Mana Base: How Many Lands Does Your Magic Deck Need?

While this is a general notion, the mana curve is much more variable and flexible today than it was a decade ago. The reasons include the increasing number of utility lands and also the increased flexibility in the mana values ​​of cards. The best way to understand your mana curve is to categorize cards by their cost and then understand how they are distributed.

Once you've separated them, you can analyze your mana curve by seeing which mana costs are most present in your list, but there are a few extra factors to consider.

Aggro

Aggro decks tend to keep their mana curves around values ​​of one to three, with possible exceptions depending on the Sideboard and/or the Metagame. The distribution of these costs tends to vary depending on the cards available for each strategy, but they tend to be split with most decks between one and two mana, while the three-cost is made up of, on average, four to six cards.

Take Pioneer's Rakdos Prowess for example. The majority of the list is made up of cards with a mana value of one or two, but there are also a few cards like Manifold Mouse, as well as some pieces in the Sideboard that cost up to four mana. Additionally, since it's a very explosive two-color deck, Rakdos Prowess can't afford to lose lands in the early turns, while also wanting to avoid them as the game goes on.

The deck also runs Ramunap Ruins and Den of the Bugbear, two maindeck cards whose activated abilities cost four mana. Ideally, their controller never wants to use these abilities, but having this flexibility helps keep the momentum going in longer games.

All things considered, Rakdos Prowess might want to go up to 22 lands to have more consistency for Ramunap Ruins and Den of the Bugbear, but since its plan is more explosive, 20 is the sweet spot between having enough to play its low-cost cards and chain spells without any problems, and gaining access to some utility cards in longer games.

Compare this to another example, Boros Burn from Best of One Standard.

Here, with a very similar shell to Rakdos, we have a deck in which the costs revolve entirely around one or two mana. Furthermore, because of the absence of Sideboards, we don't need to worry about utility cards with higher mana value, and since our game plan is very focused on the early game, we also don't need as many flexible lands, and can therefore reduce the number of lands to 18.

If this were a Mono Red list, perhaps with interactions involving Cacophony Scamp that would further reduce the overall mana value of the cards, it would be possible to reduce it to 17, since we wouldn't need to worry about accessing the second color or the possibility of using other categories of lands.

But low costs don't always mean reducing the number of lands in a deck:

Esper Pixie that has gained popularity these weeks in Standard is a deck mostly composed of one or two mana cards, just like the Prowess lists we've seen recently. However, its mechanics revolve around returning permanents to its owner's hand to play them again, and it usually wants to make all its plays in the same turn, in addition to being a three-color archetype, which would make it difficult to run even with 22 lands if there weren't so many untapped duals available in Standard today.

Therefore, despite its mana curve being as low as that of Prowess decks, Esper Pixie wants around 22 and 24 lands to be able to reuse its cards each turn without delaying its plans, either due to access to available mana or the color requirements of its cards.

The same example can be seen in more straightforward Aggro decks. Pioneer's Azorius Humans, for example, is a classic go wide and still requires 22 lands to reach the three mana for Adeline, Resplendent Cathar consistently, in addition to most of its cards having a mana value of two. To mitigate this need, the deck has a Mutavault set that interacts with the deck's plan, as well as Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire and even Fortified Beachhead with a Soldier sub-theme.

Midrange

Moving to the other polarity of the spectrum, we have the Midrange. It is from here that the concept of losing your land drop for the turn can be costly applies, as these archetypes are known for an increasing mana curve that usually increases up to costs five or six - but with one exception, when compared to Control or Ramp: most of their cards are solidified in the first three mana costs.

The idea of ​​Midrange is to try to make the best possible play, one at a time, every turn. So a Thoughtseize on turn one, followed by a Bloodtithe Harvester for removal and followed by Fable of the Mirror-Breaker is the ideal midrange mana curve because each of these plays generated substantial value when they were deployed, and that value continues to be added to with cards like Unholy Annex.

Midranges also value their removals very highly. After all, they need to apply pressure while reducing the pressure exerted by their opponents, so a third turn of Fear of Missing Out followed by Fatal Push can be just as important as a Fable of the Mirror-Breaker would be, since it guarantees an extra turn in the medium term.

As we can see, having a land every turn until you reach six or seven mana is essential for midranges. From this point on, lands become disposable and/or not so essential, but to mitigate this point, it is common for utility lands to gain more prevalence - in the case of Rakdos Demons, Mutavault is the card chosen with its interaction with Unholy Annex for a low mana value.

