Seen plenty of commander lists where I'm like "Wow look at all these amazing spells this deck is running" and then I see the land count and I'm like "That explains it."
A lot of my buddies do that. They run like 33 lands consistently with no mdfc. They got rocks and dorks, but like, they’re all amazed that I make most of my land drops. I run 38 lands minimum in most of my decks. At the lowest, I run 34 and the highest I’ve ran was 42, but those were a cost reduction spellslinger deck and a landfall deck respectively. I used to be that player though. Pretty much led to feast or famine game experiences. Either everything would go right and I would make impactful plays, or I’d be mana screwed doing nothing.
I feel like this advice makes more sense in a metagame where people have super high casual mana curves I used to run 37 lands in every deck as just a standard number to start with bc that’s what I received as wisdom, I learned through experience of flooding too much that it was better to run 34-35 Now “flooding too much relative to screw” is subjective and maybe I just enjoy games more being tight on lands but having a deck full of 1-3 mana interaction and card selection than being flooded when I do the basic math, I think my land counts were too low, but maybe the basic math doesnt give an accurate picture because the effect of having cheap ramp and card selection is more than you estimate
Winning every game is the most powerful thing you can do in a game of Magic. Sometimes it is thanks to a land drop, sometimes thanks to a nonland drop. But neither hitting one of these gonna make you win always.
@@enricus2479that’s an interesting point. When I’ve played combo decks, I’m usually pretty happy to just make a land drop and sculpt my hand for a few turns before going off. Getting that extra +1 mana each turn feels pretty key in combo decks, too, even if I’m trying to win on turn 3. I get what you’re saying, though. It’s definitely not the only strategy.
In my opinion the best way to avoid feeling the pain of cutting cards for lands is to just decide your number of lands before the deck is made and don't let yourself change it until you've built the deck and played it enough to make a decision about if the land count needs to go up or down. I typically run less lands than the internet recommends, but I also tend to run a lot of ramp, and I've been slowly increasing my land counts over the years.
@@blaze556922 that's true but my system leaves room to account for that. If you have a higher curve you usually will know that going into the deckbuilding process (most architypes tend to give you a good general idea of how expensive your spells will be) and start with a higher land/ramp count.
Yup, this is exactly how I do it. For a generic commander deck, I start with 36 lands that offer little if any utility beyond tapping for mana, plus 4 cards that can be counted as either a land or a spell (the Zendikar Rising MDFCs, channel lands, cheap land cyclers, Abundant Harvest, etc) for a total of 40, potentially cutting 2 of those 'modal lands' for a regular land if I don't have enough that fit the deck's gameplan. For ramp I start with 10 ramp cards for 2 mana or less, usually with a handful of ramp cards for later in the game, which means about half the deck is either land, cards that find a land for cheap, or cheap ramp, allowing me to consistently draw hands which allow me to reach at least 4 mana without relying on getting lucky with early topdecks. Once I build the rest of the deck, I may decide to run additional cheap ramp, draw spells or effects which put lands into my hand that would allow me to cut some amount of land (but usually not more than 2). If I were to build a landfall deck, then I would probably start at about 45, with 5 being modal.
I've uploaded 52 EDH decks now to TableTop Simulator and I'll say I've learned a lot when it comes to building. The most important thing I've learned is to always start with your lands first, then put in your mana rocks and defensive spells. After I finish the deck, I have it sorted by color of spells and that helps me determine what "color" lands I'll be putting in more than others. For example, if I have 24 Green spells and 14 Blue spells, I'll want to have maybe 14 lands that tap for Green and 7 or 8 that tap for Blue
I've only built a couple decks but they've both been perfectly functional right from the first draft (not necessarily good, but consistently giving me solid hands) because I listened to my friends who are good at it. It's a pretty straightforward procedure but it helps so much. I just start with lands and ramp, and include more than I think I need. I start at 40 lands and go down from there, because yes that's excessive for most decks, but that's the point, it's somewhere to trim down from. I'd rather include too many lands and cut them for necessary spells than have too few lands and struggle to cut spells to add more.
I do actually find I make the reverse statement a lot. Like, an opening hand with 4 lands, a premium 2 drop, and a 4 drop then 5 drop. I would feel like “hun this hand is neat, if I can draw something that I can play before turn 3 that would be great.”
@@akirachisaka9997 It be like that. Turn one ramp, turn two ramp, turn three commander. Turn four ramp, turn five commander again because removal exists lmao 😂
Going "base green" in your manabase can alleviate pip scarcity, i.e. filter/fix your mana, even on a budget. Non-green decks can use the talisman/signet cycles to do the same.
@@akirachisaka9997that’s the secret to playing 5c in general. I played a 5 color pile in the MOM prerelease to moderate success but secretly it was a jund deck splashing izzet. I had so much ramp and fixing in my pool that I could lean heavily on the best green spells and then all the best other color spells. (I did something similar in a LOTR prerelease where I played the 4-color Aragorn on curve, perhaps my greatest achievement in limited to date.) Love me a 5-color pile.
@@snoozbuster Yeah, and playing "Green splash 4c" decks in commander formats just triggers some happy chemicals in my brain for some reason. Like, seeing the t2 Cobra, t3 play fetch, Provisioner, crack fetch, that's 3 mana for another Nissa, Tracker, or mana rock. And that should be enough mana to start doing weird shit. As a result, I actually find myself in the opposite from "This opening hand is good I just need some lands". I would often see a 4 land hand with a Cobra and a 5 drop 6 drop, and be like "As long as I can get another playable card that's 3mv or less before my t3 is done, I should be able to win". It usually doesn't matter what it is, a premium landfaller, a mana rock, or even just a charm or removal spell. I just need something to bridge the tempo a bit.
Yeah, green is pretty overpowered in EDH LOL. The only color with unconditional land ramp and it has a crap ton of it in addition to the second-best removal, second-best card draw, and some of the absolute best top end… also how are carpet of flowers and gaea’s cradle legal LOL. Can’t wait for them to print veil of summer 2.0
I remember hearing from some magic pro (might have been PVDDR?) that you can improve almost any decklist you find online by just swapping out two spells for two lands. You could probably bump that number up to four when it comes to commander decks.
@@xinlou6707proxying solves the ckst problem, and sometimes it is fun to throw some of the most powerful cards in the history of mtg at each other, saying people are cringe for having fun playing a card game is a bit cringe yourself
@@xinlou6707 not defending competitive meta since I only play casual edh, but every deck costs the same if you print proxies, there's literally no reason to spend hundreds of dollars for a piece of cardboard that wizards purposely keeps at a high value, if you're playing casual just proxie what you need, no point in playing with a sub optimal mana base and get frustrated with mana screw, specially when playing with many colors
As much as I largely agree with your point about people being attached to certain cards, I do think "cursing the luck gods" happens just as much in the other direction, where someone instead read something about going with ~40 lands, did that, got flooded in the two games they played that month, and decided it was just a luck issue. I think that's why this sort of video is so incredible (as with the rest of your content); simple, concise, evidence-based reasoning does a lot to combat very human biases and fallacies. Really good video, especially as someone who's always agonizing about whether I've got too many or too little lands.
*sigh* I remember a Bloomburrow draft I entered into recently where I had some of the worst luck when it came to mana. I ran the typical 17 lands in a 40-card deck, and I laid out my cards to make sure I wasn't running too many of one color of lands. I was only playing 2 colors, btw. During the 6 games I played, I got mana _flooded_ in 5 of them, and the 6th one I got mana _screwed._ I only won _one game!_ If anyone can help me figure out how to combat terrible luck like that, I'd _greatly_ appreciate it because it really made me mad when that happened.
The most interesting thing to me about these videos is seeing all the solutions to my deck building problems I've experienced over the years boiled down into a very comprehensive video. Any points I've disagreed with are entirely opinion based. Hats off to the Snail for another excellent upload.
Some great points but I think it's a little too easy to discount mana curve. In your Meria deck there's 37 lands in a deck with average mana value of less than 3 using hypergeometric distribution we find that theres about an 80% chance of having 3 lands by turn 3. If we plug in 28 lands its still a 60% chance of hitting all the land drops you need to play the average of your deck which means with the one free mulligan you get it pretty consistently with an 84% chance, 94% if you commit the unthinkable of going to 6. In a deck with a low enough mana curve you don't need to play a lot of lands sense you can leverage your mulligan to help and with a high enough card quality going to 6 cards is far from the end of the world.
This is true. Aggressive mulligans can be a great tool, and one that I had on my mind but didn’t get around to fitting into the script. I will say, however, that using them purely to get the right number of lands is giving up the resource of being able to use them to hunt for pivotal on-curve plays. For my Meria deck, playing Meria on turn 3 is important, but drawing a couple decent equipments is also important, and I prefer to mulligan a hand with no equipments. I may drop the count a bit once I trade for a couple Bond/Shock/Fetch lands so I can keep my symbols up, though.
@@salubrioussnail That's reasonable, I usually play decks with high density of tutors so its practically a given that any hand will have a given piece or a way to find a given piece almost evertime, especially within a few draws.
Yeah but the problem is "able to play my average mana value" is not at all the same as "able to play anything on curve". Getting stuck on 4 lands in a deck with average mana value 3 doesn't mean you're all set. It means you can't cast 1/3rd of your deck. What's worse, it means you can't double spell. And that's probably the biggest problem. You need to be able to double spell to win the game. It's really hard to win if you only ever cast one card per turn. Sure, if you play combo decks with heavy tutors, maybe that's fine. But most people don't play that way. That's cEDH-lite at best.
@@Leonidous as was mentioned in the video, redundancy in the form of higher-quality lands reduces the need for land density in terms of color fixing. the same can be easily applied to nonlands, as higher average card quality through tutors or generally "better" cards and tutors reduces the need for worse, "filler," cards which will dilute the density of cards you want in a given game. Both of these factors result in a greater ability to find what you want in a game especially when considering mulligans. My personal experience playing EDH has sort of aligned with this, as I slowly trended towards and acquired "better," more expensive, cards the average cmc and curve of decks I built lowered and as I acquired basically every fetch, shock, relevant multi-colored land, and even a couple duals I needed to run fewer lands for consistent mana bases. I also noticed that people I played with who didn't have the same expensive cards would sometimes fall in to the pitfall this video is addressing, running too few lands for the quality and cost of cards and lands they had available to them. All this to say, if your deck is constructed in a way to be able to take advantage of it's consistency then yes skimping on lands and leaning on mulligans to make up for it is very valid but I don't believe this video is addressing people who can and do build those decks
Yeah, this video is great for the lower ends of the power spectrum, but much less applicable for the other end. This is just sort of a general problem of EDH discourse though -- people often don't have a good grasp on how things fit into the scale and end up giving advice that may work for their typical power brackets but doesn't hold up elsewhere, and the misinformation propagates around as general advice. Another major culprit is that people don't generally understand or otherwise underestimate how much difference there is between cheap and expensive ramp sources. There is a world of difference between a 1 mana dork and a 2 mana dork, and a 2 mana rock and a 3 mana rock. For the purposes of deckbuilding heuristics, dorks only really count at 1 mana unless they tap for more than 1, and rocks only count at 2 or less. The tapland issue is at least becoming much more understood by the larger playerbase, but I think that is more down to just how apparent the tempo loss is compared to inefficient ramp options.
I just wanted to say that your Meria deck you've touted in various videos inspired me to make Thalia and The Gitrog Monster deck with a similair theme, and in testing, it looks like your deckbuilding ideas are really effective. Relating back to this video, the mana base is a thick 40, too, since Thalrog is so land-hungry, and I think the points you've made here and in your other vids about deckbuilding are valid.
