(Command Tower || Art by Evan Shipard)

The Joy of Mana!

The fun of Commander – and Magic in general – is being able to cast your spells, but you only get to do that if you have the right amount and color of mana available. This article will help you build a rocking mana base that will let you have all the fun you want!

How Many Lands?

For a 100 card Commander deck, I recommend you run 39 lands. Mathematically, this ensures you have two to three lands in your opening hand to cast your early spells, and good odds for drawing additional lands as the turns go on to cast your bigger and more splashy spells.

You may ask: but what if I draw too many lands and not enough action? The key to this is to have enough ways in your deck to use your excess mana, commonly referred to as “mana-sinks.” Lucky for us, Commander has a built-in mana sink that you can take advantage of throughout the course of each game: commander tax!

Each time your commander is put back into the command zone, you can cast it again for two extra generic mana for each time it lands back in the command zone. It’s a safe bet that your commander will die or get exiled by some sort of spell or effect multiple times in a game, and you’ll be glad to have plenty of lands to cast your commander again, and again.

You can also build mana-sinks directly into your mana base by adding lands with special activated abilities. So if you don’t have a spell you can cast with the mana you have available, you can instead activate the land for a special benefit. I’ll provide examples of them in the sections below.

A lot of decisions regarding your mana base will hinge on how many colors you’re playing in your deck, so I’m going to break the next parts of this article into how many colors you’ve chosen.

Mono-Color Land Choices

Running a single color Commander deck offers a lot of advantages regarding your mana. For one thing, you can run a bunch of basic lands, which enter the battlefield untapped and provide the right color mana you need to cast all your spells. There are spells such as Price of Progress and Back to Basics that punish people for nonbasic lands, and mono-color decks just inherently avoid a lot of the worst of those effects.

It’s easy to run cycling lands in mono-color decks, and each color has three available such as Desert of the Indomitable, Slippery Karst, and Tranquil Thicket. These lands can be discarded for a small mana cost to draw a card, so if you have plenty of lands you can trade it out for a fresh new card. If you need it for mana you can simply play it and have it available to use once you untap it.

Below I’ve picked good lands that provide nice mana-sinks for each color.

Mana-Sinks for White

Minas Tirith gives excellent card draw for decks that like attacking. Cave of the Frost Dragon can be activated to provide a flying attacker or blocker of decent size.

Monumental Henge lets you dig for action and is especially good if you’re running a fair number of artifacts in your deck, which count as historic cards.

Mana-Sinks for Blue

Rivendell’s nifty scry ability can only be used if you control a legendary creature, but at the very least your commander is (usually) going to cover that for you.

Hall of Storm Giants turns into a huge 7/7 creature in the late game, and since it has ward 3 it will sometimes be able to dodge instant speed removal.

Academy Ruins is another good card to run in a deck with a lot of artifacts, setting you up to draw the best artifact from your graveyard.

Mana-Sinks for Black

Castle Locthwain is an excellent way to turn extra mana into an extra card, and in Commander the life loss is usually going to be negligible.

Westvale Abbey can make token creatures for chump blocking duty, or if you have enough sacrificial fodder you can sacrifice creatures to transform into Ormendahl, Profane Prince and have a formidable creature to attack with.

The Black Gate offers evasion for any creature that's attacking a player with the highest life total.

Mana-Sinks for Red

Mines of Moria can turn cards in your graveyard into Treasure tokens, setting you up for a future big turn. Den of the Bugbear is fantastic in a Goblin deck, but it's also good for attacking after the battlefield has been swept of creatures.

Hanweir Battlements's ability to give a creature haste is excellent in the later game so you can attack right away when you deploy a creature.

Mana-Sinks for Green

Most Commander decks play enough different cards types to achieve delirium, so Shifting Woodland is an easy include that in the later game can turn into a permanent card from your graveyard.

Lair of the Hydra is a creature land that is the ultimate mana-sink, and gets better and better the more mana you can generate in a turn.

Argoth, Sanctum of Nature is a solid card to play if you have graveyard strategies or token synergies.

Colorless Mana Sinks

One secret super-power of choosing a monocolor deck is that you can easily run more colorless utility lands than decks with more complex colored mana needs. My rule of thumb is to have 32 lands that tap for the color of your deck, and seven powerful or flavorful lands that tap for colorless mana.

