by Johnny Cycles, June 27th, 2025

Hello and welcome to another edition of Keeping Modern Janky! It’s Final Fantasy time and, while I’ve never played the games, I have been loving the new landfall cards from the set! Ever since the printing of Bristly Bill, Spine Sower in Outlaws of Thunder Junction, I’ve been trying to make landfall work in Modern.

I love me some Hydras, but I didn’t put a lot of time and energy into that deck, as I got caught up in other things.

Here I try Bristly Bill, Spine Sower out in conjunction with Emperor of Bones.

Unfortunately, I was never impressed with the shells I put him in and set the deck aside.

Enter Tifa Lockhart and Traveling Chocobo.

The new 2-drop legendary can close out games as early as turn 3 with the right support pieces. One of these pieces is Traveling Chocobo. When I first read this card, I, like most in the Magic community I imagine, dismissed it as a powerful new toy to slot in to a Bird Tribal deck in Commander. And while Birds need more love like this to be competitive in that format, this Bird is super busted in a deck like ours, even if we only play eight Birds.

The real power of this card is in its doubling of our landfall triggers. Think Mossborn Hydra can get to scary proportions with Bristly Bill, Spine Sower and Hardened Scales out? Let’s double all those triggers.

And don’t sleep on the fact that we can play lands from our library. I’ve won more than one game thanks to this conditional card advantage.

These two cards alongside one of the more unimpressive uncommons from Final Fantasy made me think it was time for Bristly Bill, Spine Sower to shine.

Which other card, you ask?

That’s right… it’s a baby bird.

Now I don’t know anything about Sazh or Chocobo, but I do know that this is the best 1-mana creature with landfall for aggressive strategies ever printed (there are only 8 1-drop creatures, so the competition isn’t fierce). A quick search reveals two other creatures that have landfall and cost a single : Jaddi Offshoot and Scythe Leopard. Neither do enough to make our strategy competitive.

This baby bird, though, can grow to epic proportions very quickly. And unlike other 1-drop landfall creatures that feature in aggressive strategies, Sazh’s Chocobo doesn’t lose the bonus at the end of turn. It gets +1/+1 counters, which synergize nicely with Hardened Scales and Traveling Chocobo.

Now if only it had flying…

Thus, the addition of a powerful 1-drop and a game-ending 2-drop with landfall alongside a powerful enabler in the 3-drop slot gave me hope that Bristly Bill, Spine Sower now had a competitive shell in which to shine.

Here’s the decklist:

Decklist – Mono Green Landfall

by Johnny Cycles
Format: Modern

Creatures (28)

4 Delighted Halfling
4 Sazh’s Chocobo
4 Bristly Bill, Spine Sower
4 Lotus Cobra
4 Tifa Lockhart
4 Mossborn Hydra
4 Traveling Chocobo

Enchantments (4)

Hardened Scales

Instants (7)

3 Snakeskin Veil
4 Collected Company

Lands (21)

2 Boseiju, Who Endures
4 Field of Ruin
7 Forest
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard (15)

4 Veil of Summer
4 Endurance
4 Force of Vigor
3 Bloomvine Regent

Deck Tech

I’ve toyed with the numbers a bit since the first deck tech. Specifically, I cut one Lotus Cobra and added a single copy of Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth. The 2-drop Snake can fuel some big turns for us, but I wanted one more land in the deck and Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth lets us tap our fetch lands for until we’re ready to crack them to trigger our board full of landfall creatures.

Primary Game Plan

We’re looking to start the landfall party early with Sazh’s Chocobo and Tifa Lockhart. From there our best play is Traveling Chocobo on the back of a fetchland, that will allow us to swing in for 7 on turn 3. If our board stays intact and we play another fetchland on turn 4, we get to double all of our triggers, making the chick a 7/8 and Tifa a trampling 16/2.

Not too shabby for Mono Green.

Other lines of play involve Bristly Bill, Spine Sower growing our Tifa before her trigger resolves. With Hardened Scales out, this line can win us the game as early as turn 3.