I started adding more lands, ramp and card draw to my decks several years ago, along with having enough lands that produce the right colors. That worked and in the mean time I have started putting in better and more synergistic other cards in my decks. Cutting back a tad on the lands where it is appropriate is something that I have learned recently.
10:45 an easy way to fix this issue with the article is to treat spells played later as if they had some extra generic mana to them. So for example, with counterspell, it costs UU, but I might treat it like its 3UU for the chart, or even 3UUU, so I think about being able to play a blue spell and hold up counterspell on a later turn.
I've got like 14 decks and I've managed to get all of them down to 27 to 32 lands each. Just run draw and ramp that puts you to 38 to 40 or so mana sources. It's almost always more consistent than my buddy that runs 40 lands in every deck he makes.
Playing a Rakdos deck for a long time, I can see literally on first shuffle just how different 3/4 basic lands can feel in the deck. I always tried and take some out, but I learned my lesson twice to keep them in. Appreciate this video.
I've got an azorius deck that I have the motto of four lands is a keeper regardless of the other cards, three is fine if I have draw or ramp. Two or less is pretty much always gonna be a mulligan
Red decks can cheat code the high land count thing with the discard-draw effects it's filled with, plus a glorious 2-drop called Tectonic Reformation which lets you cycle lands that are in-hand. And if you aren't worried about speed, the new capenna fetches are really good as each one played reduces the lands-in-deck count by 2.
I've been wanting to craft Tectonic Reformation for a Soul of Windgrace Brawl deck on Arena, but I'm now being advised that it is generally useful. Thanks for the nudge I needed. 🤯👍
Welp, nevermind 😅. They just juiced Soul of Windgrace to cycle your lands for 1 red mana on Arena, effective tomorrow 😂. Looks like Tectonic Reformation isn't as handy in that deck now.
The best player in my meta told me that they just basically always run 40 lands. I bumped all my decks up from 35 to something closer to 40 and since then all my runouts have felt stronger.
I take issue with the first point because I've definitely said many times that hands would be good if they had just a piece of ramp or card draw, potentially more than when I say I'm missing a land. I think the difference is that individually farms and ramp and card draw are much more appealing than a single land so when you see a hand of those pieces your mind plays a trick on you that there is a smaller difference to request more lands than it is to request more bombs.
Not missing out on early land drops is also one of the main reasons why I consider Cultivate, Kodama's Reach and bounce lands to be of significant higher value than most TH-camrs and forum/article writers. For them, a bounce land is a just a land that comes in tapped and those ramp spells are just "bad" 3 mana ramp spells that don't potentially chain into other spells - for me, they are essentially 2-for1-s that guarantee subsequent land drops ! I value that quite highly.
In my usual playgroup we tend to run 34 lands as opposed to the 36 they usually recommend and replace those extra 2 lands with draw effects or ramp spells. We have noticed the decks are a lot more consistent. But this is taking into account that we do not have the budget for shock lands, fetches and triomes, since our budget is usually around €90
That works great too, but your nonland cmc should be less than 2.5 and your deck should not require a lot of mana to win. I run 32-33 lands in my 100$ malcolm kediss deck, but I present a win between turn 3-5 consistently and my average cmc is 2.14.
I like the focus on deck specificity to alter your decks. Its not as easy as play x lands but i think its a smart view on the percieved mundane aspect of your mana base
Great video! Decided to tweak my (first and) only deck, a quick tribal/token deck. Added a few more lands, cut some mana rocks and added in a few more 4 drops. The deck runs even better now and I often get to curve out with threats/engines. TY!
The old WotC forums were lost a long time ago. There was a detailed article about how to improve your deck on a budget by just changing your ratios of lands, ramp, draw, and action spells. While the game has changed a lot in terms of power creep, I will share what I remember to the best of my ability: The author imagined the same kind of generic ramp spell as Rampant Growth or a Signet: a 2 mana value spell that ramps you, but not always the same turn it is cast. This is different from Nature's Lore or Arcane Signet. The author also used a generic 4 mana value draw three cards at sorcery speed "Concentrate" or "Harmonize" burst draw spell as a base idea. Everything else is an untapped land or an "action" spell. Say you have Deck A with the then common recommendation of 40 lands and 59 action spells and your commander. No ramp. No burst draw. Your curve does not matter. Deck B has 36 lands + 14 Rampant Growth effects + 12 Harmonize effects + 37 "action" spells. Deck B, despite have fewer lands & having to spend mana on ramp and burst draw, is not expected to miss a land drop, will see more action spells per game, and will have more mana to spend exclusively on action spells in addition to the mana spent on said ramp and burst draw THAN Deck A ever will. While you can tune to your mana curve and cards pulling double duty, the ratio of Deck is a great FOUNDATION to casual deck building to this day. When your effects can double dip and grant value and tutor and so forth, then all the better. It is better to go up to 38 and even 40 lands depending on your deck than it is to go down to 34 or 32, but 36 is a very good foundation.
The most funny thing about my self is that I love lands and I love the art. What actually lead me into playing magic was land, thus I have always played with a good high number of lands and has been trying to get more modals double side cards that is land
Colorless Utility-lands are a comprehensive temptation to worsen already thin mana-bases further. The problem is absolutely endemic in posted deck lists. I was just recently looking over some mono and 2-color EDH lists, and I couldn’t begin to tell you how many had 21-22 color producing lands + 8-10 Utilities. I’m hopelessly spoiled as a Mono Green enthusiast who’s most adventurous moments are a bit of toe-dipping into Simic or Gruul, so I think I’m something of an ironically less-biased observer at the table of how everyone’s doing mana-wise. It was, after all, still the 90’s, the last time I found myself with insufficient mana, so I land-watch while others bemoan the workings of the “Luck Gods.” Utility Lands can be awesome, but I don’t think people should be counting them 1-for-1 when tallying to the Static Land Count that’s part of whatever Holy Deck-Building Quasi-Formula they’ve elected to embrace, yet I see it happen IRL more than you’d think.
Reliquary Tower might be one of the absolute worst offenders in the colorless utility land category. How often is max hand size even an issue, and is it worth giving up a colored pip to run that silly thing?
@@51gunner I mean, I get the Bonder’s Enclave and War Room adds I see all the time, because who can’t use some extra card draw? Reliquary, though? If you’re not doing some real Blue or even Green power-drawing on multiple turns as part of your primary gameplan, yeah. Be a bit more judicious with the colorless utilities. Of course now you put it to me, and I’m gonna have to find 14$ for a Heart of Y. Been putting it off and putting it off, but I should practice what I preach.
My Mono U Curie runs 10 rocks, 31 lands, ~6 colorless lands. The deck needs a critical mass of artifacts to get it's Darksteel Juggernaut style cards up and running for the card draw engine. The curve also tops out at 6 mana. I also run 4 ways to have no max hand size, because the card draw and selection is so insane in that deck. On the flipside, my GB Kagha deck runs ~37 lands, (some are MDFCs), only 1 colorless land and ~5 ramp pieces. The curve tops out at 5, so I can get away with fewer mana sources. Especially with how quickly I can mill through my deck, get back a Worldshaper or Aftermath Analyst, and ramp 10+ lands. It really all comes down to the deck composition and game plan, but I always rule of thumb try and hit 45 mana sources before I trim it down after playtesting.
I came to the “more lands” realization recently since I’m most of my decks the limiter is almost always mana and not cards, and if I need cards I can look the the command zone. A majority of my decks run 40 lands minimum now
@@w.s6124 no, they're just realizing that card draw is a much easier issue to fix than mana is. Value engine commanders give you plenty to do with excess mana, whereas there are less commanders that will guarantee fixing screw.
Excellent vid, dude. I just ran a count of colored pips on my favorite Grixis deck and was surprised at how few pips of each color I had - even with a non-budget manabase.
I gotta say, I've experienced this hard. Edric was my first deck, and it has a super low curve until the finishers. I get to 3, I'm good, and will draw enough cards to make it all work. Toning down the land count worked great, and helped me in running out of gas or not having enough creatures on hand to handle a board wipe. Flip side, Henzie needed a little more. Three colors was way more important than anything, since the real engine is in the command zone, so trimming back colorless utility and tap lands and adding colors made it sing.
Love your honesty and easy approach to some topics that people have a hard time understanding. people wonder why I run a lot of lands (I think it was almost at 40) in my casual dimir edh deck. I also have a ton of effective and cheap card selection and card draw. these two factors allow me to always set my land drops always hit my spells and very regularly find combo pieces. people underestimate how good the lotr land cyclers are especially one can just draw you cards or find you a land
This is my one of my favourite videos on deck construction. I have replay it quite often to have in the background while I build my decks. Have you ever seen Sam Black's video on the matter? He has also done a video on Frank Karsten's article and he has a more radical idea on land count than you do.
@@blakefarber3718 I play my 1 strip mine in case I need to kill specific ones but otherwise nope. I'm just tutoring life from the loam as much as possible + playing an incredibly land-centric game (taking inspiration from legacy lands loosely)
Interesting, I just normally find myself with the reverse problem. Fitting the nonland base with a 60 card limit then asking myself if I should have lower than 40 lands. I like your videos, how they promote taking a nuanced look at the art of making decks
One thing your videos and similar information on manabases have inspired me to do is run a higher land count, more land ramp(even outside of green), and reduce the number of rocks I play.
You don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars on lands, simply print out your Volcanic Islands and Underground Seas and put them in a sleeve on top of a basic land and you’re good to go
@@dbptwg Thanks for enlighten me in regarding to my former respons. It makes sense, looking back at it now. In regards to your respons, directed at my formers substans: I'm neither 1 or 2. My comment's foundation was simply based on access and human behavior - explanation follows: Kids use their imagination to exchange an item, such as a stick for a sword, during a game or play of theirs - in their pursuit of having fun. Similarly to how people would use a proxy at a table in MTG. While imagination and/or games isn't excluded to kids - participating in others imagination is almost exclusive to how kids play together. Besides, While a few may be able to buy and use a Volcanic Island during their childhood, they would be in the minority. Unlike adults who buys stuff in place of their imagination - filling out 'the gaps' so to speak. P.S I'm neither 1 or 2 of your assumptions - I simply take pride in my decks and people's ability to read it. So I rather use 6 years saving up to my deck, rather than be part of what I believe to be a problem. But that is simply an personal trait and should be expected from others. Edit: Shortening the message.
One thing that's changed a lot since I started playing is the pool of usable manlands. In recent years we've had the AFR manland cycle, the restless cycle, and foundry; and those are just the standard-playable ones. At some point (it might have been as early as KHM standard players abusing faceless haven, but it definitely wasn't really a "thing" back when mutavault was the only manland for years) constructed players figured out that manlands let you compromise between a low-curve deck that wants to be constantly drawing gas and a deck that can consistently hit its land drops. I've seen RDW decks go as high as 24 lands with a playset of foundry and boros convoke lists hit similar land counts with restless bivouac. While you can't really call bivouac "gas" in a setting where you need to deal 120 damage to win, I think there's still something for EDH players to learn here about using lands as part of their deck's main strategy.
Something I have learned as somebidy on a budget, is the immense value of land types on lands. There are plenty of dual lands that have the types that dont break your budget. I used to hate the idea of them because when i thought of the idea of land types on non-basics, my mind would jump to shocks and discount the rest. If you are playing a green or white deck, there are many ways to find plains and forests, you just have to have them
There's that cycle of typed duals from Dominaria United; they enter tapped, but they're about ten cents instead of being hundreds of dollars per card. I feel like any two+ color deck that's considering running a Restless land that enters tapped should also consider one or more of these. All the something + forest ones are very fetchable as you said, and usually one can find a time where a tapped land isn't devastating.
