Last week, we ended our first exploration of Edge of Eternities Standard with this deck:

Gruul Landfall | EOE Standard | oskiyaa, 5-0 MTGO Standard League 7/31/2025

• Creatures (26)
• 2 Icetill Explorer
• 4 Bristly Bill, Spine Sower
• 4 Llanowar Elves
• 4 Mossborn Hydra
• 4 Sazh's Chocobo
• 4 Tifa Lockhart
• 4 Traveling Chocobo

• Instants (4)
• 4 Snakeskin Veil

• Sorceries (4)
• 4 Worldsoul's Rage

• Lands (26)
• 14 Forest
• 1 Mountain
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 2 Terramorphic Expanse
• 4 Escape Tunnel
• 4 Fabled Passage

• Sideboard (15)
• 4 Dragonback Assault
• 2 Icetill Explorer
• 1 Island
• 2 Magebane Lizard
• 3 Repulsive Mutation
• 3 Seedship Impact

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Kind of naively, we cited "the difference that makes the difference" as being one Mountain.

One basic Mountain.

And superficially, it looks like that, or at least looked like that.

MONO-Green Landfall was a thing starting with the release of Final Fantasy. Tifa Lockhart joined Mossborn Hydra from Foundations and Bristly Bill from Outlaws of Thunder Junction; they came together to create a critical mass of attackers that benefit from landfall triggers.

And don't forget the Chocobo twins! Sazh's Chocobo being an in-color Steppe Lynx [whose buffs stick around] and big sister Traveling Chocobo tied all the landfall triggers together. Traveling Chocobo is kind of only okay on its own. It can operated kind of like a Courser of Kruphix as a card advantage engine (and to a lesser degree a one-Bird selection engine)... Which is made better than ever given the many Terramorphic Expanses, Evolving Wilds, Fabled Passages, and of course Escape Tunnels making up the mana base. Traveling Chocobo could play lands off the top of the deck (generating card advantage) and because so many lands fetch, search, and shuffle; could give two or more fresh looks each turn.

That's all cool, but in 2025 a 3/2 isn't killing anyone. Card advantage is nice and all, but believe it or not this deck is but rarely missing its land drops. It's the double triggers that make Traveling Chocobo so exciting. For example, if you have a Traveling Chocobo in play, cast Bristly Bill, and then play a land... Now both 2 toughness creatures are past the threshold of an un-kicked Burst Lightning. If that land were an Evolving Wilds you can play tactically around most types of point removal in Standard... even a lot of the Black cards!

Most deeply thematic decks are made viable on overlaps and redundancy. In the same way that Sazh's Chocobo is followed up by Bristly Bill; and Tifa and the Hydra are both potentially lethal tramplers, Traveling Chocobo has a partner in Icetill Explorer. Icetill Explorer is even more card advantageous! With a single Fabled Passage (or whatever of the many names in this deck) you can just play two free cards per turn and double-accelerate.

I've spent three paragraphs talking about Traveling Chocobo and Icetill Explorer but you don't get the true sense of what they do in the game unless you see them played for a few turns, or operate them yourself. That's not hard these days because even if you're not playing Mono-Green Gruul freaking TEMUR Landfall yourself, your opponent online may well be.

In this sense the deck that can run you over in just three or four turns unopposed is also, deceptively, one of the most compelling grinding / card advantage decks in the format. With either Traveling Chocobo or Icetill Explorer it can consistently draw an extra card or three per turn, often while accumulating +1/+1 counters from Bristly Bill or pressuring your life total with a once-humble 1-drop Chocobo.

Back to the one basic Mountain that looks so pivotal.

Earlier versions of the strategy played more cards like Royal Treatment to defend creatures from point removal, or Ordeal of Nylea for more explosive Ramp with specifically Mossborn Hydra. Now with just a single Mountain, Worldsoul's Rage does two things:

1. It gives the deck a completely separate dimension. Four mana to kill a 2/2 isn't very efficient, but in the past, the Mono-Green ancestor couldn't interact with opposing creatures hardly at all. The half-Red sorcery means you can now also win outside The Red Zone.
2. It's an incredible boost to specifically Tifa Lockhart. In many ways Tifa is the weakest of the explosive landfall attackers. Sure, sometimes she kills the opponent "out of nowhere" but unless you have a mechanism to play multiple lands in one turn (like Ordeal of Nylea in the past) you're maybe getting three triggers in a single turn, and that's if you stockpiled a Terramorphic Expanse or so previously. Worldsoul's Rage dumping multiple lands from the graveyard back onto the battlefield grows Tifa explosively. Not forever, but if the opponent didn't plan for her there won't be another turn anyway.