Lotus Cobra can help us build an overwhelming boardstate quickly. A single fetchland with it on the battlefield nets us 3 mana. Furthermore, it often is seen as a must-kill threat by our opponent, which means one less kill spell for our real finishers, Tifa Lockhart and…

This. Card. Is. Busted.

I’ve had my opponent grow their Mossborn Hydra to truly epic proportions. Our best is currently 78/78. That was in a single turn.

This card has won me a lot of games. If unanswered, its trample and synergies with our other landfall cards mean we can often punch through lethal damage on boards you wouldn’t think it possible. This is the chief reason we play Delighted Halfling. Untapping with a Mossborn Hydra on turn 3 can often be game over for our opponents.

The rug that ties the whole room together is Collected Company. Anyone who’s played with or against this card knows how powerful it can be. It can catch us back up quickly, put us too far ahead of our opponent for them to have a chance of catching up themselves, or be the ace up our sleeve against all kinds of archetypes, from Control to Ramp, from Aggro to Midrange.

More importantly, we’re a combo deck that needs three pieces to succeed. Two creatures with landfall and, you guessed it, lands. Collected Company gives us two of the three pieces we need. In the right spot, a single resolved Collected Company and a fetchland can take us from an empty board to a lethal one.

The rest of the deck is made up of a powerful enabler in Hardened Scales and some preemptive protection against Modern’s interaction in Snakeskin Veil that also synergizes with our gameplan.

Sideboard

It’s a pretty straightforward set of cards here. Veil of Summer to protect us against hand disruption and counter magic. Endurance for graveyard decks. Force of Vigor for Affinity, Eldrazi, Hammer Time, etc.

And a…Dragon?

Yes, I love Dragons. No, that’s not why Bloomvine Regent is in the board. Its omen side synergizes with our gameplan and can be a key draw in the right spots. Meanwhile, the lifegain the creature side gives us on top of a 4/5 flier can help us stabilize against all kinds of aggressive decks.

Still, it’s possible we go a different route here. Damping Sphere would give us some more interaction with Storm, Izzet Prowess, Amulet Titan, and Eldrazi, even if it would also slow us down.

Can a Mono Green Landfall deck like this compete in Modern? Let’s find out!

Match 1 vs. Eldrazi Ramp

Match 2 vs. Budget Lifegain Combo

Match 3 vs. Izzet Prowess

Match 4 vs. Mono Black

Match 5 vs. Temur Reclamation

Match 6 vs. Living End

Match 7 vs. Dimir Control

Match 8 vs. Eldrazi

Match 9 vs. Yawgmoth

Match 10 vs. Broodscale Combo

Overall Record: 6-4

The deck was a blast to play! We got a turn 3 win with Tifa Lockhart, which is about as fast as I’ve ever won with any of my decks. We trampled over with a massive Mossborn Hydra again and again. We grew our baby chicks to huge proportions. They usually got chump blocked since they have neither trample nor flying, but still… The deck hummed along with some super powerful finishes.

Until it didn’t.

Variance happens and we ran into a wall of bad luck in some of our matches.

The biggest issue? Not enough lands.

That’s right. Many of the games we lost were due to not hitting our lands on time. 22 lands is perhaps greedy in a deck like ours, so my first change would be to make room for one or two more. Too often we had all of our payoff cards, but we couldn’t find a fetch land on time.

Other times we ran into the opposite problem. A board of Hardened Scales, Tifa Lockhart, and plenty of fetches may seem great at first glance, but without a way to put counters on the Tifa, it’s just a sad, sad shell of what could be.

Still, our wins were explosive and so much fun.

More importantly, Bristly Bill, Spine Sower was one of our best cards. I think we found its rightful home.

Some of the problem matches were the combo decks running around Modern. Gruul Broodscale, in particular, felt like the deck we played the most and lost the most to. Some of it felt like supremely hot running by our opponent (see game 3 of match 10, when OP had three copies of their Blade of the Bloodchief in the graveyard, then preceded to find it off their very first Ancient Stirrings to win the game). Other times, it’s just one of the drawbacks of playing Mono Green, even with Force of Vigor in the sideboard.

