City of Traitors (Original Art)

City of Traitors is a land card from Exodus (1998), that can be tapped for two colorless mana, and must be sacrificed when you play another land. It’s the definition of “explosive mana”, giving you two colorless mana immediately, at the cost of being temporary – once you play another land, it’s gone. This makes it a cornerstone of decks that want explosive colorless mana and execute a powerful early-game play before the opponent can stabilize. It’s not a card for every deck, it’s for players who value tempo and burst mana over long-term stability. City of Traitors enables turn-one or turn-two plays that normally wouldn’t be possible (e.g. Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere). The drawback – having to sacrifice it if you play another land – rarely matters in the decks that want it. These decks either don’t need to play more lands, or use artifact mana or Sol lands to keep the pressure on. City of Traitors was played at the 1999 World Championship¬ in Kai Budde’s winning Red-Artifact Wildfire deck. In Legacy, City of Traitors is one of the format’s defining lands – a pillar of the format in decks collectively called “Sol Land” strategies. It’s played in decks like Eldrazi Stompy, Mono-Red Prison / Dragon Stompy, Painter, Cloudpost Ramp / “12 Post”, and Karn Forge. In Vintage, it appears in MUD / Workshop decks that rely on Mishra’s Workshop but want redundancy in explosive mana sources. In Commander (EDH), it sees play in artifact-heavy, colorless, or stax decks – particularly with commanders like Karn, Silver Golem or Kozilek, the Great Distortion. City of Traitors is on the Reserved List.