Spoiler Highlight: Starting Town on Standard & Pioneer

The rotation is approaching. While Final Fantasy will still have a few months of Dominaria United Standard, Edge of Eternities will be the first sign of a new era, which will take away the entire Pain Lands cycle (Adarkar Wastes), as well as all allied Fast Lands (Seachrome Coast), considerably reducing the consistency of three-color decks and aggressive two-color strategies.

Starting Town

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The Universes Beyond expansion seem to bring the first solution to this new upcoming Standard: Starting Town offers the same advantages as Pain Lands for any deck, but with the already well-known restriction of Fast Lands, except that it counts turns instead of lands in play, making it a little worse if its controller loses a land drop in the early turns.

Half City of Brass, half Fast Land, and half Pain Land — this is the best way to define Starting Town and its applications for formats that can benefit from it in Standard. But the land should only really grow in the Metagame after the rotation with Edge of Eternities, since today's three-color strategies already have an excellent combination between all the Fast Lands and Pain Lands available.

Without easy access to untapped dual that doesn't depend on land types, Starting Town is favored for more aggressive strategies and archetypes that have high color requirements. Examples include Esper Bounce and Jeskai Oculus — two decks that could remain relevant next season and are greedy with their colored mana costs.

Two-color aggro lists may also need the new land for consistency. Depending on Edge of Eternities dual cycles — if there is a cycle, since two recent Standard expansions had no rare duals — these strategies lose access to the fast and efficient Pain Lands manafixing that facilitates splashes of, for example, Innkeeper’s Talent in Gruul Prowess lists, which also lose Copperline Gorge and will only have Thornspire Verge as an untapped dual land.

Starting Town, in this case, ensures that these lists continue to have access to both colors without losing much consistency, as long as they are played in the first three turns. In cases like Boros Mice or Izzet Prowess, they also complement Inspiring Vantage and Spirebluff Canal, guaranteeing twelve lands that generate both colors and that enter untapped in the first turns.

On the other hand, its insertion worsens consistency in three-color lists with many Fast Lands. For example, Esper Bounce tends to use Seachrome Coast and Darkslick Shores in the first turns and Adarkar Wastes or Caves of Koilos from the fourth turn onwards to keep access to untapped mana — Starting Town comes out tapped at the same speed as Fast Lands, and while it complements these strategies that lose a lot with the absence of Pain Lands, it also presents a major speed reduction.

Midranges should also need the new card at some level, but less frequently than Aggro or three-color decks. After all, they may benefit more from including some Surveil Lands or Manlands in place of Pain Lands if the Metagame becomes slower, while at the same time being more likely to use whatever cycle comes with Edge of Eternities after the rotation, but they can't play too many tapped lands without greatly hindering their overall game plan.

Control, in general, gains very little from Starting Town compared to the current Surveil Lands base with Verges and Fast Lands, which already meet all their needs. The loss of Seachrome Coast and Darkslick Shores will certainly be felt by the blue archetypes, who will need another land to access the right colors early in the game, even if it comes with the granting of one or more extra damage in the long run.

At the same time, the fact that it enters tapped from turn four onwards makes Starting Town a poor option for these strategies since the card does not add any extra value, while Fabled Passage also exists to meet the late-game needs of these archetypes while enabling any of the Verges in the early turns.

It's not common to see lists running Mana Confluence in Pioneer, and Starting Town is a bit too close to the card on many fronts. Today, Confluence is found in archetypes like Abzan Greasefang as a one-of, and the new card might replace it, but it might not.

Decks like Greasefang, Okiba Boss rely on mana efficiency and color consistency above all else. Today, the archetype's core already has Shock Lands, Fast Lands, Pain Lands, and Mana Confluence — with Starting Town being the middle ground of the last three, it's hard to imagine that an archetype where the fourth turn usually involves the combination of Thoughtseize or Silence and Greasefang to close the combo would want to risk having another land that enters tapped as the game goes on.

Like Standard's Control lists, five-color piles like Niv-to-Light and Quintorius Combo already have a robust enough mana base for longer games, and so they opt for the combination of Triomes, Fabled Passage and Verges while forgoing Fast Lands and Pain Lands, so Starting Town is unlikely to have a home here.

The only viable possibility for Pioneer in the pre-Final Fantasy Metagame involves Humans in four or five-color combinations, such as those that try to use the interaction of Songcrafter Mage with Collected Company and/or Mantis Rider, in addition to the already established creatures with synergies between their types and quality permanents — it is worth remembering that FF brings several powerful humans, such as Lightning, Army of One and Dark Confidant, so the possibility of new cards entering the archetype exists.

Starting Town is the type of card that has a lot of potential in Standard when it loses most of its mana base with Edge of Eternities. While the next expansion will likely begin to rebuild the land pool, the new card offers an efficient color-fixing option for any archetype that wants to play fast in the early turns.

Control decks will prefer slower options that offer more versatility. Whether it's Manlands for more late-game action, Surveil Lands for its interaction with Verges, or even Fabled Passage for immediate mana availability from turn four onwards.

In pre-rotation and Pioneer, there's still a lot of competition for the slots where Starting Town would belong. It's possible that lists with major color requirements but not as many untapped duals will want the card. For example, lists that are mostly red with splashes will probably want four more untapped duals to play spells of other colors in Standard.

Three-color lists like Jeskai Oculus and Bounce will likely maintain a Fast Lands + Pain Lands base as long as they're legal in Standard, since the follow-up synergy between them is more effective.

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