Tifa's landfall benefits are a bit different from the others in the deck, so it bears a little mention of how you might want to play her.

For example, if you have both Bristly Bill and Tifa in play (and you intend to attack with Tifa), it makes sense to give Tifa +1/+1 and then double Tifa's power. So, if you resolve Tifa first, she'll go 1-2, and then to 3 with the +1/+1. If you resolve Bill first, she'll go 1-2, but then double to 4. Extrapolate that across multiple triggers (say if you have a Fabled Passage). It bears mentioning that if the game continues, Tifa will have the same number of +1/+1 counters next turn regardless.

How about which 3-drop to play in which order?

If you have a choice between Mossborn Hydra and Traveling Chocobo, all other things held equal, play the Hydra first. You'll want to attack with the Hydra more than the Chocobo probably, and presumably you'll have the mana to cast the Chocobo and execute on Chocobo shenanigans in concert with the Hydra before attacking the next turn anyway.

If you don't have a land in your hand, but you want to make a land drop... That's when you'll err on the Chocobo. Remember: The flightless Bird will give you another look at a land drop from the top of your deck. Not only might you make a land drop you wouldn't have otherwise, but it will be an extra card! Let's go deck touching!

Let's go to the title of this article.

One Basic Island

Because in my initial explorations into Edge of Eternities Standard, I didn't realize what made this deck so special. I was mostly testing Best-of-One Events so had no practical experience with the wonderful and innovative sideboard. This sideboard is a thing of beauty bringing many of Magic's most compelling strategies to the front even in 2025.

Just as one basic Mountain gave the main deck Worldsoul's Rage, one basic Island completely transforms the deck after sideboarding.

Think for a moment what might be good against this deck. Its Plan A is to be an overwhelming offensive deck, one that can potentially win inside of turn four. It has Snakeskin Veil to protect a key attacker (or maybe just surprise the opponent to death with Tifa Lockhart timing tricks)... But it was mostly just a dumb Green deck attacking with dumb Green guys. Oh, and it has a thematically-synergistic Fireball now.

What might be good against that kind of deck?

What gives it problems?

Can they be contested with Counterspells?

What if the opponent attacks Green's very strategy, not just its cards? How do you solve for that?

The big - and in this case both big and wide - solution is Dragonback Assault.

When fast enough, Dragonback Assault can stave off go-wide opponents. Do your guys have toughness 3 or less? TOO BAD. But unlike a Wrath that just kills everything (including your own creatures), Dragonback Assault is also a long-term source of both offense and card advantage. And what offense! What card advantage! Multiple 4/4 creatures per turn is wow, am I right?

In order to support Dragonback Assault - a 6-drop in a deck of 1-drops - you have not only the 27th land in your sideboard but more Icetill Explorers. They're kind of necessary because if you accidentally mill the Mountain or Island, you need a way to recover it, or you won't be able to even cast Dragonback Assault.

I'm not sure how you're "supposed" to sideboard with Dragonback Assault, but I've been leaving in my Llanowar Elves, even knowing that they're going to die. The reason is that I want to accelerate into the Assault on turn six and get Dragon value immediately. I figure a 1/1 is an okay price to pay; and I'm getting +1 creature on the Dragon to make up for the lost Llanowar Elves anyway.

Repulsive Mutation is a pretty cool Counterspell that has some minor synergy going for it. This makes it potentially clunky to cast relative to, say, a Negate

+; but this is a deck where 1-2 extra +1/+1 counters on your opponent's turn may very well result in a kill the next turn, so I get it here. I think early (now) in the format Repulsive Mutation benefits from 1) being hard to play around because of its variable mana cost, and 2) being generally unexpected. It's possible that as this archetype persists we may see more "regular" permission spells coming out of the sideboard.

Seedship Impact is better in every way than a Naturalize (which was a plenty good Magic: The Gathering card); and I can say I have in fact both generated and sacrificed the Lander token mid-combat, much to my opponent's consternation (and immediate defeat).

People are playing a lot of Magebane Lizard, but I have to say it's been the least exciting sideboard card for me. I've sided it in just for its body against x/1 attackers, tried to get the angle against "spell" decks / control; but as much as Icetill Explorer has been an over-performer both main deck and sideboard, I can't say that Magebane Lizard has ever done much for me in this archetype, at least so far. Maybe because it's a 2-drop in a deck with a whopping one Mountain? I kind of think you might just want regular removal, bounce, or a fight spell.

Regardless, here's my conclusion less than one week into the new Standard: If you dismissed "Mono-Green" Landfall as a dumb and one-dimensional attack deck, you just don't know what you were missing. This is a nuanced and cerebral seventy-five, albeit one that might just kill you if you let it untap with its second-turn Hydra.

LOVE

MIKE