by Elton Gahr

Created on: October 17, 2009

By saying you are building a landfall deck it is generally safe to assume that the plan is to take advantage of having multiple landfalls per turn triggering multiple landfall creatures, and if this happens. To do that there are a few things that must happen. First you must find good landfall cards and second you must have good ways to put multiple lands into play per turn.

The obvious choice then for landfall is green. Green has always been the best at putting lands into play quickly and in Zendikar it is no exception. Harrow has made a return to the format, allowing you to put two lands into play for three mana, as well as sacrificing a land. If you play the land before harrow this can easily allow you three landfall triggers on a single turn and leave you with two untapped lands. New in this set is Khalni Heart Expedition, new to the Zendikar set it is a quest card and a landfall card. So once you have played three lands with Khalni Heart expedition in play you can sacrifice it to put two lands into play. This combos well with harrow, allowing you to use both on the same turn.

Also of value are the fetch lands which can be played and sacrificed on the same turn allowing you to put two lands into play as well as being very good deck thinning cards. This costs only one life and most of the time that won't matter all that much.

The Early drop is what will truly make landfall valuable. And again it is worth looking at green for perhaps the best landfall creature early in the game. Lotus Cobra is a one green and one colorless creature that lets you add one mana of any color to your mana pool whenever you play a land. This could lead to some very powerful effects with multiple lands being put into play per turn.

The most powerful landfall cards are those with a permanent landfall ability. These are cards you can build a deck around. The Rampaging Baloths is one of the most impressive. Costing two green and four, whenever you trigger landfall this card lets you put a 4/4 creature into play. Combine this with Harrow or fetch lands and you could not only get this 6/6 creature into play early but have multiple 4/4's as well.

Green is the obvious color for landfall to help and it seems very likely that this type of deck will find its way into tournaments and I suspect it will do very well.

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