MTG’s Cactus Commander seriously powers up green decks

MTG’s Outlaws of Thunder Junction is having fun with Wild West icons, and now it’s time for a living cactus to debut as a hugely powerful new card.

Bristly Bill, Spine Sower continues Outlaws of Thunder Junction’s trend of creating powerful, straightforward new options for MTG’s classic color identities. While color pairs have previously been well served with cards like Bonny Pall, Clearcutter, it’s now time for mono-colored cards to receive a power boost.

WotC

This living Cactus powers up two of green mana’s most iconic abilities: +1/+1 tokens and Landfall. While Land ramp has always been a crucial part of many green decks’ gameplay, Landfall pays off land entering as a trigger for various effects.

In Bristly Bill’s case, you can put a +1/+1 counter on any Creature whenever a land enters the field under your control.

While this is a nice, straightforward boost for green players and other land-based color combos like Jund (green, red, and black), this isn’t the only strength Bristly Bill has. Bristly Bill, Spin Sower allows you to pay 3GG (three generic mana and two green) to double the number of +1/+1 counters on all your Creatures.

As a result, this card generates both early-game advantage and incredible late-game finishers all by itself. Not bad at all for a mana value of 1G.

Outlaws of Thunder Junction’s reveals have been a treat for many MTG fans, with villainous team-ups and rivalries contrasted with lighthearted cards featuring holy oxen, trojan horses, and more.

Bristly Bill, Spine Sower finds himself firmly in the latter category, and the MTG fanbase has been extremely enthusiastic about Thunder Junction’s living cacti as a whole.

With Final Fantasy on the way to MTG as an upcoming Universes Beyond set, Wizards of the Coast may have wanted to get a head-start on introducing playable cacti, before Cactuar arrive and inevitably take the game by (needle) storm.