One part of a famous two-part combo involving Squirrel Nest.
majinara
★★★★☆ (4.2/5.0)(5 votes)
Very powerful nearly broken card.
DrJones
★★★★☆ (4.8/5.0)(6 votes)
Before Tempest, green was an underplayed color. Then came together Tempest and Urza's Saga and tried to print the most broken enchantments ever on that color to test if they could be good enough to "balance" the banned and restricted list which up to that day consisted mostly on black and blue spells. That's how we got Earthcraft, Alluren, Recycle, Manabond, Abundance, Eladamri's Vineyard, Survival of the Fittest, Rancor, and Gaea's Cradle. (Okay, that one was a land). They finally got their wish and now you can only play Earthcraft on Vintage. I want my squirrels back! D:
kitsunewarlock
★★★★☆ (4.9/5.0)(6 votes)
This card is ridiculously powerful. It effectively makes all your creature's into mana producers like Llanowar Elves. Plus you can use the effect if the creature has summoning sickness. Combine with cards like Recycle or Glimpse of Nature to get a ridiculous amount of creatures...or Squirrel Nest to get infinite squirrels (quite famous win condition). The fact this broken enchantment only costs 2 makes it viable in Legacy and Vintage as a win condition tool...
Zulp
★★★★☆ (4.6/5.0)(4 votes)
Also fun with one Fertile Ground and a Horseshoe Crab.
EvilCleavage
★★★☆☆ (3.0/5.0)(5 votes)
I just bought a whole collection of magic of this guy my dad worked with i've been trying to get back into MTG the last couple months. 30 pounds of magic cards! I got soooo many cards and there are hundreds of rares! Earthcraft is one of them. I love magic!
Allric
★★☆☆☆ (2.0/5.0)(1 vote)
I believe and someone correct me if I am wrong if you have say four of these out on the field and you tap 1 creature you activate each of their effects please give me a response as soon as possible please.
kronos539
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(1 vote)
@Allric: even with multiple earthcrafts, you're still only using the activated ability of one of them each time. if it was a triggered ability, like "whenever a creature becomes tapped", then you would be golden, but alas...
Well I'm sure the intent was just to let all your creatures become Llanowar Elves, which would be great but not broken. It seems they didn't realize that land untapping effects are infinitely more powerful and comboable than simple mana adding effects. Also bear in mind that the ridiculous lands like Gaea's Cradle hadn't been printed at this point.
dberry02
★★★★☆ (4.2/5.0)(3 votes)
This is one of those cards that most people don't use because they don't know about it. It's great to play in multiplayer when people don't expect it. It goes well with any elf deck! Essentially doubles your mana pool in any elf/token generating deck. Heck, you could probably throw this in with a thallid deck and rock your opponents!
PrimeSonic
★★★★☆ (4.0/5.0)(2 votes)
Broken beyond belief. Goes to show they had no idea about game balance at this point. At least they had the decency to ban it in Legacy.
Silent1988
★★☆☆☆ (2.8/5.0)(2 votes)
In my opinion today there are more powerfull combos in Legacy and everybody can something do against Earthcraft. I want to play my squrirrelcraft deck in Legacy because I haven't enough mony to play Vintage. We have tested it and it isn't more powerfull than decks for example Ad Nauseam, Aluren or Dark Depths. I want that squirrelcraft comes back.
Xenocide1337
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(1 vote)
Having four of these would NOT mean tap one get four untapped lands. Each enchantment has its own cost, you can't use the same creature to pay the cost for all of them.
Best combo: Turn 1: Forest, Utopia Sprawl declare Mountain Turn 2: Forest, Goblin Bombardment or earthcraft and another Utopia Sprawl declare Mountain Turn 3: Land of your choice, Goblin Bombardment or earthcraft (which ever one you didn't put down last turn) and Squirrel Nest. Tap enchanted land, make a squirrel, tap squirrel to earthcraft, untap the Squirrel Nest land, tap to make a squirrel, repeat 10,000,000,000,000,000 times (since legaly you must declare an amount other than infinity.) Sacrifice them all to Goblin Bombardment Kill all creatures other than your own, and kill all opponents. ??? Profit
Atali
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(2 votes)
They obviously thought they were balancing it, it only untaps basic lands. In theory that means it taps one creature for one mana. At the time, Squirrel Nest didn't exist, and land enchantments that gave extra mana were scarce, as were cheap non-tap token generating abilities. What made this broken was all the stuff that came after it To be fair, if they had designed around Earthcraft's existence, they would be crippling the design teams, since it's so combolicious, banning it was the better option.
Totema
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Turns anything into a appropriately-colored Arbor Elf. Even better actually, since a lot of lands aren't classified as Forests and such. Holy crap.
