Valakut Exploration
Enchantment
Landfall — Whenever a land you control enters, exile the top card of your library. You may play that card for as long as it remains exiled.
At the beginning of your end step, if there are cards exiled with this enchantment, put them into their owner's graveyard, then this enchantment deals that much damage to each opponent.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- R
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Zendikar Rising
- Price
- $4.49
- EDHREC rank
- #1532
Valakut Exploration turns every land drop into a free card exiled to a ticking clock — hit another land before your next turn and it's a free cast, miss and it pings for 1. At three mana in Jund colors, the cost is low enough that it earns its slot in any deck that plays lands above curve. Tannuk, Memorial Ensign decks run it in nearly half their lists, and the synergy score backs up why.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Tannuk, Memorial Ensign
Tannuk, Memorial Ensign mills lands directly from the top and replays them from the graveyard, meaning Valakut Exploration sees a constant stream of land drops that never slow down — every land that enters the battlefield off Tannuk's ability is a free exile trigger waiting to become a free spell.
Flubs, the Fool
Flubs, the Fool cares about playing cards from exile, which makes Valakut Exploration less of a damage engine and more of a card-advantage machine — every land drop hands Flubs another exile target to work with, turning a mild side effect into the whole point.
Faldorn, Dread Wolf Herald
Faldorn, Dread Wolf Herald creates a Wolf token every time you cast or play something from exile, so each land exiled by Valakut Exploration that you subsequently play off the top is also a free 2/2 — the two cards reward the same behavior and stack into a token and damage engine simultaneously.
Soul of Windgrace
Soul of Windgrace plays extra lands per turn and recurs lands from the graveyard, which means Valakut Exploration is firing multiple triggers per turn cycle rather than one — the redundancy between Soul's activated ability and Valakut Exploration's trigger makes both engines dramatically faster.
Toph, Hardheaded Teacher
Toph, Hardheaded Teacher rewards landfall aggressively and wants to chain land drops together, so Valakut Exploration's exile-and-cast loop feeds directly into her payoffs while also threatening real damage if opponents stall the board and stop your land sequencing.
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 |
Valakut Exploration is a Commander card through and through — the effect is too slow and too incremental for the linear goldfish strategies that define Modern and Pioneer, where you need to win by turn four and a three-mana enchantment that pings for 1 doesn't close games. In Legacy and Vintage it's theoretically legal but competes with engines so much faster that it never sees play. Commander is where the math works: games go long, land drops stack up across multiple turns, and the exile-then-cast mechanic converts those land drops into meaningful card advantage while threatening real damage in attrition wars. Landfall commanders in particular turn Valakut Exploration from a slow drip into a genuine value engine.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$4.49 cheap tier
At $4.49, Valakut Exploration sits in the cheap tier — accessible enough that there's no real budget argument against running it in any Jund or four-color deck that plays lands. The price reflects steady Commander demand without a spike ceiling, so it's a stable buy-in rather than a gamble.
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Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.