Many Magic: The Gathering players feel a strong affinity for specific colors: white, blue, black, red, and green. Perhaps you identify with one of these colors and load your decks up with your favorite basic lands. (If you’re new to the game and still trying to figure out which color is right for you, check out our article here!)
But sometimes, having a certain type of land in your deck can make you vulnerable to attacks from creatures. Today, we’re here to talk about a keyword ability that turns basic lands into liabilities.
What is Landwalk?
Landwalk is a keyword ability on creatures that prevents players from blocking those creatures if they control certain types of lands. The word “landwalk” doesn’t appear on cards itself; the creature will have a specific kind of landwalk, like “islandwalk” or “swampwalk.”
Landwalk can describe any land subtype (like forest or mountain), supertype (like snow or legendary), lack of a supertype (nonbasic), or any combination thereof. It may not be the most common keyword ability, but it’s incredibly powerful.
Some of the most common creatures you’ll see with landwalk are Merfolk, who specifically have islandwalk. In Magic formats like Modern and Legacy, Merfolk decks flood the board with creatures, and give all their Merfolk islandwalk with Master of the Pearl Trident or Lord of Atlantis. Even if an opponent doesn’t control an island, Merfolk players can change the basic land types of their opponents’ lands to enable an islandwalk win.
Finer Details
Here are a few additional rules to keep in mind when you’re playing with creatures with landwalk:
- A creature can have multiple types of landwalk, and all are working at the same time. For example, a creature can have both mountainwalk and islandwalk.
- The creature only needs one of its landwalk abilities to be “turned on” for it to be unblockable.
- Multiple instances of the same landwalk ability don’t do anything extra.
- You can’t use a landwalk ability to negate an opposing landwalk ability. Just because you have a creature with forestwalk does not mean you can block an opposing creature with forestwalk if you control a forest.
LEARN MORE!
Check out the rest of our keyword ability primers:
Banding
Cascade
Companion
Crew
Cycling
Deathtouch
Defender
Enchant
Encore
Equip
First Strike & Double Strike
Flash
Flying & Reach
Haste
Hexproof
Indestructible
Kicker
Lifelink
Menace
Mill
Mutate
Partner
Phasing
Prowess
Prowl
Trample
Vigilance