Domain in Modern: How It Counts and Why Triomes Matter

Domain cards reward you for the variety of your lands rather than their number. In Modern, the lands that make that variety cheap are the Triomes: nonbasic lands that each carry three basic land types. This guide covers exactly what domain counts under the Comprehensive Rules, lists all ten Triomes with their type lines, quotes six Modern-legal domain cards, and works out the land-type math with stated assumptions. Card text and legality come from Scryfall's Oracle data, current as of October 2, 2026. Rules come from the Comprehensive Rules effective September 25, 2026.

What domain actually counts

Domain is not a keyword. Comprehensive Rule 207.2c lists it among the ability words, which "have no special rules meaning and no individual entries in the Comprehensive Rules." The word in italics just labels the ability. What matters is the sentence that follows it, and on every domain card discussed here that sentence counts the basic land types among lands you control.

Rule 205.3i lists every land type in the game and says that "Forest, Island, Mountain, Plains, and Swamp are the basic land types." Rule 305.6 repeats that list and adds that a land with a basic land type has the matching mana ability built in, even if its text box does not show it. So the highest domain count possible is five.

The official rulings on cards such as Scion of Draco and Tribal Flames spell out the two points that trip people up:

• "Domain abilities count the number of basic land types among lands you control, not how many lands you control or how many of any type." Three Forests count as one type.
• "Land types other than basic land types (such as Desert) don't contribute to domain abilities."

A third point follows from rule 305.8: being a basic land and having a basic land type are different things. "Any land that doesn't have this supertype is a nonbasic land, even if it has a basic land type." A nonbasic land with the subtype Island counts toward domain exactly as a basic Island does. That is why a single Triome adds three types at once.

All ten Triomes and their type lines

A Scryfall search for is:triome returns ten cards. We also searched every nonbasic land that has at least one basic land type, and these ten are the only ones with three. Five were first printed in Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths (April 24, 2020, per Scryfall), and five in Streets of New Capenna (April 29, 2022, per Scryfall). All ten have the same rules text: they tap for any of their three colors, "This land enters tapped.", and they have "Cycling {3} ({3}, Discard this card: Draw a card.)". All ten are legal in Modern as of October 2, 2026.

There are exactly ten ways to choose three of the five basic land types, and the ten Triomes cover each combination once. Our script (compute.cjs, below) checks this against the type lines above.

Why three types per land changes the math

Two different Triomes always share at least one type, because 3 + 3 is more than 5. So any two different Triomes give you either four or five types. Of the 45 possible pairs, 15 cover all five types and 30 cover exactly four. Every Triome has exactly three partners that complete domain with it:

• Indatha Triome: Ketria Triome, Raugrin Triome, Xander's Lounge
• Ketria Triome: Indatha Triome, Savai Triome, Raffine's Tower
• Raugrin Triome: Indatha Triome, Zagoth Triome, Ziatora's Proving Ground
• Savai Triome: Ketria Triome, Zagoth Triome, Spara's Headquarters
• Zagoth Triome: Raugrin Triome, Savai Triome, Jetmir's Garden
• Jetmir's Garden: Zagoth Triome, Raffine's Tower, Xander's Lounge
• Raffine's Tower: Ketria Triome, Jetmir's Garden, Ziatora's Proving Ground
• Spara's Headquarters: Savai Triome, Xander's Lounge, Ziatora's Proving Ground
• Xander's Lounge: Indatha Triome, Jetmir's Garden, Spara's Headquarters
• Ziatora's Proving Ground: Raugrin Triome, Raffine's Tower, Spara's Headquarters

Basic land types also make Triomes searchable. Flooded Strand reads: "{T}, Pay 1 life, Sacrifice this land: Search your library for a Plains or Island card, put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle." Rule 701.23a says that to search you "find a card that matches the given description," and a Triome with the subtype Plains or Island matches. The official ruling on Three Visits says the same thing about Forests: it can find "any card with the land type Forest, not just a card with the name Forest." A Flooded Strand can therefore fetch Raugrin Triome, which brings Island, Mountain and Plains, not just one type. Flooded Strand and Wooded Foothills (Mountain or Forest) are both legal in Modern as of October 2, 2026. The trade-off is printed on the Triome: it enters tapped, whether you play it or fetch it.

The domain cards, in their exact Oracle text

Every card in this table has a domain ability that counts the basic land types among lands you control. The legality column is Modern as of October 2, 2026.