Proxying i think should absolutely be encouraged more in play groups especially for lands. Unless a guy is proxying the power 9 into his deck i have no qualms with it. And depending on what power level is being played i still wouldnt mind. I proxy crack and shock lands for a 3 colour commander of mine (i didnt proxy the og dual lands because i felt its more fair for the good lands to actually have a cost)
I found the base formula at the beginning has worked well for all of my edh decks I've applied it to. The symbols I followed a similar process as if it were a draft and would do a weighted average for color needs. Edit - I have plenty of untapped multi color lands and other mana sources so it's not.much of an issue ever either.
I enjoy sitting out a game of commander with my friends and just observe the game, and it’s quite interesting just how devastating missing a land drop is, even on the later turns
I recently built an Abdel Adrian/Candlekeep Sage blink deck that suffered from stalling problems that this video discussed. I literally had the exact scenario that Snail describes: a higher-than-average cost commander (8 total CMC over 2 turns) and card draw in the command zone. Not only did adding more lands solve my early game stalling issues--my count is currently 39--but by coming up with creative ways to cheat them into play, I was able to up the mana curve by putting in higher cost/higher value spells. If I am drawing 3-5 cards a turn, I have no issue discarding them knowing that I can bring them back out of the graveyard by blinking Sun Titan every turn. Cloudform was another game changer once I learned that blinking a facedown card turns it face up. On most of my turns I would manifest a land from the top of my deck, blink it out with Abdel, and be getting two land drops a turn.
I love your videos! I barely play commander and usually borrow decks when I play. But the way you think about strategy is so interesting and helpful to lots of different games!
6:00 I have been saying this for years. If your commander has card advantage then running more lands is so important. My favorite deck is Maelstrom Wanderer. It has been on 38 lands and 29 ramp spells for years. The deck is so powerful because I get to play a land every turn and super ramp along with it. I recently reduced it to 37 with an untapped mdfc. And with the new surveil lands I am testing cutting one more land because being able to fetch and have that card selection is great.
interesting analysis - i actually found that i didn't need more lands with my syr gwyn deck. Mostly because she's threatening enough to draw attention and get removed if she shows up as one of the first threats. So the actual playtime is at turn 6-7 even with lots of ramp. But maybe that's because i'm mostly playing with low power decks and they need a while to set up their threats aswell.
Plus if you slow-play Gwyn you should have several equipment out by then and then launch her at someone's face the turn you play her and really threaten some damage, assuming you're not going wide with Knights in your build. If you are going wide with knights then I can see you wanting her sooner for the draw value.
I've been running 38-42 lands in my EDH decks for a long time. It depends on how many mana rocks I want to include and the overall mana cost of the deck. Most of my friends used to run 36 or less lands and struggle often with bad opening hands. Consistency is key. I had to learn from countless games of trial and error though
I prefer to run low land counts (around 33-34 on average including mdfc lands) but I make sure to play several cards in the 99 that help with finding lands in the opening hands, but that also aren't dead cards when your hand is already full of lands. Cards like Abundant Harvest, Once upon a Time, Lorien Revealed (all of the ones from that cycle actually) are great for that. Another one is low cmc cards that help grab multiple lands which are great because they enable you to keep 1 land hands that are most often auto-mulligan candidates. Especially white has great (but also pricey) options with Tithe, Land Tax and Weathered Wayfarer. The other approach is to play an above average amount of lands in the deck, but to include many options for looting away the unneeded land cards in hand.
Really appreciate the thought stimulating content Alex. My decks have definitely seen improved performance rates since I started following your channel. Thanks again!
This is very helpful data and I often do this with my mana bases to make sure I have the right ratio of mana symbols on mana sources and mana symbols in costs (accounting for activated abilities even). All in all, this is very solid advice, but some might go crazy trying to brew a deck with data. One of the best things you can do is build a deck you love, following sound deck building advice. Maybe even start with an interesting precon or a deck you found online that looks really interesting. Then, test it! You can use formulas and try to get it perfect, but you will find that your deck is doing something too much or not enough.. Replace the too much with the not enough. But account for luck.. Play a few games and see. Ultimately, if you are mana screwed every game, you need more lands. If you are mana screwed a majority of the time, but not all the time, maybe shift your deck one land for one nonland at a time. For some people, this will be the simpler way to get a deck that you like that works how you want it to and is consistent.
I have a Kozilek, the Great Distortion deck so all of its lands (aside from four wastes) have a fun bonus effect, like gaining me 2 life, scrying, turning into a creature, tapping for two mana under certain circumstances, tutoring for an artifact card, retrieving an artifact from my graveyard, drawing me a card if I'm out... it's basically a selection of funky little spells at the bottom of my board.
For casual commander(not cEDH), I think its important to run even more land than the ratio that 1v1 60 card formats require. For multiplayer casual games, the game usually drags a bit longer and with multiplayer, its really important to do a lot on your turn because there will be 3 other turns before it gets back to you. For that reason, its so much more important to double spell compared to 1v1 so hitting land drops consistently into like your 7th to 10th land is really critical, where you usually dont want to have that many in 1v1 except in the most control vs control matchups.
I never run less than 38 lands in my decks, expect for the one deck I have with a 2CMC commander with built-in card draw, where I run 36 lands. The issue for me is usually finding a starting hand with enough lands of different colors to keep. Love it when I draw a starting hand with some green ramp, blue card draw, and a green-black interaction spell, but the lands in my hands are three swamps.
@@hoodiegal The way my buddy said it was something like 45 almost 50 sources or mana for decks. That's all your lands, rocks, dorks, and rituals. Sounds crazy at first but yeah, most of my decks that do well consistantly have about 40 something mana sources
Great video, I definitely agree that peiple usually run too few lands. Add more MDFC's or cards like Lorien revealed if you feel bad about puttinf more lands in tiur deck
Barely though, that's the point. You can have as many cantrips as you want. If you don't have a consistent mana base, it's irrelevant. Proper amount of lands > ramp or draw.
I've become a fan of running more lands AND running more ramp spells. Simple ones that are either reoccurring or fit with the theme are my favorite. Venture forth has become a pet favorite of mine along with other 'sub-par' or unpopular ramp cards. Plus it's fun to see the reactions on quirky ramp spells that they haven't seen!
I had a game that on turn 3 I casted shared journey (if I remember the name, it could also be joint exploration) and their reaction from me saying I have it and asking if they'd put in to realising that the caster benefits from it last was great to see. Group ramp is hilarious sometimes
My general standard is 1/3-2/5 lands depending on what the deck plans to do. I put in the lands first, put in the game plan cards, then beef up with consistency or theming. If it's a G deck with 3 or fewer colors and space for ramp, I can sometimes even squeak the number of lands down a bit, but if I'm ending up with a lot of high-cost cards it's time to move the number up and start making cuts before the attachment kicks in, or waiting a few weeks to see how attached I really am to my choices.
I have a barely modified Blood Rites precon, and honestly, yes. It feels far more well oiled with a relatively high number of lands. All you need is card draw or mana dumps and a high land count ceases to have a disadvantage.
It's been awhile since I've built a deck, and I almost always built green. My formula was 32 minimum that can create immediate mana, leaving 3-5 spots for tapped lands or ones that take some extra to benefit from. Then at least 50 mana sources total, so 15-20 mana rocks, low cost dorks/ramp spells, reducers and etc. You can get away with a lot more in green, but I would usually end up between 55-60 mana creating sources in my deck. Rarely had issues unless I was disrupted or greedy.
A nice starting place but what has always worked better for me is asking these five questions “what is my mulligan strategy with this deck,” “is there any easy changes to make hands more keepable,” “how often will I go down to X cards with this strategy (pretending free mulligans don’t exist for commander),” “what is the minimum number of cards this deck needs in starting hand to be relevant in the format it’s intended to be played in,” “does that leave me relevant in more than 90% of games I’m playing?” This line of thought has an interesting difference from a more sensible statistic based approach, it doesn’t assume the goal is winning. The goal is to be relevant in a game. At first I only applied this to commander the “casual” format, but I play all formats for casual fun so now I apply it to everything. It has the perk of being a fast enough strategy to estimate that I can sort of get it to work in limited.
I should mention if I can’t make a commander deck meet the relevancy threshold I ditch the deck in constructed formats, and stop drafting the set in limited environments. It’s left me with a very low deck count which has actually been nice for the budget.
you put what I've been arguing with people about for 5 years in such a concise video, ty! Especially all the Karsten math, and arguments like 'your commander is always a mana sink' 'you want to run a good amount of draw anyways, and it makes flood even less likely' (...) feel so overlooked by many players. I wonder if people try to 'get away with' as few lands as possible for the reason you described as unwillingness to make cuts, rather than figure out how many lands they need to run optimally
So, I've been thinking about this a lot, and just from my games I think ramp and draw relate to the playability of cards in the deck as a whole. I think of simple card draw spells almost like rituals for mana, and in most cases it'd be best to find a stable source. So, the lower the average mana, the earlier you'd need your card draw engines, and the more non-land ramp would also require more card draw as you are losing more cards in hand than you gain on draw step. The higher your mana based, the more ramp you need and the more card draw you need. So basically if you had a mana expensive deck, a lot of it would have to be ramp and card draw for it to work smoothly, but a low to the ground would just need card draw equal to the amount of stuff you plan on playing out of hand per turn to make sure you always have cards to play.
My Sram deck runs 30 lands and mulliguns until it has at least 2, whereafter it is quite the glass cannon. 30 lands, because the avarage cmc is probably 2, and you get to draw 2-5 cards a turn, even more late game, with the only limitation being that you draw non-lands.
My Edric deck is also on 30, and plays much the same way. The curve is low & the deck has roughly 30 cards, which, when combined with the commander, generate a lot of card advantage. Back in the days of the Partial Paris Mulligan, I ran fewer lands. I miss the PPM, but overall, the game is better off without it.
my partner and i like to say 'wow this hand is so good!' excitedly; the other will respond with 'so youre going to mull?' it's worth saying, you can avoid a pricey land bases by spreading fixing between lands and ramp. if you break down you deck by which colors you need early and late, you can tend to get away with a land base heavy on your early colors and using rocks to shore up your late game colors. it's absolutely a little more inconsistent and risky, but if you don't wanna spend $100 on a land base and still want to run 3 colors, it's worth thinking about. for example my zombie deck is a lot of black early, white for removal, and blue at the top for draw or just general control; my lands are swamp heavy, so i choose to focus on talisman of progress or marble/sky diamond for rocks
The video was great and had me rethinking about my mana bases in my commander decks. I think 33- 37 is a good range to start from, and then adjusting it after playing the deck a handful of times. I think the baseline 33 makes sense in that it'll be a 3rd of the deck at that value.
After playing some more and thinking about this video, I want to thank you again for it. I've been working my Kellan, the Fae-Blooded list and ended up making a ton of cuts and going way up on lands, even though the deck's curve is pretty low. Kellan's pretty interesting from an EDH perspective because he's basically three cards in the command zone: Birthright Boon on two, Kellan on three, and then whatever equipment or aura you tutored for + equipping it. My opening hand(s) need mana to support doing this, but any spells I happen to have early on are either going to need to squeak out on 1 or need to be impactful enough to make me veer off the line above. A four- or even five-land opening hand feels pretty playable to me, just because I've got so much action coming out of the command zone and I know I can probably curve out at least to 5 or 6. Meanwhile a two-land opening hand is risking disaster as I would be counting on a topdecked land to even get the commander out, never mind playing & equipping all the other cards I kept.
Really enjoying the vibes of this channel and its method. Are there any other channels folks could recommend with videos as concise and focused as this one?
I really expected this to be a more game design video on how magic's lands compare to other games' resource systems. While I was a little sad to realize I was wrong this is super helpful information
I actually started working on a comparative resource systems video awhile back but ended up shelving it for later to focus on more specifically MTG content. Might get back to it at some point!
