Is Nissa of Shadowed Boughs good in Commander?

Nissa of Shadowed Boughs

Legendary Planeswalker — Nissa

Landfall — Whenever a land you control enters, put a loyalty counter on Nissa.
+1: Untap target land you control. You may have it become a 3/3 Elemental creature with haste and menace until end of turn. It's still a land.
−5: You may put a creature card with mana value less than or equal to the number of lands you control onto the battlefield from your hand or graveyard with two +1/+1 counters on it.

CMC: 4
Mana cost
Color identity: BG
Rarity: mythic
Set: Zendikar Rising Promos
Price: —
EDHREC rank: #5035

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Nissa of Shadowed Boughs enters, immediately threatens to reanimate a creature from your hand at the cost of a land drop, and protects herself with a +1 that grows your land count toward that threshold. The cost is real — her minus requires you to have as many lands as the target's mana value, which means she underperforms early and demands a land-heavy shell — but in decks that already want to flood the board with basics, she's a recursive threat engine that Springheart Nantuko and Carth the Lion both exploit to devastating effect.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

Carth the Lion

31.9% of decks · synergy 0.30

Carth the Lion runs nearly every relevant planeswalker, and Nissa of Shadowed Boughs earns her slot by converting Carth's loyalty-counter bonuses into immediate reanimation pressure — the extra loyalty from Carth means her minus comes online a full turn faster.

The Gitrog, Ravenous Ride

22.7% of decks · synergy 0.21

The Gitrog, Ravenous Ride already wants a high land count and rewards sacrificing them, so Nissa of Shadowed Boughs plugs in naturally — her plus fetches the basics that feed Gitrog's draw engine, and her minus recurs the fatties that those sacrificed lands helped cast.

Lord Windgrace

21.8% of decks · synergy 0.20

Lord Windgrace decks pile up lands faster than almost any other archetype, which means Nissa of Shadowed Boughs hits her minus threshold effortlessly and can start pulling creatures from hand to battlefield as early as turn five.

Yarok, the Desecrated

19.9% of decks · synergy 0.18

Yarok, the Desecrated doubles every enters-the-battlefield trigger, so the creatures Nissa of Shadowed Boughs reanimates immediately generate twice the value — she's a value engine delivering payloads directly into the most efficient doubling effect in Sultai.

Sméagol, Helpful Guide

18.7% of decks · synergy 0.17

Sméagol, Helpful Guide churns through basic lands at a high rate, keeping Nissa of Shadowed Boughs' land-count requirement satisfied while also filling the graveyard with creatures she can pull straight onto the battlefield.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

Format	Verdict
commander	legal
legacy	legal
modern	legal
pioneer	legal
standard	not legal
vintage	legal
pauper	not legal
oathbreaker	legal

Commander is where Nissa of Shadowed Boughs belongs — her reanimation ability scales with the format's larger creatures, and she slots cleanly into any Golgari or three-color landfall or lands deck that naturally hits fifteen-plus basics. In Modern and Pioneer, the competition at four mana is fierce, and her minus ability requires board setup she rarely gets in those faster formats — she sees fringe play at best. Legacy and Vintage are simply too fast; a four-mana planeswalker that needs lands in play to do anything impactful is not where those formats want to be. Oathbreaker gives her a niche role as a signature spell or supporting piece in a lands-matter shell, but the real stage is Commander, where a lands deck will hit her threshold reliably and her recursion hits the biggest targets in the game.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

429 decks