MTG's Gruul ![]()
decks like to get moving fast, and nothing slows down a giant Creature quite like a mana base that refuses to cooperate.
Thankfully, this color pairing has plenty of strong options, ranging from affordable Duals to some of the best Lands ever printed.
With that in mind, here are the best Gruul Lands for Commander and what makes each one worth considering for your mana base.
Top 10 Gruul Lands
The nice thing about building a Gruul mana base is that Red and Green already play together rather naturally.
Green gives you access to some of the best Ramp and Land-search effects in Magic, while Red usually isn't asking you to jump through too many hoops with complicated color requirements.
That flexibility gives Gruul plenty of strong Lands to work with, but these 10 stand out the most:
- Fire-Lit Thicket
- Dining Room
- Sheltered Thicket
- Copperline Gorge
- Karplusan Forest
- Grove of the Burnwillows
- Commercial District
- Stomping Ground
- Wooded Foothills
- Taiga
10. Fire-Lit Thicket
Fire-Lit Thicket is a classic Filter Land. It enters untapped, taps for colorless, or lets you turn one Red or Green mana into any combination of two Red and/or Green. The filtering ability is especially handy when your mana is leaning too heavily toward one color.
A board full of Mountains suddenly looks a lot better when Fire-Lit Thicket can help you produce double Green.
The tradeoff is that Fire-Lit Thicket can't make colored mana on its own, so it's a pretty lousy Land on turn one. Still, once you've got another mana source online, Fire-Lit Thicket is a consistent way to smooth out awkward color requirements without slowing you down.
9. Dining Room
Dining Room is one of the stranger Gruul Lands on the list. It enters tapped, makes
or
, and lets you pay four mana and tap it to Investigate.
Now, four mana for a Clue isn't exactly a bargain, but the ability is attached to a Land rather than taking up a spell slot. So, if you happen to have mana left over at the end of an opponent's turn, Dining Room can bank some of it toward a future card.
The Investigate ability gets even better in decks that care about Artifacts or tokens, especially alongside cards like Academy Manufactor. Dining Room is on the slower side, but repeatable card advantage from a Land is especially welcome in Gruul when you've got nothing better to spend your mana on.
8. Sheltered Thicket
While Sheltered Thicket enters tapped, the reason it is so good is that it's both a Mountain and a Forest.
Its Land types make Sheltered Thicket easy to find with Fetch Lands and popular Green Land-search effects like Farseek and Three Visits. It also has Cycling for two mana, so if you draw it late and don't need another Land, you can simply cash it in for a new card.
Entering tapped keeps Sheltered Thicket from making the cut in every Gruul deck but being fetchable early and replaceable late gives it a lot more flexibility than your average Tap Land.
7. Copperline Gorge
Copperline Gorge enters untapped as long as you control two or fewer other Lands, making it excellent during the first few turns of the game. The good news is that those first few turns are generally when Gruul wants its mana working the hardest anyway.
A turn-one Llanowar Elves into a turn-two Badgermole Cub is a lot easier when your Land isn't slowing you down. And judging by the Cub's recent Standard ban, starts like that may have been just a little too good.
Admittedly, Copperline Gorge gets worse as the game goes on, but by then you've usually got enough mana to absorb a tapped Land without too much trouble.
6. Karplusan Forest
Karplusan Forest enters untapped and taps for colorless, or you can take one damage to make either Red or Green mana.
That one life is usually a pretty easy trade in Commander, especially when you start at 40. A few points of damage over the course of a game is usually a lot easier to stomach than having a tapped Land throw off an important turn, after all.
Karplusan Forest is especially useful early, when hitting the right colors on time matters most. Then, once your other Lands have your colors covered, it can simply make colorless without hurting you at all. Its flexibility is what makes Karplusan Forest one of those Lands that rarely feels awkward, no matter when you draw it.
5. Grove of the Burnwillows
Grove of the Burnwillows works a lot like Karplusan Forest. It enters untapped, taps for colorless mana, or makes
or
.
The difference is that instead of dealing one damage to you, Grove gives each opponent one life whenever you use it for colored mana. And like Karplusan Forest, the little bit of life involved is usually a pretty manageable price for reliable fixing in Commander.
Unless, of course, your deck is trying to squeeze out every last point of damage, a few extra life across the table probably aren't going to make or break your game.
4. Commercial District
Commercial District enters tapped, but it makes up for the lost speed by being both a Mountain and a Forest and letting you Surveil 1 when it enters. And honestly, the Surveil does more work than it looks like.
If the top card of your Library is something you don't need, you can simply send it to the graveyard and move one card closer to something useful. You aren't technically drawing an extra card, but filtering out a dead draw for free can feel pretty close.
