The Great Forest MTG Card
2009-09-04 - Number 14
2018-12-25 - Number 32
2023-04-21 - Number 144
| Card sets | Released in 3 setsSee all |
| Rarity | Common |
| Type | Plane — Lorwyn |
Key Takeaways
- Card advantage is boosted as The Great Forest lets players delve into their libraries and gain extra lands.
- The instant speed feature of The Great Forest empowers players to make responsive plays and surprise opponents.
- Balancing its many benefits, The Great Forest comes with a high casting cost, making early game pacing crucial.
Text of card
Each creature assigns combat damage equal to its toughness rather than its power. Whenever you roll chaos, creatures you control get +0/+2 and gain trample until end of turn.
Card Pros
Card Advantage: The Great Forest enables you to explore the top cards of your library, potentially putting additional lands into your hand and enhancing your overall card advantage.
Resource Acceleration: By granting you the ability to play an additional land on your turns, The Great Forest acts as a robust resource acceleration tool, fueling your strategies more efficiently.
Instant Speed: With instant speed activation, this forest-themed card allows for flexible plays, providing the opportunity to react swiftly to the changing battlefield or to end-step surprise your opponent.
Card Cons
Discard Requirement: The Great Forest card demands that the player discards another card to activate certain abilities. This trade-off can be particularly challenging when your hand is already low, potentially forcing you to give up key pieces of your strategy prematurely.
Specific Mana Cost: The card’s casting requires a blend of green mana, making it less flexible and primarily confined to green-based decks. Players not running a deck with significant green mana sources will find it difficult to incorporate The Great Forest into their game.
Comparatively High Mana Cost: The card is notable for its high casting cost, which can slow down your early game. Other cards in the same mana range might offer more immediate board impact or versatility, leaving The Great Forest as a potentially less efficient option in fast-paced matches.
Reasons to Include in Your Collection
Versatility: The Great Forest card serves as a dynamic land card, easily fitting into green-themed decks or any multi-colored deck that needs to ensure a smooth mana curve. Its ability to tap for green mana or to be utilized for more complex land strategies ensures it can support various play styles.
Combo Potential: With cards that synergize with forests or landfall mechanics, The Great Forest can be a central piece in unlocking powerful combinations. Whether it’s powering up land-based creatures or enabling intricate landfall abilities, this card can help you leverage the groundwork for potential game-winning plays.
Meta-Relevance: Land cards are perennially useful in many MTG metas, and The Great Forest is no exception. It’s especially relevant in formats where building a sturdy mana base is crucial. By including The Great Forest in your arsenal, you’re prepared to face a variety of deck types with confidence, knowing your mana will be stable and reliable.
How to beat
The Great Forest can be a game-changer for players who take advantage of its ability to generate mana and bolster their creatures. Overcoming this enchanting card is all about disrupting the mana base and creature strategy it supports. Artifact removal spells or enchantment destruction cards are effective measures against The Great Forest. Consider adding cards such as Naturalize, which can remove an enchantment or artifact with a single, low-cost spell, to your deck to keep The Great Forest in check.
Strategically stifling your opponent’s mana production can also prove beneficial. By implementing land destruction cards or employing strategies that force players to sacrifice lands, you ensure the benefits of The Great Forest are minimized. Quick and efficient attacks that keep the opponent on the defensive can prevent them from establishing the board presence needed to capitalize on The Great Forest’s advantages. It’s crucial to maintain pressure and control, preventing your opponent from leveraging the full potential of this enchanting card within their green-driven deck.
Ultimately, being proactive and keeping your opponent from using The Great Forest as a springboard for more powerful plays is paramount in maintaining the upper hand. By acknowledging key vulnerabilities and incorporating the right counters in your deck, triumphing over the enchantments of The Great Forest becomes a plausible mission.
Cards like The Great Forest
In the realm of land cards in Magic: The Gathering, The Great Forest stands as a staple for Green mana. It bears resemblance to Forest, the basic land essential in Green-based decks, offering a source of Green mana without any conditions. Yet, The Great Forest differentiates itself with an added ability, granting benefits that could harmonize with a deck’s theme revolving around a synergy with forests.
Comparably, cards like Gaia’s Cradle may come to mind which, while not offering mana outright, do produce Green mana for each creature you control. While Gaia’s Cradle can exponentially grow your mana pool, The Great Forest maintains a steady pace. Dryad Arbor presents another parallel. As a Forest creature land, it’s vulnerable to removal in ways The Great Forest is not, but it can also sway the tide of battle as a creature.
Identifying a card’s unique offerings allows players to carefully curate their decks for peak performance. The Great Forest, though sharing some common ground with other forest-related cards, brings its own strategic advantages to the table in MTG, fitting comfortably into many Green deck strategies.
Cards similar to The Great Forest by color, type and mana cost
Where to buy
If you're looking to purchase The Great Forest MTG card by a specific set like Planechase Planes and Planechase Anthology Planes, 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 The Great Forest 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 MTG Products
Printings
The The Great Forest Magic the Gathering card was released in 3 different sets between 2009-09-04 and 2023-04-21. Illustrated by Howard Lyon.
| # | Released | Name | Code | Symbol | Number | Frame | Layout | Border | Artist |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2009-09-04 | Planechase Planes | OHOP | 14 | 2003 | Planar | Black | Howard Lyon | |
| 2 | 2018-12-25 | Planechase Anthology Planes | OPCA | 32 | 2015 | Planar | Black | Howard Lyon | |
| 3 | 2023-04-21 | March of the Machine Commander | MOC | 144 | 2015 | Planar | Black | Howard Lyon |
Rules and information
The reference guide for Magic: The Gathering The Great Forest card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.
| Date | Text |
|---|---|
| 2009-10-01 | A face-up plane card that's turned face down becomes a new object with no relation to its previous existence. In particular, it loses all counters it may have had. |
| 2009-10-01 | A plane card is treated as if its text box included “When you roll {PW}, put this card on the bottom of its owner's planar deck face down, then move the top card of your planar deck off that planar deck and turn it face up.” This is called the “planeswalking ability.” |
| 2009-10-01 | If an ability of a plane refers to “you,” it's referring to whoever the plane's controller is at the time, not to the player that started the game with that plane card in their deck. Many abilities of plane cards affect all players, while many others affect only the planar controller, so read each ability carefully. |
| 2009-10-01 | The Great Forest's first ability doesn't actually change creatures' power; it changes only the value of the combat damage they assign. All other rules and effects that check power or toughness use the real values. |
| 2009-10-01 | The Great Forest's first ability means, for example, that a 2/3 creature will assign 3 damage in combat instead of 2. |
| 2009-10-01 | The controller of a face-up plane card is the player designated as the “planar controller.” Normally, the planar controller is whoever the active player is. However, if the current planar controller would leave the game, instead the next player in turn order that wouldn't leave the game becomes the planar controller, then the old planar controller leaves the game. The new planar controller retains that designation until they leave the game or a different player becomes the active player, whichever comes first. |
