Timberland Ancient and the Forest's Recurring Characters

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Timberland Ancient artwork: a towering Treefolk guardian standing amid a lush forest

Image courtesy of Scryfall.com

Timberland Ancient and the Forest's Recurring Characters

In the sprawling tapestry of March of the Machine, green mana yields some of the most stubborn, lumbering bruisers in the format—and Timberland Ancient is a prime example. A creature — Treefolk with a 6/5 frame, it lands with a thud for a mana cost of 4GG and immediately begins telling a story about the forest’s memory and endurance. This card is not just a stat line; it’s a nod to the evergreen chorus that recurs in MTG lore—the patient guardians who watch over the woods as they witness the world change around them 🧙‍♂️🔥. Its presence asks the question: who else remembers what the trees remember?

Forestalling any misstep with a broad suite of keywords, Timberland Ancient offers Reach and Trample, ensuring your green tide can punch through a wide swath of blockers. But the real charm lies in its cycling abilities—Forestcycling for two and Typecycling—paired with the generic Cycling clause. This is green design at its most elegant: the forest itself becomes a resource you can actively curate, a recurring character who lends memory and utility to the ongoing saga of your deck. Forestcycling lets you search for a Forest card, add it to your hand, and shuffle, while Typecycling opens the door to narrative echoes—searching for another card of the same type by paying the cycling cost. In other words, Timberland Ancient is less about brute force and more about compelling storytelling through layered dredge and draw power 🌲💎.

Recurring forest characters you’ll feel echo through Timberland Ancient

  • The Trees as Witnesses: The flavor text hints that “Only the trees were old enough to remember what happened when Moag ignored warnings of Phyrexia millennia ago.” The trees stand in as elder witnesses to the cycles of war, corruption, and renewal that sweep across the magic multiverse. In decks built around this card, trees become more than scenery; they are a chorus of memory that grounds your strategies in inevitability.
  • Moag and Phyrexian Shadows: The reference to Moag anchors Timberland Ancient in a larger Phyrexian arc. Phyrexia’s creeping influence is a recurring antagonist across sets, and Timberland Ancient invites players to lean into green’s resilience—the forest pushing back against the machine, even as Moag’s memory lingers like sap in a wound that refuses to fully close.
  • Treefolk as a Tribe: Treefolk are a revered recurring archetype in MTG—sturdy, stubborn, and often surprisingly nimble for their size. Timberland Ancient belongs to this lineage, serving as a prototype for other green behemoths that bridge raw force with evergreen utility. The character of Treefolk emphasizes patience, community, and the slow, inevitable march of growth you can leverage in longer games.
  • The Forest as Character: In many MTG narratives, forests are not mere backdrops. They are living, breathing characters that offer landfall, cycling, and strategic memory. Timberland Ancient embodies this philosophy—its presence invites you to lean into forest-rich strategies, where every draw and discard reshapes the story you’re telling on the battlefield.
  • : While Timberland Ancient is a concrete figure, it also evokes a broader gallery of green protectors—the guardians who appear across formats and sets to defend the woodlands from encroaching threats. Their recurring appearances reinforce a central theme: nature endures, adapts, and remembers long after the roars of war fade from the battlefield.

From a gameplay perspective, the card’s Forestcycling and Typecycling empower you to sculpt your board state mid-game. You can fetch a Forest to fuel your mana curve, then later sweep the lines with cycling to reconfigure your threats and blockers. The combination of Reach and Trample lets Timberland Ancient slam through skies and ground alike, creating a formidable axis in a green-heavy shell 🌿⚔️. The marketing whisper of a treefolk sentinel is reinforced by the card’s art and flavor text, which celebrate endurance, memory, and the stubborn refusal of the forest to bend to the will of invaders.

Artistically, Pavel Kolomeyets gives Timberland Ancient a weighty, almost mythic presence. The illustration captures that moment when a guardian of the woods looms over the undergrowth, roots rebelling through earth and time. The color palette and composition scream “elder wisdom” while hinting at the danger a well-timed swing from this creature can unleash. It’s a celebration of green’s identity: steadfast, communal, and unafraid to lean on the forest for both power and perspective 🎨.

For collectors and players, Timberland Ancient sits at common rarity with foil and nonfoil finishes. Its accessibility makes it a staple in green-based midrange or ramp strategies, and its multi-layered abilities offer a template for deck-building innovation. While it may not boast a dramatic marquee ability, its true strength lies in the recurring forest motif—the idea that memory, better planning, and a chorus of green guardians can carry you to victory over the long game. If you’re building around forest cycling, or simply want a reliable midrange threat that scales with your board, Timberland Ancient is a reassuring, evergreen pick that embodies the soul of MTG’s wooded battlefields 🧙‍♂️🔥💎.

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Timberland Ancient

Timberland Ancient

{4}{G}{G}
Creature — Treefolk

Reach, trample

Forestcycling {2} ({2}, Discard this card: Search your library for a Forest card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle.)

Only the trees were old enough to remember what happened when Moag ignored warnings of Phyrexia millennia ago. They were determined not to repeat the mistake.

ID: 5f73cd60-cd89-4c7a-85a6-e0ae34ca101b

Oracle ID: e71eca6f-388c-4750-b70e-3ee1832931f0

Multiverse IDs: 607267

TCGPlayer ID: 491718

Cardmarket ID: 704890

Colors: G

Color Identity: G

Keywords: Reach, Landcycling, Trample, Forestcycling, Typecycling, Cycling

Rarity: Common

Released: 2023-04-21

Artist: Pavel Kolomeyets

Frame: 2015

Border: black

EDHRec Rank: 11694

Penny Rank: 11903

Set: March of the Machine (mom)

Collector #: 210

Legalities

  • Standard — not_legal
  • Future — not_legal
  • Historic — legal
  • Timeless — legal
  • Gladiator — legal
  • Pioneer — legal
  • Modern — legal
  • Legacy — legal
  • Pauper — legal
  • Vintage — legal
  • Penny — legal
  • Commander — legal
  • Oathbreaker — legal
  • Standardbrawl — not_legal
  • Brawl — legal
  • Alchemy — not_legal
  • Paupercommander — legal
  • Duel — legal
  • Oldschool — not_legal
  • Premodern — not_legal
  • Predh — not_legal

Prices

  • USD: 0.05
  • USD_FOIL: 0.14
  • EUR: 0.09
  • EUR_FOIL: 0.16
  • TIX: 0.03
Last updated: 2025-11-16