The 24 Best Landfall Commanders in Magic Ranked

Last updated on April 22, 2024

Omnath, Locus of Creation | Illustration by Chris Rahn

Magic is full of powerful mechanics worth building an EDH deck around. Morph, flying, heroic, and even prowess are great abilities to sculpt your game plan. But, if you’re going all-in on a keyword ability or ability word, landfall is one of the best choices.

Landfall is a powerful mechanic introduced in Zendikar block to embody how fierce the plane’s mana is. It rewards you with powerful abilities whenever a land comes into play, regardless of whether you played it or put it onto the battlefield with a ramp spell. Ramping is already one of the best things you can do in Magic, so an ability word that bolsters it is insane! But which commanders do you want to lead your EDH landfall decks?

What Are Landfall Commanders in MTG?

Toggo, Goblin Weaponsmith | Illustration by Svetlin Velinov

Landfall commanders are commanders that work well with the landfall mechanic, which rewards players for making land drops. While many landfall commanders are green or have landfall themselves, it’s not a prerequisite for being a good landfall commander; quite a few of the options here have abilities that enable landfall synergies without having the ability word themselves.

The important thing for landfall commanders is an ability that either benefits you from making land drops or helps existing landfall cards function better.

If your commander doesn’t have landfall, it needs to facilitate the landfall strategy. Some options help make additional land drops; others put lands directly into play from zones other than your hand. It’s all in service of making as many land drops, and thus Scute Swarm copies, as possible.

#24. Ob Nixilis, the Fallen

Mono-black isn’t typically where you’d expect a landfall strategy, but Ob Nixilis, the Fallen gives you an interesting option for a mono-black burn commander. Ob Nixilis is your most prominent landfall piece, but black has a few other payoffs. Bloodghast and Skyclave Shade can give you tons of sacrifice fodder, Retreat to Hagra helps with the burn, and Guul Draz Overseer can enable a lethal alpha attack. Getting landfall triggers is trickier in black, but a few choice artifacts and lands like Wayfarer's Bauble, Terrain Generator, and Myriad Landscape help get a bunch of extra land drops.

#23. Toggo, Goblin Weaponsmith

Who you partner Toggo, Goblin Weaponsmith with does a lot to define the kind of deck you’ll end up with. The Rock tokens are a unique payoff for landfall. Getting a bunch of free artifacts opens the door to abusing lots of powerful effects, like Urza, Lord High Artificer or Cyberdrive Awakener. Thrasios, Triton Hero is a potentially powerful partner to give you access to the best landfall enablers and the best effects to pay you off for having so many Rocks. A few notable cards with this color combination include Jaheira, Friend of the Forest and Meria, Scholar of Antiquity to make all those Rocks into mana rocks.

#22. Obuun, Mul Daya Ancestor

Obuun, Mul Daya Ancestor lends itself well to an aggressive landfall strategy. It works well with creature lands; if you animate something like Needle Spires or Inkmoth Nexus then target them with Obuun’s ability, they keep all their keywords. You typically want to put Obuun’s counters on itself to make bigger land creatures, so +1/+1 counter synergies work well in this deck. Kami of Whispered Hopes, Hardened Scales, Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider, and Pir, Imaginative Rascal are a few great pieces to start stacking counters and beating face with massive lands.

#21. Nissa, Resurgent Animist

Lotus Cobra is one of the strongest landfall cards. It turns each land you play into Ancient Tomb for a turn and goes hard with fetch lands. Nissa, Resurgent Animist gives you all that power in the command zone. It’s a little more expensive but has a very relevant creature type and card advantage.

This commander is quite flexible. You could lean into the landfall ability to generate mana to power out Rampaging Baloths and Avenger of Zendikar or you could lean into one of the typal synergies. There’s also an interesting build where you use Nissa as a tutor for a combo deck; if the only elf or elemental in your deck is Ashaya, Soul of the Wild, you can easily tutor it up and use it as the crux of several infinite-mana combos.

#20. Tatyova, Steward of Tides

Tatyova, Steward of Tides brings your lands straight into your opponents’ faces, which is a great way to show off white-bordered basics. Land creatures have a few decent synergies, like Jolrael, Voice of Zhalfir for card draw or Earth Surge for some extra stats. Another powerful synergy to draw on is blue’s spells that bounce nonland permanents.

