Retreat to Kazandu MTG Card


Card setsReleased in 5 setsSee all
Mana cost
Converted mana cost3
RarityUncommon
TypeEnchantment
Abilities Landfall

Key Takeaways

  1. The card excels in providing consistent value via landfall, enhancing creatures or life totals adaptively.
  2. While it boosts creature stats, its green mana cost and speed can limit its deck compatibility.
  3. Its versatility and synergy with landfall make Retreat to Kazandu a worthwhile MTG card for various decks.

Text of card

Landfall — Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, choose one — • Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature. • You gain 2 life.


Card Pros

Card Advantage: Retreat to Kazandu excels at providing ongoing value as it allows for multiple landfall triggers throughout the game. Each land you play can result in either bolstering your creatures or padding your life total, effectively giving you more resources to work with as the game progresses.

Resource Acceleration: While the card itself doesn’t directly produce mana, it can be a form of resource acceleration by permanently increasing the power and toughness of your creatures. With each land you play, you can grow a creature, which in turn may allow you to close out games faster or make your creatures more formidable against opponents’ strategies.

Instant Speed: While Retreat to Kazandu operates at sorcery speed, it interacts favorably with lands that can be put onto the battlefield at instant speed. This can create surprise scenarios where you bolster a creature or gain life during an opponent’s turn, potentially disrupting their calculations for combat or spells.


Card Cons

Discard Requirement: While Retreat to Kazandu does not have an explicit discard requirement, optimizing its use may indirectly cause you to hold onto lands or creatures you might otherwise play or discard. This can be particularly constraining when you need to manage your hand size or are seeking more immediate board impact.

Specific Mana Cost: The card’s cost includes one green mana, essential for its activation. This requirement dictates deck compatibility and may not flexibly fit into multi-colored decks that aren’t heavily green. Players need to ensure a consistent green mana source to leverage the enchantment’s potential.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: Priced at three mana, two of which are generic and one green, Retreat to Kazandu might be considered a moderate investment for its incremental life gain or +1/+1 counters. In a meta where speed can dictate the victor, the mana investment into setting up this enchantment may detract from deploying more immediate threats or answers.


Reasons to Include Retreat to Kazandu in Your Collection

Versatility: Retreat to Kazandu offers a flexible boon for decks that thrive on life gain or +1/+1 counters. Its landfall ability allows you to adapt on the fly, bolstering your creatures or your life total as the situation demands.

Combo Potential: This enchantment shines in combinations with cards that capitalize on gaining life or adding counters. Pair it with cards that trigger from these events and watch your board presence grow increasingly threatening.

Meta-Relevance: In a game where aggro decks are frequent, the consistent life gain can be crucial to staying in the game. For more subdued matches, stacking +1/+1 counters can progressively strengthen your creatures, making Retreat to Kazandu a card to consider for various matchups.


How to beat

Retreat to Kazandu presents a unique challenge in MTG due to its ability to bolster life totals or creature strengths with every landfall. To effectively counter this enchantment, players should consider incorporating enchantment removal cards within their decks. Cards like Naturalize or Disenchant can be game-changers, swiftly eliminating the threat posed by Retreat to Kazandu. Moreover, strategies that limit land drops or utilize land destruction can significantly mitigate the benefits that Retreat to Kazandu offers, thereby diminishing its impact on game progression.

Another tactical approach involves redirecting the focus towards aggressive gameplay. Ramping up the pressure with swift, powerful creatures can overwhelm an opponent before they fully utilize the advantages of Kazandu’s incremental gains. In essence, successful strategies against Retreat to Kazandu rely on adaptability and preemptive deck building, ensuring that you have the right answers at the right time to maintain control of the game’s tempo and prevent your opponent from capitalizing on its landfall synergies.


BurnMana Recommendations

As you assess the intricate balance of strengthening your MTG deck, Retreat to Kazandu stakes its claim as a formidable enchantment. With its ability to enhance creature durability or pad your life against aggressive strategies, this card has earned due consideration for green-centric strategies. Should you prioritize endurance or aggressive growth? The journey within the MTG realm is multifaceted and retreat to Kazandu brings that to the forefront. Connect with us and discover how this enchantment can transform your deck’s dynamics and prepare you for triumphs across various metas.


Cards like Retreat to Kazandu

Retreat to Kazandu makes waves in the world of enchantments for MTG players with its verdant multipurpose abilities. When exploring cards of similar nature, Evolutionary Leap comes to mind, which also revolves around the concept of utilizing creatures. Although Evolutionary Leap is more centered on recycling creatures for card advantage, Retreat to Kazandu offers a broader utility by providing life gain or strengthening creatures on the battlefield.

Another kin in terms of utility and lore is Retreat to Emeria. Like Retreat to Kazandu, Retreat to Emeria activates its abilities whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, but instead of emphasizing on bulk or health, it fabricates creature tokens and boosts your army’s might. Both cards shine in land-centric decks, with a slant on different strategic approaches: life and power versus presence and breadth.

