The 9 Best Land Destruction Commanders
Lord Windgrace by Bram Sels
Are you tired of having "fun" in Commander games? Think Simic Landfall decks have gone too far? Tired of seeing Cabal Coffers every game? Sick of seeing Omnath decks of every variety? It might be time for you to build some land destruction!
Don't let the bad taste fool you, land destruction is a viable and powerful strategy in EDH. In fact, you should be playing some form of nonbasic land removal in your Commander decks, especially when it only costs you a basic land slot (I'm thinking Field of Ruin and its cousins). As the resident Lands Destroyer at Commander's Herald, I feel uniquely qualified to bring this list to you!
For the overachievers among you, I've compiled a list of the most popular land destruction commanders from EDHrec. I guarantee, somewhere in this list, you'll find the perfectly punishing deck for you and your pod.
What is Land Destruction?
For the purposes of this list, we'll be evaluating different commanders based on how well they lead a deck themed around land destruction. The best land destruction commanders will include built-in ways to punish opponents for losing lands, or they'll come stock with ways to return lands we've destroyed with symmetrical effects to the field. Some will make their own mana to compensate for losing our lands, while others will just be generally valuable enough to make up for losing our mana sources.
Despite its "feel bad" moments (an incredibly infantilizing expression we should be moving away from as a community), land destruction is a time-honored tradition for controlling and locking down the board once you've set yourself up into a strong position. Classic decks, like Brian Hacker's 1998 World Championship deck, ran two Armageddons in the sideboard in addition to the four Cataclysms in the main.
#9. Child of Alara
Alright, you caught me. Child of Alara used to be the go-to WUBRG commander when you just wanted a pile of good stuff with a board wipe in the command zone, but it's definitely not land-destruction-coded. Nowadays, Child of Alara tends to appear at the head of a deck entirely filled with wraths, its own special form of punishment.
Child of Alara's built-in board wipe makes it a useful rattlesnake after you've cast your Armageddon. If there's one thing you don't want to lose after you've lost all your lands, it's the rest of your permanents. While other players struggle to reassemble their mana bases, you'll have a threatening 6/6 trampler to throw around the board. Dare them to come after your commander; see how long it takes them to build a board state again.
#8. Loot, the Key to Everything
I was surprised to see Loot, the Key to Everything in the top commanders for land-destruction-themed decks, with only 67 logged on EDHrec under that tag. Why is the Temur beast here?
I think the play with Loot, the Key to Everything as your land destruction commander is to stack the top of your deck with Sensei's Divining Top/Brainstorm/other pseudo-scry effects to hit both a Decimate and a Reverberate at the same time.
More likely is the land destruction Loot decks online are just leaning on its aggressive card draw to recover from mass land destruction spells. Loot's cheap to cast, and if we can stuff the deck with other cheap nonland permanents (oh, like that Sensei's Divining Top!) we can effectively dig through our library for a spell to cast each turn and hopefully re-ramp ourselves back up to a serviceable amount of mana before our opponents can. I've never seen this executed, but I'd love to someday!
All that said, the Loot, the Key to Everything decks on EDHrec are hardly running any land destruction. Some sort of fluke in their design has resulted in decks with just Ruination and Decimate being classified as land destruction. If you were looking for a real Ponza deck, I'd suggest leaning in to the mass land destruction spells and focus on casting them after you've stuck loot and a few other nonland permanents.
#7. Svella, Ice Shaper
One of the biggest problems with running a land destruction deck is getting around the punishingly symmetric land board wipes. One option to fight against this is to simply make your own mana without lands! Svella, Ice Shaper is a three-mana 2/4 that can tap to create a mana rock for three mana. This is a fairly slow way to start ramping in Commander, but we'll reap the rewards once we wipe the board of lands and are the only player with any mana left standing.
Svella's in the right colors to run some land destruction strategies, and its second activated ability can flip into even more land destruction once the pod's begun to recover from your initial Decree of Annihilation.
Svella, Ice Shaper is probably one of the slower land destruction commanders on this list. While Svella's "powered-down" version of land destruction might be more palatable to your pod, it'll ultimately suffer if you're hoping to emulate the true Ponza experience.
#6. Hazezon, Shaper of Sand
Every desert has its day, and Hazezon, Shaper of Sand is the scheduler. The DMU take on Hazezon takes the original Hazezon Tamar and focuses it down to Desert lands specifically. Deserts from the Amonkhet block are known for their cycling and sacrificial abilities, making Hazezon perfect for replaying those pitched lands and for recovering after you've cast Armageddon. On top of that, Hazezon creates two 1/1s whenever a Desert enters under your control, meaning we'll be putting combat damage on the board before anyone else can recover from our land-wipe.
Naya also gives Hazezon, Shaper of Sand access to some of the best land removal in the format, including Raze, Decimate, and Cataclysm.