@@salubrioussnail Oh that would be so cool! It's been on my mind ever since I finally decided to give magic a shot after having played yugioh, duel masters, & digimon how *weird* lands feel as a mechanical choice (obv magic is the oldest & yugioh isn't better by any stretch)
Yeah, the moment I found this, I objectively checked my commanders, and OOOOOF!!! They were mostly mana dry, except for my Karametra deck which does focus on ramping fast, if not all lands at once...
This is very useful info and sort of applies to a deck im building. Marchesa the black rose. It's design means won't be casting certain stuff often as marchesa keeps it around and coming back in for free. The mana base is rather higher end but still cost effective and tuned towards the deck. Means I might be able to get away with 33 lands 7 mana artifacts and some creature based combos to generate mana and untap lands. Resource denial control deck that can swarm thanks to some mechanics. You can reliably generate reaourxe denial off attacks deaths etbs and more plus casting stuff. It's built as a hyper combo deck also based off uber versatility decks that are hard to shut down cause alot of generically useful stuff and more versatile combo pieces. Increased consistency but a lil bit less focused and some power loss generally.
I just run land counts in the low 30s and let luck decide, because without fail the bulk of them end up clumped together somewhere in the deck. I'll either find the land bubble or I won't.
I think one of the best rules I have followed that has improved my manabase is having at least 50 mana sources in my decks. lands count for one, pieces of ramp count for however much mana they can produce, and I'm still figuring out treasures. The hard part is the balance between lands and acceleration which are deck dependent.
My trick when building decks to avoid the falling in love with non land cards is when i first pull up moxfield is put in 36 lands, 15 of a draw spell, 15 of an interaction spell and 12 ramp spells and only remove them as i put in cards to the deck so i don't get caught having to cut syngery for veggies later on
I struggle with this in my Cosima god of the Voyage mono-blue lands deck. You want lots of lands because every land turns into a card after Cosima returns from the voyage, and, more importantly, you need a land to trigger Cosima’s return. Not having the last land drop screws you over. The issue is that something like half the non-land cards are ways of getting lands. So if the deck is 40 lands and 30 ramp cards there isn’t much room for action.
Someone once told me to run 40 mana sources (being lands, rocks, and ramp spells) in every deck, but mana rocks only count towards 1/2 a mana source each. Example, you can have 34 lands, as along as you have 8 one to two CMC mana rocks and two ramp spells. I don't know how valid that really is, but it seems to work quite well!
Whenever i build a commander deck nowadays the first thing i do is building the mana base, i allways include arround 36 lands 10-20 basics, command tower, orchard etc, a couple utility lands and the rest the respective duals and such. When im done with the initial manabase i build the rest of the deck, adjusting the manabase as is nessecary. Note i dont play any decks that use more than 3 colors i know that these need more lands in most cases, i also havent yet made a deck centered arround strategys like landfall that make more lands nessecary.
First time stumbling on your channel, this is a great breakdown! I’ve got a bad habit of throwing 35 lands in every deck and adding a few DFCs and extra ramp if I want more, but the math makes sense there. My Henzie and Scarab God decks need more lands for sure (Scarab God’s scry ability should make it easy to filter out a late game flood, and I can easily sink 8 mana a turn into activating it if there’s anything good in any graveyard, so it’s sort of a perfect exemplar of the reasons you cited to play high land count). The couple decks I have that actually want fewer lands are good “exceptions that prove the rule,” indicating why it generally works. Prosper hits land drops very easily once he’s down, but lands I can’t drop immediately are a loss with all the draw being impulsive. I took out some lands for extra 2-mana rocks, which are mana neutral with Prosper down if they enter untapped. That deck has been happy at 34 lands (2 DFCs) and 11 rocks as I keep lowering its curve. Kinnan is doing his own thing and doesn’t worry too much about missing a land drop here and there since he costs 2 and has 27 ramp pieces (16 of them mana dorks to keep creature count at 45 so he never misses activations). That deck has 35 lands but 4 of them are DFCs. Glasspool Mimic is an all star. That deck also has a very cheap land base, since the pip needs aren’t huge and most mana comes from dorks and rocks.
My casual decks start at 36 lands: enough to see an average of four lands in the opening hand + first four draw steps. This keeps things running smoothly, and while this may sound high I allow the 29th-36th to be mana producing utility lands, MDFCs, etc to keep a high density of action cards if I feel the need to do so. With 28 lands focused on untapped color production, I’ve frequently got 2~ lands producing the colors I need in the opening 7.
I'd love for you to look at Apass Combo Walls manabases in pauper, he''s a mad scientist looking for the way to play the least amount of lands but also plays so many greedy lands, I love watching his decklists
Regarding which dual lands to play, if you are running a deck with 3 or more colors, and you are not running too many cards with high requirements of the same single color, the Thriving lands are a very cheap option that works nicely. These always produce one set color, but let you pick one second color when you play them. This means they are excellent for making sure you have at least 1 of every color you might need (or 2+ during the later turns). Yes, they come into play tapped, but unless you want a manabase that is over twice as expensive as the rest of the deck, a 5 color deck will always have a decent number of citp-tapped lands. And these are literally 1-2% of the cost of a dual or fetchland.
I recently got converted to the church of 37 lands in my Commander deck and my god it is so nice for 90% of your opening hands to have enough lands so you can mulligan for shit you actually need to play rather than having to keep the first 3-lander you get. and then you find your land drops later in the game, too, so you don't find yourself with 6 drops you can't use on turn 8.
I’ll provide a point that I find massively important: Land Ramp is deck thinning. I don’t mean this in the way where we are talking about individual percentage points going up or down when you crack a fetchland, I mean when you are doing nothing but playing ramp spell after ramp spell for 1-3 turns, the land count in your deck goes down significantly, and although land drops are EXTREMELY important in the early turns, they get massively less important after certain cutoffs, where you’d rather your draw spells only grab nonlands. Take the card Abundance, it’s a 4 mana green enchantment that essentially allows you to choose if your draw will hit a land or nonland, if you’ve played with this card, you’ll know how rarely you are choosing to draw a land if you’ve built your deck correctly, because by the time this enchantment hits the field, you’re looking for every draw to be a game-warping spell that can start to generate advantage and advance towards winning. As an anecdote, I had a friend in my playgroup running Maro, whose whole gameplan was to ramp, have a ton of mana, and then make everyone have large hands, before winning the game off that state. They were experiencing a lot of flooding because their hand was filled with lands and not spells they could cast with all the mana they generated. I offered a simple solution: cut lands, but run ramp in its stead. Especially in green, the rule of thumb I use is to pick a number between 40 and 50, and instead of saying that’s my land count, I say that’s my lands+ramp count. What this means is that instead of worrying about mana flood/screw, I’m focused on the balance of ramp to lands, and instead of cutting lands for more spells, I’m only ever cutting lands for ramp, meaning I’m never encroaching on my land count for more gas spells. What does this do? I have more mana earlier in the game when the balance is struck correctly, I have less lands/ramp in the deck for when we reach the stage of the game where I’d prefer not to draw them, and I feel more impactful earlier and more often. Revisiting deck thinning: If I have a land, that’s one draw and one land on the field for no mana cost. If I have an Explosive Vegetation or a Cultivate in the same slot, that’s two lands and a dead spell out of the deck for the cost of three mana. For most people, that might not be a big deal, but when you cast 3 or 4 of these cards over the course of a game, the difference becomes enormous. Let’s say you have 40 lands in your deck, and no ramp spells. You’re going to draw the same 3 slots no matter what, and in this example they’re all lands. You’ve hit 3 land drops alongside some mana rocks and dorks, and you’ve curved out nicely, but there’s still ~33 lands in the deck. If you cut 3 of those lands for Cultivates, the scenario changes. In the same situation where you’ve drawn and cast all 3, the land count started at 37, and is now sitting at 27. The difference might not seem like much, but consider that you’re in a similar position, with a similar or identical number of lands available to you, but you have significantly less lands in your deck, meaning your later turns are more likely to be meaningful spells late-game. It’s hard to effectively articulate through a comment without visuals or graphs, but if you just try it out a couple times with some extreme changes, you’ll likely find yourself in positions that are more commanding in your games. My advice: Think of ramp and lands as occupying the same category in your decks, and ensure that when you construct your deck, you’re allocating the proper amount of space to those cards, and manipulating and perfecting the balance of both. In decks with low curves that are combo-oriented, I tend to run a ton of cheap rocks and a low land count, but it still adds up to ~45 in total between the categories. In control decks that have a higher curve and want a slower plan, the split is weighted much heavier towards lands, and the total between categories is still ~45.
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Join my discord: discord.gg/wRQ2BbNEdY
New discord link? Seems this one's no longer working
@@dlion0734 Should work now
Seen plenty of commander lists where I'm like "Wow look at all these amazing spells this deck is running" and then I see the land count and I'm like "That explains it."
A lot of my buddies do that. They run like 33 lands consistently with no mdfc. They got rocks and dorks, but like, they’re all amazed that I make most of my land drops. I run 38 lands minimum in most of my decks. At the lowest, I run 34 and the highest I’ve ran was 42, but those were a cost reduction spellslinger deck and a landfall deck respectively. I used to be that player though. Pretty much led to feast or famine game experiences. Either everything would go right and I would make impactful plays, or I’d be mana screwed doing nothing.
I feel like this advice makes more sense in a metagame where people have super high casual mana curves
I used to run 37 lands in every deck as just a standard number to start with bc that’s what I received as wisdom, I learned through experience of flooding too much that it was better to run 34-35
Now “flooding too much relative to screw” is subjective and maybe I just enjoy games more being tight on lands but having a deck full of 1-3 mana interaction and card selection than being flooded
when I do the basic math, I think my land counts were too low, but maybe the basic math doesnt give an accurate picture because the effect of having cheap ramp and card selection is more than you estimate
Hitting your land drop every single turn is one of the most powerful things you can do in a game of Magic.
As long as you have other cards to play. Imagine drawing a land every draw step and nothing else
Hitting your land drop every single turn is one of the most powerful things you can do in a *FAIR* game of Magic
Winning every game is the most powerful thing you can do in a game of Magic.
Sometimes it is thanks to a land drop, sometimes thanks to a nonland drop. But neither hitting one of these gonna make you win always.
@@enricus2479that’s an interesting point. When I’ve played combo decks, I’m usually pretty happy to just make a land drop and sculpt my hand for a few turns before going off. Getting that extra +1 mana each turn feels pretty key in combo decks, too, even if I’m trying to win on turn 3.
I get what you’re saying, though. It’s definitely not the only strategy.
That's why low cost card draw is great
In my opinion the best way to avoid feeling the pain of cutting cards for lands is to just decide your number of lands before the deck is made and don't let yourself change it until you've built the deck and played it enough to make a decision about if the land count needs to go up or down. I typically run less lands than the internet recommends, but I also tend to run a lot of ramp, and I've been slowly increasing my land counts over the years.
I see why you say that but the land count will vary based on your curve.
@@blaze556922 that's true but my system leaves room to account for that. If you have a higher curve you usually will know that going into the deckbuilding process (most architypes tend to give you a good general idea of how expensive your spells will be) and start with a higher land/ramp count.
Yup, this is exactly how I do it. For a generic commander deck, I start with 36 lands that offer little if any utility beyond tapping for mana, plus 4 cards that can be counted as either a land or a spell (the Zendikar Rising MDFCs, channel lands, cheap land cyclers, Abundant Harvest, etc) for a total of 40, potentially cutting 2 of those 'modal lands' for a regular land if I don't have enough that fit the deck's gameplan. For ramp I start with 10 ramp cards for 2 mana or less, usually with a handful of ramp cards for later in the game, which means about half the deck is either land, cards that find a land for cheap, or cheap ramp, allowing me to consistently draw hands which allow me to reach at least 4 mana without relying on getting lucky with early topdecks.
