General Landfall and Landfall Aggro

[Kuldahar]

Hey guys!

So with Zendikar Rising coming, it is clear that a bunch of playable landfall cards are coming. Landfall also is the showcase theme and there is some amazing art with them. I thought ikoria's comic book was the height but this is just as great. Battle for Zendikar was more midrange landfall and not terribly exciting imo.

One of the defining aspects of the very early Jason/Riptide cube was 3 Steppe Lynx to assist white aggro. A lot has changed since then, but it looks like it landfall aggro is completely doable again in WGR. With cards like Akoum Hellhound and brushfire elemental.

So my questions are: how many are needed to make landfall aggro work? What support cards are good but aren't just useful for landfall triggers (besides fetch lands)? Is there enough compelling cards to support an aggro and a midrange version? Is that a good idea?

Would love to hear people's thoughts. I'm a sucker for alt frames/artwork so I need to question myself if it's good to proceed or am i just drawn to the new shinies.

 

[jerichoalar]

I support Landfall in my 360 cube using mostly pre-BFZ cards. it's undergoing refactoring (and will undergo more once we get ZNR) but you can see it at https://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/8243

Landfall in my cube is in Naya colors (WGR), the supported color "pairs" (I use a shifted wheel) within that combo are WR and GR, but WG landfall decks are possible (mostly by combining Green Ramp with White Landfall). I took out Admonition Angel awhile ago (good in my cube, not good for my cube) but you should definitely consider it. White Red is very "landfall aggro" - When Green Red is landsmatter it usually goes a little bigger and tends to be more of a Wildfire deck that sometimes uses Plated Geopede to get in early.



some terms:
"As-fan" - number of cards of interest which you would see in a random pack
"As-Draft" - number of cards of interest which an average seat will see in a full 24 pack draft (77% of the total cards)


here's some numbers to quantify:
* 18 cards have landfall (a third of these are steppe lynx and plated geopede at 3 copies each) only Roil Elemental Ob nixilis, the fallen, Rampaging Baloths and Avenger of Zendikar are over 4 CMC.
* 46 other cards reference land somewhere in their rules text (not including actual lands)
* as-fan of 0.75, as-draft of 13.8 (naya specific: 0.54, 10.0)
* I run 20 fetchlands. (4x each of my "allied" pairs)
* I have yet to see the landfall deck get a Primeval Titan even though there are two in the cube.
* Plated Geopede might as well read "unblockable" for the first ~4 turns of the game
* When the deck isn't competing for its key cards, the resulting deck is the fastest in my format.

Spoiler: typical deck

Naya Landfall Aggro from CubeTutor.com

Q&A:
1) How many are needed to make landfall aggro work?
18 *Actual* landfall cards has been plenty for me. I put some in every color, but in the core colors I have 12. From experiments with Prowess, "6" cards to make the main is usually enough to make a deck feel like the "Keyword" deck. In an 8 player draft you'll see 77% of the cards in a given seat, so if you were attempt to force this you'd see on average 7.7 landfall cards in WRG specifically in a random draft of my cube. (in reality these are often high picks so it doesn't always come together, which is good.) In my cube this corresponds to an as-fan of 0.75 (3 in 4 packs will contain a landfall card on average).

For comparison, Prowess in m21 is on 7.03 cards in an average draft (a random seat will see 5.4 on average) and has an as-fan of 0.29. (3 in 10 packs will contain a prowess card on average)

I think you could go as low as about 8 total cards that benefit from landfall (that's where my prowess support is). This is close to "is a trap" levels in cube though, especially if the cards are independently good enough to be picked up by people not interested in the archetype.

2) What support cards are good but aren't just useful for landfall triggers:
The first-tier support cards are cards that let you Find more land into your hand (land tax) play more land each turn (exploration), or trigger landfall at instant speed (Harrow).

