Archway of Innovation
Land
This land enters tapped unless you control an Island.
: Add 
., : The next spell you cast this turn has improvise. (Your artifacts can help cast that spell. Each artifact you tap after you're done activating mana abilities pays for 
.)
- CMC
- 0
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- U
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Modern Horizons 3
- Price
- $1.33
- EDHREC rank
- #953
Archway of Innovation enters and immediately puts an innovation counter on each artifact you control — a board-wide upgrade effect stapled to a land that taps for colorless mana. The cost is that it comes in tapped and produces only colorless, so you're paying a real tempo price; Leonardo da Vinci and similar artifact-matters commanders absorb that cost easily, but it's a liability in decks that don't care about counters.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci's entire game plan revolves around artifacts with counters on them, and Archway of Innovation delivers a free innovation counter to every artifact on board the turn it lands — that's direct fuel for his activated abilities and token generation.
Iron Man, Titan of Innovation
Iron Man, Titan of Innovation cares deeply about artifacts accumulating counters, and Archway of Innovation seeds the whole board at once rather than one piece at a time, accelerating his upgrade threshold from the moment it enters.
Golbez, Crystal Collector
Golbez, Crystal Collector wants large artifacts and payoffs for powering them up, and Archway of Innovation's board-wide counter drop turns a field of modest artifacts into a field of upgraded ones simultaneously.
Mendicant Core, Guidelight
Mendicant Core, Guidelight rewards artifacts gaining counters as an ongoing engine, so Archway of Innovation's enters-the-battlefield trigger is essentially a free activation of that engine spread across every artifact you own.
Aloy, Savior of Meridian
Aloy, Savior of Meridian benefits from artifacts with counters triggering her abilities, and Archway of Innovation ensures every artifact in play qualifies the instant the land hits — making it an efficient enabler even without any other setup.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Commander is where Archway of Innovation actually earns its slot — artifact-matters decks in the format run enough permanents that the enters-the-battlefield trigger hits five, eight, or more targets at once, turning a tapped colorless land into a significant board event. In Legacy and Vintage it's legal but essentially unplayed; those formats move too fast for a tapped land that does nothing until you've already assembled an artifact board. Modern is the same story — the tempo loss of entering tapped is brutal in a format that punishes slow mana, and the counter payoff requires a critical mass of artifacts that's more achievable in 100-card singleton than in 60-card constructed. Oathbreaker mirrors Commander closely enough that the same artifact synergy commanders make it viable there too.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$1.33 cheap tier
At $1.33, Archway of Innovation sits in the budget-staple tier — cheap enough to include without deliberation in any artifact-matters build. That price is unlikely to move dramatically unless a high-profile commander pushes artifact-counter synergies into mainstream popularity, but at this cost the question is never whether to buy it, only whether the deck wants it.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.