Once I build the rest of the deck, I may decide to run additional cheap ramp, draw spells or effects which put lands into my hand that would allow me to cut some amount of land (but usually not more than 2). If I were to build a landfall deck, then I would probably start at about 45, with 5 being modal.
I've uploaded 52 EDH decks now to TableTop Simulator and I'll say I've learned a lot when it comes to building. The most important thing I've learned is to always start with your lands first, then put in your mana rocks and defensive spells. After I finish the deck, I have it sorted by color of spells and that helps me determine what "color" lands I'll be putting in more than others. For example, if I have 24 Green spells and 14 Blue spells, I'll want to have maybe 14 lands that tap for Green and 7 or 8 that tap for Blue
I've only built a couple decks but they've both been perfectly functional right from the first draft (not necessarily good, but consistently giving me solid hands) because I listened to my friends who are good at it. It's a pretty straightforward procedure but it helps so much. I just start with lands and ramp, and include more than I think I need. I start at 40 lands and go down from there, because yes that's excessive for most decks, but that's the point, it's somewhere to trim down from. I'd rather include too many lands and cut them for necessary spells than have too few lands and struggle to cut spells to add more.
When people ask me how many lands they should run I always say "more than they think".
I _really_ like this answer. I've been mana-screwed many times before, and that's because I've not followed this advice.
Turn seven with 2 lands and no rocks/dorks: "It's eternity in here."
Lands are once per turn zero drop mana rocks that your other cards rely on to work.
A mox that doesn't even die to naturalize? Power creep is getting out of hand.
@@fieldrequired283 Okay, that's funny!🤣
I do actually find I make the reverse statement a lot. Like, an opening hand with 4 lands, a premium 2 drop, and a 4 drop then 5 drop.
I would feel like “hun this hand is neat, if I can draw something that I can play before turn 3 that would be great.”
Don't you have a commander to play? :)
@@testingbls *angry 5 color 5 drop commander noises*
"If I can't drop my 5c Omnath on t3 might as well just scoop"
@@akirachisaka9997 It be like that. Turn one ramp, turn two ramp, turn three commander. Turn four ramp, turn five commander again because removal exists lmao 😂
@@emilianoflcnwhile being chipped into oblivion cause your open
Going "base green" in your manabase can alleviate pip scarcity, i.e. filter/fix your mana, even on a budget. Non-green decks can use the talisman/signet cycles to do the same.
same with red, if you include lots of treasure cards
Yeah, my deck is a Omnath of All 5C ramp landfall deck. It does feel like it’s actually more of a “Green deck that splashes 4c”.
@@akirachisaka9997that’s the secret to playing 5c in general. I played a 5 color pile in the MOM prerelease to moderate success but secretly it was a jund deck splashing izzet. I had so much ramp and fixing in my pool that I could lean heavily on the best green spells and then all the best other color spells. (I did something similar in a LOTR prerelease where I played the 4-color Aragorn on curve, perhaps my greatest achievement in limited to date.) Love me a 5-color pile.
@@snoozbuster Yeah, and playing "Green splash 4c" decks in commander formats just triggers some happy chemicals in my brain for some reason.
Like, seeing the t2 Cobra, t3 play fetch, Provisioner, crack fetch, that's 3 mana for another Nissa, Tracker, or mana rock. And that should be enough mana to start doing weird shit.
As a result, I actually find myself in the opposite from "This opening hand is good I just need some lands". I would often see a 4 land hand with a Cobra and a 5 drop 6 drop, and be like "As long as I can get another playable card that's 3mv or less before my t3 is done, I should be able to win". It usually doesn't matter what it is, a premium landfaller, a mana rock, or even just a charm or removal spell. I just need something to bridge the tempo a bit.
Yeah, green is pretty overpowered in EDH LOL. The only color with unconditional land ramp and it has a crap ton of it in addition to the second-best removal, second-best card draw, and some of the absolute best top end… also how are carpet of flowers and gaea’s cradle legal LOL. Can’t wait for them to print veil of summer 2.0
I remember hearing from some magic pro (might have been PVDDR?) that you can improve almost any decklist you find online by just swapping out two spells for two lands. You could probably bump that number up to four when it comes to commander decks.
I remember hearing this too, but I always remember it being Reid Duke who said it.
It's not true at all. Competitive decks have less lands.
@@dave3269 Competetive decks cost houndreds of dollars and playing meta is cringe unless its some tournament or some shit
@@xinlou6707proxying solves the ckst problem, and sometimes it is fun to throw some of the most powerful cards in the history of mtg at each other, saying people are cringe for having fun playing a card game is a bit cringe yourself
@@xinlou6707 not defending competitive meta since I only play casual edh, but every deck costs the same if you print proxies, there's literally no reason to spend hundreds of dollars for a piece of cardboard that wizards purposely keeps at a high value, if you're playing casual just proxie what you need, no point in playing with a sub optimal mana base and get frustrated with mana screw, specially when playing with many colors
My name's Alex, my Elas-is Cedh runs 28 lands and 71 non-lands. I did not expect to be called out so harshly at 6:20
As much as I largely agree with your point about people being attached to certain cards, I do think "cursing the luck gods" happens just as much in the other direction, where someone instead read something about going with ~40 lands, did that, got flooded in the two games they played that month, and decided it was just a luck issue. I think that's why this sort of video is so incredible (as with the rest of your content); simple, concise, evidence-based reasoning does a lot to combat very human biases and fallacies. Really good video, especially as someone who's always agonizing about whether I've got too many or too little lands.
Exactly! Amazing video for sure, so much better than the opinionated bloated nonsense videos from channels like the command zone or nitpicking nerds
@@dlion0734peace out tribe scout
*sigh* I remember a Bloomburrow draft I entered into recently where I had some of the worst luck when it came to mana. I ran the typical 17 lands in a 40-card deck, and I laid out my cards to make sure I wasn't running too many of one color of lands. I was only playing 2 colors, btw. During the 6 games I played, I got mana _flooded_ in 5 of them, and the 6th one I got mana _screwed._ I only won _one game!_
If anyone can help me figure out how to combat terrible luck like that, I'd _greatly_ appreciate it because it really made me mad when that happened.
The most interesting thing to me about these videos is seeing all the solutions to my deck building problems I've experienced over the years boiled down into a very comprehensive video. Any points I've disagreed with are entirely opinion based. Hats off to the Snail for another excellent upload.
Some great points but I think it's a little too easy to discount mana curve. In your Meria deck there's 37 lands in a deck with average mana value of less than 3 using hypergeometric distribution we find that theres about an 80% chance of having 3 lands by turn 3. If we plug in 28 lands its still a 60% chance of hitting all the land drops you need to play the average of your deck which means with the one free mulligan you get it pretty consistently with an 84% chance, 94% if you commit the unthinkable of going to 6.
In a deck with a low enough mana curve you don't need to play a lot of lands sense you can leverage your mulligan to help and with a high enough card quality going to 6 cards is far from the end of the world.
This is true. Aggressive mulligans can be a great tool, and one that I had on my mind but didn’t get around to fitting into the script. I will say, however, that using them purely to get the right number of lands is giving up the resource of being able to use them to hunt for pivotal on-curve plays. For my Meria deck, playing Meria on turn 3 is important, but drawing a couple decent equipments is also important, and I prefer to mulligan a hand with no equipments. I may drop the count a bit once I trade for a couple Bond/Shock/Fetch lands so I can keep my symbols up, though.
@@salubrioussnail That's reasonable, I usually play decks with high density of tutors so its practically a given that any hand will have a given piece or a way to find a given piece almost evertime, especially within a few draws.
Yeah but the problem is "able to play my average mana value" is not at all the same as "able to play anything on curve". Getting stuck on 4 lands in a deck with average mana value 3 doesn't mean you're all set. It means you can't cast 1/3rd of your deck.
What's worse, it means you can't double spell. And that's probably the biggest problem. You need to be able to double spell to win the game. It's really hard to win if you only ever cast one card per turn. Sure, if you play combo decks with heavy tutors, maybe that's fine. But most people don't play that way. That's cEDH-lite at best.
@@Leonidous as was mentioned in the video, redundancy in the form of higher-quality lands reduces the need for land density in terms of color fixing. the same can be easily applied to nonlands, as higher average card quality through tutors or generally "better" cards and tutors reduces the need for worse, "filler," cards which will dilute the density of cards you want in a given game. Both of these factors result in a greater ability to find what you want in a game especially when considering mulligans.
My personal experience playing EDH has sort of aligned with this, as I slowly trended towards and acquired "better," more expensive, cards the average cmc and curve of decks I built lowered and as I acquired basically every fetch, shock, relevant multi-colored land, and even a couple duals I needed to run fewer lands for consistent mana bases. I also noticed that people I played with who didn't have the same expensive cards would sometimes fall in to the pitfall this video is addressing, running too few lands for the quality and cost of cards and lands they had available to them. All this to say, if your deck is constructed in a way to be able to take advantage of it's consistency then yes skimping on lands and leaning on mulligans to make up for it is very valid but I don't believe this video is addressing people who can and do build those decks
Yeah, this video is great for the lower ends of the power spectrum, but much less applicable for the other end. This is just sort of a general problem of EDH discourse though -- people often don't have a good grasp on how things fit into the scale and end up giving advice that may work for their typical power brackets but doesn't hold up elsewhere, and the misinformation propagates around as general advice.
Another major culprit is that people don't generally understand or otherwise underestimate how much difference there is between cheap and expensive ramp sources. There is a world of difference between a 1 mana dork and a 2 mana dork, and a 2 mana rock and a 3 mana rock. For the purposes of deckbuilding heuristics, dorks only really count at 1 mana unless they tap for more than 1, and rocks only count at 2 or less.
The tapland issue is at least becoming much more understood by the larger playerbase, but I think that is more down to just how apparent the tempo loss is compared to inefficient ramp options.
I just wanted to say that your Meria deck you've touted in various videos inspired me to make Thalia and The Gitrog Monster deck with a similair theme, and in testing, it looks like your deckbuilding ideas are really effective. Relating back to this video, the mana base is a thick 40, too, since Thalrog is so land-hungry, and I think the points you've made here and in your other vids about deckbuilding are valid.
So, you take bad advise and then proceed to make life decisions ? Yikes
@@bradcallahan3546you’re doing a lot of assuming for a dude who said he was inspired to build a deck for a card game
I started adding more lands, ramp and card draw to my decks several years ago, along with having enough lands that produce the right colors.
That worked and in the mean time I have started putting in better and more synergistic other cards in my decks.
Cutting back a tad on the lands where it is appropriate is something that I have learned recently.
10:45 an easy way to fix this issue with the article is to treat spells played later as if they had some extra generic mana to them. So for example, with counterspell, it costs UU, but I might treat it like its 3UU for the chart, or even 3UUU, so I think about being able to play a blue spell and hold up counterspell on a later turn.
Your technical while grokable videos are exactly what newer players need and experienced players appreciate seeing put into words. Great work!
Some people are not brave enough to run 28 lands and it shows
I would never ever pull a land. I once have never pulled land in 7 turns with 40+ lands.
I've got like 14 decks and I've managed to get all of them down to 27 to 32 lands each. Just run draw and ramp that puts you to 38 to 40 or so mana sources. It's almost always more consistent than my buddy that runs 40 lands in every deck he makes.
30 lands is comfy lands
Playing a Rakdos deck for a long time, I can see literally on first shuffle just how different 3/4 basic lands can feel in the deck. I always tried and take some out, but I learned my lesson twice to keep them in. Appreciate this video.
