Commander Aspirations - Gaea’s Cradle
Welcome to the first entry into the new series entitled Commander Aspirations. This series of articles will take a look at key cards for the Commander format in Magic the Gathering and see what other alternatives there might be to replace those cards that just might be out of a player’s reach. Today’s subject is a Reserved List card from Urza’s Saga called “Gaea’s Cradle”.
Gaea’s Cradle, for me personally, is the personification of the idea of a Commander Aspiration. This is a card that I have wanted to acquire for sometime for one very specific deck. The problem is that the card is on the dreaded Reserved List. For those that don’t know, the Reserved List is a list of 500+ cards that Wizards of the Coast promised players would never be reprinted. That little promise has made Gaea’s Cradle a $1,000 card. Why is it that expensive, though? Is the card really that good? Short answer - yes.
Released in October 1998 in Magic the Gathering’s fifteenth expansion, Urza’s Saga, Gaea’s Cradle is a land the is synonymous with the Commander community in decks that focus on a go-wide strategy. If you aren’t aware, a go-wide strategy in Magic the Gathering usually revolves around the use of amassing an army of tokens and then swinging for massive damage. The most popular deck theme for this is Elves, which happens to be the king of the Green mana base.
The card’s effect is incredibly simple and straight forward. You tap it to add one Green mana to your mana pool for each and every creature you control. Again, going back to the Elf themed decks, it isn’t unheard of for a player to have ten or more 1/1 Elf Warrior tokens on their side of the field at any one point. Drop Gaea’s Cradle for your land play for the turn, tap it since it doesn’t have summoning sickness, and you have instant ten mana (in that example, anyways). This makes for playing big Green spells, like Craterhoof Behemoth, or anything with ‘X’ in its mana value a much more enjoyable experience. Well, for you anyways.
From a playability standpoint, the only draw back to the card is that it is a Legendary Land and makes it a little bit tricker to tutor for if you are not seeing it when you need it. Most land tutors search out Basic Lands or lands that specifically mention the Basic Land types (Plains, Islands, Swamps, Mountains, Forests). Though, honestly, if you can afford to have this card in your deck then you can afford the pricier tutors that make it easier to get out.
On the point of prices, and the reason for this being the first subject of Commander Aspirations, lets look to TCGPlayer for current market prices. The current original printing for Gaea’s Cradle has a market price of $1,021.61 (as of the writing of this article). That is a crazy amount of money to spend on an entire deck, let alone a single card. The mix of incredible playability and Reserved List status have certainly had an effect on the card.
There are two additional printings of this card, though. Wizards of the Coast printed a Judge Promo of the card as a foil, and a gold-bordered version in a World Championship Deck. The current market prices for the Judge Promo are around $2,063.51, while the gold-bordered printing is sitting at about $203.31. Obviously the gold-bordered one seems reasonable, especially as Commander is a much more casual format. However, the conversation around gold-border cards is a conversation for another day.
With a dream card in the four-digit range and out of most normal players’ budget, what alternatives can we possibly find? There are actually two cards that have the exact same ability as Gaea’s Cradle, but at much more reasonable price point. However, they both have their draw backs.
The first of our two alternate options is Growing Rites of Itlimoc. This is a Legendary Enchantment from Ixalan expansion (the game’s 76th expansion!), released in September 2017. The card was a part of a five card cycle of Legendary Enchantments that would transform (flip over) into something else. In the case of Growing Rites of Itlimoc, it basically became a better Gaea’s Cradle in Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun.
In Commander, at least non-cEDH, there is an unspoken social contract that all players essentially agree to not destroy another player’s lands. This is so that all players have a chance to actually play the game as opposed to sitting back and discarding cards because they can’t play them. There are some rare exceptions that arise that make land destruction acceptable. It’s because of this unspoken social contract that most players do not include any land destruction in their decks and why Gaea’s Cradle is so prevalent. Though it the playing of that card is one of the rare reasons it is acceptable to nuke one of their lands. When removing lands from the equation, enchantments are the next card type that is the most difficult to remove and why Growing Rites of Itlimoc makes for a fantastic alternative.
The Legendary Enchantment side has an Enter-the-Battlefield (ETB) that allows you to look the top four cards of library and put a creature card from them into your hand. In a 100 card, singleton format like Commander, it goes without saying that seeing more cards is a good thing. Yes, you might strike out and see anything but creatures on occasion. That is a small price to pay.
At the beginning of your End Step, you transform the card if you control four of more creatures. It has the small downside of it being at the beginning of your End Step, which means you have to possibly wait an entire rotation of the table to take advantage of the mana. Silver lining is that, generally, you will more than likely have more than enough creatures on the board the turn you drop this. Essentially, it’s a three cost spell that lets you possibly get a creature into your hand you might not have drawn for another turn or two and land ramp in one package.
On the flip side (literally), we have Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun. For all intents and purposes, this is a better Gaea’s Cradle. It is still a Legendary Land. It still adds one Green mana to your mana pool for each creature you control. However, it has the added bonus of simply adding a single Green mana to your mana pool regardless of creatures on the board.