Cards like Consuming Tide, Devastation Tide, and Displacement Wave function very similarly to Plague Wind in this deck since they can’t bounce your animated land. It’s practically a build-your-own Cyclonic Rift. Since the elementals have flying, Coastal Piracy and Bident of Thassa can tie everything together for a little more card draw. Just make sure to run something like Heroic Intervention so a Wrath of God doesn’t double as an Armageddon.

#19. Maja, Bretagard Protector

Token production is one of the strongest landfall abilities. Getting board presence and mana is a hard deal to top. Maja, Bretagard Protector provides lots of board presence thanks to its anthem. is a great color combination for tokens; on top of green pump effects, you get access to cards like Mondrak, Glory Dominus and Anointed Procession to double up on your tokens.

These tokens also have a great type; humans are well-supported, giving you access to tools like Coppercoat Vanguard and Laid to Rest. You don’t need to go all in on humans, though. There are plenty of other powerful cards that make tokens with landfall, most notably Scute Swarm and Emeria Angel.

#18. Phylath, World Sculptor

Phylath, World Sculptor is a deeply “fixed” version of Avenger of Zendikar, but this doesn’t mean it’s without strength. This commander strikes me as a candidate for land disruption cards. Since Phylath requires you to have a ton of basics, Blood Moon, Magus of the Moon, and Ruination become easy includes to slow your opponents down. You’ll want to ramp out basics via Rampant Growth and friends, so you’ll naturally avoid an artifact-heavy mana base, giving you access to disruptive tools like Collector Ouphe and Null Rod. All this early-game disruption gives you plenty of time to get a bunch of big plants with Phylath to crush your opponents.

#17. Omnath, Locus of the Roil

Omnath, Locus of the Roil gives you som

e excellent landfall and typal options as an elemental-themed landfall commander. You’ll want plenty of early elementals, like Chandra's Embercat, Smokebraider, and Risen Reef to ensure Omnath kills something as soon as it’s in play. Cheap flicker effects like Essence Flux and Ghostly Flicker are great for this deck; they work well with Omnath, but also all the evoke elementals like Endurance, Fury, and Mulldrifter.

A few good ramp spells like Skyshroud Claim and Three Visits make it easy to hit the eight-land threshold. Once you’ve achieved that, it’s smooth sailing as every land drop makes your creatures better and replaces themselves.

#16. Mina and Denn, Wildborn

Mina and Denn, Wildborn is a fantastic landfall commander. Getting an extra land drop already helps double things up, but getting to bounce a land is a fantastic way to enable extra landfall triggers and use excess mana. Cards that let you make extra land drops work well with cards that let you play lands from other zones, like Crucible of Worlds or Augur of Autumn. The trample ability can be useful with larger landfall creatures like Moraug, Fury of Akoum and Rampaging Baloths, whose major weakness is getting chumped for days on end.

#15. Tatyova, Benthic Druid

A classic landfall commander, Tatyova, Benthic Druid offers card draw and life gain. The incidental life gain opens you up to some interesting subthemes. Well of Lost Dreams can turn the life gain into additional card draw to go with all the mana you’ll ramp out. Blossoming Bogbeast and Trudge Garden can turn this into incidental board presence.

Once you lean into those life-gain synergies, cards like Jaddi Offshoot and Kazandu Nectarpot, while historically weaker landfall cards, become more appealing. That said, it’s hard to go wrong with a commander that draws you at least one extra card a turn when you make a land drop, and often more once you throw in ramp spells.

#14. Slogurk, the Overslime

Slogurk, the Overslime is an interesting landfall commander that offers lots of value. You need to do a little more work with Slogurk. A few other effects to make extra land drops and such go a long way, but its true worth as a landfall commander comes from getting lands back from your graveyard.

Fetch lands, either true fetches like Misty Rainforest or knock-offs like Fabled Passage, are some of the strongest cards you can have in a landfall deck because they generate two triggers for a single land drop. Getting multiple fetches a turn is incredible. If you throw in some top-deck manipulation like Sensei's Divining Top and Jace, the Mind Sculptor, constantly recurring fetches also gives you a lot of control over what you draw.

#13. Omnath, Locus of Rage

Getting tokens for landfall triggers is good when they’re 1/1s, so 5/5s are even better. Omnath, Locus of Rage is another landfall commander that touches on some elemental synergies. It’s especially powerful with evoke options that sacrifice themselves, and you can even set up some loops with Kodama of the West Tree or Perilous Forays for infinite endgames. Cards that care about a creature’s power, like Where Ancients Tread, Garruk's Uprising, and Terror of the Peaks round the deck out with some great ways to close out the game as you make 5/5s.

#12. Moraug, Fury of Akoum

Moraug, Fury of Akoum, is one of the most aggressive landfall commanders since you get extra combats. Like the mono-black deck, you’ll want a few effects like Wayfarer's Bauble, Terrain Generator, and fetch lands to help get multiple triggers a turn. Once you do, a few choice dragons like Ancient Copper Dragon or Cavern-Hoard Dragon can help close the game in short order. The two listed dragons are particularly interesting because they can lead to pseudo-infinite combats with Aggravated Assault. When playing Moraug, make sure to go through your regular combat before you start making land drops; if you play your land drop in your pre-combat main phase, you’ll go to the extra combat step before your regular combat step, leaving your creatures tapped since they don’t untap at the beginning of your normal combat step.

#11. Azusa, Lost but Seeking

Azusa, Lost but Seeking is one of the best landfall enablers, so it makes sense that it’d be a fine choice in the command zone. You’ll want ways to play lands from zones other than your hand. Augur of Autumn, Oracle of Mul Daya, and Courser of Kruphix are all vital cards because you’ll only have so much land in your hand. Guildless Commons can also help get a bunch of landfall triggers. Horn of Greed works great with Azusa; since you’ll have more land drops than your opponents, you can offset the symmetry by using it way better than them, and the extra cards help ensure you have extra lands, and so on.

#10. Nine-Fingers Keene

Getting extra lands into play always helps the landfall strategy, but Nine-Fingers Keene takes this a step further by leaning into gate synergies. Scute Swarm, Tireless Provisioner, Tatyova, Benthic Druid, and all those are still powerful effects, but now you get to include Guild Summit and powerful gates from Baldur’s Gate into the mix. The list also gets Dragon's Maze as a slow but inevitable alternate win condition that’s pretty hard to interact with unless your opponents run Strip Mine or similar effects.

#9. Soul of Windgrace

Soul of Windgrace is another great landfall commander who helps reanimate fetch lands to get all those exciting landfall triggers. It works well alongside other value lands that go to the graveyard, like Kamigawa’s channel lands or Strip Mine and friends. Since this commander synergizes so well with the graveyard, you can lean much harder into cards that care about lands in your graveyard, like Elvish Reclaimer and Splendid Reclamation. Green also has access to some excellent card draw like Winding Way, which becomes much more appealing in a deck that wants lands in the graveyard.

#8. Yarok, the Desecrated

Yarok, the Desecrated can be far more than a landfall commander, but it’s still a powerful application of its broad Panharmonicon. Your Lotus Cobra makes 2 mana, Scute Swarm multiplies faster, and Rampaging Baloths generates even more 4/4s.

Toss in Ancient Greenwarden and your opponents are buried beneath more value than they can keep up with. Yarok is a great landfall commander not for enabling the synergy but for getting the most value. It can help enable landfall by making creatures like Wood Elves and Topiary Stomper get extra lands into play.

#7. Hazezon, Shaper of Sand

Hazezon, Shaper of Sand has a distinctly specific version of landfall, but getting to play a desert-themed deck is an interesting quirk. You get lots of tokens for every desert you play, so ways to get them take top priority.

Crop Rotation is a great card for this since you’ll get one in play and one in the graveyard to replay with Hazezon’s ability, but Hour of Promise and Scapeshift do a lot of work here. You’ll also need to get deserts into your graveyard. Several of the Amonkhet deserts sacrifice themselves to get you started, but you’ll also get a lot of mileage from effects like Constant Mists and Nahiri's Lithoforming to fill your graveyard with deserts that you replay to overwhelm your opponents with warriors pumped by effects like Intangible Virtue and Lovisa Coldeyes.

#6. Titania, Nature’s Force

Titania, Nature's Force is great for the landfall player looking to bring the forest’s wrath upon their playgroup. Getting 5/3s for the low price of playing a Forest is incredibly strong, especially since you get to play Forests from your graveyard. Titania pairs well with cards that make Forests; Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth is a must-have for all of your fetch lands, but Ashaya, Soul of the Wild and Yedora, Grave Gardener help your creatures get in on the action. Combos that let you make infinite land drops, like Ashaya and Quirion Ranger, get even better with this commander and a haste enabler like Concordant Crossroads to build infinite armies.

