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Icetill Explorer

Creature — Insect Scout

You may play an additional land on each of your turns.
You may play lands from your graveyard.
Landfall — Whenever a land you control enters, mill a card.

CMC
4
Mana cost
{2}{G}{G}
Color identity
G
Rarity
rare
Set
Edge of Eternities
Price
$18.57
EDHREC rank
#823
Buy on TCGplayer
Icetill Explorer card art
Icetill Explorer puts a land directly onto the battlefield — not into your hand — while giving you a body that keeps the engine running, and Glacial Chasm decks treat it as a near-automatic include because the cumulative upkeep on that land pairs brutally well with repeated sacrifice outlets. Zask, Skittering Swarmlord lists run it at nearly 70% inclusion for good reason: the Explorer fuels both the graveyard and the board simultaneously.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Zask, Skittering Swarmlord

Zask, Skittering Swarmlord

69.5% of decks · synergy 0.61

Zask, Skittering Swarmlord triggers off Insects dying, and Icetill Explorer slots into that loop as both a land enabler and a sacrifice-ready body that keeps the graveyard stocked.

03
Tannuk, Memorial Ensign

Tannuk, Memorial Ensign

58.8% of decks · synergy 0.53

Tannuk, Memorial Ensign cares about permanents entering from unusual zones, and Icetill Explorer's land-to-battlefield effect lines up cleanly with what Tannuk needs to generate value each turn.

04
Hearthhull, the Worldseed

Hearthhull, the Worldseed

67.3% of decks · synergy 0.49

Hearthhull, the Worldseed scales on land count and land ETBs, making Icetill Explorer a cheap, recurring contributor to both the creature count and the land-drop triggers Hearthhull feeds on.

05
The Gitrog Monster

The Gitrog Monster

56.7% of decks · synergy 0.49

The Gitrog Monster draws a card whenever a land enters the graveyard, and Icetill Explorer — especially alongside Glacial Chasm — creates the kind of land-cycling loop that turns that draw trigger into a repeatable engine.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

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

Commander is where Icetill Explorer does its real work: 100-card singleton means every land-from-library effect is meaningful, and the Explorer's body plus immediate land drop is the kind of two-for-one that land-matters commanders can't ignore. In Legacy and Vintage it's legal but irrelevant — three mana for a 2/2 that fetches a basic is far too slow for those formats. Modern and Pioneer have the same problem; the Explorer isn't competing for a slot when one-mana ramp exists. Standard is the one non-Commander context where it could see fringe play in a land-synergy shell, but it won't be a staple. Pauper is the only format where it's off the table entirely.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

Harrow and Sakura-Tribe Elder both cost under $1 and cover the land-to-battlefield effect at a lower mana investment, though you trade the persistent body and any enters-the-battlefield synergy Icetill Explorer provides. If the appeal is specifically a creature that finds lands and fuels sacrifice or graveyard loops, Farhaven Elf or Wood Elves come within a dollar and overlap heavily — you just lose whatever unique text makes the Explorer worth the premium in dedicated builds.

Price Context

Current price

$18.57 mid tier

At $18.57, Icetill Explorer sits in the mid-tier range — expensive enough to feel like a deliberate purchase, not an impulse throw-in. Whether that price holds depends entirely on reprint risk; as a newer card in an active standard-legal set, a precon or reprint product could move it quickly, so buy in if you're building now rather than treating it as a stable asset.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

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