Having played enough of my two Elf decks, I know for a fact that you become Public Enemy #1 when you start amassing that token army. Yes, all of those are just 1/1 (possibly more if you have some buffs going on), but everyone knows what you are doing. Somewhere in your deck is Overwhelming Stampede or Triumph of the Hordes, or maybe you pulled Craterhoof Behemoth out with the other side’s ETB. Regardless of if you have those or not, a board wipe is in your future. That is where that first mana ability comes into play and makes it just a slightly better effect. No creatures, no problem. It isn’t a dead land. Granted you do have to jump through some hoops to get yourself to that point, though.
Now what about the actual price to get this card?
Growing Rites of Itlimoc has seen only really seen one printing so far. With the card’s inclusion in Ixalan, it had the standard version, a prerelease foil-stamped version, and a Buy-a-Box promo version. The standard version of the card is currently in the ballpark of $17.68 ($30.35 for the foil), making it the cheapest. The prerelease and Buy-a-Box promos are $35.31 and $39.77 respectifully. Also, like Gaea’s Cradle, there is a judge promo version, with gorgeous new artwork. It has a premium price of $122.02. Regardless of the printing, Growing Rites of Itlimoc is vastly cheaper than even the cheapest (though technically not legal) Gaea’s Cradle.
As a Legendary Enchantment, you will find your opponents will have more removal options and will have less remorse in casting them. Not only is removal spells in general a threat, but you are also a target of that Blue player’s counter magic since it does have to be cast. The upside is that you will have a moderately better Gaea’s Cradle once it does flip, though.
What if you are on a stricter budget? I have known more than a few players over the years who have stuck to a rule of not spending over a certain amount on a card. Usually the limit was $10 dollars. They would look for cheaper alternatives or just cut that line of play from their deck if they couldn’t. Luckily the second card is the most budget option possible, but it is also the most easily dealt with by your opponents.
Circle of Dreams Druid is literally Gaea’s Cradle on a creature. Plain and simple. It is also the most recent example, having released in the Adventures in the Forgotten Realms expansion (the 88th expansion) in July 2021.
For three Green mana, you get a 2/1 Elf Druid that taps to add a Green mana to your mana pool for each creature you control. The Power and Toughness don’t really mean all that much as you won’t be attacking with it since it’ll usually be tapped during the Combat Phase (unless you are saving it for Main Phase II). The most significant thing this card has going for it, aside from the text box, is that it is an Elf. Elves have the most synergy of all of the creature themes in Commander, they are low to the ground in mana value, and tend to be the ones that get the most support in each set (except for maybe Humans).
As a non-Legendary Creature, it has a benefit of being able to be copied or cloned with relative ease. Mono-Green doesn’t have much in the way of cloning abilities, but if played in a Simic (Blue/Green) deck then you would have access to a lot of options, like literal Clone. Bonus points being that each of the copies would see one another and add to their copies’ total.
Being a creature makes it the easiest of them all to remove, however. Rather it is removed from the battlefield with Path to Exile or straight up killed with Lightning Bolt, if your opponent wants the card gone they will have a way to do. Worst yet, though, would be to have it stolen from you with something Act of Treason. You could find a multitude of ways to give it Indestructible, but it would still be helpless against Exile abilities.
Beyond it’s vulnerabilities, being a creature makes it the slowest option as well. Unless you have some way of giving it Haste, you will have to wait a full rotation of the table. Hopefully you will have a way of protecting it until then.
The card has only been printed in Adventures in the Forgotten Realms so far. Like with Growing Rites of Itlimoc, it has a standard version and a prerelease version. This one also has a special promo pack version and a exclusive promo featuring the D&D ampersand. Circle of Dreams Druid was also available in an extended art treatment. The standard version is a mere $3.60 ($7.42 for foil), with the prelease being $8.27. The promo pack version comes in at around $6.31 ($6.15 for foil), while the excuse ampersand version is a whopping $60.29. Finally the extend art treatment goes for $6.94 ($9.56 for foil).
Circle of Dreams Druid is the most effective way of achieving the same effect as Gaea’s Cradle, but its speed and vulnerabilities as a creature make it the easiest to remove of the three. At 0.0035% of Gaea’s Cradle’s price, is that a fair trade off?
There you go. If you have been like me and looking for a way to have the effect of Gaea’s Cradle in your game without feeling the weight of Gaea’s Cradle’s cost on your wallet, then these two are your best options. Growling Rites of Itlimoc has a couple of additional hoops you’ll need to jump through (casting it, having creatures on board to trigger the flip) but it’ll be the most protected against your opponent’s various removal options. Circle of Dreams Druid has the exact effect on the card from the moment it comes onto the board, but its speed and vulnerabilities are reflected in its cheaper monetary cost. Ultimately, I feel the old meme of “Why not both?” would be rather acceptable right here. For less than $25, you could throw both of these into your deck as the perfect redundancies to one another.
Take the $1,000 you’ll save and go buy other cards for your other Commander decks. That or just go build another one since you can never have too many Commander decks.
I certainly hope you’ve enjoyed this little experiment in hunting down a replacement (or two) for a card that I’ve wanted to get my hands on for years. If you like this sort of content and would like to see more, let us know on our various social media platforms. If you have a card you’d like us to take a deep dive and try to find alternatives to for future Commander Aspirations, let us know on those same platforms or email us at thelatenightplayers@gmail.com.