The second tier support cards are cards that let you repeat your landfall triggers for value Meloku the Clouded Mirror (there aren't very many of these but check out recently spoiled "Murasa Rootgrazer") or recover lands from your graveyard Life from the Loam or draw extra cards in general mentor of the meek

Third tier is something to do with flood like Faithless Looting or molten vortex can be a nice support card too, since Landfall Aggro has a tension between "wanting to play as many 1-3 CMC threats as possible" and "wanting to still play 17+ lands". Big mana Sinks like Fireball or Kessig Wolf Run are also good for flood.

For aggro shell, the best support is also 'cheap equipment that gives me evasion' fleetfeather sandals, although if you get to draft the whole pile you'll probably be 'too fast' to want to take time off equipping up, so lategame reach like lightning bolt, or the previously mentioned fireball and Kessig Wolf run might be better. (I found sword of the animist was too deep.)


In general the best support cards overlap heavily with the kinds of things you are already trying to do with "land" - get more of it into play. In general the second best support cards overlap heavily with other known Red/Green archetypes like Stompy and Wildfires.

3) Is there enough compelling cards to support an aggro *and* a midrange version?

I think the answer is 'probably' yes, but the midrange version was (pre-ZNR) a lot less compelling. (Akoum Hellkite is just not exciting to me, I'd rather see scapeshift valakut, the molten pinnacle. I don't think admonition angel can carry the archetype on its own (maybe there's a UW landfall shell that goes deep on hedron crab which would work) when AA was in my cube, she either topped the aggro deck and put the last nail in Villain's coffin with khalni heart expedition on turn 6 or so, or was in a super-late game control deck as a repeatable o-ring effect.

This may have gotten better with ZNR, there are a lot more 4-6 drops worth looking at, especially in GW. (which will give us a way to do "midrange lands matter" in Naya that isn't wildfire focused)

Another issue with midrange is that most of the 3-5 drop landfall cards are bad at blocking, so stabilizing against an aggro deck will be pretty hard.

4) is it a good idea to support both decks?

I think it's *possible* to support both decks, but I'd be concerned about too much overlap putting the draft on rails if only one drafter is in the archetype. Moving one of the decks into a different color combo may be smart. (for ex: the cube space I spend on supporting a red green sneak pod deck could be using midrangey stuff like undergrowth champion akoum hellkite etc.)

the alternative is to go even more in than I did and end up at something like a 1.75 as-fan in all five colors. (which is where original zendikar was). This will make approximately "Every" deck in your cube "a landfall deck, at least a little bit".

prior to ZNR going this deep would require custom cards, but between BFZ, ZNR, and ZEN it seems like it should be possible to make more than one deck of reasonably similar power level in 2+ color pairs using retail cards.

 

[Kuldahar]

Thank you for the amazing detailed response. You have given me much to work with/think about.

 

[jerichoalar]

Hopefully more people weigh in soon, I’d love to see what other people are doing in this archetype too! Thank you for asking detailed questions.

 

[blacksmithy]

Blue can actually support a landfall deck with some interesting options to move into aggro-control:

Spoiler

 

[Nanonox]

If you want to expand landfall to other colors, a UG midrange/GY value deck is perfect for this. Blue and green both have great enablers to fill the graveyard (Grapple with the Past, SatyrWafinder and Merfolk Looter for example). Blue also generally likes using the GY in other decks, so it shouldn't be too parasitic.



Be warned though, Titania and Tracker are really strong. But the deck still works without them.

The same is true for red with its great discard outlets Faithless Looting, Cathartic Reunion, Tectonic Reformation, cards like Mina and Denn, Wildborn reuse your lands and is a beefy body and Cavalier of Flames is both an enabler and a payoff for lands in the GY.
Finally a more controlling card GR land recursion is Wildfire (as long as your ramp is non-creature based, which I feel it should be if you want to trigger landfall).

Edit: ravnic has that theme in his cube I believe if you want to check it out:
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/nightmare

 

[ravnic]

Yes, I am indeed having lots of fun with my GUx landfall decks. It is just that the way I approach the archetype is pretty far from Aggro. It can generate stupid value but is slow and fragile enough to be balanced in my lower powered cube. It runs cards like these:



Like I said, incredibly fun but a totally different jam.

