or something). You should also see my lenses on Pain / Shock Lands and Artifact Lands.