DieZeroDie
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Before squirrel's nest came around I used to run Sacred Mesa, Earthcraft, and a Wild Growth put onto a Plains. Tap enchanted Plain, gain a 1/1 flying pegasus token, tap token, untap plains, and repeat :) Not a guaranteed win though, I have fallen victim to things like humility and earthquake for 1 and enchant killers, 1 damage to all flying creatures, damage redirects, etc. But more often than not if they don't know you're runnin that combo they don't know what's coming til it's too late :)
S-r-ex
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(1 vote)
This + Animate Land + Darksteel Garrison and all your creatures get +inf/+inf until end of turn. Give Mage Slayer to whatever creature and shake your opponent's hand.
TheManakinTransfer
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Hyper convoluted combo with Ambush Commander, Judge of Currents and Xenograft for infinite life. Jesus, this card just yells "Hey, Johnnies. You know that crazy creature based combo that you really wanted to try out? Well here you go" Quite possibly the most fun you can have with a combo generator without breaking down into degeneracy
Jerec_Onyx
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
I don't always rate cards 5/5, but when I do, it's earthcraft.
The_Trendkill
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Obscenely broken. You can easily lose friends by using this card. Run it with nearly any token generator and you'll find out why in short order.
SnackyNorph
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Forgive me for my ignorance I suppose, but I was under the assumption that summoning sickness means that a creature cannot tap or attack the turn it comes into play without haste. Even though the ability is on this enchantment, the creature itself is still tapping. Can someone explain how a brand-new squirrel token without a Fervor or something similar on the field can tap?
Arachnos
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Can you tap creatures even with resurrection sickness (like for the Squirrel Nest combo)?
Aquillion
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
So many broken combos.
Squirrel's Nest for infintie 1/1s has been mentioned.
But even without that, this turns all your 0-casting-cost creatures into moxes. It can combo with any creature-producing land for a huge number of tokens. It leads to massively outrageous mana acceleration with Wild Growth or any land that can naturally tap for more than one mana.
And it costs , so its mana acceleration can hit fast.
JaxsonBateman
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Had someone drop this on me in casual, alongside Fastbond in a seemingly enchantress deck, then combo off on turn 3 with Squirrel Nest. They couldn't understand why I was not impressed with their idea of a casual deck, which included 2 very powerful vintage-only cards, one of which basically allows any of your crits to double as a Llanowar Elf *at worst*.
swagtusk
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
In response to a few that have asked:
You can tap a creature that just entered the battlefield via cards such as squirrel nest. You are tapping the creature to pay the cost for Earthcraft rather than tapping the creature to activate its ability or to attack.
Say you were to try to tap that creature with Elvish Archdruid on the board, you couldn't since the creature has summoning sickness . But since the creatures don't have the tap ability themselves you are allowed to.
See rule: 302.6. A creature’s activated ability with the tap symbol or the untap symbol in its activation cost can’t be activated unless the creature has been under its controller’s control continuously since his or her most recent turn began. A creature can’t attack unless it has been under its controller’s control continuously since his or her most recent turn began. This rule is informally called the “summoning sickness” rule. It really has to do with the tap symbol and since the squirrels do not have the symbol you are not tapping them to activate their ability rather you are doing it to pay the cost for Earthcraft.
Spleenface
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
The original plan for this card was to have the text be: Creatures you control gain "Tap; Untap target basic land" but they decided splicing text onto cards was dumb, so they printed it this way, not considering that it might lead to degenerate combos rather than just really good acceleration.
Comments (30)
side note, Elvish Guidance and Fertile Ground are parts of other 3-card infinites with earthcraft.
Turn 1: Forest, Utopia Sprawl declare Mountain
Turn 2: Forest, Goblin Bombardment or earthcraft and another Utopia Sprawl declare Mountain
Turn 3: Land of your choice, Goblin Bombardment or earthcraft (which ever one you didn't put down last turn) and Squirrel Nest.
Tap enchanted land, make a squirrel, tap squirrel to earthcraft, untap the Squirrel Nest land, tap to make a squirrel, repeat 10,000,000,000,000,000 times (since legaly you must declare an amount other than infinity.) Sacrifice them all to Goblin Bombardment Kill all creatures other than your own, and kill all opponents.
???
Profit
Squirrel's Nest for infintie 1/1s has been mentioned.
But even without that, this turns all your 0-casting-cost creatures into moxes. It can combo with any creature-producing land for a huge number of tokens. It leads to massively outrageous mana acceleration with Wild Growth or any land that can naturally tap for more than one mana.
And it costs
You can tap a creature that just entered the battlefield via cards such as squirrel nest. You are tapping the creature to pay the cost for Earthcraft rather than tapping the creature to activate its ability or to attack.
Say you were to try to tap that creature with Elvish Archdruid on the board, you couldn't since the creature has summoning sickness . But since the creatures don't have the tap ability themselves you are allowed to.
See rule: 302.6. A creature’s activated ability with the tap symbol or the untap symbol in its activation cost can’t be activated unless the creature has been under its controller’s control continuously since his or her most recent turn began. A creature can’t attack unless it has been under its controller’s control continuously since his or her most recent turn began. This rule is informally called the “summoning sickness” rule.
It really has to do with the tap symbol and since the squirrels do not have the symbol you are not tapping them to activate their ability rather you are doing it to pay the cost for Earthcraft.