 

[Brad]

I love when I see low powered cards together. That looks so fantastically fun. Then I go to make my own low power format and I'm like "Mannn these cards suck ass." I can never move past the feeling that each individual card is too weak to keep people's attention.

I'm sure you've seen the card, but Perilous Forays is really cool with Sporemound or anything else that generates a guy on Landfall. It's slow, but it might be just right?

 

[ravnic]

Maybe you should play some more retail limited? They had some fun formats tecently, and this also should teach xou to hate those Elder Gargaroths.

I think it was John Finkel who says "I don't understand the appeal of good cards", and in the sense in which he means that, I agree with John (or was is Kai Budde? Some old school pro). If a card is strong enough that it wins me the game on it's own, what puzzle do I have to solve? If you just drop an Elder Gargaroth and the opponent does not have a way to immediately kill a 6-toughness guy, it is like saying "that was a fun draft, but now the fun is over and I win."

And while a high power cube is not Core set 21, the priciple is kinda similar. If you focus too much on individually (!) broken cards, it will come down to who drops the biggest/most bombs OR who stops having answers for opposing bombs to some degree. Yeah, nice, I can't answer your Grave Titan for two turns, guess I lose.

You know, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying high power cubes aren't fun. There you usually at least have powerful answers. But in recent years, you don't even get many of these. You really feel this in the arena cubes. Overstatted creatures dripping with value to the point where it's disgusting and super little appropiate answers. And isn't it funny that Counterspell is deemed far too strong, but cards like Hydroid Krasis, which would totally wreck it anyway are okay?

But I am drifting off. My main message is: I prefer environments, I don't want to die because I can't remove your 3-drop for a few turns and I also don't want to die, because I can't answer your five drop immediately. That's why I run Nantuko Husk instead of Flesh Carver and Sporemound instead of Elder Gargaroth. I want to give fun cards room to breath and make my players work for their value.

 

[inscho]

I've never really cared for a dedicated landfall deck, but I do support a land-tilling midrange deck that can play pretty aggressively and is functionally similar to a landfall deck:

Here's a general pool to get the idea:


(Titania, Protector of Argoth weaponizes the archetype a little too much for my liking)

The whole goal is to apply pressure with efficient and scaling creatures while churning through lands via fetching, bouncing, and sacrificing to generate card and board advantage. It has toolbox properties fetching things like:



Note the possibility to reuse hideaway lands

It pivots into red with cards like:


The deck is very muscular and deep with a great curve (sounds like I'm talking about a person ). The play patterns are smooth and interesting, and decks can range from aggressive to combo to stax and everywhere in between. It's a very dynamic and fun archetype to support and I highly recommend it. Most of the cards have appeal in other archetypes, especially if you support heavy graveyard synergies with dredge and the like.

I don't like most of the landfall cards. I think Steppe Lynx is bad, and too narrow to dedicate aggro slots to. It's hard to dedicate a lot of space to aggro only cards, add to that ones that don't have a lot of crossover appeal and it starts to feel like supporting infect. A lot of the payoffs are awkward....Much like supporting a Madness deck, I'm in favor of designing an archetype to overlap with mechanics analogous to Madness rather than ham-jamming every remotely playable madness card. With landfall that means thinking about cards that interact with putting lands into play, but also lands into hand from play, and from play into graveyard, or from library to graveyard....it weaves a more interesting archetype that has broader appeal to more archetypes in my experience

 

[jerichoalar]

My experience with one drops has always been that they’re definitionally narrow (because they’re one drops). They either are designed for attacking (by having 2+ power at least situationally) or they’re utility creatures that only appeal to non-Aggro decks.


gravecrawler is the exception, not the rule. And even to make him an exception requires inserting broad support into the rest of black (at least zombies are more interesting as a tribe than goblins).


