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Gaea's Cradle

Legendary Land

{T}: Add {G} for each creature you control.

CMC
0
Mana cost
Color identity
G
Rarity
rare
Set
World Championship Decks 1999
Price
$296.08
EDHREC rank
#458
Buy on TCGplayer
Gaea's Cradle card art
Gaea's Cradle turns a board full of creatures into a mana engine that ends games — tap it with five creatures out and you've already lapped every Sol Ring in the pod. Derevi, Empyrial Tactician abuses it by untapping it repeatedly in a single turn; Thrasios, Triton Hero // Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful sinks that mana straight into Thrasios activations to dig for combo pieces on the spot.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Thrasios, Triton HeroYoshimaru, Ever Faithful

Thrasios, Triton Hero // Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful

81.7% of decks · synergy 0.76

Thrasios, Triton Hero // Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful is the most popular Gaea's Cradle shell because Thrasios converts every excess green mana into card selection, and Cradle produces excess green mana faster than almost anything else in the format. The pair appears in over 80% of tracked Thrasios // Yoshimaru lists.

02
Tevesh Szat, Doom of FoolsThrasios, Triton Hero

Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools // Thrasios, Triton Hero

68.2% of decks · synergy 0.63

Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools // Thrasios, Triton Hero leans on Gaea's Cradle the same way its sibling pairing does — flood the board, convert Cradle's output into Thrasios activations, and close the loop. Tevesh adds a sacrifice outlet and token generation that keeps the creature count high even after blockers get chumped.

03
Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy

Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy

45.0% of decks · synergy 0.38

Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy doubles mana from nonland sources, but Gaea's Cradle is a land — what it gives Kinnan is the raw volume of green mana needed to activate Kinnan's second ability and start slamming creatures from the library for free. Even without the doubling rider, Cradle does enough work in a creature-dense Kinnan shell to justify its slot.

04
Sisay, Weatherlight Captain

Sisay, Weatherlight Captain

36.7% of decks · synergy 0.33

Sisay, Weatherlight Captain tutors legendary permanents to the battlefield repeatedly, and each hit adds another body that inflates Gaea's Cradle's output the following turn. The deck naturally accumulates a dense legendary-creature board, making Cradle's tap ability consistently explosive from the mid-game onward.

05

Etali, Primal Conqueror

30.7% of decks · synergy 0.26

Etali, Primal Conqueror costs nine mana to hard-cast, so Gaea's Cradle's ability to accelerate from five or six creatures into that number in a single turn is the main appeal. Once Etali is swinging and generating additional free casts, the creatures that enter off those triggers feed Cradle right back.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern not legal
pioneer not legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

Commander is where Gaea's Cradle is most broken — the singleton format's creature-heavy strategies and multiplayer card-advantage arms race mean a single land that taps for five or more green mana warps games from the moment it resolves. In Legacy, it sees niche play in Elves, where the combination of Cradle and Heritage Druid can produce enough mana to empty a hand in one turn, but redundant interaction and faster combo decks keep it from dominating. Vintage is legal but irrelevant — the format's broken mana artifacts and blue cantrips make a green land that requires creatures look modest by comparison. Gaea's Cradle is not legal in Modern, Pioneer, Standard, or Pauper, which is where the vast majority of players live; its power ceiling in any format where it is legal has consistently kept it off the reprint shortlist.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun is the closest functional replacement — it enters as a creature-checker that flips into a Gaea's Cradle mirror for roughly $3, and in any deck running enough creatures to make Cradle good, Itlimoc flips reliably by turn four or five. It taps for one green before flipping and costs a draw step to set up, but at 1% of the price it does 80% of the same work. Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx is the other candidate if your deck leans heavily on green pips, producing comparable or greater mana in devotion-dense builds while running closer to $15.

Price Context

Current price

$296.08 premium tier

At $296.08, Gaea's Cradle sits firmly in premium territory — one of the ten most expensive legal Commander cards that hasn't received a direct reprint in a non-Reserved List product. It holds value because Reserved List status makes a standard reprint impossible, but buy it because you need it for the deck, not as a financial asset.

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Sources

Mentioned

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.