While reflecting on these enchantments’ place in MTG gameplay, players value Retreat to Kazandu for its dual options in response to the ever-changing tides of a match. Its ability to tip the scales with incremental life or power makes it a versatile and treasured inclusion in many green-based decks, holding its ground amid a forest of similar themed cards.

Evolutionary Leap - MTG Card versions
Retreat to Emeria - MTG Card versions
Evolutionary Leap - Magic Origins (ORI)
Retreat to Emeria - Battle for Zendikar (BFZ)

Cards similar to Retreat to Kazandu by color, type and mana cost

Kudzu - MTG Card versions
Wanderlust - MTG Card versions
Thelon's Chant - MTG Card versions
Maddening Wind - MTG Card versions
Cycle of Life - MTG Card versions
Dense Foliage - MTG Card versions
Hall of Gemstone - MTG Card versions
Fecundity - MTG Card versions
Familiar Ground - MTG Card versions
Momentum - MTG Card versions
Ancestral Mask - MTG Card versions
Broken Fall - MTG Card versions
Verdant Field - MTG Card versions
Lure - MTG Card versions
Food Chain - MTG Card versions
Howling Moon - MTG Card versions
The Dragon-Kami Reborn // Dragon-Kami's Egg - MTG Card versions
Squirrel Nest - MTG Card versions
Alpha Status - MTG Card versions
Lifegift - MTG Card versions
Kudzu - Limited Edition Beta (LEB)
Wanderlust - Fourth Edition (4ED)
Thelon's Chant - Fallen Empires (FEM)
Maddening Wind - Ice Age (ICE)
Cycle of Life - Mirage (MIR)
Dense Foliage - Classic Sixth Edition (6ED)
Hall of Gemstone - World Championship Decks 1998 (WC98)
Fecundity - Urza's Saga (USG)
Familiar Ground - Classic Sixth Edition (6ED)
Momentum - Urza's Destiny (UDS)
Ancestral Mask - Eternal Masters (EMA)
Broken Fall - Battle Royale Box Set (BRB)
Verdant Field - Prophecy (PCY)
Lure - Tenth Edition (10E)
Food Chain - Double Masters 2022 (2X2)
Howling Moon - Innistrad: Double Feature (DBL)
The Dragon-Kami Reborn // Dragon-Kami's Egg - Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Promos (PNEO)
Squirrel Nest - World Championship Decks 2002 (WC02)
Alpha Status - Salvat 2005 (PSAL)
Lifegift - Betrayers of Kamigawa (BOK)

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Retreat to Kazandu MTG card by a specific set like Duel Decks: Zendikar vs. Eldrazi and Battle for Zendikar, there are several reliable options to consider. One of the primary sources is your local game store, where you can often find booster packs, individual cards, and preconstructed decks from current and some past sets. They often offer the added benefit of a community where you can trade with other players.

For a broader inventory, particularly of older sets, online marketplaces like TCGPlayer, Card Kingdom and Card Market offer extensive selections and allow you to search for cards from specific sets. Larger e-commerce platforms like eBay and Amazon also have listings from various sellers, which can be a good place to look for sealed product and rare finds.

Additionally, Magic’s official site often has a store locator and retailer lists for finding Wizards of the Coast licensed products. Remember to check for authenticity and the condition of the cards when purchasing, especially from individual sellers on larger marketplaces.

Below is a list of some store websites where you can buy the Retreat to Kazandu and other MTG cards:

Continue exploring other sealed products in Amazon
See Magic products

Printings

The Retreat to Kazandu Magic the Gathering card was released in 5 different sets between 2015-08-28 and 2020-11-20. Illustrated by Kieran Yanner.

#ReleaseNameCodeSymbolNumberFrameLayoutBorderArtist
12015-08-28Duel Decks: Zendikar vs. EldraziDDP 212015normalblackKieran Yanner
22015-10-02Battle for ZendikarBFZ 1862015normalblackKieran Yanner
32017-06-16Archenemy: Nicol BolasE01 722015normalblackKieran Yanner
42020-09-25Zendikar Rising CommanderZNC 782015normalblackKieran Yanner
52020-11-20Commander LegendsCMR 4352015normalblackKieran Yanner

Legalities

Magic the Gathering formats where Retreat to Kazandu has restrictions

FormatLegality
CommanderLegal
LegacyLegal
ModernLegal
OathbreakerLegal
VintageLegal
DuelLegal
PioneerLegal

Rules and information

The reference guide for Magic: The Gathering Retreat to Kazandu card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.

DateText
2015-08-25 A landfall ability triggers whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control for any reason. It triggers whenever you play a land, as well as whenever a spell or ability puts a land onto the battlefield under your control.
2015-08-25 If the ability has an additional or replacement effect that depends on the land having a certain basic land type, the ability will check that land's type as the ability resolves. If, at that time, the land that entered the battlefield is no longer on the battlefield, use its types when it left the battlefield to determine what happens.
2015-08-25 When a land enters the battlefield under your control, each landfall ability of the permanents you control will trigger. You can put them on the stack in any order. The last ability you put on the stack will be the first one to resolve.

Recent MTG decks

Continue exploring other format decks
More decks