I think it’s a matter of deciding if you want to support Aggro starting on 1 drops at all, and if you do then I feel like it’s ok to play narrow one drops. They’re already narrow By virtue of being Aggro one drops, so might as well make them fun and not just efficient bodies. Steppe Lynx is bad at blocking, but it’s a 1 mana 2/3 for every attack where a 2/3 is likely to be relevant, and if supported is sometimes a 4/5 or 6/7. That’s a lot of ceiling for a 1 drop.

also the Aggro deck needs to be able to wheel some cards too, they’re not wheeling the removal or reach spells, which leaves the combat tricks (which midrange also wants) and the 1 drops (because everyone wants 2 drops), so the 1 drops being appealing to Aggro only is fine.

 

[inscho]

My experience with one drops has always been that they’re definitionally narrow (because they’re one drops). They either are designed for attacking (by having 2+ power at least situationally) or they’re utility creatures that only appeal to non-Aggro decks.

I don't really agree with that...



All can go in aggro and non-aggro decks...and some have additional crossover appeal with artifact, graveyard, spells matters, etc

 

[jerichoalar]

I probably articulated the point I wanted to make poorly, so I'd like to try again: my thought is basically that: "I think that one drops that are (situationally or permanently) 2+ power on turn 2 are almost always narrow because there's only so much value you can pack onto a 1 mana creature without it being too far above curve, and are also the only part of an aggro deck the aggro player can expect to wheel, so them being narrow isn't exactly a downside or problematic for the health of the draft") I don't intend that to imply that every cube has to support 2+ power attackers on turn 2, or that not having them makes a format unhealthy.

I retract the comment about these kinds of not-purely aggro cards only being attractive to non-aggro decks. I'd be happy to play most of these *alongside* traditional 2+ power one drops in an aggro list. (they're all sweet cards)

But, if they're also representative of the best one drops in the list for aggro, the aggro decks aren't starting on turn 1. Half of them don't even want to swing themselves (or feel awful when they do), and the ones that could swing mostly either die to or trade with the other ones (that presumably the environment wants other decks to pick and play for their crossover appeal).

If the speed of the format is such that the low curve attacking decks don't need to get in that hard that early, this is fine. But that's different than saying that narrow aggro 1 drops like Wild Nacatl or Steppe Lynx are bad because they're narrow.

Narrow cards are good in moderate doses: they give a drafter direction, they are reliably going to make it to the seat that wants to play them in the final 40, they make evaluating a pack faster for the other drafters because they're easier to ignore, etc.

 

[shamizy]

The lower your power threshold, the more viable a Landfall archetype is. I don't think you can quite get there at a higher power level, but if your cube is middle of the road power wise you can likely make it work. There are just so many cards that have been printed that interact with lands in a positive manner, even if they don't explicitly have Landfall as an ability. I don't think you have the density to make pure Aggro work without double dipping on certain cards, but a midrange based archetype centered in Naya colors is very possible nowadays.

 

[Brad]

Maybe you should play some more retail limited? They had some fun formats recently, and this also should teach you to hate those Elder Gargaroths.

I definitely throw up a little when I see cards like that. I'm confident you can find me bitching about it in the spoiler thread. And if I didn't, it was to save people the rant. I refused to speak the name of that GU Jellyfish in the ZNR thread because it's disgusting.

There's such a huge power gap between Garglemouth and Sporemound, though. My green 5s are Spider Spawning, Deity of Scars, The Gitrog Monster, and Twinblade Assassins. This seems more mid power to me.

Your post poses a dichotomy between a 10 outta 10 bomb mythic vs a 2 outta 10 5-drop that dies to most red cards. There's a lot of power levels between there, but it's those truly LOW power cards I have a hard time feeling like they're going to appeal to people.

Fathom Seer and Cloudskater are likely lower powered than anything that would make a final deck in retail draft and I'm not convinced my playgroup would be interested in them. Even if I forced them into this low power level, their pick analysis would take quite a few drafts to adjust and we don't really play frequently enough to wait for that.




