Commander blueprint · Reality Fracture Commander

How to build Nissa, Leyline Tamer

Every other card in Magic with Nissa in its name has green somewhere in its colour identity. This one costs , so building her means working out how much of a landfall deck is left once you take away the colour that invented the mechanic.

Art by Justyna Dura

The draw is on every land and the free creature is once a turn

The trigger is two abilities sharing a sentence, and they have different limits. The draw has none. Play three lands in a turn and you draw three cards. The second half is fenced behind if this is the first time this ability has resolved this turn, so you get one free creature however many lands you manage.

That decides what the extra land effects are actually buying. Burnished Hart sacrificing for two lands draws two cards and finds one creature, not two. Myriad Landscape in the budget rung is the same shape. None of this makes those cards worse, but it does mean the deck is not trying to chain land drops for a bigger board. It is trying to hit its one trigger every single turn, and then draw as many extra cards on top as it can.

It also settles a sequencing question. Lead with the land that is hardest to cast off, because the first one is the land that pays twice.

Her colours are the four that cannot play a second land

Green has a whole shelf of cards that simply let you play more lands. Exploration, Burgeoning, Azusa, Lost but Seeking and Oracle of Mul Daya are where a landfall deck normally starts. Nissa, Leyline Tamer is the one four-colour identity that contains no green at all, and there is no white, blue, black or red card that lets you play an additional land from your hand.

So every extra land drop in this list is a permanent that goes and fetches one. Sixteen cards do it. Eleven are lands: the seven fetch lands, Fabled Passage, Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse do it once each, and Thawing Glaciers does it again every other turn. Burnished Hart, Solemn Simulacrum and Kor Cartographer do it attached to a body, which matters because a body is also something the commander can hit later, and Wayfarer's Bauble does it from the artifact side. Sword of the Animist does it once per combat for as long as it survives. Expedition Map is not one of them. It puts the land in your hand, so it finds the right land rather than an extra one.

Crucible of Worlds is the piece that makes the difference smallest. It turns every spent fetch land in the graveyard back into a land drop, which is the nearest thing these colours have to Ramunap Excavator. The honest summary is that this deck triggers landfall fewer times per turn than a green one and makes up the gap by triggering it every turn for longer.

The revealed cards go to the bottom, which is not a mill

It is easy to read the reveal as a cost. It is not one. The cards you turn over are not discarded and not exiled. They go to the bottom of your library in a random order, so nothing is lost and the only thing you have spent is the order of your own deck.

That changes how many creatures the list wants. If the reveal binned what it passed, a low creature count would be fatal and you would jam forty of them. Because it does not, creature count is a dial for how deep each dig goes rather than a safety requirement. At twenty-six creatures the average trigger turns over about two or three cards and you keep every one of them.

There is a real cost and it arrives late. Each trigger takes a creature out of the library and leaves every non-creature in it, so the ratio drifts against you. Ten creatures into the game the same trigger is turning over three or four cards instead of two. That is a slow drift and not a cliff, which is the reason this list does not need to be padded with small creatures to feel safe.

Twenty-six creatures, and the deck is judged on the worst of them

You do not choose. Whatever creature is nearest the top is what arrives, so the quality of this list is set by its weakest creature rather than its best one. Every cheap utility body you add is a slot that sometimes turns the turn into nothing.

That rules out a class of card that would otherwise be correct. Esper Sentinel is excellent in almost any white deck and wrong in this one, because adding it means roughly one trigger in twenty-seven hands you a 1/1 rather than a threat.

So the creature half is built downward from the top. Archon of Cruelty at eight mana is the best thing that can happen. Ashen Rider, Agent of Treachery, Sepulchral Primordial, Diluvian Primordial, Rune-Scarred Demon, Angel of Serenity, Nezahal, Primal Tide and Emeria Shepherd all cost seven and all do something the moment they land. The two cheapest creatures in the deck are Burnished Hart at three and Solemn Simulacrum at four, and both fetch a land, so even the floor of the creature list triggers her again.

Written down, the curve looks like a mistake. Twelve cards at six mana and ten at seven or more, in a list whose average mana value is 3.98, is not a curve anyone would want to cast. It is not meant to be cast. Those cards are the stock the top of the library is loaded with.

Deathtouch and vigilance let her attack without opening you up

A 5/5 for seven mana that traded with a 2/2 block would not be worth the trouble. Deathtouch means nothing blocks her profitably, and vigilance means attacking costs you no defence, so she can swing every turn and still be standing untapped when the turn passes to somebody else. Across three opponents that is the whole difference between a commander who threatens people and one who stays home.

It also makes Sword of the Animist better here than in most decks that run it. The Sword puts a land onto the battlefield when the equipped creature attacks, which is a landfall trigger on a turn you have already used your land drop, and the attack it asks for is free because she does not tap. Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots are in the list for a blunter reason: a seven-mana commander who has been answered once costs nine the next time.

Ten of the thirty-nine lands enter tapped and all ten still draw

Four colours without green forces a lot of slow mana. The four triomes, the three karoo bounce lands, Thawing Glaciers, Bojuka Bog and Field of the Dead all enter tapped no matter what, which is ten of thirty-nine, and six more are shock lands that only come in untapped if you pay two life.

In most decks that is a straight cost. Here it is part refunded, because her trigger never asks whether the land is untapped. A tapped triome still draws a card. The three karoos get better still once she is out, since bouncing a land to hand and replaying it next turn is another trigger you did not have to find.