#5. Lord Windgrace

Lord Windgrace is one of the commanders who generates the most landfall triggers. If you have two fetch lands in your graveyard when you play it, you can get both back and immediately crack them for four landfall triggers. This plays notably well with landfall cards like Nissa, Resurgent Animist, Lotus Cobra, and Tireless Provisioner that generate mana via landfall – that’s 6 extra mana from four triggers and two untapped lands, letting you spend 11 mana the turn you played Windgrace. It’s also great with cards like Wrenn and Six and Crucible of Worlds effects, letting you discard lands for card draw and still getting landfall triggers by playing them from the graveyard.

#4. The Gitrog Monster

The Gitrog Monster has some of the best card draw for landfall decks. I’ve exalted the virtues of fetches enough, but they get far better when they draw you a card. With the extra land drop, this friendly frog offers a landfall deck with plenty of value to sate the greediest appetites. You can also perform some cool loops with Gitrog, Dakmor Salvage, a free discard outlet like Noose Constrictor, and a way to shuffle your graveyard into your deck like Kozilek, the Great Distortion to draw your entire deck and end the game in a single turn.

#3. Zimone and Dina

Zimone and Dina stands out as an option for anybody wanting to build a combo-oriented landfall deck. There are already a bunch of combos that utilize an ability that lets you tap to put a land into play; this commander puts that effect into the command zone and tacks on card draw for fun. Since this is both a sacrifice outlet and puts a land into play, all you need is a card that makes tokens on landfall, like Scute Swarm or Sporemound, an Intruder Alarm or Retreat to Coralhelm for untapping, and a Karoo land to draw your entire deck and get enough landfall triggers to take out the table with effects like Retreat to Hagra or Ruin Crab.

#2. Omnath, Locus of Creation

Why pick one or two colors for landfall when you can have them all? Omnath, Locus of Creation doesn’t give access to black, but that’s landfall’s weakest color. Too good for Standard and Pioneer, Omnath is a solid commander and card. It’s easy to get the second landfall trigger for tons of extra ramp, so this could work well alongside X spells as well as landfall cards. Since the third ability only triggers once a turn, you’ll never get a combo to burn everybody out. But who needs combos when you’re generating an extra 4 mana a turn?

#1. Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait

Magic is a complex game filled with immensely powerful strategies and combos. But two of the best game actions you can take are the simplest: making land drops and drawing cards. Doing both more than your opponent gives you far more resources. Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait, is one of the best commanders to enable these actions.

You can make two land drops and draw three cards each turn once you land this behemoth, leaving your opponents far behind you. You’ll get extra triggers of all your landfall cards and see enough cards to make land drops. Aesi is a one-card value engine the table must remove, or they’ll be completely overwhelmed.

Best Landfall Commander Payoffs

One of the best payoffs is all the powerful landfall cards. The best landfall cards are ones that produce mana or draw cards for resources or ones that add tokens for board presence. The power of the mechanic comes from rewarding you for basic game actions. You want to make land drops and cast ramp spells anyway, so making a thousand copies of Scute Swarm or making five or six Treasure tokens with Tireless Provisioner only advances your game further.

Your landfall deck needs plenty of ways to enable the triggers. Fetch lands are king. Even less desirable ones like Shire Terrace or Evolving Wilds can offer plenty of extra value. You’ll also want as many ramp spells that get lands as possible. Three Visits and Nature's Lore are premium, but cards like Entish Restoration and Harrow are also great as you get two landfall triggers for one card.

Another great payoff for this strategy is surprisingly Collector Ouphe. Landfall-based decks are rarely interested in artifact ramp; every Golgari Signet you add is one less Rampant Growth, and you want the Rampant Growth. Once you’ve cut almost all the artifact mana, attacking your opponents is a great way to draw ahead. Cards like Collector Ouphe, Meltdown, Titania's Song, and Kataki, War's Wage do a lot to slow down opponents whose game plan starts with dumping a bunch of Talismans and Signets into play or amassing Treasure tokens over a few turns. It’s always worth considering effects when your deckbuilding naturally allows you to skirt powerful symmetrical abilities.

Commanding Conclusion

Omnath, Locus of Rage | Illustration by Brad Rigney

Landfall is one of Magic’s strongest mechanics because it rewards you for taking a basic, important game action. It also has an incredibly small window of opportunity for your opponents to interact before you get at least a few triggers. Whether or not these commanders have landfall themselves, they’re all great choices to utilize such a powerful mechanic.

Which landfall commanders are your favorite? Is landfall a mechanic you enjoy and want to see more of? Let me know in the comments or on the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe, and make land drops!