#5. Klothys, God of Destiny
Klothys, God of Destiny pulls double-duty as both graveyard hate and synergy for our land destruction spells. In Gruul, she's got access to many of the best mass land destruction spells, but lacking white means we'll miss out on favorites Armageddon and Cataclysm. That said, her indestructibility and option to add mana after we've filled our opponents' graveyards with lands means we'll recover much quicker than they can.
#4. Soul of Windgrace
Like his planeswalker incarnation, Soul of Windgrace is excellent for recurring our already-destroyed lands to the field. Following up an Obliterate by casting our commander means we'll not only begin recovering our own mana base, but we can also steal the useful utility lands from our opponents' graves.
Soul of Windgrace's built-in land discard effects also work like pseudo-ramp for our deck. Assuming he'll be attacking each turn, our commander should recur another land each turn in addition to whatever land drops we make and Cultivates we cast.
#3. Lord Windgrace
At first glance, Lord Windgrace might not seem like he's built for land destruction, but his second loyalty ability to return lands straight from the graveyard to the battlefield makes him very good at mitigating our own losses from Wildfire and Obliterate. In addition, he's the only commander on the list with access to black, opening up some of my favorite targeted land destruction spells, like Icequake, Choking Sands, and, of course, Sinkhole (please WotC please unban Sinkhole in Pauper I am normal and can be trusted with turn one land destruction).
Green also gives Lord Windgrace access to numerous other land-recursion effects and great synergies for them. Impending Disaster-ing all of our lands with Titania, Protector of Argoth on the field, then recurring them with Splendid Reclamation is a brutal one-two punch that not only locks our opponents out of the game, it leaves us with a board of threatening 5/3s to beat face with.
Finally, Lord Windgrace and his Soul have access to two unique land destruction spells not available to any other commanders on this list (well, save Child of Alara, but we'll get to that). Army Ants' requirement to sacrifice a land is lightened by Windgrace's recursion effect, and it's a consistent source of dead lands for both Titanias.
#2. Numot, the Devastator
Numot, the Devastator made my list of Saltiest Commanders, to some rather controversially. Maybe it's just my own biased experience, but the Numot deck I used to run back in 2010 was disgraceful. Numot is a 6/6 Dragon for six mana, with a triggered (but sort of activated) ability to blow up any two target lands whenever he connects. Being so expensive, Numot decks rely on a ton of early-game artifact-based ramp to run out their commander, then focus on wiping the board of lands with Armageddon and Impending Disaster and the like, locking the board down so no one can deal with your (honestly, middling) 6/6 commander.
Numot decks suck up mana like no other, requiring a constant influx of 2 to continue double-Stone Raining your foes, and that's after we've cast a six-mana creature that needs to survive a round before it can attack.
Numot's biggest boon is his color identity. Jeskai means Numot can run the best land removal from red and white, while also controlling the board with blue counterspells. He gets even better if you can land a few stax effects, like Smothering Tithe and Propaganda. Your opponents will have a hard time ever paying the required costs if they don't have any lands! Plus, we've got access to some of the most easily abusable spell-recursion with Archaeomancer and Mnemonic Wall, letting us cast our Stone Rains over and over, too!
#1. Zo-Zu the Punisher
Red is the color of Stone Rain, Raze, Cleansing Wildfire, and the rest of your favorite land destruction sorceries, so the mono-red Zo-Zu the Punisher's presence on this list should come as no surprise.
Zo-Zu doesn't destroy lands on his own, but he does offer one of the best penalties for those incessantly Rampant Growth-y decks. A meager Shock might not seem like much, but at just three mana we can stick Zo-zu early and maximize that damage across the entire length of the game.
More Zo-Zu the Punisher land destructions deck exist on EDHrec than any other! Zo-Zu works best with cards like Dingus Egg and Ankh of Mishra to shock opponents' lands on their way in and out.
Zo-Zu's only real downside is being locked into mono-red. There are more than a few land destruction spells in black, green, and even white (yes, besides Armageddon), and lacking access to those spells can hurt the overall consistency of this deck. On the flip side, running only a single color means we don't have to worry about fixing our mana sources after we've wiped the board of lands.
Salting the Fields
Everyone got their Crucible of Worlds out? You green players got your Ramunap Excavators? Good, we'll need them. While Stone Rain and Ruination exist, and we will need them, most land destruction strategies are built around recovering from a symmetrical land wrath. Some of these commanders are best built to help you reassemble a mana base faster than your opponents can, while others just want to punish them over and over for even thinking about ramping. Whatever your preferred flavor of grueling land destruction, I'm sure one of these commanders is right for you!
What are your favorite land destruction spells, and why are they Choking Sands and Rancid Earth? Is there a better land destruction commander out there? Let me know in the comments, or come harass me on Twitter about it.
Thanks for reading!