I've got an azorius deck that I have the motto of four lands is a keeper regardless of the other cards, three is fine if I have draw or ramp. Two or less is pretty much always gonna be a mulligan
Red decks can cheat code the high land count thing with the discard-draw effects it's filled with, plus a glorious 2-drop called Tectonic Reformation which lets you cycle lands that are in-hand.
And if you aren't worried about speed, the new capenna fetches are really good as each one played reduces the lands-in-deck count by 2.
I've been wanting to craft Tectonic Reformation for a Soul of Windgrace Brawl deck on Arena, but I'm now being advised that it is generally useful. Thanks for the nudge I needed. 🤯👍
Welp, nevermind 😅. They just juiced Soul of Windgrace to cycle your lands for 1 red mana on Arena, effective tomorrow 😂. Looks like Tectonic Reformation isn't as handy in that deck now.
Mdfc are good for sneaking in extra lands. Like play bala ged recovery instead of regrowth.
"spend hundreds of dollars"
the printer in my house:
Yup, printing money fixes land base problems
Arena for free online:
Hey, printer ink isn't cheap.
The best player in my meta told me that they just basically always run 40 lands. I bumped all my decks up from 35 to something closer to 40 and since then all my runouts have felt stronger.
I've been running 40 as well but take one land out for every two mana rocks I add. This seems to make most decks I run work well.
MDFC lands can be a good way to boost your land total up to 40.
I run 30 plus commander and it floods sometimes
@@deezboyeed6764 lol
Frank karstens articles on manabases are the best thing to look at by far, but always running 40 is pretty good
I take issue with the first point because I've definitely said many times that hands would be good if they had just a piece of ramp or card draw, potentially more than when I say I'm missing a land. I think the difference is that individually farms and ramp and card draw are much more appealing than a single land so when you see a hand of those pieces your mind plays a trick on you that there is a smaller difference to request more lands than it is to request more bombs.
Not missing out on early land drops is also one of the main reasons why I consider Cultivate, Kodama's Reach and bounce lands to be of significant higher value than most TH-camrs and forum/article writers. For them, a bounce land is a just a land that comes in tapped and those ramp spells are just "bad" 3 mana ramp spells that don't potentially chain into other spells - for me, they are essentially 2-for1-s that guarantee subsequent land drops ! I value that quite highly.
In my usual playgroup we tend to run 34 lands as opposed to the 36 they usually recommend and replace those extra 2 lands with draw effects or ramp spells. We have noticed the decks are a lot more consistent. But this is taking into account that we do not have the budget for shock lands, fetches and triomes, since our budget is usually around €90
That works great too, but your nonland cmc should be less than 2.5 and your deck should not require a lot of mana to win. I run 32-33 lands in my 100$ malcolm kediss deck, but I present a win between turn 3-5 consistently and my average cmc is 2.14.
I like the focus on deck specificity to alter your decks. Its not as easy as play x lands but i think its a smart view on the percieved mundane aspect of your mana base
Great video! Decided to tweak my (first and) only deck, a quick tribal/token deck. Added a few more lands, cut some mana rocks and added in a few more 4 drops. The deck runs even better now and I often get to curve out with threats/engines. TY!
The old WotC forums were lost a long time ago. There was a detailed article about how to improve your deck on a budget by just changing your ratios of lands, ramp, draw, and action spells.
While the game has changed a lot in terms of power creep, I will share what I remember to the best of my ability:
The author imagined the same kind of generic ramp spell as Rampant Growth or a Signet: a 2 mana value spell that ramps you, but not always the same turn it is cast. This is different from Nature's Lore or Arcane Signet.
The author also used a generic 4 mana value draw three cards at sorcery speed "Concentrate" or "Harmonize" burst draw spell as a base idea.
Everything else is an untapped land or an "action" spell.
Say you have Deck A with the then common recommendation of 40 lands and 59 action spells and your commander. No ramp. No burst draw. Your curve does not matter.
Deck B has 36 lands + 14 Rampant Growth effects + 12 Harmonize effects + 37 "action" spells.
Deck B, despite have fewer lands & having to spend mana on ramp and burst draw, is not expected to miss a land drop, will see more action spells per game, and will have more mana to spend exclusively on action spells in addition to the mana spent on said ramp and burst draw THAN Deck A ever will.
While you can tune to your mana curve and cards pulling double duty, the ratio of Deck is a great FOUNDATION to casual deck building to this day. When your effects can double dip and grant value and tutor and so forth, then all the better.
It is better to go up to 38 and even 40 lands depending on your deck than it is to go down to 34 or 32, but 36 is a very good foundation.
The most funny thing about my self is that I love lands and I love the art. What actually lead me into playing magic was land, thus I have always played with a good high number of lands and has been trying to get more modals double side cards that is land
Did anyone else recognized the PERFECT fit in the arrangement of the basics at 13:15 ? Really satisfied me 😍
Colorless Utility-lands are a comprehensive temptation to worsen already thin mana-bases further.
The problem is absolutely endemic in posted deck lists. I was just recently looking over some mono and 2-color EDH lists, and I couldn’t begin to tell you how many had 21-22 color producing lands + 8-10 Utilities.
I’m hopelessly spoiled as a Mono Green enthusiast who’s most adventurous moments are a bit of toe-dipping into Simic or Gruul, so I think I’m something of an ironically less-biased observer at the table of how everyone’s doing mana-wise.
It was, after all, still the 90’s, the last time I found myself with insufficient mana, so I land-watch while others bemoan the workings of the “Luck Gods.”
Utility Lands can be awesome, but I don’t think people should be counting them 1-for-1 when tallying to the Static Land Count that’s part of whatever Holy Deck-Building Quasi-Formula they’ve elected to embrace, yet I see it happen IRL more than you’d think.
Reliquary Tower might be one of the absolute worst offenders in the colorless utility land category. How often is max hand size even an issue, and is it worth giving up a colored pip to run that silly thing?
@@51gunner I mean, I get the Bonder’s Enclave and War Room adds I see all the time, because who can’t use some extra card draw?
Reliquary, though? If you’re not doing some real Blue or even Green power-drawing on multiple turns as part of your primary gameplan, yeah. Be a bit more judicious with the colorless utilities.
Of course now you put it to me, and I’m gonna have to find 14$ for a Heart of Y. Been putting it off and putting it off, but I should practice what I preach.
My Mono U Curie runs 10 rocks, 31 lands, ~6 colorless lands. The deck needs a critical mass of artifacts to get it's Darksteel Juggernaut style cards up and running for the card draw engine. The curve also tops out at 6 mana.
I also run 4 ways to have no max hand size, because the card draw and selection is so insane in that deck.
On the flipside, my GB Kagha deck runs ~37 lands, (some are MDFCs), only 1 colorless land and ~5 ramp pieces. The curve tops out at 5, so I can get away with fewer mana sources. Especially with how quickly I can mill through my deck, get back a Worldshaper or Aftermath Analyst, and ramp 10+ lands.
It really all comes down to the deck composition and game plan, but I always rule of thumb try and hit 45 mana sources before I trim it down after playtesting.
I came to the “more lands” realization recently since I’m most of my decks the limiter is almost always mana and not cards, and if I need cards I can look the the command zone. A majority of my decks run 40 lands minimum now
So you are just playing bad decks?
@@w.s6124 no, they're just realizing that card draw is a much easier issue to fix than mana is. Value engine commanders give you plenty to do with excess mana, whereas there are less commanders that will guarantee fixing screw.
Excellent vid, dude.
I just ran a count of colored pips on my favorite Grixis deck and was surprised at how few pips of each color I had - even with a non-budget manabase.
I gotta say, I've experienced this hard. Edric was my first deck, and it has a super low curve until the finishers. I get to 3, I'm good, and will draw enough cards to make it all work. Toning down the land count worked great, and helped me in running out of gas or not having enough creatures on hand to handle a board wipe.
Flip side, Henzie needed a little more. Three colors was way more important than anything, since the real engine is in the command zone, so trimming back colorless utility and tap lands and adding colors made it sing.
Love your honesty and easy approach to some topics that people have a hard time understanding.
people wonder why I run a lot of lands (I think it was almost at 40) in my casual dimir edh deck. I also have a ton of effective and cheap card selection and card draw. these two factors allow me to always set my land drops always hit my spells and very regularly find combo pieces. people underestimate how good the lotr land cyclers are especially one can just draw you cards or find you a land
This is my one of my favourite videos on deck construction. I have replay it quite often to have in the background while I build my decks.
Have you ever seen Sam Black's video on the matter? He has also done a video on Frank Karsten's article and he has a more radical idea on land count than you do.
I have a lord windgrace deck running 43 lands, and a Francisco Keleth lurrus companion decks running 26. And that's correct for each.
heh I've got a windgrace deck running 56
@zanewarner8372 are you destroying lands? I mostly avoided that
@@blakefarber3718 I play my 1 strip mine in case I need to kill specific ones but otherwise nope. I'm just tutoring life from the loam as much as possible + playing an incredibly land-centric game (taking inspiration from legacy lands loosely)
Interesting, I just normally find myself with the reverse problem. Fitting the nonland base with a 60 card limit then asking myself if I should have lower than 40 lands.
I like your videos, how they promote taking a nuanced look at the art of making decks
One thing your videos and similar information on manabases have inspired me to do is run a higher land count, more land ramp(even outside of green), and reduce the number of rocks I play.
You don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars on lands, simply print out your Volcanic Islands and Underground Seas and put them in a sleeve on top of a basic land and you’re good to go
No Thanks.
Its for the kids.
Sounds sensible. 👍
@@KabobHope
I can see how it can come across that way.
With that said,
I don't believe my statement is wrong tho' - do you?
@@dbptwg Thanks for enlighten me in regarding to my former respons.
It makes sense, looking back at it now.
In regards to your respons, directed at my formers substans: I'm neither 1 or 2.
My comment's foundation was simply based on access and human behavior - explanation follows:
Kids use their imagination to exchange an item, such as a stick for a sword, during a game or play of theirs - in their pursuit of having fun.
Similarly to how people would use a proxy at a table in MTG.
While imagination and/or games isn't excluded to kids - participating in others imagination is almost exclusive to how kids play together.
Besides,
While a few may be able to buy and use a Volcanic Island during their childhood, they would be in the minority. Unlike adults who buys stuff in place of their imagination - filling out 'the gaps' so to speak.
P.S I'm neither 1 or 2 of your assumptions - I simply take pride in my decks and people's ability to read it.
So I rather use 6 years saving up to my deck, rather than be part of what I believe to be a problem. But that is simply an personal trait and should be expected from others.
Edit: Shortening the message.
@@dbptwg (...) or option 3. Isn't a child.
One thing that's changed a lot since I started playing is the pool of usable manlands. In recent years we've had the AFR manland cycle, the restless cycle, and foundry; and those are just the standard-playable ones. At some point (it might have been as early as KHM standard players abusing faceless haven, but it definitely wasn't really a "thing" back when mutavault was the only manland for years) constructed players figured out that manlands let you compromise between a low-curve deck that wants to be constantly drawing gas and a deck that can consistently hit its land drops. I've seen RDW decks go as high as 24 lands with a playset of foundry and boros convoke lists hit similar land counts with restless bivouac. While you can't really call bivouac "gas" in a setting where you need to deal 120 damage to win, I think there's still something for EDH players to learn here about using lands as part of their deck's main strategy.