War Room is an excellent source of card draw for one- or two-color decks. Rogue’s Passage's activation is an excellent way to break through a battlefield stall where there are no good attacks. And Myriad Landscape is a great way to turn extra mana into an extra land.

If you have an aggressive commander you want to attack (or block) with, Witch’s Clinic is a great way to sink extra mana for extra life.

Mirrorpool is one of my favorite lands, both of its sacrifice modes can be incredibly powerful in the right circumstances.

One thing I like to do is copy my commander when it's been targeted by removal so I can still keep a copy of it on the battlefield. Fountainport offers a ton of options depending on how much extra mana you have available.

Two-Color Land Choices

Once you’re playing more than one color, attention focuses on ensuring more of your lands tap for more than one color. In a two-color deck you could still run a few colorless utility lands, but I wouldn’t recommend running more than four to ensure your lands are providing you the needed colors.

There are a lot of options for lands that tap for the two colors of mana in your deck; I’ll run down the various choices, from the more powerful – and often more expensive – options, down to some good budget alternatives.

One thing to keep in mind: you don't need to spend a bunch of money on having all of the most powerful lands; you can put together a very respectable mana base with the budget options that will perform just fine in most casual games of Commander.

The Original Dual Lands

The original dual lands are simply great at what they do-- enters untapped, and can tap for one of two colors. Unfortunately they are extremely expensive to buy these days, so if you have some play them, but don't worry about it if you don't.

Fetch Lands

The fetch lands are staples in tournament decks and they do good work in Commander decks too, sacrificing to search up one of two specific basic land types. What makes these so powerful is they can search up basic lands or nonbasic lands if they have the basic land type.

Shocklands

Shocklands were the "fixed" newer versions of the original dual lands, playing just like those if you wanted to pay two life to enter untapped. It's nice to have the choice to not pay the life if you don't need the mana right away.

Bond Lands

This cycle of lands from Battlebond are perfect in Commander since you will often have enough opponents to deploy these lands untapped.

Pain Lands

The pain lands will deal damage to you if you need to tap it for a color, but in the early part of a Commander game the damage is negligible, and later in the game you'll have plenty of sources of colored mana and can just tap these for pain-free colorless.

Surveil Lands

Since these lands have basic land types they can be searched up with cards like the fetch lands, and the surveil ability is an excellent way to set up your next draw step.

Check Lands

These are excellent and affordable, and will often enter the battlefield untapped if you've got one of the required basic land type on the battlefield.

Slow Lands

I really like these for Commander; if you draw them early it's not too bad that they enter tapped, but once you've deployed two or more other lands they enter untapped and ready to help you cast your big spells.

Scry Lands

These lands have been overshadowed a bit by the recent surveil lands, but I still find the ability to set up your next draw very helpful for a lot of decks.

Pathways

I only play these in two-color decks, but I really like that they can provide you with whichever color you're in need of most, which is especially great in the early game for fixing your colors.

Bounce Lands

The secret superpower of the bounce lands is that they effectively "draw" you an extra land by returning one of your lands to your hand that you can play the next turn. Since these tap for two mana, you're not behind on your mana development from the bounce. It's fun to return a surveil land or scry land so you can get their trigger when you play it again.

Creature Lands

I'm a fan of the two-color creature lands since they fix your colors, and later on if you have extra mana lying about you can turn these into a creature for attacking.

Three-Color Mana Bases

Once you're playing with three or more colors in your Commander deck, lands that tap for your choice of three colors becomes incredibly helpful in making sure you've got the right mana to cast the spells you want, when you want them.

Three Land Types

These lands are incredible in Commander; not only do they provide excellent color-fixing, but since they have three different basic land types they can be searched up with the fetch lands, and easily satisfy the requirements of the check lands. And if you don't really need the extra land, you can cycle it away to draw an extra card!

Tri-Lands

These don't have all the bells and whistles of the three land types above, but tapping for one of three colors is still well worth playing.

Lairs

I don't see these Lairs in decks often, but if you're playing a three color deck and a way to play extra lands in a turn (such as Dryad of the Ilysian Grove), give one a try!

