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The Gruul Landfall deck in Magic: The Gathering is one of the toughest to face. If you make even a small mistake or skip a turn, your opponent’s creatures can quickly become huge threats, swinging with massive power to reduce your life total.
Playing with this deck is just as challenging. You need to find the right balance between being cautious and taking aggressive actions. With some helpful tips and lots of practice games, you’ll start winning more matches and climbing the ranks fast.
Gruul Landfall Deck List
Here’s a typical list for this deck:
- Llanowar Elves — 4 copies
- Sazh’s Chocobo — 4 copies
- Bristly Bill, Spine Sower — 4 copies
- Tifa Lockhart — 4 copies
- Mossborn Hydra — 4 copies
- Traveling Chocobo — 4 copies
- Icetill Explorer — 2 copies
- Worldsoul’s Rage — 4 copies
- Snakeskin Veil — 4 copies
- Escape Tunnel — 4 copies
- Terramorphic Expanse — 2 copies
- Mountains — 1 copy
- Forests — 14 copies
- Evolving Wilds — 1 copy
- Fabled Passage — 4 copies
(Make sure to check the latest card choices as they may change with new sets.)
How the Deck Works
This deck’s main goal is pretty straightforward: get landfall creatures on the battlefield, play your lands after those creatures, and protect them so they grow bigger and stronger. Landfall triggers abilities whenever you play a land, often giving you benefits like gaining life, dealing damage, or buffing your creatures.
Having a lot of fetch lands can maximize this effect. These lands trigger landfall when they hit the battlefield, and if you sacrifice them to search for a basic land, you trigger landfall once more.
Cards like Traveling Chocobo can even double the number of landfall triggers, giving you up to four activations per turn if you use fetch lands while Traveling Chocobo is on the field.
Key Cards and Strategies
Tifa Lockhart is vital, despite her modest appearance. When you play a land, she doubles her power until the end of the turn. As a 1/4 creature, she might not seem impressive at first, but with cards like Snakeskin Veil or Bristly Bill that add +1/+1 counters, she can quickly turn into a giant threat.
If you can activate landfall multiple times each turn, Tifa can reach over ten power very fast, especially with trample. This makes her almost certain to deal significant damage during combat.
Snakeskin Veil is more than just a way to add a +1/+1 counter. Its real strength lies in providing hexproof until end of turn, protecting your creatures from spells or targeted removal. Since it’s playable as an instant, you can use it reactively to shut down a threatening spell, making it a handy defense tool.
Keep in mind that Snakeskin Veil is the only protection spell in this deck, so use it wisely. You might consider adding more protection cards if you want your creatures to be even safer.
Ideal Opening Hands
The best starting hand for this deck tends to have at least:
- One basic land
- One fetch land
- One low-cost creature
Remaining three cards should be flexible but low-cost to keep your early game pressure strong. Ideally, your opening hand should give you three turns of potential plays, especially to counter slower decks or control strategies early on.
Changes You Can Make
One key upgrade is adding more protection spells. Things that deal damage to blockers, grant hexproof, or make your creatures indestructible can give you an edge.
While Gruul doesn’t have direct counters like blue decks do, you can still improve your deck’s resilience. Consider swapping or adding cards like gladiolus or Tannuk, Memorial Ensign, which can bring new dimensions. As legendary creatures, just one or two copies are enough, so you could replace some forests with extra mountains if needed.
Adjusting your deck’s creature lineup and protective spells can make a significant difference in how well your Landfall strategy performs.
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