Cabal Coffers is a Huge Reprint – Here’s What to Play With It

Cabal Coffers has been previewed for Modern Horizons 2, and while it’s at mythic, it’s still a huge reprint — given that fetch lands are in the set, plenty of copies of Cabal Coffers are likely to be opened. If you haven’t played much with it before, then here’s a rundown of some of the strong interactions and fun cards to play alongside it in Commander.

Before we get into things, there’s an important thing to note about the collation of Modern Horizons 2 booster packs. In a tweet from Aaron Forsythe, it was confirmed that reprints new to Modern (cards like Cabal Coffers, for instance) would appear in a separate slot. 

This is similar to how the Mystical Archive cards appeared in Strixhaven booster packs, and is welcome news for those of us wanting to pick up some of the reprint cards. We’re yet to know just how many cards will feature in this slot, but chances are it’ll make the reprints more accessible than they would be otherwise. 

Cabal Coffers

Cabal Coffers is a land that generates substantial amounts of mana, and it’s right at home in many black decks. There’s one thing to keep in mind if you haven’t played it, though: it doesn’t tap for mana itself. Because of this, I’d be hesitant to count it as a land when you’re figuring out your minimum land requirements for a deck. So, if you’re aiming for 37 lands? Cabal Coffers should be land 38. 

Next, you need to figure out when you start to gain advantage with it. To generate positive amounts of mana, you need to have more than three Swamps in play. These can be basic Swamps, or lands with the “Swamp” subtype. Thankfully, there’s a way to make all of this easier. Let’s kick things off with our first synergy card. 

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

We can’t talk about Coffers without Urborg. By making all your lands into Swamps, Coffers will tap for significantly more mana. If you’re playing Coffers, you need to be playing this card.

There are a couple of other good synergies for leaning heavily into Swamps, too. Crypt Ghast is the more affordable of the two, letting your Swamps tap for double. Lake of the Dead is also worth looking at — though if you have access to that card, you probably already have your copies of Cabal Coffers!

Otherwise, I’d look into strong synergy cards. In a Zombie tribal deck, Corpse Harvester is a great way to get Swamps into play to make Coffers tap for more, while Strands of Night works excellently with an Urborg in play; reanimating at that cost is incredibly efficient, especially if you can bring lands back to play or to hand with the likes of Life from the Loam.

Manascape Refractor

When I previewed this powerful mana rock the other year, it was clear that the best synergies with it involved Cabal Coffers. Manascape Refractor has the activated abilities of lands in play, meaning your Cabal Coffers — or even an opponent’s. 

You can also expand the Manascape Refractor package with similar effects. Vesuva, recently reprinted in Time Spiral Remastered, is a way to instantly get a second Cabal Coffers into play for even more mana. Thespian’s Stage is a cheaper option, but one that is still often played alongside them both. At worst, it can turn into a bounce land like Orzhov Basilica. 

Dark Depths, meanwhile, is a mana sink for that excess mana, and it also has strong synergy with Thespian’s Stage. By turning Thespian’s Stage into Dark Depths, you get an instant Marit Lage token, as the Stage will have no counters on it. 

Deserted Temple

Deserted Temple lets you double dip on your Cabal Coffers, something anybody would be grateful for. 

If Deserted Temple is a little out of your budget, there are other ways to access some sweet untap technology. Voyaging Satyr is a nice budget option, while if you want to go a little further into synergy, then consider the likes of Garruk Wildspeaker or Magus of the Candelabra. 

If you’re building around lands and untapping them, then Thaumatic Compass and Maze of Ith are very good includes here. They’re amazing cards even just to have access to once a turn cycle, but when you can get extra untaps, they’re even better. 

If you’re in the market for good lands to untap, and you’re in the market for big mana, it makes sense to look at other lands with big mana generation. A lot of black decks tend to have incidental high devotion, so Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx is a good bet. If you’re an Elves deck or make a lot of tokens, Growing Rites of Itlimoc flips into a much more affordable version of Gaea’s Cradle. Field of the Dead is just a sweet payoff for running a land toolbox; try it with an even split of snow and non-snow basics.

One last thing: Nyxbloom Ancient also triples the amount of mana your Cabal Coffers produces. It’s a great one to run in a deck with an X spell win condition, like Torment of Hailfire or Exsanguinate, and it’s my win condition of choice in Meren of Clan Nel Toth.

Crop Rotation

Playing Coffers is one thing, but seeing it during the course of your game is another thing entirely. When you want to find your payoff lands, you’ll need ways to tutor for them. Crop Rotation is the most versatile option aside from Expedition Map, but it’s far from the only one. 

Sylvan Scrying puts a land to hand, Ulvenwald Hydra comes with an excellent body for blocking, and Elvish Reclaimer is a repeatable engine that can keep tutoring for your lands.

If you’re in Orzhov, you can try Weathered Wayfarer. If you’re in Reanimator, remember that your Entomb also puts a land into your graveyard if you’d prefer; you’ll just need Life from the Loam or another way to grab it to hand. In a “lands matter” deck? Slam that Scapeshift!

The new Modern Horizons 2 card Unmarked Grave is another good candidate for use with Cabal Coffers. If you’re able to get value from non-legendary cards, then putting Cabal Coffers into the graveyard is a nice little play. Just keep in mind, it won’t be able to drop Urborg into the bin, as it’s a legendary land. If you’re in a Reanimator-style black build, it’s definitely a consideration. 

Rounding things out, consider ways to get this thing back into play when it inevitably eats removal. 

The card that’ll be most interesting to see when it comes to Cabal Coffers is Tomik. It can hose the Coffers deck by not letting it use the graveyard, but it can also help the Coffers deck by protecting it from the likes of Ghost Quarter or Field of Ruin. It depends how hard you’re going in on the lands strategy, of course, but Tomik’s an underutilized tech card for sure. 

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If you’re building around Cabal Coffers, then make sure you pack the right tools to enable it. If your deck ends up relying on big mana, you can always get that mana elsewhere, too — Culling Ritual is a great pick for a deck that wants to pop off with Cabal Coffers, for example.

While reprinting Coffers at mythic might drive up the card’s price, the sheer amount of Modern Horizons 2 players will want to open for fetch lands means it could actually see a sizable price drop. There’s also the fact it appears in the dedicated reprint slot, which should increase the chances we see it popping up in booster packs. 

Are you picking one up? What deck is it going into? Let me know on Twitter.