Best Utility Lands For Commander In MTG

Summary

• Utility lands in Commander decks can elevate your strategy, providing game-changing effects.
• Vault of the Archangel offers deathtouch/lifelink, Kessig Wolf Run has trample/boost, Command Beacon bypasses Commander tax.
• Maze of Ith can disrupt attackers, Vesuva clones lands, Field of the Dead spawns Zombies.

You can’t go wrong with a few good utility lands in your Magic: The Gathering Commander deck. These lands can be vital to your strategy or just give you a little boost to help you overcome your opponents.

With so many lands in the game, it can be a little overwhelming trying to pick just a few to add to your deck. Which is why we took a look at all the various lands you can run and narrowed them down to some of the best. These cards might not fit in every deck, but they certainly will make an impact.

10

Vault Of The Archangel

Two Abilities Packed Into One

There are quite a few very good utility lands that we skipped over to get to Vault of the Archangel, but this little land is completely worth the inclusion if your deck can fit it. For four mana you get to give all your creatures both deathtouch and lifelink for the turn.

You can use this defensively and offensively, holding up the mana to turn all your blocking creatures into killing machines or as a way to push damage and sustain yourself on the attack thanks to the lifelink.

9

Kessig Wolf Run

Can’t Stop, Wolf Stop

A neat little land that can trip up your opponents time and time again, Kessig Wolf Run comes with a red and green ability that gives two bonuses. You can pay X mana into the otherwise two-mana ability to give a creature +X/+0 for the turn, with X equal to how much you pump into the activation cost.

You can also spend the two mana to give a creature trample by paying 0 for the X cost. You can do this at instant speed, letting you sneak some damage through your opponents who might not be paying attention to your open mana, and very likely, not to the abilities you have tacked on those lands.

8

Command Beacon

Ignore That Command Tax

When playing Commander, one of the most frustrating things that can occur is having your Commander become exorbitantly expensive thanks to repeatedly casting it from the Command Zone. Once you hit three or four commander taxes, it can lock you out of casting your commander again anytime soon.

Command Beacon helps you get around this by taking your Commander and adding it directly to your hand. All you have to do is sacrifice Command Beacon, which is a pretty low cost. If you have any way to bring back Command Beacon, you can keep casting it over and over again.

Command Beacon is one of the few ways you can get around the lose the game trigger attached to the legendary creature Phage The Untouchable.

7

Maze Of Ith

Get Lost

One of the more curious lands here, Maze of Ith is a fascinating look into using lands as a disruptive or tempo tool. All you have to do is tap the Maze of Ith to remove an attacking creature from combat. Technically, you’re untapping that creature and then preventing all combat damage that would be done to and by that creature.

The nice thing with Maze of Ith is that you can use it to untap your own creatures, like those with an attack trigger, so you can get whatever activation you want and keep your creature out of harm’s way.

6

Vesuva

A Land Clone

If a land is really good you’re going to want two of them, and with Vesuva, you can do just that. When Vesuva comes into play you get to turn it into any land, and that land can be either yours or any of your opponents.

Sure, Vesuva comes into play tapped, but that’s not really a problem when you’re cloning cards like Dark Depths, giving you a free 20/20 indestructible monster. Vesuva is unique in that it is only as good as the best land in play, but that gives you plenty of potential with it.

5

Field Of The Dead

Start The Zombie Wave

A land that gets better the more lands you play, Field of the Dead doesn’t do anything on its own. Instead, every time you play it or another land while you have seven or more lands out, you get to make a 2/2 Zombie creature token.

One major thing to keep in mind is that your seven lands have to have different names, so if you have six Forests and then play Field of the Dead, not much is going to happen. This card is so good that it is banned in five formats, but still legal in Commander, so you know its powerful.

4

Wasteland

Who Needs Lands?

Sometimes, the answer to an opponent’s utility land is one of your own, and that’s where Wasteland comes in. Wasteland lets you tap and sacrifice it to blow up another nonbasic land, wiping whatever is causing you the most problems off the battlefield.

The artwork depicts a decayed City of Brass, which is a neat little throwback to another solid land.

Wasteland is best when you have some type of way to recur it, so you can repeatedly take out any land bothering you. While it is weaker against mono-colored decks, it can still put in a fair amount of work over the course of the game.

3

Mystic Sanctuary

Double The Spells

This land doubles as both an Island and a nonbasic land, which is super important for a reason we’ll get to in a second. Mystic Sanctuary comes into play tapped unless you control three or more other Islands, which can be kind of steep but comes with a strong ability in return.

When Mystic Sanctuary enters untapped, you get to take an instant or sorcery card from your graveyard and put it on top of your deck. Since it counts as an Island, you can use any number of fetch lands to tutor it up and start setting up a combo.

2

Urza’s Saga

Both A Set And A Card

The first enchantment land in the game, Urza’s Saga is a three-chapter Saga that puts in a lot of work. The three chapters are:

1. Urza’s Saga can tap for one generic mana.
2. You can pay two mana and tap Urza’s Saga to make yourself a Karn-struct token.
3. You get to search your library for an artifact that costs either zero or one mana and put it directly on to the battlefield.

Most Commander decks have at least an artifact or two that costs one mana, and if they don’t, you should make room in the deck for something at least if you’re running this card.

1

Boseiju, Who Endures

Less Of A Land, More Of A Removal Card

Honestly, you likely won’t even use this land as a land unless you’re in a bit of a pinch when it comes to your mana. You can utilize its channel ability to discard it and blow up any artifact, enchantment, or nonbasic land.

Sure, your opponent gets to replace it with a basic land, that doesn’t really matter since Boseiju, Who Endures is borderline unstoppable. There are a few ways to stop it, basically anything that counters an activated ability, but they’re not super common in Commander.