Crafting a manabase

What would we do without lands? We would be playing deformed decks with every 0 mana rock and let's be honest, that would be bad and no one wants to play Jeweled Amulet (Right Andrew?!)

Hey look a land you should play

Let's take a look at what you want your manabase to be and how to optimize it.


Before we start with the lands I want to stress how important it is to have more ramp in early game. You want to play your stronger spells as soon as you can and a turn one mana dork can make all the difference on whether that spell wins the game or gets countered.

Green includes:
Llanowar elves
Fyndhorn elves
Elvish Mystic
Birds of paradise
Bloom Tender (If your general is 3+ colors)
Avacyn's Pilgrim (If your deck is white)
Elves of deep shadow (If your deck is black)
Deathrite shaman (If your deck is black)
Carpet of flowers


Starting with those guys first, matters a bunch and can allow you to play super strong the following turn.

If you're not playing green you absolutely abuse mana rocks. I want to stress how important they are because they will allow you to lower your land count in the deck down to 29-33 while helping you cast your big spells the following turn.


Rocks you should use:
Mana crypt
Sol ring
Mana vault
Signets
Talismans
Coalition Relic
Gilded lotus
Mox Opal (Artifact heavy decks)
Grim Monolith
Chome Mox
Mox Diamond


Obviously drowning yourself in mana sources isn't healthy. You want a good amount but using every single one will lead to a ton of flooding and hellbent players with 12 mana and nothing to do with them. Depending on your deck I can see any number from 7 to 12 mana sources working well.
Of course, this isn't for every deck, you can also work it out with less and work it out with more but I think that's a good start. With 12 ramp sources, you should be getting 1/2 in an opening hand and play stronger spells turn 2.

If your deck has lands you should start
with this one

This is how I would prioritize them:


If you can play these:
Mana crypt
Sol ring
Birds of paradise
Deathrite Shaman
Carpet of flowers
Bloom tender (If your deck is 3+ colors)
Mox diamond
Chrome Mox


Other powerful options
Mana vault
Llanowar elves
Elvish Mystic
Fyndhorn elves
Avacyn's Pilgrim
Elves of deep shadow
Signets
Talismans
Grim Monolith


Also good:
Frontier siege
Coalition relic
Gilded lotus



If you think you need all of them then go for it. It's not hard to cast four drops turn two with enough of them and if you have enough card draw sources then they're perfectly viable.


Anyway, now let's get into the manabases.


Two colors!
Duals + Shocks + 7 fetches. That comes to nine lands off the bat
Pain lands, Check lands, Command tower, Filter lands and that brings us to 13.
Adding Ancient tomb and strip mine brings us to 15 to start with.

Another staple here

These are cards you should consider as well:
Academy ruins (Heavy artifact decks)
Ancient tomb (Everything)
Ancient Ziggurat (Massive creature decks)
Bazaar of Baghdad (Reanimator and decks that need draw and don't care about card advantage) Buried ruin (Artifacts but not super needed)
Boseiju, Who Shelters All (Combo decks)
Cabal Coffers (Mono-black mostly)
Cavern of souls (Tribal)
Cephalid Coliseum (Reanimator and card draw decks)
City of brass
Command Beacon (General centric decks)
Crystal Vein
Command tower (EVERYTHING)
Deserted Temple (Pair it with cradle)
Dryad Arbor
Dust bowl (Land destruction)
Eldrazi Temple (Eldrazi heavy decks)
Exotic Orchard
Eye of Ugin (Eldrazi)
Flagstones of Trokair (Nearly all white decks)
Forbidden Orchard
Gaea's cradle (If your deck has green then you likely want it)
Gemstone caverns (Combo)
Gemstone Mine
Grove of the burn willows (2nd Taiga)
Hall of the bandit lord (General centered decks)
High Market (Good sac outlet)
Homeward path (If your creatures matter)
Horizon Canopy (2nd Savannah)
Inkmoth Nexus (Voltron/Infect)
Inventor's Fair (Artifact decks)
Kessig wolf run (Green/Red creature decks)
Kher Keep (Red decks likely want it)
Kor Haven
Lake of the dead (Mono Black decks)
Mana Confluence
Maze of ith
Minamo, school at water's edge (Untap decks like Arcum and Roon)
Miren, the Moaning Well
Mishra's Workshop (Artifact decks)
Reliquary tower
Nykthos, shrine to Nyx (Often 1/2 colors but with lots of permanents)
Oboro, palace in the clouds
Phyrexian Tower (Decent sac outlet)
Riptide Laboratory (Wizard decks love it)
Serra's Sanctum (Have tons of enchantments. 15+ at least)
Shizo, Death's Storehouse (If you want unblockable creatures often)
Spire of Industry (Heavy artifact decks)
Strip Mine (If you're playing magic cards)
Wasteland (Super good but can be cut in 3+ colors)
Tarnished Citadel
Volrath's Stronghold (Creature heavy)
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale (Stax)
Urborg, tomb of yawgmoth (Pretty much every black deck)
Yavimaya hallow (Heavy creature deck)


With that, you should have a good amount of lands. Throw in at least five or six basics so your fetch lands don't miss and make sure you have around 30-34 lands afterward. That should be a good start for two color decks.

At three + colors it's far easier to optimize manabases

Let's start with duals/shocks/and nine fetches. That brings us to 15 lands.
If you're not in green you may want to add at least one of each basic. That way you at least have nine targets for fetches.

Depending on how your color balance is then you may want to do multiple of certain lands and exclude others.

Throw in Ancient tomb, Command tower, City of brass, mana confluence, exotic orchard, and tarnished citadel and that brings our grand total to 24 lands.
Now we only need 6-8 more lands. The other list on top can easily bring you up to 30+.

If you need more substitutes then you can easily swap in pain lands in place of duals or fetches.


Finally....4+ colors six duals/shocks and ten fetches right away brings us to 22 lands.
Ancient tomb, Exotic orchard, Command tower, City of Brass, Mana confluence, and Tarnished Citadel brings us to 28 lands and it should be fairly easy to add either Urborg or Gaea's cradle to get you to at least 30.


Like before if you need subs for duals or fetches you can swap in pain lands or other lands from above. It's important to note that with three or more colors you shouldn't run many colorless lands. Ancient tomb and Homeward path come to mind first but other than that it's hard to justify other lands.

Well, that's about it for manabases. I think having between 29-33 lands is best and having plenty of mana sources to make sure you can play big spells afterward helps.

If you guys have any questions or think I'm dumb let me know. ;)

But let me know by doing this survey here so we can rank all the lands together: http://diestodoomblade.blogspot.com/2017/02/help-me-rank-lands-in-commander.html


If you enjoyed this article please visit my Patreon. Every little bit helps a ton and allows me to make more content for you guys in the future.



 https://www.patreon.com/diestodoomblade