Gruul can also often make good use of whatever gets sent to the graveyard. Lands can come back through Life from the Loam or World Shaper, while a card like Anger may actively prefer being in the graveyard.
Commercial District still enters tapped, which isn't ideal, but free card selection stapled onto a Land makes the slower entry a lot easier to forgive.
3. Stomping Ground
Stomping Ground is the classic Gruul Shock Land. It's both a Mountain and a Forest, makes
or
, and can enter untapped if you pay two life.
If you need the mana right away to hold up a Heroic Intervention, then you can pay If you don't need the mana right away, then you can let Stomping Ground enter tapped and keep the life. Its Mountain and Forest Land types can also help other Lands in your mana base.
Rootbound Crag, for example, sees Stomping Ground as both a Mountain and a Forest, making its untapped condition much easier to meet. Stomping Ground also keeps all the searchability of Sheltered Thicket and Commercial District without forcing you to wait a turn before using it.
Stomping Ground may ask for two life, but the ability to choose when that speed is worth the cost makes it so consistently reliable.
2. Wooded Foothills
Wooded Foothills doesn't make Red or Green on its own. Instead, you pay one life, sacrifice it, and search for a Mountain or Forest. The important part is that Wooded Foothills doesn't say Basic Mountain or Forest.
Depending on what you need, Wooded Foothills can grab the Snow Dual Highland Forest, the Tango Land Cinder Glade, the Shock Land Stomping Ground, or even an old-fashioned basic Mountain or Forest.
The flexibility goes beyond mana fixing, too. Playing Wooded Foothills and then fetching another Land gives you two separate Landfall triggers. Those extra Landfall triggers can add up quickly with Land-matter cards like Lotus Cobra or Omnath, Locus of Rage.
Wooded Foothills also puts itself into the graveyard, making it especially useful alongside Land recursion cards like Crucible of Worlds or Ramunap Excavator. Few Lands give you as much control over what your mana base does next as Wooded Foothills.
1. Taiga
Taiga is simply a Mountain Forest that taps for
or
, and its sheer lack of drawbacks is exactly why it's the number one Gruul Land.
Its Land types make Taiga easy to find with Wooded Foothills and other applicable Fetch Lands, and it also works with anything that cares about Mountains or Forests.
In many ways, Taiga is the benchmark every other Gruul dual Land tries to approximate. Of course, as a Reserved List card, Taiga isn't exactly convenient to pick up at your local game store.
Thankfully, Taiga is far from necessary for a great Gruul Commander deck, with Stomping Ground, Karplusan Forest, Commercial District, and plenty of more accessible options already doing excellent work. But if we're talking purely about the cleanest Red-Green Land available, Taiga is hard to beat.
Which Gruul Land is the best?
The best Red-Green mana Land really depends on what your Gruul deck needs most. If speed is the priority, Fire-Lit Thicket, Karplusan Forest, Grove of the Burnwillows, and Copperline Gorge all fit the bill.
The first three give you reliable untapped fixing with relatively minor tradeoffs, while Copperline Gorge is at its best during the opening turns when Gruul is trying to Ramp, curve out, and get moving.
On the utility side, Dining Room, Sheltered Thicket, and Commercial District all trade some speed for extra value. Dining Room can turn spare mana into Clues, Sheltered Thicket can Cycle away when you flood, and Commercial District uses Surveil 1 to filter dead draws or feed graveyard synergies.
Then you have the heavy hitters. Stomping Ground combines useful Land types with the option to enter untapped whenever you need the mana immediately. At the same time, Wooded Foothills can find whichever Mountain or Forest best fits the moment while adding extra value to Landfall and Land-recursion strategies.
And Taiga just works. It makes
or
while keeping the Mountain and Forest types that make so many Gruul Lands useful, all without entering tapped, costing life, or asking you to meet another condition.
You certainly don't need to include every option here to build a great mana base, though. At the end of the day, the best mix of Gruul Lands often comes down to how much your deck values speed, fixing, utility, or simply having the right colors available when you need them.
Conclusion
Gruul in MTG may be all about big Creatures, fast mana, and turning things sideways, but none of that matters if your Lands refuse to cooperate.
The good news is that Red-Green has no shortage of excellent options. Whether you want untapped fixing, extra utility, or simply a reliable Mountain Forest, there's plenty of room to tailor your mana base around the deck you're actually playing.
You also don't need to overhaul your entire mana base all at once. Picking up a Stomping Ground here, swapping in a Wooded Foothills there, or selling cards you're no longer using to fund another mana-base upgrade can gradually make your favorite Gruul deck feel smoother every time you shuffle up.
And the smoother your mana base runs, the sooner you can get back to what Gruul does best: casting enormous Creatures and smashing faces.


















