Hello, my fellow Planeswalkers! I am The MTG Hero, and I have written about Landfall several times over the past year. From Mono-Green to Selesnya, the archetype has continued to be a powerhouse in Standard, carving out its own spot in the metagame. For a while, Badgermole Cub was one of the biggest reasons to play the archetype. It was absurdly efficient, generated multiple bodies, accelerated your mana, and could be abused with fetchlands to generate an insane amount of triggers in a single turn.
Then Wizards of the Coast finally said enough was enough and banned the Mole alongside Gran-Gran and Stormchaser's Talent. And honestly? I think that’s perfectly fine. Because while I loved playing Badgermole Cub, I don’t think it was the reason Landfall was good. I think it was simply the best version of something that was already very good.
So rather than abandon the archetype, players went back to the drawing board. What we ended up with is a version that isn’t trying to recreate the exact same broken starts we had with the Badger. Instead, we’re leaning harder into the explosive turns that have always made Landfall such a powerful strategy.
We are no longer trying to create the most ridiculous possible mana advantage on Turn 2. Instead, we’re trying to make every card in the deck contribute to the same overwhelming game plan: consecutive explosive turns where we swing for an absurd amount of damage while leaning even further into the combo side of Landfall.
The Badger may be gone, but the engine isn’t. We still have plenty of ways to generate Landfall triggers, grow our creatures, create additional threats, and turn a seemingly harmless board into lethal damage in a single turn.
But Don’t You Say Elementals Is the Best Deck?
Yes, I do. I still think Izzet Elementals is the best deck in Standard, and I still think Landfall has a bad matchup into it. However, Landfall is fantastic against almost everything else, and that is incredibly important in the current metagame.
Dimir Doomsday and 4c Control have stepped up as two of the decks capable of fighting the Elemental menace, and that’s exactly why Landfall has found its way back to the top tables. Landfall SMASHES those decks.
Yes, those decks are packed with removal, but we’re equally packed with hard-hitting threats. It generally only takes one or two attacks with a creature plus Mightform Harmonizer to end the game. They can answer our creatures, but the problem is that they can’t answer all of them. That’s where Sapling Nursery becomes especially important, but we’ll get to that later.
Like most green decks, we have the classic Llanowar Elves. This little guy has been a staple of Magic for years and will probably continue to be one for many more. He is simply too efficient at accelerating us and is generally our best Turn 1 play.
But if we don’t have Llanowar Elves, we have Sazh's Chocobo. The Chocobo is our second-best Turn 1 play because it is incredibly aggressive and can get out of hand quickly if the opponent doesn’t have an answer early. A creature that starts putting pressure on the opponent while also benefiting from everything else we’re already trying to do is exactly what we want.
That’s where our fetchlands become so important. With four Fabled Passage and four Escape Tunnel, we have an enormous number of ways to generate Landfall triggers. The important thing is that the opponent can’t simply sit back and wait for us to play a giant creature. The bird becomes a giant creature because we’re doing what the deck naturally wants to do anyway: play lands, then play more lands, and then find ways to play even more lands.
That’s the beauty of Landfall. Our mana development and our offense are often the exact same thing.
Icetill Explorer and Mightform Harmonizer remain one of the most dangerous combinations in the deck. Together, they allow almost any creature on the battlefield to become a massive threat. Sixteen times the threat, to be exact, with a single fetchland, since Icetill Explorer allows us to replay our land from the graveyard and generate even more Landfall triggers.
Mightform Harmonizer alone turns every Landfall trigger into a much bigger problem since it doubles the power of our creatures. But when you combine him with Icetill Explorer, things get out of hand incredibly fast. This is where the deck starts feeling less like a traditional creature deck and more like a combo deck.
You aren’t simply playing creatures and attacking. You’re setting up one enormous turn where suddenly everything on your battlefield is gigantic. The opponent can spend the first few turns thinking they’re keeping pace with you, only to find themselves staring down a battlefield that has completely exploded in size.
If you are playing Landfall and aren’t playing four copies of Earthbender Ascension, I have some questions for you. This card holds everything together and is one of the biggest reasons I believe the archetype survived the banning of Badgermole Cub.
It finds a land, creates another threat, generates Landfall triggers, grows our board, and gives our creatures trample. That last part is huge because one of the weaknesses of Landfall has always been that our gigantic creatures can sometimes be stopped by a pile of tiny blockers.
Earthbender Ascension solves that problem. Suddenly, your 20-power creature isn’t getting embarrassed by a bunch of 1/1 tokens. You’re actually getting the damage through, and that means the opponent has to find a real answer rather than simply throwing creatures in front of you.
