Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Nissa, Vastwood Seer!

Nissa is a three mana 2/2 that when she enters you search your library for a basic Forest and put it into your hand then shuffle, and whenever a land enters the battlefield under you control and you have seven or more lands, you exile Nissa and transform her to Nissa, Sage Animist, a 3 loyalty Planeswalker who has a +1 to reveal the top card of your library and either putting a land to your battlefield or a card in your hand, a -2 to make a legendary 4/4 green Elemental creature token named Ashaya, the Awoken World, or a -7 to turn six lands into 6/6 Elemental creatures that are still lands.

Nissa wants a ton of lands on the battlefield, and with her very easy way to flip, this should not be hard to do. While it would be easy to make this a pure Landfall deck with all the land ramp we are going to be playing, I think it would be more interesting if we built around Nissa’s ultimate and make our lands into creatures.

The game plan is to get an absurd number of lands onto the battlefield, have ways to make them creatures, and give them benefits to being land creatures to get a ton of damage through, since there are plenty of removal spells that target nonland permanents that we can just blank.

The first thing we need to do is up the amount of ramp that this deck can output, more than usual to get Nissa to flip consistently early.

Open the Way is a solid way to get at most three lands onto the battlefield, all while resetting the top of your library to get to more ramp cards. Now to combat the issue that a majority of the extra lands that we are getting will be coming in tapped, we can also play Spelunking, which draws us a card and gets us an additional land drop in the process.

Nissa’s Pilgrimage is a way for us to get two basic Forests onto the battlefield or three if we have Spell Mastery active, Cultivate and Kodama’s Reach gets an additional land onto the battlefield and one into our hand that we can play, and Nature’s Lore gets us an additional Forest onto the battlefield untapped.

We can also make use of additional land drops if we get a ton of lands into our hand, Summer Bloom being a way for us to get three additional lands onto the battlefield, Azusa, Lost but Seeking being able to give us two additional land drops each turn, and Oracle of Mul Daya to let us get an additional land drop each turn and while it does have us have the top card of our library revealed, we can play lands from the top of our library.

If we happen to have access to it, Awaken the Woods is a way for us later in the game to get a ton of Forest Dryad land creature tokens into play, and we can also choose to play Dryad Arbor as a Forest that can be tutored up from Nature’s Lore.

While we are at it, we can play Invasion of Zendikar, a Battle that let’s us get two basic lands onto the battlefield tapped that when it flips it becomes Awakened Skyclave, which is a creature with vigilance and haste that counts as a land as well as its additional types when it’s in play and can tap for mana of any color.

The next thing that we are going to be looking for are additional ways to make our lands into creatures, ideally not permanently until we flip Nissa.

Animate Land is a classic way to get turn a land into a creature and essentially becomes a combat trick that can be used early in the game to turn one of our lands into a creature to block an attack or to attack if we need to get some damage in on an opponent.

Disturbed Slumber is a way for us to get a surprise 4/4 land creature with haste and reach that must be blocked if able, Elemental Uprising doing the same except the 4/4 land doesn’t have reach, and Genju of the Cedars being a recursive way for us to turn a Forest into a 4/4 creature for two mana.

Harmonious Emergence is an interesting Aura that turns a land we control into a 4/5 with vigilance and haste that also has a pseudo version of umbra armor in that if that land would be destroyed, we instead sacrifice Harmonious Emergence and give the land indestructible until the end of turn.

Vastwood Zendikon is an Aura that also gives the enchanted land some form of protection by letting the now 6/4 land return to our hand when it dies, meaning that we can send the land in for a big attack or keep it back to block with little consequence.

If our lands do go to the graveyard, we should also have ways to recur them via effects like Conduit of Worlds and Ramunap Excavator which let us play lands from our graveyard, or Titania, Nature’s Force which let’s us play Forests from our graveyard, makes a 5/3 Elemental whenever a Forest we control enters, and whenever an Elemental we control dies we mill three cards.

If we want to be mean, we can play Natural Affinity to turn all lands into 2/2 creatures right as a board wipe is about to hit and then cast something like Heroic Intervention as a way to keep all of our creatures and lands alive while our opponents aren’t as lucky. It’s really mean and situational, so use it at your own risk.

The last thing we need are ways to make our land creatures into lethal threats that can win us the game.

There are a few ways that we can benefit our land creatures, with Syvlan Advocate being one of them since as long as we control six or more lands, Sylvan Advocate and land creatures we control get +2/+2. Combine that with something like Embodiment of Insight to give land creatures we control vigilance and can turn a land we control into a 3/3 Elemental with haste for a turn whenever we trigger Landfall.

Earth Surge is a blanket anthem for land creatures we control by giving them a +2/+2 bonus. Blossoming Tortoise is a little more involved in that we mill three cards and put a land from our graveyard onto the battlefield, also making activated abilities of lands we control cheaper by 1 mana, all the while giving land creatures we control a +1/+1 bonus.

Since we are using Nissa to turn a bunch of our lands into creatures, we can use other Nissa’s to help out. Nissa, Who Shakes the World has our Forests tap for additional mana, gives three +1/+1 counters on a land we control, untaps it, and gives it vigilance and haste and can ultimate into letting us get any/all of our Forests onto the battlefield tapped.

Then we can have a way to turn all of our lands into creatures with Natural Affinity and then cast Nissa, Ascended Animist for full retail and then immediately ultimate her into giving creatures we control +1/+1 for each Forest we control and gives them trample to make for a massive swing of damage that will most assuredly win us the game most of the time.

We can also include Craterhoof Behemoth and Overrun as additional ways to get the same effect in order to get a massive swing of damage to win us the game with the massive number of land creatures we control.

Nissa as a Commander would want us to play more into the Landfall style of deck, but with our game plan of turning our lands into creatures turns what would be a safe strategy into one that’s a bit more risky. Our lands becoming creatures can benefit us by being able to blank some removal spells, but not all removal spells if we keep those lands as creatures.

However, lands are one of the more difficult to interact with pieces of the game, and with us being able get away with some destruction effects while having some surprise blockers and attackers made available to us.

Thank you for reading, see you tomorrow for the next Daily Commander!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual