Living Terrain MTG Card
2000-06-05 - Number 117
2003-07-28 - Number 260
2003-07-28 - Number 260★
| Card sets | Released in 3 setsSee all |
| Mana cost | |
| Converted mana cost | 4 |
| Rarity | Uncommon |
| Type | Enchantment — Aura |
| Abilities | Enchant |
Key Takeaways
- Living Terrain elevates strategy, pairing land utility with creature-based offense and defense capabilities.
- Resourcefulness incarnate, it offers dual benefits without sacrificing land count, improving mana base and battlefield presence.
- This card’s instant speed activation provides players with the element of surprise, keeping opponents wary.
Text of card
Enchanted land is a 5/6 green Treefolk creature that's still a land.
Keldons were accustomed to rugged terrain, but they never expected it to be aggressive.
Card Pros
Card Advantage: Living Terrain provides an added edge by enabling you to alter the battlefield with a land that’s also a creature, effectively giving you more options and presence on the board without losing a card in hand. It’s a seamless way to maintain pressure while still keeping your hand resourced for future turns.
Resource Acceleration: This dynamic card turns a basic land into a potent creature that can attack and defend, all while still providing mana. This dual function allows for robust resource acceleration, as it doesn’t take away from your land count, empowering your mana base and your offensive capabilities simultaneously.
Instant Speed: The ability to activate Living Terrain at instant speed is a game-changer, offering the tactical advantage of surprise. You can transform a land into a creature in response to combat or at the end of your opponent’s turn, maintaining the element of surprise and forcing opponents to play around an ever-present threat.
Card Cons
Discard Requirement: Living Terrain requires dropping a card from your hand into the graveyard to unlock its full potential. This means under the pressure of a tight game, you might find your hand size dwindling just to get this card onto the battlefield, which can backfire if you’re in need of options.
Specific Mana Cost: This card’s reliance on a specific blend of mana can be a stumbling block, especially if your land draw is out of sync. With a demand for both green and other colors, it necessitates a well-tuned mana base to be played effectively, potentially limiting the decks it can thrive in.
Comparatively High Mana Cost: With a higher mana requirement compared to other enchantments or creatures that might provide a better board presence or more immediate impact, playing Living Terrain comes at the cost of possibly forgoing a more efficient play. This makes it a card that demands strategic planning and timing to truly maximize its value.
Reasons to Include Living Terrain in Your Collection
Versatility: Living Terrain allows for a quick pivot from defense to offense, fortifying board presence. This card transforms lands not just into blockers but into significant threats, making it a dynamic choice for countless deck archetypes.
Combo Potential: In decks that manipulate +1/+1 counters or landfall triggers, Living Terrain can become even more formidable. This card seamlessly integrates with strategies that revitalize lands or benefit from animated lands.
Meta-Relevance: With the fluctuating meta often favoring creature-heavy decks, Living Terrain can be a surprise element that enhances your board state while catching opponents off guard. It’s ideal for formats where lands matter and the battlefield is constantly evolving.
How to beat
Confronting a Living Terrain on the battlefield poses unique challenges due to its ability to turn lands into formidable creatures. It’s a distinctive strategy within the landscape of Magic: The Gathering, likened to cards which animate lands such as Awaken the Ancient or Nissa, Who Shakes the World, each with their own methods of creating threats from the very mana sources used to cast spells.
Navigating against a Living Terrain involves keeping land destruction or board control spells at the ready. Spells like Ghost Quarter or Field of Ruin can target the animated lands directly, undermining the opponent’s strategy. If destruction is not an option, enchantment removal becomes essential—cards like Disenchant or Naturalize allow players to efficiently remove the enchantment causing the animation, rendering the previously ominous lands harmless once more.
Adept players will balance the threat assessment of their opponents’ creatures and the animated lands to prioritize targets effectively. Since Living Terrain temporarily elevates a land to creature status, leveraging timing and instant speed interaction can be the key to dismantling this strategy. Each decision counts to outmaneuver the challenges posed by this card, ensuring a player’s victory in the unfolding duel.
Cards like Living Terrain
Living Terrain adds a unique twist to the roster of creature enchantment cards within Magic: The Gathering. It is reminiscent of cards like Earth Surge, which grants a significant power and toughness boost to land creatures. However, Earth Surge lacks the ability to actually turn lands into creatures. This is where Living Terrain shows its strength by turning a land into a 5/6 elemental creature with reach, potentially providing a surprise blocker or an unexpected attacker.
Comparatively, there is the card Awakener Druid, which also animates lands, bringing them to life as a 4/5 green Treefolk creatures. While Awakener Druid is effective for this transformation, Living Terrain offers the additional bonus of reach, giving players a tactical edge, especially against flying creatures. Additionally, Sylvan Awakening is another card to consider. It turns all lands you control into 2/2 creatures with reach, indestructible, and haste until end of turn, offering a different approach for land animation by affecting multiple lands temporarily versus a single permanent creature.
In evaluating these options, Living Terrain holds a valuable niche for players who enjoy building strategies around land creatures, providing a durable and well-statted defender or attacker, coupled with the utility of reach, setting it apart from its counterparts.
Cards similar to Living Terrain by color, type and mana cost
Where to buy
If you're looking to purchase Living Terrain MTG card by a specific set like Prophecy and Eighth Edition, 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 Living Terrain and other MTG cards:
- eBay
- TCG Player
- Card Kingdom
- Card Market
- Star City Games
- CoolStuffInc
- MTG Mint Card
- Hareruya
- Troll and Toad
- ABU Games
- Card Hoarder Magic Online
- MTGO Traders Magic Online
See Magic products
Printings
The Living Terrain Magic the Gathering card was released in 2 different sets between 2000-06-05 and 2003-07-28. Illustrated by Andrew Goldhawk.
| # | Release | Name | Code | Symbol | Number | Frame | Layout | Border | Artist |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2000-06-05 | Prophecy | PCY | 117 | 1997 | normal | black | Andrew Goldhawk | |
| 2 | 2003-07-28 | Eighth Edition | 8ED | 260 | 2003 | normal | white | Andrew Goldhawk | |
| 3 | 2003-07-28 | Eighth Edition | 8ED | 260★ | 2003 | normal | black | Andrew Goldhawk |
Legalities
Magic the Gathering formats where Living Terrain has restrictions
| Format | Legality |
|---|---|
| Commander | Legal |
| Legacy | Legal |
| Modern | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Premodern | Legal |
| Vintage | Legal |
| Duel | Legal |
| Predh | Legal |
Rules and information
The reference guide for Magic: The Gathering Living Terrain card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.
| Date | Text |
|---|---|
| 2004-10-04 | It does give the land a color and creature type, which is unlike most other ways to animate a land. |
| 2004-10-04 | This can be placed on any land, not just Forests. |
| 2008-08-01 | A noncreature permanent that turns into a creature can attack, and its abilities can be activated, only if its controller has continuously controlled that permanent since the beginning of their most recent turn. It doesn’t matter how long the permanent has been a creature. |
