Many of Commander’s best cards cost a pretty penny nowadays. Many common Commander cards, from generic staples like Roaming Throne to Game Changers like The One Ring, can easily cost $30 or more. Since Commander gets so much attention, finding strong cards that don’t break the bank can be difficult.
That said, if you know where to look, there are some somewhat hidden gems that only cost about a dollar. Wilderness Reclamation, in a lot of different decks, offers a powerful effect comparable to a Game Changer, but only costs $1 to buy.
Wilderness Reclamation
Despite Wilderness Reclamation’s simplicity, it has repeatedly produced some of the most problematic combo decks in competitive Magic. Banned during its time in Standard, and in Pioneer and Historic, Wilderness Reclamation simply untaps all of your lands on your end step.
This might seem simple, but in a focused strategy, Wilderness Reclamation can both act as a way to allow you to keep up interaction while casting spells on your turn and can be a ramp piece. So long as the ramp-based payoff can be cast at instant speed, you can float all of your mana at the end step, untap your lands, and cast a massive spell.
This is what got Wilderness Reclamation in trouble in three different competitive formats. Multiple copies of this card, plus a massive instant like Expansion//Explosion, could end your opponent out of nowhere. Because of Wilderness Reclamation’s nature, it also served as the perfect control win condition. It gives your opponent a very small window to deal with it and, if they can’t, you get to keep interaction up for the rest of the game.
Considering all this, $0.40 Wilderness Reclamation’s price tag may surprise you. The card has seen a healthy amount of reprints, some in Commander precons, and is too slow to impact the majority of formats where it remains legal. Competitively, Wilderness Reclamation only sees play in Duel Commander and cEDH nowadays, but the card also sees a decent amount of play in casual Commander. For its price tag, however, it should probably be seeing a lot more.
Wilderness Reclamation in Commander
Wilderness Reclamation isn’t really a hidden gem in Commander, but it is seeing shockingly little play for such a powerful card. Appearing in 3.55% of EDHREC decks, all of Wilderness Reclamation’s most popular Commanders have some built-in way to leverage all of the extra mana that the enchantment provides.
With the exception of Precon Commanders that saw Wilderness Reclamation reprints, Kalamax, the Stormsire appears to be the most popular Commander for Wilderness Reclamation. Considering that this deck is all about casting instants, Wilderness Reclamation’s presence in the deck makes a lot of sense. You can deploy Kalamax, tap it with an effect like Springleaf Drum, and untap all of your mana to keep up instants for Kalamax to copy. You’re also likely able to use Wilderness Reclamation’s hidden ramp mode since copying massive instants can easily lead to game wins.
Other Commanders that commonly employ Wilderness Reclamation provide outlets for all the extra mana it provides. Kenrith, Returned King is a great example of this, providing a bunch of different activated abilities for you to sink your extra mana into. Omnath, Locus of Mana and Kruphix, God of Horizons provide another way to do this, hoarding your mana turn after turn and setting up for a massive payoff.
Both face Commander in the precons that reprinted Wilderness Reclamation are also unsurprisingly good with the card. Zimone, Mystery Unraveler allows Wilderness Reclamation to see cEDH play, using its ‘secret ramp’ mode to flip powerful creatures face-up. Morska, Undersea Sleuth, on the other hand, wants the extra Wilderness Reclamation mana to crack all the Clue tokens it creates.
The last category of Commanders that seem to employ Wilderness Reclamation consistently are green Commanders that offer rewards for casting multiple spells in a turn. Ms. Bumbleflower and Rashmi, Eternities Crafter fit into these categories. More mana means you can trigger these Commanders multiple times in a turn cycle. Since both Commanders offer built-in card draw as their rewards, you won’t run out of spells to cast with your extra mana, either.
Well Worth the Cost
For the most part, Wilderness Reclamation offers an incredibly powerful effect that only compounds in value the longer you have it. These exponential value pieces are exactly what’s needed in Commander since your games go for such a long time. Wilderness Reclamation certainly warrants being targeted, but it might fly under the radar as well since it’s not as openly egregious as cards like Doubling Season.
That said, in many decks, Wilderness Reclamation can be just as powerful as many typical $20 staples. As long as you have a plan for using the mana that Wilderness Reclamation provides, it will overperform its current secondary market price point.
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