While inscho posted a good list to the contrary, I do generally agree that supporting turn 1 aggro leaves you somewhat forced to run a dozen or more narrow cards that are primarily attackers. One of the nice things about The Black Cube, and one of the reasons I designed it, is that all the aggro decks are black. This alleviates the issue of having to support aggro in every aggro color and I can place almost all the one drops in highly desired black slots, reducing the narrowness of the picks.

 

[ravnic]

Yeah I would definitely call that midpower, I run Spawning myself and I would at the very least run the assassins as well or let's say not be concerned about them in my meta. And of course there is a middle ground between Sporemound and Elder Craparoth.

But I have to stand up for two of my pals here:

Fathom Seer and Cloudskater are likely lower powered than anything that would make a final deck in retail draft.

I doubt that strongly. Cloudskater is much stronger than it looks like. She is a cheap evasive body that brings a lot of card draw potential in the mid- to lategame. Ist is like "2, Sacrifice a land: Draw a card", but better, since you don't have to discard the land. In this case you'd even get a mana back. It is also big game that she allows you to loot multiple times a turn if you need to dig for a removal spell. She's also a card that gets better with the high synergie of a cube environment, as she fuels draw matters, discard matters, landfall AND all kinds of graveyard shenanigans.

Fathom Seer is another card that I would put into all my retail draft decks, given I am blue. It is a 2/2 that draws you a Gush on EtB! And to that you can add the emergency case where you just need a 1/3 for 2 against aggro. That card would probably stand up in most mid-powered cubes and is just great in lower powered ones. And again, that is not counting landfall/discard synergies or stuff like Vesuvan Shapeshifter shenanigans.

 

[whydirt]

I think this should be a part of any aggressive landfall package, especially if you're not breaking singleton.

 

[Jason Waddell]

How good are these Gruul cards? And am I wrong in thinking that Hexdrinker looks stupidly pushed?

 

[sigh]

Living Twister is really sweet to play with, but maybe a little slow for your environment? Hard for me to estimate that though.

Hexdrinker is extremely pushed.

 

[shamizy]

How good are these Gruul cards? And am I wrong in thinking that Hexdrinker looks stupidly pushed?

Brushfire looks fine to me as supplemental card for G/R Landfall, but it's not really a reason to go into the archetype. Hexdrinker is just some bullshit, play patterns really suck with that one. Living Twister reads better than it plays unless you're all in on the Wildfire plan. In Wildfire decks it's excellent, but as a generic Gruul card there isn't a whole lot of appeal for most drafters.

 

[sigh]

Brushfire looks fine to me as supplemental card for G/R Landfall, but it's not really a reason to go into the archetype. Hexdrinker is just some bullshit, play patterns really suck with that one. Living Twister reads better than it plays unless you're all in on the Wildfire plan. In Wildfire decks it's excellent, but as a generic Gruul card there isn't a whole lot of appeal for most drafters.

Yeah it's a solid point that Twister needs to have a dedicated RG lands archetype, generally on the grindier side. I don't see it shining in "Landfall aggro"

 

[Erik Twice]

Living Twister is worse than it looks in the "discard lands" part and much better than it looks in the "I'm a 2/5" camp. I like it.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Some more stuff that showed up in the last Zendikar set

 

[ravnic]

I totally wrecked many limited opponents on arena with fearless fledgling. That card is nuts, considering Vinelasher Kudzu was a first pickable rare in RAV and is still a great 2-drop in my cube. Similarly I wasn't surprised by this cards success:



Like the Kudzu it plays well in both aggro or midrange decks, even without ways to get extra triggers.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I like the landfall cards that get +1/+1 counters as well, since it at least in theory seems to me as reducing the tendency for landfall based decks to just wanna red zone all the time since the growth effect only lasts until end of turn, discouraging you from leaving blockers, making games less interactive. Scythecat et al. can hang back and act as a blocker!