Towns in MTG: Rules, History, and Best Cards

Starting Town | Illustration by Hristo D. Chukov

Magic is full of war-torn battlescapes, treacherous terrain, and sprawling metropolis cities like Ravnica. But even the denizens of the MTG universe need to take a vacay every now and then, or retire to a quiet, peaceful town somewhere far away from the multiverse’s many dangerous hellscapes.

Well, Final Fantasy isn’t exactly part of the multiverse, so towns aren’t quite canon to Magic lore yet, but the card type’s new to the game, just locked to Universes Beyond for the time being. And there’s nothing all that complicated about them.

Turns out this town is big enough for the two of us, so let’s get to it.

What Are Towns in MTG?

Adventurer's Inn | Illustration by Allen Morris

Town is a land type, plain and simple. It doesn’t carry any inherent meaning; it only exists for flavor reasons and to interact with a specific set of cards that mention towns by name. They’re essentially gates for a different subset of payoffs.

Towns were billed as a subtheme of the Simic () ramp archetype in Final Fantasy Limited.

How Many Towns Are There in MTG?

There are currently 23 towns in Magic, all of which are linked to the Final Fantasy set or its Commander decks.

There aren’t any plans to errata previous townlike cards. Sorry Gavony Township and Port Town.

Note that Planar Nexus counts as a town now (in all zones), and the everything counter from Omo, Queen of Vesuva adds the town subtype to the land it modifies.

Do Towns Have Basic Land Types?

None of the towns printed so far have a basic land type, though there’s nothing saying a town can’t have one. For example, having an Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth in play adds the swamp land type to all your towns, and future town cards might have basic land types as well.

Can Towns Be Fetched?

You can only search for towns out of your library with cards that specifically tutor up non-basic lands. None of the existing towns have land types, so they’re not viable targets for traditional fetch lands like Flooded Strand, even if they have a matching color identity. But a general land searcher like Urza's Cave or Expedition Map could fetch a town.

What Is the Color Identity of a Town?

Towns have a combined color identity of every colored mana symbol that appears in their rules text.

For example, Rabanastre, Royal City has and mana symbols in its text, so it has a Boros/RW color identity. Generic lands like Adventurer's Inn and Capital City don’t have any colored mana symbols in their rules text, so they have a colorless color identity, and you can play them in any Commander deck.

What Other Cards Interact With Towns?

Travel the Overworld

The following non-town cards mention towns in their rules text:

• Prishe's Wanderings
• PuPu UFO
• Qiqirn Merchant
• Reach the Horizon
• The Wandering Minstrel
• Town Greeter
• Travel the Overworld

How Do the Adventure Towns Work?

The cycle of adventure towns from Final Fantasy work like any other adventure, with the exception that the main card is a land instead of a non-land card.

That means you can either play them like normal as a land drop, or you can alternatively cast the adventure part of the card. Doing the latter places the card in exile upon resolution, after which you can play the land from exile. This counts towards your one land drop per turn.

One difference here is that the lands are played from exile, not cast from exile like most adventures, so cards that key off of casting from exile specifically won’t trigger. For example, Vega, the Watcher triggers off most adventures coming out of exile, but not doesn’t trigger when you play one of these towns from exile. However, a card like Prosper, Tome-Bound that triggers when you play a card from exile still triggers.

Towns vs. Gates

There’s functionally no difference between towns and gates outside of the cards that specifically interact with them. “Town” and “gate” have no inherent rules text, and they just exist as land types for other cards to reference.

Gates have been around for over a decade, and they have significantly more support across multiple sets. However, there are just as many towns as gates, with 23 total gates as of Final Fantasy.

Gallery and List of Town Cards

• Adventurer's Inn
• Balamb Garden, SeeD Academy / Balamb Garden, Airborne
• Baron, Airship Kingdom
• Capital City
• Clive's Hideaway
• Crossroads Village
• Eden, Seat of the Sanctum
• Gohn, Town of Ruin
• Gongaga, Reactor Town
• Guadosalam, Farplane Gateway
• Insomnia, Crown City
• Ishgard, the Holy See
• Jidoor, Aristocratic Capital
• Lindblum, Industrial Regency
• Midgar, City of Mako
• Rabanastre, Royal City
• Sharlayan, Nation of Scholars
• Starting Town
• The Gold Saucer
• Treno, Dark City
• Vector, Imperial Capital
• Windurst, Federation Center
• Zanarkand, Ancient Metropolis

Best Town Cards

Jidoor, Aristocratic Capital

It’s not actually all that great, but the adventure on Jidoor, Aristocratic Capital is the type of effect that makes Bruvac the Grandiloquent players swoon. Also weird to see aristocrats mentioned on a mono-blue card, but that’s Universes Beyond for ya.

Lindblum, Industrial Regency

Lindblum, Industrial Regency reads pretty terribly, but spellslinger decks just wanna sling spells, so repurposing a land as basically anything that gets a spell on the stack is useful in dedicated spells decks. Think of it like an MDFC: It’s a tapland on one side, or a nerfed Guttersnipe that draws your next land on the back.

Ishgard, the Holy See

Card advantage in white is always welcome, and this has less restrictive requirements than Axgard Armory. Of course, you miss out on the adventure if you have to just run this out as a land first, but that’s nothing a good ol’ Kor Skyfisher can’t help with.

Zanarkand, Ancient Metropolis

There’s nothing flashy about Zanarkand, Ancient Metropolis; it’s either a bad Forest or a pretty tame vanilla creature for 6 mana. It’s reminiscent of a Turntimber Symbiosis that’s just kind of worse on both ends, but getting a big creature out of a land is fine late-game utility, especially when you get the land back anyway.

Starting Town

Starting Town is the latest riff on City of Brass or Mana Confluence. It’s a 5-color pain land with a colorless buyout, and it even comes in untapped for the first three turns of the game. It’s likely more of a big deal for Constructed than Eternal formats, but certain Commander decks will welcome another 5-color fixer.

Balamb Garden, SeeD Academy / Balamb Garden, Airborne

The sauciest town in town is Balamb Garden, SeeD Academy. It’s a Simic Guildgate that eventually becomes a card advantage machine… literally! This thing costs an effective eight mana to transform (less if you control other towns), and you still need to crew it once it becomes airborne, but that’s a nice card advantage vehicle hiding on the back half of the land.

Midgar, City of Mako

Of all the adventure towns, I like Midgar, City of Mako the most. It’s overcosted in comparison to analogs like Village Rites and Deadly Dispute, and being a sorcery takes away a lot of interplay that cards like this usually have. But I’d expect those downsides from what’s effectively an MDFC land. Think about it: It’s a tapped black source on one half, nerfed Village Rites on the other.

Except here’s the kicker: The Reactor Raid adventure actually draws you three cards, not two. Two to your hand and the land that you can play from exile. That’s net positive on an effect that’s almost always card neutral. Don’t underestimate this one: It looks dinky, but MDFCs have taught us the power of attaching meager effects to lands.

The Gold Saucer

Coin flippers love flipping coins, so anything that has those fabled words on it is an immediate head-turner for Zndrsplt/Okaun fans. It’s also the only card in the main set (plus Setzer, Wandering Gambler in the precons) that flips a coin, making use of the trinket text on Edgar, King of Figaro. If you look closely, you might even see Sai, Master Thopterist taking a ride at the The Gold Saucer.

Decklist: The Wandering Minstrel in Casual Commander

The Wandering Minstrel | Illustration Thanh Tuấn

This is a proof of concept for The Wandering Minstrel. I’d classify it as a very causal Bracket 1-2 deck, though the presence of Crop Rotation unfortunately means it’s technically Bracket 3 (why is Crop Rotation a Game Changer again?).

The deck jams in pretty much every town from Final Fantasy, minus one or two of the truly non-synergistic colorless lands. It also features several ways to copy lands (Vesuva, Copy Land) to artificially up the town count.

Outside of the obvious town theme, this is a typical landfall deck featuring all the landfall favorites, with an emphasis on ones that make tokens or deal direct damage. The idea is to use ramp effects to power out your towns, triggering landfall effects along the way to grow your board, and closing out with The Wandering Minstrel’s activated ability. In some cases, a single activation is enough to end the game. The secondary gameplan lets you fall back on wincons like Rampaging Baloths and Avenger of Zendikar to do what they’ve been doing for centuries.

Time to Leave Town

The Gold Saucer | Illustration by Anthony Devine

Well thanks for stopping by. Hope your stay in town has been pleasant.

I gotta admit, I’m a little let down by the execution of towns in Final Fantasy. It felt like introducing a new land type with very little support, even less than what caves got in The Last Caverns of Ixalan. It’s just enough for Limited, but there’s very little excitement factor for the payoffs, and it feels like a rehash of gates with less support. There was also an opportunity to do something interesting with the common 2-color taplands, but they’re just guildgates with different names. A town is a town is a town, by any other name would be just as lame.

Here's to hoping they revisit towns in future sets and expand what the card type is capable of. Right now, they're more flavor than function, but as we’ve seen with gates, there’s demand for novel card types like this. If you plan on using the new towns, let me know in the comments below or over in the Draftsim Discord.

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