While cards like Vivi challenge the idea somewhat, the fact is that Wizards of the Coast, on the whole, is much more conservative when it comes to designing cards these days. Most modern cards come with safety valves that prevent them from being totally busted. Back in the day this was far less of a concern, and we saw some truly wacky designs as a result. One such design, namely Ghost Town, is back in vogue with MTG players this week.
Thanks to a post on the Magic The Gathering EDH-Commander Facebook page, many players are rediscovering this hidden gem. Many more are actually discovering it for the first time, along with all the wacky plays it enables. While a land that bounces itself back to your hand doesn’t sound like something most decks would want, there are actually a ton of applications for this 1997 classic in Commander. The card even enables a new infinite combo that we highlight at the end of the article.
Ghost Town In MTG Landfall Decks
It doesn’t take long to see what makes Ghost Town so special as an MTG land. The ability to bounce itself back to your hand isn’t totally unique: we’ve seen similar options on the likes of Oboro, Palace in the Clouds and Undiscovered Paradise, after all. What sets Ghost Town apart, however, is the flexibility of that bounce option.
Being free to activate is absolutely massive here. Oboro, while it can tap to fuel its own cost, is still a tempo hit every time you use it. Undiscovered Paradise is also restricted to only bouncing during your untap phase, which greatly limits the possible shenanigans. Ghost Town can be bounced any time on an opponent’s turn, with no mana investment required. This means you can hold up its colorless mana as needed, and then bounce it whenever you need to. It’s the kind of effect that Wizards absolutely wouldn’t print now, and likely for good reason.
Naturally, the card is a fantastic addition to Landfall decks. When you want to be hitting a land drop, or even multiple land drops, each turn, having a land you can bounce like this is ideal. It guarantees you’ll be able to keep powering your key Landfall pieces, whether it’s Omnath, Locus of Creation or Field of the Dead.
Landfall has other ways to achieve this, largely through play-land-from-graveyard cards like Icetill Explorer. Ghost Town lets you do the same thing with just a single card, however, and doesn’t demand any other synergy pieces to function. If you’re running any kind of Landfall or lands-matter deck, it’s likely worth finding a slot for this one.
An Unusual Form Of Ramp
If that were all Ghost Town could do, it would still be a pretty spicy MTG card. Turns out it has a lot more to offer than that, however, in white decks in particular.
Over the years, white has been given a lot of cards that belong to the category of Catch-Up Ramp. These are pieces that search up lands, and sometimes put them into play, if you have fewer lands in play than your opponents. Land Tax and Weathered Wayfarer are classic examples in this genre. In more recent times, cards like Claim Jumper and Beza, the Bounding Spring have carried on the tradition.
These cards are important for white decks in Commander, since the color really doesn’t have much access to ramp otherwise. They can be pretty tricky to work with, however, since being behind on lands isn’t really where you want to be in most games. Ghost Town gives you a way to bring down your land count on demand without giving up any permanent resources. As a result, it’s a fantastic inclusion in any deck running cards like these, particularly if you’re in Mono-White.
Ghost Town’s potential with Catch-Up Ramp doesn’t end there. A common inclusion in this Mono-White ramp package is Scroll Rack. Since Land Tax and friends add a bunch of lands to your hand, you have plenty of material to put back with the Rack in exchange for real cards. Ghost Town, when bounced, serves as another fodder card in your hand you can trade in if need be when using Scroll Rack. This essentially makes it card draw in the right circumstances. There really aren’t any other cards that do this much for Mono-White decks running this strategy. For this reason, Ghost Town is well worth a slot.
Welcome To Combo Town
As with most MTG cards with zero-mana activated abilities, Ghost Town also has a fair bit of combo potential. There are a number of busted infinite loops you can pull off with this card.
For starters, Retreat to Coralhelm and a creature that puts a land from your hand into play, like PuPu UFO, creates an easy loop. With both pieces out, you can wait for your opponent’s turn, then tap UFO to put Ghost Town into play. This will trigger Retreat, untapping UFO. You can then bounce Ghost Town for free and repeat the process as many times as you’d like, generating infinite Landfall triggers. This can end the game right away alongside a Landfall creature like Sabotender or Hedron Crab. There’s some nice redundancy available for this combo, too. If you’d like, you can sub in Walking Atlas or Sakura-Tribe Scout for UFO.
We’ve also received a nice new combo piece for Ghost Town very recently. That card is Steward of the Harvest from the Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander decks. If you get Ghost Town in your graveyard, you can exile it with this new creature. This will grant its self-bounce ability to all of your creatures. It’s very rare for creatures in Magic to be able to bounce themselves, never mind for free. As a result, the potential for shenanigans here is huge.
If you have a way to grant your creatures Flash, like High Fae Trickster, you can loop zero-mana creatures like Ornithopter for infinite enters/leaves triggers. Use Aluren instead, and you can get infinite mana using ‘Ritual Creatures’ like Burning-Tree Emissary. Alternatively, you can just make your board (mostly) immune to interaction from your opponents. As long as you have six lands, Anticausal Vestige from Edge of Eternities can draw your entire deck and drop a Thassa’s Oracle into play for free if you set this up.
Ghost Town is a card with a ton of applications, which is why it’s great to see it resurface now after so many years. At its current price tag of $1.80, it’s an easy pickup for many collections.
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