Living Lands MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Living Lands turns all of your Forests into 1/1 creatures, which essentially means each Forest card you have on the battlefield is now a potential attacker or blocker. This transformation bolsters your ranks and can overwhelm opponents with an increased number of threats, providing substantial card advantage.

Resource Acceleration: While Living Lands itself doesn’t directly produce mana, the fact that it makes your lands into creatures can work in tandem with other cards that accelerate resources. Cards that allow you to untap creatures can now be used to untap your Forests, providing another chance to tap them for mana within the same turn. This can significantly speed up your gameplay, allowing you to cast more spells or heavier hitting creatures sooner.

Instant Speed: Although Living Lands is an enchantment that’s cast at sorcery speed, the instant ability it grants to your land-creatures can create unforeseen opportunities. Since the 1/1 creatures it creates are still lands, you can decide to tap them for mana or attack with them as the situation requires, even if they’ve just been transformed. Combining Living Lands with other cards that can be played at instant speed allows for flexible responses to your opponent’s actions, keeping them guessing at every turn.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: One of the drawbacks of using the Living Lands card is its dependency on having a land card to discard. In some situations, this can put players in a tough position, especially when their hand is lacking in land cards or crucial for the current game strategy.

Specific Mana Cost: In order to play Living Lands, players need to have access to green mana. This necessitates a deck that’s tuned to generate green mana consistently, potentially limiting the card’s versatility across various deck types that might not focus on green mana.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: With its cost sitting at four mana, including three generic and one green, some players find Living Lands to be on the higher side in terms of investment, especially considering other cards in the game that can offer land-centric benefits for lower mana costs.

Reasons to Include Living Lands in Your Collection

Versatility: Living Lands offers a unique dynamic to the battlefield by turning all Forests into 1/1 creatures that remain as lands. This allows the card to enhance various green-based decks focused on land synergy, creature strategies, or those looking to capitalize on having multiple creatures in play.

Combo Potential: The transformation of every Forest into a creature presents significant combo potential with cards that benefit from large numbers of creatures entering the battlefield or being tapped for advantage. Pair it with cards that boost creatures or provide benefits for creature-heavy boards to unlock devastating combos.

Meta-Relevance: In a meta where lands play a pivotal role, Living Lands can be a game-changer. It slots well into land-matters strategies and provides an avenue for turning land-heavy draws into potential threats, keeping the card relevant and useful in a variety of match-ups.

How to beat

Living Lands is a unique enchantment card in the world of Magic: The Gathering, with the ability to turn all Forests into 1/1 creatures. These animated lands can be quite the surprise for an unprepared opponent, ultimately shaping the battlefield in unexpected ways. To effectively counter this strategic move, focus on cards that can sweep the board of creatures, such as Wrath of God or Damnation, which can clear out the animated Forests before they can mount a significant attack.

Alternatively, spot removal spells that don’t target lands—like Doom Blade or Go for the Throat—are not particularly effective here. Hence, you may want to rely on mass removal or even enchantment removal spells such as Return to Nature or Back to Nature to directly remove Living Lands from play. It’s also worth noting that with Living Lands in play, an opponent’s land base is vulnerable to creature removal; thus, cards like Pyroclasm can disrupt your opponent’s mana base by taking out these 1/1 Forest creatures. Proper recognition of Living Lands’ potential threat and preparing your deck with versatile answers will make facing this card much less intimidating.