The mana is worth putting a number on. On the play, at ninety per cent confidence, the list wants twenty-four sources to have a single pip available on turn two. It has thirty-four blue, thirty-three black, thirty-two white and thirty-one red, because each of the eleven lands that fetch counts as a source of every colour it can find, so every colour clears that line by seven or more. What the count cannot see is that each fetch is counted for every colour and still becomes a single land, and Thawing Glaciers, Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse bring theirs in tapped. Double pips clear as well, and every card here that wants two of one colour costs five or more, which are exactly the cards this deck plans to put onto the battlefield rather than pay for.

Thirty-nine lands is above the range our land calculator recommends for an average mana value near four. That is on purpose. When every land is also a card, the usual argument against the thirty-ninth one stops applying.

A sweeper costs this deck one turn and costs the table its board

A deck with twenty-six creatures normally cannot afford board wipes. This one can, because it rebuilds for free and nobody else at the table does. After a wipe your next land drop hands you a creature back without spending a card or a single mana, while three opponents have to recast theirs.

Austere Command is the pick rather than a flat four-mana wipe, because the mode that destroys creatures of mana value three or less leaves nearly everything in this list standing. The cheapest creature here costs three and most of them cost six. Toxic Deluge scales up to kill anything and charges life instead of mana, and Blasphemous Act is usually a single red mana by the time you want it.

The objection is fair and worth answering. If your board came from seven turns of free creatures, blowing it up is throwing away work. The answer is that the work was free and theirs was not.

The lock this list leaves out on purpose

Crucible of Worlds and Strip Mine together destroy one land every turn for the rest of the game, and Crucible is already here to replay fetch lands, so the second half costs one slot. It is still not in the core list.

The reason is the bracket rather than the power level. A repeatable land destruction engine is the kind of thing that ends a bracket 3 game with nobody having much fun, and this list is meant to be one you can put on the table at a pod that agreed on bracket 3 beforehand. Strip Mine and Wasteland go back in on the bracket 4 rung, where the conversation has already happened.

The core list

A hundred cards at bracket 3. Hover any card name to see the card, and the printing you hover is the printing its price is quoted from.

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Dropping to bracket 2 sells seven fetch lands, and that is the real cost

The three rungs are one deck at three prices, and the comparison worth making is not the money. It is how many of the extra land drops survive.

The core list runs sixteen cards that put a land onto the battlefield from your library. The budget rung sells eight of them, the seven fetch lands and Thawing Glaciers, because fetch lands are where the money in a four-colour mana base actually sits, and buys one cheaper one back in Myriad Landscape. Terrain Generator comes in beside it and works the other way round: it puts a basic from your hand onto the battlefield, so a spare land in hand becomes an extra trigger. Nine of those effects instead of sixteen means about one fewer of them drawn by turn eight, and that, rather than anything it gives up among the creatures, is what the rung really costs. Crucible of Worlds leaving hurts for the same reason, and Thaumatic Compass in its slot does not cover it, because the Compass puts its land into your hand. The three Game Changers leaving is what takes the list to bracket 2.

The bracket 4 rung buys speed instead. Ancient Tomb, Mana Vault and Grim Monolith are there to land a seven-mana commander two turns earlier, which is worth more here than in most decks, because every extra turn she spends on the battlefield is another card and another body. Strip Mine and Wasteland arrive to pair with the Crucible that was already in the list. The One Ring, Rhystic Study and Smothering Tithe are the draw and the mana that let a slow deck keep pace with a fast table, and Force of Will, Fierce Guardianship and Teferi's Protection are there so she survives the first answer aimed at her.

FAQ

Does every land you play give you a free creature?

No. The card draw happens on every land, but the creature only arrives the first time the ability resolves in a turn. Playing three lands on one turn draws three cards and still finds exactly one creature.

What colors is Nissa, Leyline Tamer, and does she really have no green?

She is white, blue, black and red, which is the one four-colour identity with no green in it. That is unusual for this name: every other card in Magic called Nissa has green somewhere in its identity. It is also why the deck cannot play Exploration, Burgeoning or Azusa, Lost but Seeking.

She comes in a precon. Why build this instead?

Because the box is not her deck. Nissa is a single foil card inside Multiverse Reforged, which is built around Jace, Multiverse Architect and plays nothing like this. Owning that precon gets you the commander and very little of the ninety-nine. The data page for the box tracks what it actually contains, and this page is what to do with her once you have pulled her out of it.

What does this Nissa, Leyline Tamer deck cost to build?

Roughly $634 for the core list, taking the lowest paper price each card sells for. The budget rung is roughly $218 and the bracket 4 rung roughly $1,787. All three are figures rather than floors now that the commander is priced.

Which bracket does this Nissa list claim?

Bracket 3. It runs three Game Changers, which is as many as bracket 3 allows: Field of the Dead, Cyclonic Rift and Consecrated Sphinx. Treat that as a floor rather than a ceiling. Nothing in this set joined the Game Changers list, which still holds 53 cards, so the 3 has not moved since release.

Can you build Nissa, Leyline Tamer without fetch lands?

Yes, and the budget rung on this page does exactly that. It sells all seven expensive fetch lands and puts four painlands, Myriad Landscape, Ash Barrens and Terrain Generator in their place. By turn eight you have drawn about one fewer card that fetches a land, which is the honest cost, and the deck still does what it was built to do.