A general lack of interaction, then, came back to haunt us against decks that could goldfish and win faster than our own. Living End felt tough, for example.

Which leads to me…

A New Direction

What if we splashed for ?

I’ve long since liked splashing for in my otherwise Mono Green big beaters decks. It helps shore up some of our problem matches by giving us access to targeted removal, hand disruption, and more card draw.

It also just so happens that gives us another 1-drop creature with landfall. Will making room for Iridescent Vinelasher and some interaction in the sideboard make the deck more competitive?

Here’s the list:

Decklist – Golgari Landfall

by Johnny Cycles
Format: Modern

Creatures (30)

4 Delighted Halfling
3 Iridescent Vinelasher
4 Sazh’s Chocobo
4 Bristly Bill, Spine Sower
3 Springheart Nantuko
4 Tifa Lockhart
4 Mossborn Hydra
4 Traveling Chocobo

Enchantments (4)

Hardened Scales

Instants (4)

4 Collected Company

Lands (22)

1 Boseiju, Who Endures
3 Field of Ruin
5 Forest
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Swamp
1 Underground Mortuary
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

Sideboard (15)

3 Fatal Push
3 Assassin’s Trophy
2 Disruptor Flute
3 Force of Vigor
4 Leyline of the Void

The sideboard is where I see the most changes being made, as I don’t want to disrupt our main strategy. Thus, I made room for Iridescent Vinelasher by cutting Snakeskin Veil. I’m also testing out Springheart Nantuko in this shell, which I also tested in place of Lotus Cobra in my Mono Green version. I’m still on the fence about it, to be honest. We aren’t really a go-wide strategy, which the Insect Monk facilitates.

Splashing for for interaction in the board will also water down our combo. I found myself largely taking out Collected Company and trimming from some of the 4 ofs to make room for Fatal Push, Assassin’s Trophy, etc.

The TL;DR is the change did keep us in games against combo decks like Gruul Broodscale, winning us at least one game that we would’ve probably lost otherwise.

However, I’m not sure we don’t just want to be faster than our opponents and keep the interaction to a minimum.

That being said, in the few matches I tested with the deck, we ran into almost all combo strategies. We played Infect, Gruul Broodscale, Affinity, and a discard deck. I won’t spoil the outcome, but further testing is necessary before we settle on a refined Golgari list.

Match 1 vs. Affinity

Match 2 vs. Infect

Match 3 vs. Stormscale Scion

Match 4 vs. Broodscale

Match 5 vs. Gruul Discard

Overall Record: 0-5

Yeah, it was bad. But let’s look past the record. Our interaction kept us in games the way I’d anticipated. What I didn’t anticipate was a turn 2 win from Infect, missing multiple land drops against Broodscale, and having to fight through three (3!) Metallic Rebukes from Affinity.

So while variance impacted our results, I think our sideboard plan of more interaction was a good one.

But we didn’t play against some non-Combo decks. Thus, the jury is still out.

All that being said, we played against some super cool and innovative decks. The Storm deck winning with Stormscale Dragon was awesome. The Infect deck won on a different axis than I’m used to seeing. And the discard deck was not in , but and was using some cards I haven’t seen in action yet. I’m happy to show those decks off!

Conclusion

I won’t lie. When I set out to test these Final Fantasy cards, I did so with super low expectations. I was pleasantly surprised, then, by how competitive the deck was and how many games we won. And not only that, our wins were often spectacular! Each of the new cards had their moment in the sun, while Mossborn Hydra closed out games with the kind of vicious quickness I expected from it when I first saw the card. I think the fact that we’re playing so many must-answer threats allowed the Hydra to survive when it might not in other decks I’ve played it in.

So if you love landfall as much as I do, or you love Tifa Lockhart, or Chocobo (it’s very fun to say), or Mono Green…you get the picture…give this deck a try. Our wins were fast and fun!

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading and watching!