That’s a ridiculous amount of functionality for a single card, and it’s one of the reasons I don’t think the banning of Badgermole Cub kills this deck.
Sapling Nursery, of course. This card has been in and out of Landfall main decks since it was released, but I think it is particularly well-positioned right now because of all the midrange and control decks running around.
If they survive Plan A, we simply move to Plan B: make a million tokens.
Sapling Nursery gives the deck something that Badgermole Cub didn’t necessarily provide in the same way: staying power. Instead of putting all of our resources into one enormous threat, we can continually build a board that demands an answer. They can kill our creature, but they still have to deal with the Saplings. They can wipe the board, but we can rebuild.
And if they spend the entire game trading one-for-one with us, eventually they’re going to run out of answers. That’s exactly where Landfall wants to be against control and midrange decks.
For removal, we don’t have a ton of options. Meltstrider's Resolve is basically the best we’ve got, but it serves another important purpose. It makes blocking us almost impossible because it limits how many blockers can go in front of a single attacker.
Once we have a large trampling threat, we’re almost guaranteed to get damage through. If the opponent can’t block it efficiently, they have to find another way to remove it, and that’s exactly where we want them. We are forcing them to spend actual cards dealing with our threats while continuing to develop our board.
Another card I really like is Esper Origins. First, it helps smooth out our draws, but later in the game it becomes essentially a free card draw and a creature once we flash it back. In grindy games, that can make all the difference. It gives us another way to rebuild after removal and turns our board into an even bigger threat.
I’m also still playing three copies of Surrak, Elusive Hunter. Surrak is another reason the deck doesn’t simply fold to removal. Every time the opponent tries to use one-for-one removal on him, we’re getting value back. He also naturally has trample, which makes him an excellent threat alongside Mightform Harmonizer.
There are plenty of games where the opponent thinks they have another turn, only to realize they don’t. Llanowar Elves gets us ahead on mana, Icetill Explorer and Mightform Harmonizer start doing their thing, and suddenly we’re attacking for lethal on Turn 4. That’s what this deck does best. It turns a normal-looking battlefield into a completely absurd one in a single turn.
This is one of the best cards we have for taking over the mirror and against removal-light decks. It is also an Elemental, which means it doesn’t get bounced by Sunderflock. That makes it particularly useful against the decks where you need a threat that can stick around.
Two copies of Torpor Orb is a must for this deck, and I could even see going up to three. But you don’t want to draw too many and get your hand clogged.
If those cards are part of the opponent’s plan, Orb can completely change the way the game plays out. This is especially important because, as I’ve already said, Elementals is the matchup I least want to face.
Soul-Guide Lantern remains one of the best pieces of graveyard hate in the format. The important thing is that it doesn’t become completely useless once you’ve used the graveyard interaction. You can sacrifice it for another card, giving you a little bit of extra flexibility when you don’t need the graveyard hate anymore.
It comes down against midrange and control decks and can just end the game. Especially when it gets doubled by Mightform Harmonizer, this thing can become a nightmare for the opponent to deal with.
I prefer it over Leatherhead because it fits exactly what this version of the deck wants to do: make something enormous, then make it even more enormous, and attack.
This is our go-to artifact and enchantment removal, but it also gives us additional graveyard interaction when we need it. It’s one of those sideboard cards that isn’t particularly flashy, but it does exactly what we need it to do in the matchups where we bring it in.
This is another card that helps make the Elementals matchup playable. It can protect one of our threats or simply destroy a Sunderflock. We aren’t pretending that Elementals is suddenly a good matchup. It isn’t. But having cards like this gives us more ways to fight back, and sometimes that’s all you need.
Wrap-Up
I loved Badgermole Cub, and I still think Izzet Elementals is the best deck in Standard. I won’t pretend otherwise. But I also won’t pretend that Landfall died when the Badger did.
If anything, I think this version of the deck proves the opposite.
That’s the thing I think people are forgetting. You can ban the Badger. You can take away the broken starts. You can slow the deck down. But as long as we’re allowed to play lands, Landfall is going to find a way to make those lands dangerous.
So no, I don’t think the Badger ban killed Mono-Green Landfall. I think it simply forced the deck to evolve.
And if you’re looking for a deck that can absolutely punish the current crop of Dimir and four-color control decks, I’d strongly recommend giving this one a shot.
Just don’t expect me to tell you it’s better than Elementals.
I’m The MTG Hero.
And until next time, keep playing Magic, keep brewing, and remember:
My name is The MTG Hero. I have played Magic for over 15 years. I am a consistent high Mythic ranked player. Follow me on Twitch and subscribe on YouTube!
