Knight of the Reliquary does not interact properly with non-support land cards. It does not get boosted with desert cards in the graveyard, nor does it fetch them when a support is destroyed. The card does not specify land supports, just ‘land’ cards.
Is this a bug, or is the card working as intended, but needs to be rewritten ?
//Edited Title - Brigby
From my understanding the Desert cards are not considered to be Land cards, but Desert cards. Desert is actually a type separate from Land which is why they wouldn’t trigger Knight of the Reliquary’s boost or fetch ability.
If that is the case they should be re-worded. They are currently listed as having the “Desert Land” type.
That’s where the confusion is coming from
And some of the events actually say “Land supports” rather than just “Lands” implying that the deserts are known about and are meant to work in all other cases where land is specified.
(And since the land deck concept continues to be pushed I think the non support lands SHOULD be counted for everything, it would help make things a reality sooner. I like that some lands aren’t supports and think there should be occasional spell ones in the future too. And drop the “land support” requirement back to just “land”, it’s not a necessary restriction.)
Soooo, the desert cards (which are actual lands with sacrifice abilities in paper) that are explicitly labeled as lands, aren’t actually lands? This is doubly curious because they initially were just desert cards, before getting retroactively changed when Ixalan added cards that cared about lands.
I can definitely see where the confusion is coming from, I’ll reach out and see if I can get confirmation on how this should be working.
Also, point of order, it’s not just deserts.
Evolving Wilds is also a (standard legal) land spell.
Grow from the Ashes and Scapeshift will both pull in Desert Land Spell cards (tested with Ramunap Ruins and Desert of the Indomitable).
Knight of the Reliquary is ignoring these in the same deck.
As @Gun_Bunny originally suspected, the issue appears to be specific to Knight of the Reliquary, and it isn’t identifying the non-support lands as valid triggers.
Hi Everyone. This should be fixed in 3.1