In the pantheon of Commander archetypes, Landfall is a powerful, consistent presence. While the popularity of these strategies means they’ve been fairly well-explored over time, there are still stones left unturned among Magic’s 30,000+ cards. Stone-Seeder Hierophant, for example, is an excellent underplayed card for MTG Lands decks, enabling powerful plays and infinite combos alike.
Stone-Seeder Hierophant MTG
While four mana for a 1/1 creature obviously isn’t ideal, Stone-Seeder Hierophant more than makes up for this. Tapping to untap any land is incredibly flexible, letting you double-dip on all sorts of effects depending on your deck.
By itself, this is a solid ramp engine, but it works particularly well with lands that tap for multiple mana, like Ancient Tomb and Gaea’s Cradle. This ability also lets you get much more value out of your utility lands. With Maze of Ith, for instance, you can nullify two attackers per turn, or you can draw two cards with lands like War Room.
What makes Hierophant really shine is the fact that it untaps each time you drop a land. Even in a totally normal game, this means you’ll likely get two uses of that untap ability each turn. Bring in land-based ramp like Farseek or Open the Way, however, and this number skyrockets.
With a ton of untaps to work with, you can produce a boatload of mana in one turn. Alternatively, you can leverage Auras and Equipment that grant additional tap abilities, like Ocular Halo and Presence of Gond, and spam those instead to devastating effect. Whichever option you choose, bringing in some trigger doublers like Ancient Greenwarden and Traveling Chocobo will turn things up to 11.
If you’re running Hierophant, then protection pieces like Lightning Greaves and Mithril Coat are must-plays. This is especially true if you want to pull off the many infinite combos the card enables. Alongside a Springheart Nantuko attached to an animated land, for example, it can create an easy infinite mana and Landfall loop.
Lands Of Hope And Glory
With all the pieces in play, dropping a land will trigger Nantuko, letting you create a new land token for 1G. When this enters, you can untap Hierophant and use it to untap another land, then tap the new token as well to make up the 1G needed to repeat the loop. This will net you infinite Landfall triggers for a kill with something like Sabotender, as well as infinite land tokens for a Walking Ballista win the following turn.
Hierophant also enables easy infinite mana lines with any of the blue Karoo lands, such as Simic Growth Chamber. Kit Hierophant out with Freed from the Real or Pemmin’s Aura, and you can untap it for a blue, then use it to untap your Karoo for blue and another color. A similar combo is also available with Gaea’s Cradle and Umbral Mantle, assuming you control at least four creatures to make Mantle’s untap ability profitable.
You can even take infinite turns with Hierophant if you pair it with Magosi, the Waterveil and Rings of Brighthearth. Hierophant’s untap ability lets you use both of Magosi’s abilities in the same turn, skipping a turn while also taking an extra one and returning it to your hand. If you copy the latter with Rings of Brighthearth, you can take two extra turns instead, cancelling out the skipped one. On your next turn, you can then replay Magosi and stack Hierophant’s untap trigger to use both abilities again and repeat the loop.
A Lost Budget Banger
While its combo lines are flashy, the real beauty of Stone-Seeder Hierophant lies in its flexibility. With how many good utility lands we have now, a repeatable untapper like this is an asset no matter where you run it. This makes it a card you can slot into a ton of different decks, even if you’re not planning to pop off with it.
Despite its quality, not a ton of Commander players are running Hierophant at present. EDHREC data notes that only 10.7k decks include the card, which is very much on the low end. Even in the Landfall decks where it fits like a glove, such as Lumra, Bellow of the Woods and Tatyova, Benthic Druid, less than 250 players are taking advantage of this powerful tool.
This low play rate, combined with the card’s common rarity, makes it an extremely affordable pickup right now. You can nab near-mint copies on TCGplayer for just $0.25, so it’s an ideal add for budget decks. Due to the scarcity of older foils, however, you will need to splash around $7 if you want to bling this one out, at least until it gets a snazzy Secret Lair treatment or some such in the future.
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