Landfall is back. Well, I mean, it’s back in Standard. We’re Commander players, so it’s not as though a mechanic ever leaves us. We can keep everything forever. Still, when a mechanic is back in a Standard-legal set, that means we see new goodies, and that means we sometimes get new goodies that make old goodies even goodier. This is pleasing to me because I’ll occasionally come across a card and wonder why it’s not worth more money than it is. The obvious answer for a card not being worth as much money as you’d think—when you control for factors like relative abundance due to the set it was in and how many times it’s been printed—is that people just aren’t playing the card a ton. How do we get people excited about cards like that? The short answer is, “I, as a person, cannot,” or I’d be the richest MTG financier in history. The truth is that events can create new circumstances and that can create opportunities. So what’s an example of a card I think should be worth more money?

Admonition Angel

I think the best landfall stuff is in green and white, and since we want to be heavy green and feature sweet landfall creatures like Rampaging Baloths, why not go with a token commander? I want to do Trostani, Selesnya's Voice, and literally the only reason I’m not suggesting Trostani is that we made a Trostani deck already. You could use Trostani; I’m not the police. But I have not tackled Rhys the Redeemed yet, and I look forward to it. Remember that this won’t be a typical Rhys deck—it will be a shell to fit some landfall shenanigans into, and as more landfall cards are spoiled, we’ll have a shell ready to test them in.

What would the deck look like if we modified Rhys to take advantage of landfall and all of its wonderful enablers?

75% Landfall Rhys the Redeemed ? Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (0)

• Creatures (21)
• 1 Admonition Angel
• 1 Armada Wurm
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Baloth Woodcrasher
• 1 Blade Splicer
• 1 Cloudgoat Ranger
• 1 Deranged Hermit
• 1 Emeria Angel
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Grazing Gladehart
• 1 Hero of Bladehold
• 1 Knight of the Reliquary
• 1 Kozilek's Predator
• 1 Lotus Cobra
• 1 Master of the Wild Hunt
• 1 Mirror Entity
• 1 Nullmage Shepherd
• 1 Rampaging Baloths
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Yavimaya Elder
• 1 Titania, Protector of Argoth

• Planeswalkers (3)
• 1 Elspeth Tirel
• 1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
• 1 Garruk Wildspeaker

• Spells (38)
• 1 Constant Mists
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Gilt-Leaf Ambush
• 1 Animist's Awakening
• 1 Bestial Menace
• 1 Boundless Realms
• 1 Conqueror's Pledge
• 1 Gaea's Balance
• 1 Hour of Reckoning
• 1 March of Souls
• 1 Martial Coup
• 1 Nomads' Assembly
• 1 Overrun
• 1 Planar Birth
• 1 Primal Growth
• 1 Triumph of the Hordes
• 1 Wave of Vitriol
• 1 Hunting Triad
• 1 Aura Shards
• 1 Awakening Zone
• 1 Beastmaster Ascension
• 1 Doubling Season
• 1 Glare of Subdual
• 1 Martyr's Bond
• 1 Oblivion Ring
• 1 Parallel Lives
• 1 Perilous Forays
• 1 Retreat to Kazandu
• 1 Seance
• 1 Sylvan Library
• 1 Lignify
• 1 Adventuring Gear
• 1 Crucible of Worlds
• 1 Seer's Sundial
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Sword of the Animist
• 1 Zuran Orb

• Lands (37)
• 10 Forest
• 10 Plains
• 1 Arid Mesa
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Flooded Strand
• 1 Grasslands
• 1 Jungle Basin
• 1 Marsh Flats
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 1 Selesnya Sanctuary
• 1 Temple Garden
• 1 Terminal Moraine
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Verdant Catacombs
• 1 Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree
• 1 Windswept Heath
• 1 Wooded Foothills
• 1 Gaea's Cradle
• 1 Pendelhaven

Buy This Deck

This deck needs a ton of tuning, but I think it’s a fun shell to start testing. Let’s look at what I jammed in here.

If we can get one landfall trigger and a benefit, how about a whole raft of them? Boundless Realms, Animist's Awakening, and Planar Birth can trigger a ton of landfall abilities. Putting lands in the ’yard for Planar Birth is a cinch with cards like Zuran Orb and Constant Mists, and that will even trigger Titania, Protector of Argoth. Crucible of Worlds is a great way to make sure we can keep generating landfall triggers. Will twenty basics be enough? We’d better test!

I like the Equipment we have in the deck. Skullclamp will be a big help when we have tokens running around, Adventuring Gear is an old-school favorite that gives any creature the Steppe Lynx treatment (known in Commander circles colloquially as “the bidness”), and Sword of the Animist is a great way to trigger landfall often. Seer's Sundial helps round out our artifacts by giving us even more card draw on top of Skullclamp.

This deck is theoretical, which is why I included so many fetch lands. If that’s untenable, don’t even worry—having fewer fetches and more basics makes you sweat less when you cast a big Boundless Realms. I included Grasslands, Terramorphic Expanse, Evolving Wilds, and Terminal Moraine—that’s a lot. If we want to pare that down, the deck will still be fine. The more basics, the better, honestly, so if you want to cut a few hundred bucks off the cost of the deck instantly, don’t trifle with Misty Rainforest and the like. Basics fuel stuff like Perilous Forays, which I can’t say enough good things about.

As more cards are spoiled, we can think about how a theoretical deck like this could change to make room for the good ones. In the meantime, I like the idea of toying around with a deck like this. Playing reanimator with our lands and creatures without any black in the deck is especially fun. Rhys couples well with Séance, and Titania couples well with Planar Birth and Zuran Orb. All in all, this deck will be a lot of fun to play, and it was a lot of fun to just build. Is it 75%? And how! It also looks capable of running people over if they underestimate you. Boundless Realms with an Avenger of Zendikar out can be “GG” if opponents aren’t ready for it, which they infrequently are.

Thanks for reading! I’ll be back next week with . . . another article. I can stick to a plan if we make sure and keep them real loose. See you next week with an article. If you can’t wait that long, scribble something in the comments section, and we’ll establish a dialogue. Later!