The Badger Is Gone, But Landfall Isn’t: Mono-Green Landfall After the Ban
Greetings, fellow Planeswalkers. For a year I have written upon Landfall in its many guises, from Mono-Green to Selesnya, and the archetype has proved a lasting and mighty thing in Standard. For a spell, Badgermole Cub was the animating spirit of the deck — absurdly good, producing bodies without number, quickening our mana, and, when paired with lands that call forth other lands, capable of producing a perfectly extraordinary quantity of Landfall workings in a single turn. Wizards of the Coast, at last unwilling to endure the spectacle further, banned the Mole together with Gran-Gran and Stormchaser’s Talent. I hold no complaint against the decision.
The Death of the Badger, and Why It Matters Less Than You Think
I loved the Badger dearly, yet I never believed it was the true source of Landfall’s power. It was merely the finest expression of a strategy already dreadful in its own right. Rather than lament and abandon the archetype, its devotees returned to the drawing board, and what came of it was not an attempt to bring back the old broken openings but something plainer and, dare I say, more honest.
No longer do we pursue the most singular mana advantage possible on Turn 2. Instead, every card is made to serve one design: turn after turn of great attacks that end games entirely, giving ourselves wholly to the combo heart of Landfall.
The Badger is gone. What drives the deck is not. We retain ample means of producing Landfall workings, swelling our creatures, calling forth new threats, and converting a seemingly quiet board into deadly damage within a single turn.
Isn’t Izzet Elementals Still the Greatest Deck?
Yes — I hold firm that Izzet Elementals remains the finest deck in Standard, and I grant that Landfall struggles against it. But Landfall is superb against nearly everything else, and in the current state of the game that distinction carries enormous weight.
Dimir Doomsday and 4-color Control have both come forward as answers to the Elemental peril, and this is precisely why Landfall has found its way back to the top tables. Landfall SMASHES those decks without ceremony.
Those control decks are filled with means of destroying our creatures, certainly, but we are filled equally with threats that strike hard. It generally requires only one or two attacks from a creature paired with Mightform Harmonizer to finish matters entirely. They may answer some of our creatures. They cannot answer all of them. That is where Sapling Nursery earns its keep, though its full glory deserves its own telling.
The Old Faithful and the New Chocobo
Like most green decks worth their salt, we carry the venerable Llanowar Elves. This small creature has served Magic faithfully for years and shows no sign of retiring; it remains simply too capable at quickening our mana, and it is generally our finest possible play on Turn 1.
Should Llanowar Elves fail to appear, we turn to Sazh’s Chocobo. The Chocobo stands as our next finest Turn 1 play, forward in its manner and perfectly capable of growing beyond all bounds before an adversary has gathered his wits.
Between the two, our early turns rarely lack for purpose. One hastens our mana; the other brings harm to bear. Both feed the same design.
A Deck Made Anew, Not Abandoned
What strikes me most is how little Landfall has actually lost. The Badger’s banning might have been taken as a sentence of death, yet the archetype has instead been made simpler — relieved of its single most excessive piece and left with its philosophy whole. Sapling Nursery, Mightform Harmonizer, and the faithful Llanowar Elves and Sazh’s Chocobo have shown themselves more than sufficient to carry the design forward.
Against Dimir Doomsday and 4-color Control, the deck remains a hammer against glass. Against Izzet Elementals, it remains a difficult endeavour, though not a hopeless one. In a field thick with control decks made for the destruction of creatures, Mono-Green Landfall’s capacity to simply overcome its rivals with threats has shown itself, again and again, the deciding matter.
So no, the Badger’s absence has not silenced Landfall. It has merely taken away the outward show and left the frame of the strategy exposed — and that frame, it turns out, was always the true source of its terror. Play on, Planeswalkers; the storm has not passed, it has only changed its shape.
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