Something I have learned as somebidy on a budget, is the immense value of land types on lands. There are plenty of dual lands that have the types that dont break your budget. I used to hate the idea of them because when i thought of the idea of land types on non-basics, my mind would jump to shocks and discount the rest. If you are playing a green or white deck, there are many ways to find plains and forests, you just have to have them
There's that cycle of typed duals from Dominaria United; they enter tapped, but they're about ten cents instead of being hundreds of dollars per card. I feel like any two+ color deck that's considering running a Restless land that enters tapped should also consider one or more of these. All the something + forest ones are very fetchable as you said, and usually one can find a time where a tapped land isn't devastating.
Proxying i think should absolutely be encouraged more in play groups especially for lands. Unless a guy is proxying the power 9 into his deck i have no qualms with it. And depending on what power level is being played i still wouldnt mind. I proxy crack and shock lands for a 3 colour commander of mine (i didnt proxy the og dual lands because i felt its more fair for the good lands to actually have a cost)
Stupid example. Power 9 isn’t even legal in commander.
@@bradcallahan3546 if we are going to get nitpicky timetwister is.
I think if I’m getting crack I’d want the real thing, proxy crack is just bath salts
@@tparty4 hehe i see what you did there
@@bradcallahan3546anything is legal in commander if your group allows it.
I found the base formula at the beginning has worked well for all of my edh decks I've applied it to. The symbols I followed a similar process as if it were a draft and would do a weighted average for color needs.
Edit - I have plenty of untapped multi color lands and other mana sources so it's not.much of an issue ever either.
I’ve gotten my radkos cEDH deck down to 23 lands, that said this is excellent information.
I enjoy sitting out a game of commander with my friends and just observe the game, and it’s quite interesting just how devastating missing a land drop is, even on the later turns
I recently built an Abdel Adrian/Candlekeep Sage blink deck that suffered from stalling problems that this video discussed. I literally had the exact scenario that Snail describes: a higher-than-average cost commander (8 total CMC over 2 turns) and card draw in the command zone. Not only did adding more lands solve my early game stalling issues--my count is currently 39--but by coming up with creative ways to cheat them into play, I was able to up the mana curve by putting in higher cost/higher value spells. If I am drawing 3-5 cards a turn, I have no issue discarding them knowing that I can bring them back out of the graveyard by blinking Sun Titan every turn. Cloudform was another game changer once I learned that blinking a facedown card turns it face up. On most of my turns I would manifest a land from the top of my deck, blink it out with Abdel, and be getting two land drops a turn.
I love your videos! I barely play commander and usually borrow decks when I play. But the way you think about strategy is so interesting and helpful to lots of different games!
6:00 I have been saying this for years. If your commander has card advantage then running more lands is so important. My favorite deck is Maelstrom Wanderer. It has been on 38 lands and 29 ramp spells for years. The deck is so powerful because I get to play a land every turn and super ramp along with it. I recently reduced it to 37 with an untapped mdfc. And with the new surveil lands I am testing cutting one more land because being able to fetch and have that card selection is great.
interesting analysis - i actually found that i didn't need more lands with my syr gwyn deck. Mostly because she's threatening enough to draw attention and get removed if she shows up as one of the first threats. So the actual playtime is at turn 6-7 even with lots of ramp. But maybe that's because i'm mostly playing with low power decks and they need a while to set up their threats aswell.
Plus if you slow-play Gwyn you should have several equipment out by then and then launch her at someone's face the turn you play her and really threaten some damage, assuming you're not going wide with Knights in your build. If you are going wide with knights then I can see you wanting her sooner for the draw value.
I've been running 38-42 lands in my EDH decks for a long time. It depends on how many mana rocks I want to include and the overall mana cost of the deck. Most of my friends used to run 36 or less lands and struggle often with bad opening hands. Consistency is key. I had to learn from countless games of trial and error though
Really well articulated video! I had to rewatch a few areas because this gets so technical. But very fascinating. Great video topic! 😊
I prefer to run low land counts (around 33-34 on average including mdfc lands) but I make sure to play several cards in the 99 that help with finding lands in the opening hands, but that also aren't dead cards when your hand is already full of lands. Cards like Abundant Harvest, Once upon a Time, Lorien Revealed (all of the ones from that cycle actually) are great for that. Another one is low cmc cards that help grab multiple lands which are great because they enable you to keep 1 land hands that are most often auto-mulligan candidates. Especially white has great (but also pricey) options with Tithe, Land Tax and Weathered Wayfarer. The other approach is to play an above average amount of lands in the deck, but to include many options for looting away the unneeded land cards in hand.
Really appreciate the thought stimulating content Alex. My decks have definitely seen improved performance rates since I started following your channel. Thanks again!
This is very helpful data and I often do this with my mana bases to make sure I have the right ratio of mana symbols on mana sources and mana symbols in costs (accounting for activated abilities even). All in all, this is very solid advice, but some might go crazy trying to brew a deck with data. One of the best things you can do is build a deck you love, following sound deck building advice. Maybe even start with an interesting precon or a deck you found online that looks really interesting. Then, test it! You can use formulas and try to get it perfect, but you will find that your deck is doing something too much or not enough.. Replace the too much with the not enough. But account for luck.. Play a few games and see. Ultimately, if you are mana screwed every game, you need more lands. If you are mana screwed a majority of the time, but not all the time, maybe shift your deck one land for one nonland at a time. For some people, this will be the simpler way to get a deck that you like that works how you want it to and is consistent.
I have a Kozilek, the Great Distortion deck so all of its lands (aside from four wastes) have a fun bonus effect, like gaining me 2 life, scrying, turning into a creature, tapping for two mana under certain circumstances, tutoring for an artifact card, retrieving an artifact from my graveyard, drawing me a card if I'm out... it's basically a selection of funky little spells at the bottom of my board.
For casual commander(not cEDH), I think its important to run even more land than the ratio that 1v1 60 card formats require. For multiplayer casual games, the game usually drags a bit longer and with multiplayer, its really important to do a lot on your turn because there will be 3 other turns before it gets back to you. For that reason, its so much more important to double spell compared to 1v1 so hitting land drops consistently into like your 7th to 10th land is really critical, where you usually dont want to have that many in 1v1 except in the most control vs control matchups.
I never run less than 38 lands in my decks, expect for the one deck I have with a 2CMC commander with built-in card draw, where I run 36 lands. The issue for me is usually finding a starting hand with enough lands of different colors to keep. Love it when I draw a starting hand with some green ramp, blue card draw, and a green-black interaction spell, but the lands in my hands are three swamps.
I never run more than 36 lands. I'd rather run rocks, dorks, and card draw to get more mana.
@@thetimebinder I run that in addition to 38 lands and stilll sometimes get screwed at 3 or 4 mana. I'm just incredibly unlucky I guess :P
@@hoodiegal The way my buddy said it was something like 45 almost 50 sources or mana for decks. That's all your lands, rocks, dorks, and rituals. Sounds crazy at first but yeah, most of my decks that do well consistantly have about 40 something mana sources
I was actually just thinking about this recently. I feel like it's where I need to start going into my decks to help with overall consistency.
Mana ramp is the most fundamentally satisfying things you can do in a card game. STOOOOOOOOOOOOONKS
Great video, I definitely agree that peiple usually run too few lands. Add more MDFC's or cards like Lorien revealed if you feel bad about puttinf more lands in tiur deck
As a side note, running high counts of hand sculpting cards (ex. Ponder & Preordain) also changes the number of lands you should run.
Barely though, that's the point. You can have as many cantrips as you want. If you don't have a consistent mana base, it's irrelevant. Proper amount of lands > ramp or draw.
I've become a fan of running more lands AND running more ramp spells. Simple ones that are either reoccurring or fit with the theme are my favorite. Venture forth has become a pet favorite of mine along with other 'sub-par' or unpopular ramp cards. Plus it's fun to see the reactions on quirky ramp spells that they haven't seen!
I had a game that on turn 3 I casted shared journey (if I remember the name, it could also be joint exploration) and their reaction from me saying I have it and asking if they'd put in to realising that the caster benefits from it last was great to see. Group ramp is hilarious sometimes
My general standard is 1/3-2/5 lands depending on what the deck plans to do. I put in the lands first, put in the game plan cards, then beef up with consistency or theming. If it's a G deck with 3 or fewer colors and space for ramp, I can sometimes even squeak the number of lands down a bit, but if I'm ending up with a lot of high-cost cards it's time to move the number up and start making cuts before the attachment kicks in, or waiting a few weeks to see how attached I really am to my choices.
I have a barely modified Blood Rites precon, and honestly, yes. It feels far more well oiled with a relatively high number of lands.
All you need is card draw or mana dumps and a high land count ceases to have a disadvantage.
It's been awhile since I've built a deck, and I almost always built green. My formula was 32 minimum that can create immediate mana, leaving 3-5 spots for tapped lands or ones that take some extra to benefit from. Then at least 50 mana sources total, so 15-20 mana rocks, low cost dorks/ramp spells, reducers and etc. You can get away with a lot more in green, but I would usually end up between 55-60 mana creating sources in my deck. Rarely had issues unless I was disrupted or greedy.
A nice starting place but what has always worked better for me is asking these five questions “what is my mulligan strategy with this deck,” “is there any easy changes to make hands more keepable,” “how often will I go down to X cards with this strategy (pretending free mulligans don’t exist for commander),” “what is the minimum number of cards this deck needs in starting hand to be relevant in the format it’s intended to be played in,” “does that leave me relevant in more than 90% of games I’m playing?”
This line of thought has an interesting difference from a more sensible statistic based approach, it doesn’t assume the goal is winning. The goal is to be relevant in a game. At first I only applied this to commander the “casual” format, but I play all formats for casual fun so now I apply it to everything. It has the perk of being a fast enough strategy to estimate that I can sort of get it to work in limited.
I should mention if I can’t make a commander deck meet the relevancy threshold I ditch the deck in constructed formats, and stop drafting the set in limited environments. It’s left me with a very low deck count which has actually been nice for the budget.
you put what I've been arguing with people about for 5 years in such a concise video, ty!
Especially all the Karsten math, and arguments like 'your commander is always a mana sink' 'you want to run a good amount of draw anyways, and it makes flood even less likely' (...) feel so overlooked by many players.
I wonder if people try to 'get away with' as few lands as possible for the reason you described as unwillingness to make cuts, rather than figure out how many lands they need to run optimally
I play magic to play cool cards, not boring lands. They're the lamest card type in the game.
I play magic to play cool cards, not boring lands. They're the lamest card type in the game.
I play magic to play cool cards, not boring lands. They're the lamest card type in the game.
I play magic to play cool cards, not boring lands. They're the lamest card type in the game.
I play magic to play cool cards, not boring lands. They're the lamest card type in the game.
So, I've been thinking about this a lot, and just from my games I think ramp and draw relate to the playability of cards in the deck as a whole. I think of simple card draw spells almost like rituals for mana, and in most cases it'd be best to find a stable source. So, the lower the average mana, the earlier you'd need your card draw engines, and the more non-land ramp would also require more card draw as you are losing more cards in hand than you gain on draw step. The higher your mana based, the more ramp you need and the more card draw you need. So basically if you had a mana expensive deck, a lot of it would have to be ramp and card draw for it to work smoothly, but a low to the ground would just need card draw equal to the amount of stuff you plan on playing out of hand per turn to make sure you always have cards to play.
My Sram deck runs 30 lands and mulliguns until it has at least 2, whereafter it is quite the glass cannon.
30 lands, because the avarage cmc is probably 2, and you get to draw 2-5 cards a turn, even more late game, with the only limitation being that you draw non-lands.
My Edric deck is also on 30, and plays much the same way. The curve is low & the deck has roughly 30 cards, which, when combined with the commander, generate a lot of card advantage.
Back in the days of the Partial Paris Mulligan, I ran fewer lands. I miss the PPM, but overall, the game is better off without it.