Basic Fetch Lands

I like these lands because they can tap for colorless mana right away, and later on if you want to sacrifice it to search up a basic land you can do that. Sometimes you'll want to shuffle your library after playing a card like Brainstorm, so having the option of using these for mana until you want to shuffle is nice.

Cards like these are fine to play too, just make sure you have plenty of basic lands in your deck so you don't end up not being able to search anything up when you activate it later in the game!

Four and Five-Color Mana Bases

Four or more colors will make use of lands discussed above under two- and three-colors, but you'll also want even more color fixing.

Command Tower slots in two- and three-color decks, but really shines when you have even more colors. Path of Ancestry is like a tapped Command Tower but very worth playing for the color-fixing even if you're not playing a kindred deck.

The more colors you play, odds are excellent that Exotic Orchard will provide you with the color you need, depending on the colors that your opponents' lands provide.

I'm not a big fan of City of Brass and Mana Confluence since if you draw one in your opening hand it can really deal you a significant amount of damage over the course of a casual Commander game. But if you want to build a high-powered Commander deck that plays shorter games, by all means go for it!

If you play Reflecting Pool after you play Command Tower the world is your oyster for whatever colors you need.

Cactus Preserve is a welcome second version, with an option of turning into a creature land later on -- and if your commander has a large mana value the Plant it turns into will be quite large!

For a casual five-color Commander deck, The World Tree is an excellent way to wash away all your color troubles once you control six or more lands.

Rupture Spire and other cards just like it are a bit slow, but it's a great budget option when you need any color mana.

Artifact Mana

It's wild that one of the most powerful mana artifacts ever printed, Sol Ring, is so readily available for Commander but iconic status has its privileges. Even if your commander doesn't have any generic mana in its mana value, Sol Ring will help pay one instance of commander tax, as well as casting many of your more expensive spells. It's always worth a slot.

Outside of Sol Ring, I recommend being careful relying too much on artifact mana for color-fixing and mana ramp. If your deck has green, I'd suggest playing land fetch spells like Farseek or Cultivate instead.

Outside of green you'll need to rely on artifact mana, but keep in mind that people often play spells in Commander that can destroy all artifacts -- you'd hate to have a huge part of your mana base be collateral damage when someone plays Cleansing Nova to stop the enchantment deck from going bonkers.

And I would definitely not cut lands to make room for more artifact mana, unless you're playing high-powered games where you need the speed and games are over faster.

Signets

Arcane Signet is a fantastic mana rock for two mana I'd run in any non-green deck. And there's a signet for each color combination that lets you turn a generic mana into two colors. Notably these can't tap for mana unless you have that generic mana to activate it.

Talismans

The Talismans can tap to provide you with one of two color mana but for the price of a point of damage; if you don't specifically need the color, you can tap it for colorless, which makes these a fantastic choice.

Other Two Mana Rocks

Each of these cards immediately tap for colorless mana, but they all have utility outside of mana that really makes them excellent choices for mana ramp.

Three Mana Rocks

A lot of Commander deckbuilders these days avoid the mana rocks that cost three to cast, but if you're playing casual commander and need the extra color fixing or mana ramp, playing these cards are perfectly acceptable.

Commander's Sphere taps for any color you need, and if it's getting destroyed by something like Cleansing Nova you can just cash it in for a card.

Chromatic Lantern is a great way to ensure your four or five color deck can always cast the spells you want when you want to.

And Worn Powerstone is awesome for helping to ramp into your big spells a couple turns early.

Wizards of the Coast has been trying to make mana rocks that cost three more attractive, so take advantage of it by playing sweet cards like Midnight Clock, Cursed Mirror, and Crowded Crypt!

Good Mana Is The Foundation Of A Good Commander Deck

While it may be tempting to shave your land count to squeeze more cool spells into your deck, keeping disciplined about running enough lands is crucial to ensuring you have a lot of fun each and every time you shuffle up your deck.

Bennie Smith

Bennie's played Magic since 1994 and has been writing about it nearly as long. Commander is his favorite format, but he's been known to put on his competitive hat to play Standard and Pioneer. Recently he's dabbled in Oathbreaker and Pendragon.