Patient Naturalist
Creature — Human Scout
When this creature enters, mill three cards. Put a land card from among the milled cards into your hand. If you can't, create a Treasure token. (To mill three cards, put the top three cards of your library into your graveyard.)
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- G
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Outlaws of Thunder Junction
- Price
- $0.07
- EDHREC rank
- #14660
Patient Naturalist puts a land into play tapped each time you gain life — no mana investment, no hoops, just passive acceleration that compounds across a long game. It's a two-mana creature that functions as a ramp engine in any life-gain shell, and that combination of rate and synergy makes it an easy include.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Patient Naturalist slots cleanly into any life-gain or +1/+1 counter deck that wants a low-cost body that does real work without occupying a dedicated spell slot — Atraxa, Praetors' Voice and Lathiel, the Bounteous Dawn lists both benefit without even trying. In competitive 1v1 formats like Modern and Pioneer, it's too slow; three-land-drop triggers require a sustained game state that aggro and midrange won't allow. Pauper is its best non-Commander home, where life-gain synergies are accessible and an extra land per trigger snowballs quickly. Standard legality makes it a legitimate budget option for kitchen-table brews, though it won't crack competitive lists there either.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.07 bulk tier
At $0.07, Patient Naturalist is deep bulk — the kind of card you pick up as a throw-in or out of a bulk bin without a second thought. Bulk ramp creatures with narrow synergy requirements rarely climb in price, so treat this as a permanent penny and just play it.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.