I reworked all my mana bases of my commanders recently and it is absolutely ridiculous how much stronger they became in consequence to that.
my partner and i like to say 'wow this hand is so good!' excitedly; the other will respond with 'so youre going to mull?'
it's worth saying, you can avoid a pricey land bases by spreading fixing between lands and ramp. if you break down you deck by which colors you need early and late, you can tend to get away with a land base heavy on your early colors and using rocks to shore up your late game colors. it's absolutely a little more inconsistent and risky, but if you don't wanna spend $100 on a land base and still want to run 3 colors, it's worth thinking about. for example my zombie deck is a lot of black early, white for removal, and blue at the top for draw or just general control; my lands are swamp heavy, so i choose to focus on talisman of progress or marble/sky diamond for rocks
The video was great and had me rethinking about my mana bases in my commander decks. I think 33- 37 is a good range to start from, and then adjusting it after playing the deck a handful of times. I think the baseline 33 makes sense in that it'll be a 3rd of the deck at that value.
I always start with 30 plus commander cost
7:00 as someone who mostly plays 5 colour slivers, and hasn't really spent too much in MTG, i felt that land spectrum on a deeper level 😂
I don't even play MTG but I love some data analysis, optimization, and general thinking about games with intent.
Your Glissa deck's curve is ridiculous. Truly unhinged behavior
After playing some more and thinking about this video, I want to thank you again for it. I've been working my Kellan, the Fae-Blooded list and ended up making a ton of cuts and going way up on lands, even though the deck's curve is pretty low.
Kellan's pretty interesting from an EDH perspective because he's basically three cards in the command zone: Birthright Boon on two, Kellan on three, and then whatever equipment or aura you tutored for + equipping it. My opening hand(s) need mana to support doing this, but any spells I happen to have early on are either going to need to squeak out on 1 or need to be impactful enough to make me veer off the line above.
A four- or even five-land opening hand feels pretty playable to me, just because I've got so much action coming out of the command zone and I know I can probably curve out at least to 5 or 6. Meanwhile a two-land opening hand is risking disaster as I would be counting on a topdecked land to even get the commander out, never mind playing & equipping all the other cards I kept.
Really enjoying the vibes of this channel and its method. Are there any other channels folks could recommend with videos as concise and focused as this one?
I really expected this to be a more game design video on how magic's lands compare to other games' resource systems. While I was a little sad to realize I was wrong this is super helpful information
I actually started working on a comparative resource systems video awhile back but ended up shelving it for later to focus on more specifically MTG content. Might get back to it at some point!
@@salubrioussnail Oh that would be so cool! It's been on my mind ever since I finally decided to give magic a shot after having played yugioh, duel masters, & digimon how *weird* lands feel as a mechanical choice (obv magic is the oldest & yugioh isn't better by any stretch)
Yeah, the moment I found this, I objectively checked my commanders, and OOOOOF!!! They were mostly mana dry, except for my Karametra deck which does focus on ramping fast, if not all lands at once...
This is why I love Land Tax, it makes one land hands possible (if it can produce white) and it also reeds out basic lands to better improve your gas
This is very useful info and sort of applies to a deck im building. Marchesa the black rose. It's design means won't be casting certain stuff often as marchesa keeps it around and coming back in for free.
The mana base is rather higher end but still cost effective and tuned towards the deck. Means I might be able to get away with 33 lands 7 mana artifacts and some creature based combos to generate mana and untap lands.
Resource denial control deck that can swarm thanks to some mechanics. You can reliably generate reaourxe denial off attacks deaths etbs and more plus casting stuff.
It's built as a hyper combo deck also based off uber versatility decks that are hard to shut down cause alot of generically useful stuff and more versatile combo pieces. Increased consistency but a lil bit less focused and some power loss generally.
I just run land counts in the low 30s and let luck decide, because without fail the bulk of them end up clumped together somewhere in the deck. I'll either find the land bubble or I won't.
I think one of the best rules I have followed that has improved my manabase is having at least 50 mana sources in my decks. lands count for one, pieces of ramp count for however much mana they can produce, and I'm still figuring out treasures. The hard part is the balance between lands and acceleration which are deck dependent.
My trick when building decks to avoid the falling in love with non land cards is when i first pull up moxfield is put in 36 lands, 15 of a draw spell, 15 of an interaction spell and 12 ramp spells and only remove them as i put in cards to the deck so i don't get caught having to cut syngery for veggies later on
I struggle with this in my Cosima god of the Voyage mono-blue lands deck.
You want lots of lands because every land turns into a card after Cosima returns from the voyage, and, more importantly, you need a land to trigger Cosima’s return. Not having the last land drop screws you over.
The issue is that something like half the non-land cards are ways of getting lands. So if the deck is 40 lands and 30 ramp cards there isn’t much room for action.
Someone once told me to run 40 mana sources (being lands, rocks, and ramp spells) in every deck, but mana rocks only count towards 1/2 a mana source each. Example, you can have 34 lands, as along as you have 8 one to two CMC mana rocks and two ramp spells. I don't know how valid that really is, but it seems to work quite well!
Whenever i build a commander deck nowadays the first thing i do is building the mana base, i allways include arround 36 lands 10-20 basics, command tower, orchard etc, a couple utility lands and the rest the respective duals and such.
When im done with the initial manabase i build the rest of the deck, adjusting the manabase as is nessecary.
Note i dont play any decks that use more than 3 colors i know that these need more lands in most cases, i also havent yet made a deck centered arround strategys like landfall that make more lands nessecary.
First time stumbling on your channel, this is a great breakdown! I’ve got a bad habit of throwing 35 lands in every deck and adding a few DFCs and extra ramp if I want more, but the math makes sense there. My Henzie and Scarab God decks need more lands for sure (Scarab God’s scry ability should make it easy to filter out a late game flood, and I can easily sink 8 mana a turn into activating it if there’s anything good in any graveyard, so it’s sort of a perfect exemplar of the reasons you cited to play high land count).
The couple decks I have that actually want fewer lands are good “exceptions that prove the rule,” indicating why it generally works. Prosper hits land drops very easily once he’s down, but lands I can’t drop immediately are a loss with all the draw being impulsive. I took out some lands for extra 2-mana rocks, which are mana neutral with Prosper down if they enter untapped. That deck has been happy at 34 lands (2 DFCs) and 11 rocks as I keep lowering its curve. Kinnan is doing his own thing and doesn’t worry too much about missing a land drop here and there since he costs 2 and has 27 ramp pieces (16 of them mana dorks to keep creature count at 45 so he never misses activations). That deck has 35 lands but 4 of them are DFCs. Glasspool Mimic is an all star. That deck also has a very cheap land base, since the pip needs aren’t huge and most mana comes from dorks and rocks.
I’d love that video on each land type and when it should/shouldn’t be added, honestly.
Really good content! I will try to apply this to my decks, thanks!
Yeah, my manabase does deserve better. *puts in one more basic land. as a treat.*
My casual decks start at 36 lands: enough to see an average of four lands in the opening hand + first four draw steps. This keeps things running smoothly, and while this may sound high I allow the 29th-36th to be mana producing utility lands, MDFCs, etc to keep a high density of action cards if I feel the need to do so. With 28 lands focused on untapped color production, I’ve frequently got 2~ lands producing the colors I need in the opening 7.
I have to press x to doubt. 36 lands means 31% chance of getting 4 or more lands in the opening 8.
I'd love for you to look at Apass Combo Walls manabases in pauper, he''s a mad scientist looking for the way to play the least amount of lands but also plays so many greedy lands, I love watching his decklists
I, for one, would love to hear your thoughts on specific cycles of lands and when to use them.
More lands, few games passing turns doing nothing. Excellent video.
Regarding which dual lands to play, if you are running a deck with 3 or more colors, and you are not running too many cards with high requirements of the same single color, the Thriving lands are a very cheap option that works nicely. These always produce one set color, but let you pick one second color when you play them. This means they are excellent for making sure you have at least 1 of every color you might need (or 2+ during the later turns). Yes, they come into play tapped, but unless you want a manabase that is over twice as expensive as the rest of the deck, a 5 color deck will always have a decent number of citp-tapped lands. And these are literally 1-2% of the cost of a dual or fetchland.
I recently got converted to the church of 37 lands in my Commander deck and my god it is so nice for 90% of your opening hands to have enough lands so you can mulligan for shit you actually need to play rather than having to keep the first 3-lander you get. and then you find your land drops later in the game, too, so you don't find yourself with 6 drops you can't use on turn 8.
I just want to say how much I love your channel, I have stopped playing commander, but holy cow you make me want to. 💀
I’ll provide a point that I find massively important: Land Ramp is deck thinning.
I don’t mean this in the way where we are talking about individual percentage points going up or down when you crack a fetchland, I mean when you are doing nothing but playing ramp spell after ramp spell for 1-3 turns, the land count in your deck goes down significantly, and although land drops are EXTREMELY important in the early turns, they get massively less important after certain cutoffs, where you’d rather your draw spells only grab nonlands.
Take the card Abundance, it’s a 4 mana green enchantment that essentially allows you to choose if your draw will hit a land or nonland, if you’ve played with this card, you’ll know how rarely you are choosing to draw a land if you’ve built your deck correctly, because by the time this enchantment hits the field, you’re looking for every draw to be a game-warping spell that can start to generate advantage and advance towards winning.
As an anecdote, I had a friend in my playgroup running Maro, whose whole gameplan was to ramp, have a ton of mana, and then make everyone have large hands, before winning the game off that state. They were experiencing a lot of flooding because their hand was filled with lands and not spells they could cast with all the mana they generated. I offered a simple solution: cut lands, but run ramp in its stead.
Especially in green, the rule of thumb I use is to pick a number between 40 and 50, and instead of saying that’s my land count, I say that’s my lands+ramp count.
What this means is that instead of worrying about mana flood/screw, I’m focused on the balance of ramp to lands, and instead of cutting lands for more spells, I’m only ever cutting lands for ramp, meaning I’m never encroaching on my land count for more gas spells.
What does this do? I have more mana earlier in the game when the balance is struck correctly, I have less lands/ramp in the deck for when we reach the stage of the game where I’d prefer not to draw them, and I feel more impactful earlier and more often.
Revisiting deck thinning: If I have a land, that’s one draw and one land on the field for no mana cost. If I have an Explosive Vegetation or a Cultivate in the same slot, that’s two lands and a dead spell out of the deck for the cost of three mana.
For most people, that might not be a big deal, but when you cast 3 or 4 of these cards over the course of a game, the difference becomes enormous.
Let’s say you have 40 lands in your deck, and no ramp spells. You’re going to draw the same 3 slots no matter what, and in this example they’re all lands. You’ve hit 3 land drops alongside some mana rocks and dorks, and you’ve curved out nicely, but there’s still ~33 lands in the deck.
If you cut 3 of those lands for Cultivates, the scenario changes. In the same situation where you’ve drawn and cast all 3, the land count started at 37, and is now sitting at 27. The difference might not seem like much, but consider that you’re in a similar position, with a similar or identical number of lands available to you, but you have significantly less lands in your deck, meaning your later turns are more likely to be meaningful spells late-game.
It’s hard to effectively articulate through a comment without visuals or graphs, but if you just try it out a couple times with some extreme changes, you’ll likely find yourself in positions that are more commanding in your games.
My advice: Think of ramp and lands as occupying the same category in your decks, and ensure that when you construct your deck, you’re allocating the proper amount of space to those cards, and manipulating and perfecting the balance of both.
In decks with low curves that are combo-oriented, I tend to run a ton of cheap rocks and a low land count, but it still adds up to ~45 in total between the categories.
In control decks that have a higher curve and want a slower plan, the split is weighted much heavier towards lands, and the total between categories is still ~45.