Mana bases for Commander: how many lands and colors you need

More Commander games are lost to the wrong lands than to the wrong spells. A good mana base lets you play your cards on time; a bad one leaves you holding a hand you can't cast. Here's how to build one.

How many lands

Start at 37 lands and adjust:

• Fewer (34 to 36) if most of your spells cost three or less and you play ten or more cheap ramp cards.
• More (38 to 40) if your commander costs six or more, your deck has expensive spells, or your strategy rewards playing a land every turn.

Ramp cards don't fully replace lands. A mana rock is a spell you need mana to cast, and it can be destroyed. Counting each two cheap ramp spells as roughly one land is a reasonable rule of thumb.

How many sources of each color

A source is any land (or cheap ramp card) that can produce a color. What matters is how early you need a color, and how much of it. These targets give you the color on time about 90% of the time:

You want to cast...	Sources of that color to aim for
One-pip cards of the color by turn 3	about 22
One-pip cards of the color by turn 4 to 5	about 18 to 20
Two-pip cards (like ) by turn 4	about 33: realistic only in your main color
A splash: a few late-game cards	about 12

Deckbuilding by the numbers shows the probability math behind these targets.

Your commander deserves special attention. If you want to cast it on curve every game, build to the stricter end for its colors.

Lands that tap for more than one color count toward each of those colors, which is why dual lands matter so much in decks with three or more colors.

Choosing lands

Always good

• Command Tower makes any color in your commander's identity. Play it in every deck with two or more colors.
• Basic lands never enter tapped, can be fetched by ramp spells, and can't be hit by cards that punish nonbasic lands.

Two-color lands, by budget

• Budget: lands that enter tapped and gain life or scry (the "gain lands" and "scry lands"). Slower, but they fix your colors.
• Middle: lands that enter untapped under a condition, such as checklands and painlands.
• High end: original dual lands, shock lands and fetch lands. Untapped, flexible, and expensive.

Too many lands that enter tapped will slow your deck down. Try to keep them to a handful, especially in two-color decks.

Utility lands

A few lands that do something extra (draw a card, make a creature, destroy an artifact) add value without costing a spell slot. Watch the colorless ones: each colorless land is one fewer source of your colors. In a three- or four-color deck, keep colorless utility lands to two or three.

A sample: a two-color deck

For a white-green deck with 37 lands:

• 1 Command Tower
• 8 two-color lands that make both colors
• 2 utility lands
• 26 basics: 13 Plains and 13 Forests (shift the split toward the color your cheap spells use most)

That gives 22 sources of each color: enough to have both colors by turn 3 about 90% of the time.

Check your deck

The Podtable deck builder's Stats tab shows each deck's mana curve and how many colored mana symbols its spells use, so you can check your lands against what your spells need before you play.

Next: Building your first Commander deck puts the lands into a full deck template.