(Line breaks in the Oracle text are shown here as sentence breaks.) The payoff at each domain count works out like this:

Rules details that decide games

Cost reduction only touches generic mana

Rule 118.7a: "Effects that reduce a cost by an amount of generic mana affect only the generic mana component of that cost." Leyline Binding's {W} is never reduced, so with all five types it costs exactly {W}. Scion of Draco's cost is all generic, so five types bring it from {12} down to {2}. Rule 601.2f says a cost "can't be reduced to less than {0}."

Mana value does not change

The official ruling on Leyline Binding: "Leyline Binding's domain ability doesn't change its mana value, which is always 6." Rule 202.3 defines mana value from the mana cost, so the same logic leaves Scion of Draco at mana value 12. That matters for any effect that checks mana value.

Scion of Draco does not buff itself

Scion of Draco's second ability checks each creature's color. Scion of Draco is colorless (its cost is {12}, with no colored symbols), so it gets none of those abilities. It has flying from its own text. Your white, blue, black, red and green creatures get the matching ability.

Territorial Kavu can be a 0/0

Territorial Kavu's power and toughness come from a characteristic-defining ability, and rule 604.3 says those "function in all zones." If you control no lands with a basic land type, it is 0/0. Under rule 704.5f, a creature with toughness 0 or less "is put into its owner's graveyard." Nishoba Brawler has a printed toughness of 3, so it survives with zero types, as a 0/3.

Modern legality and the banned list

As of October 2, 2026, none of the domain cards or Triomes in this guide is banned in Modern. Every domain card in the table above, and every Triome, is legal in Modern.

Two older domain cards are not legal in Modern, without being banned. Draco ({16}, 9/9 flyer; one domain ability cuts its spell cost by {2} per type, and a second makes you pay {10}, minus {2} per type, each upkeep or sacrifice it) and Stratadon ({10}, 5/5 trample, {1} less per type) are listed by Scryfall as not legal in Modern. Neither has been printed in a Modern-legal set. Both debuted in Planeshift (February 5, 2001, per Scryfall), which is not on Wizards' list of Modern-legal sets; Draco's later printings are From the Vault: Dragons and The List, and Stratadon's only other printing is a digital Arena Anthology. Our Wizards ban history has no Modern entry for either card. They are outside the card pool, not on the banned list.

How often do Triomes alone reach four or five types?

To show what the Triomes do by themselves, we computed exact probabilities for a deliberately simple hypothetical deck. This is a model, not a recommended list. Assumptions:

• 60 cards, with exactly one copy of each of the ten Triomes.
• The other 50 cards have no basic land type: no basics, fetch lands or other typed lands.
• No mulligans, no extra card draw or selection, no cycling.
• One land drop per turn, so by your turn N at most N Triomes are on the battlefield. You choose which ones to play.
• Cards seen by your turn N: 7 + N − 1 on the play, 7 + N on the draw.

The script counts every subset of the ten Triomes you could draw and weights it with exact binomial coefficients (no simulation). It then finds the most basic land types you could have on the battlefield by that turn.

The "3+ types" column is just the chance of having drawn at least one Triome. Reaching four or five takes two or more, and only 15 of the 45 pairs complete domain. This is the case for adding fetch lands and other typed lands: a fetch land that can still find a Triome in your library adds three types, much like drawing one more Triome. Every Triome also enters tapped, a real cost on the turns these numbers describe. To model your own list, enter its exact land counts in our hypergeometric calculator, or check color requirements with the manabase calculator.

Building around domain: what the facts support

Here is what the verified card text supports, without any claim about how a deck performs in events:

• Three types arrive with a single Triome. Leyline Binding drops to {2}{W}, Tribal Flames deals 3, and Territorial Kavu is a 3/3 for two mana.
• Domain counts types, not lands. A second land that repeats types you already have adds nothing to any domain ability. Choose the second Triome from the three partners listed above.
• Fetch lands find Triomes by their basic land types, so a fetch land can turn into three types at once, as long as a matching Triome is still in your library.
• The ceiling is five. Once you control all five basic land types, more lands do nothing for domain. At that point Scion of Draco costs {2} and Leyline Binding costs {W}.

Before you register a list, check every card's current legality on Scryfall or Wizards' Modern format page. This guide is accurate as of October 2, 2026.