One of the most powerful forces in Magic the Gathering's plane of Zendikar is the Roil. The lifeforce of Zendikar itself, the Roil can reshape the landscape at a moment's notice, forming sinkholes, earthquakes, floods, and even create elementals to protect itself.

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Because of the devastating impact of the Roil, many of Zendikar's inhabitants have a close relationship to the land. In-game, this is shown in the Landfall mechanic. Using it right can make for a devastating deck, so here is everything you need to know about Landfall.

What Is Landfall?

Kazandu Nectarpot by Simon Dominic Brewer
Kazandu Nectarpot by Simon Dominic Brewer

Landfall is a triggered ability keyword introduced in the original Zendikar set that triggers whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control.

Found exclusively on permanents (creatures, enchantments, and artifacts), there is a wide range of Landfall effects, such as temporary buffs with Akoum Hellhound or Retreat to Emeria, milling with Ruin Crab and Hedron Crab, lifegain with Jaddi Offshoot and Kazandu Nectarpot, card draw with Omnath, Locus of Creation or Tatyov, Benthic Druid, or even token production with Scute Swarm or Rampaging Baloths.

Landfall is an interesting ability because lands are not cast and don't go on the stack, they are simply put into play. This means the only way to stop a Landfall trigger is usually to remove the permanent with Landfall before a land is played. While there are a few exceptions to this (Tale's End, for instance), Landfall can be a very tricky mechanic for opponents to deal with.

Unless otherwise stated, there's no limit to how many times a single permanent's Landfall trigger can go off in a turn.

How To Use Landfall

Ancient Greenwarden by Greg Rutkowski
Ancient Greenwarden by Greg Rutkowski

One of the great things about Landfall is that it's rewarding you for something you're already doing. Pretty much every deck uses lands, and so having a few Landfall cards sprinkled throughout your deck can be a great decision no matter what.

If you want to push Landfall a bit further, though, there are some key things to include. First, fetch lands are incredibly for a Landfall-focused deck, as you get the first trigger when the fetch land comes in, and then a second trigger when the land you fetch for enters.

You'll also want to play cards that let you play more than one land a turn, like Growth Spiral, Azusa Lost But Seeking, Exploration, or Dryad of the Elysian Grove. The more of these you can get out at once, the more lands you can play, and the more landfall triggers you get at once.

Zendikar Rising's Ancient Greenwarden is an incredible creature that supercharges landfall decks. Not only does it double any Landfall trigger, but it also lets you play lands out of your graveyard. Combine Ancient Greenwarden with a fetch land, which goes to your graveyard after it's been used, and you could get four times the amount of landfall triggers each turn that you normally would.

What Colour Is Landfall?

Lotus Cobra by Bastien Grivet
Lotus Cobra by Bastien Grivet

Landfall is a long-established mechanic, and so every colour has a decent amount of cards that mention it.

Unsurprisingly for a land-based mechanic, green has the most mono-coloured Landfall cards, with 27. Next is red with 21, then white with 15, and blue and black have 13 each. There are five colourless cards with it as well.

There are only a handful of multicoloured Landfall cards, and most of them are the Gruul colours of red and green. Out of the seven multicoloured cards, four are Gruul (red/green), one is Golgari (black/green), one is Naya (red/green/white), and one is Not-Black (red/green/white/blue).

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