Between the need to reach five or seven mana and the amount of utility lands, Rakdos Demons tends to close around 24 or 25 lands, with 25 being the ideal number in its current configuration due to Invoke Despair in the Sideboard, which forces very heavy mana requirements for the deck.

Another important example is Golgari Midrange from Standard. Its mana base is also composed of 25 lands; however, there are two significant differences when compared to Rakdos Demons: a total of eight utility lands added to a set of Llanowar Elves.

Mana dorks are always a possibility for Midranges and almost mandatory for those who want to play “bigger” with more cards with a mana value of five or higher in the maindeck. In this case, the main importance of the dork is to be able to increase its curve from one to three faster, where key creatures like Glissa Sunslayer and Preacher of the Schism are there to generate value faster for its controller when compared to the non-green versions.

Control

Control usually uses the end of the game to increase its mana curve, mixing cheap removals with higher cost sweepers and sources of card advantage that lead to the inevitability of winning the game at some point.

Due to its late-game nature, Control never wants to lose its land drop for the turn. Therefore, it bets heavily on utility lands so that each card played is useful in some way, avoiding drawing useless cards that are only lands. Controls are also more passive when playing with tapped lands in the first turns, and their preference will always involve those that have additional abilities.

In this example, we have a list with 27 lands, an average of one or two cards more than usual for this strategy. As explained above, Control is an archetype that does not want to lose a land of the turn at any time. After all, in addition to needing all the cheap interaction possible to hold back more aggressive decks, its mana curve points to values ​​of four, five and even seven to start extracting value from its cards.

To compensate, the Azorius Control above has nine utility lands, between two tapped Restless Anchorage, which collaborate as a victory condition, and cards like Fountainport and Field of Ruin that have direct and more specific functions in the deck.

Starting on turn four, cards like Beza, the Bounding Spring and Teferi, Hero of Dominaria start to dominate the game, but playing them in a permission deck suggests some risks that should preferably be mitigated with No More Lies or Dovin’s Veto, so they end up costing virtually six or seven mana to cast safely.

Compare this to the Modern version of Azorius Control, which uses the bare minimum of an archetype in this category, with 24 lands. While the Pioneer variant's curve is focused on four mana, Modern's is mostly at three cost with cards like Teferi, Time Raveler and Archmage's Charm while relying on a much more efficient early game with Path to Exile and the interaction between Tune the Narrative and Wrath of the Skies to control the board in a format where mana values ​​are inherently lower.

Another card that matters in this sum is Lorien Revealed, whose primary function is to serve as manafixing to find a land of the desired color, including Thundering Falls as a one-of that expands the scope of Prismatic Ending to deal with more permanents. It counts, virtually, as the twenty-fifth land and has the same function as a utility land in a more traditional list.

This practice is very common in Modern, but it also migrates to other formats: Pauper's Izzet Terror is undeniably a Control deck, but the mix of cards with a mana value of one (20, that is, 1/3 of the deck), the number of cheap cantrips (13) and the cost reduction of its main win condition allows the archetype to play with only 19 lands, totaling 23 with the Lorien Revealed set that helps both find Volatile Fjord and reduce the cost of Tolarian Terror.

Ramp

Just like Control, Ramp will hardly like to lose the land drop. On the contrary, it usually wants more than one land per turn for its game plan to work, and the mana value tends to be an increasing value that goes from seven to, in some cases, fifteen.

There are two ways to make Ramp work: by playing as many lands as possible each turn with accelerators and other cards that increase the amount of mana available the following turn, or by subverting the amount of mana that the lands you control generate.

The Four-Color Zur is essentially the first case. Its list has 26 lands accompanied by manafixing with Herd Migration and Overlord of the Hauntwoods to ensure the necessary lands and colors, taking some important lessons from Ramp decks about how to have appropriate access to colors without giving up the consistency of playing a land every turn. Both elements are essential to making your strategy work:

Other lists focused on casting Atraxa, Grand Unifier used to go up to 28 lands because Atraxa was always the deck's goal and its mana value was always seven, with no way to cheat its cost (an advantage that has made Zur versions the most popular Ramp variant in Standard today).

The idea of ​​cheating on mana costs often has to do with doubling or tripling the mana you can generate per turn. Pioneer's Nykthos Ramp is a good example of how this strategy works: Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx generates for each cost that its controller has among the permanents they control, so when we add it to cards with a cost of or with Leyline of the Guildpact (which, for devotion purposes, counts as four), it easily generates five or more mana for the price of three.

Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner allows to untap Nykthos to generate mana again, doubling the mana it generates to cast bombs like Storm the Festival very early. In addition, most of the mana curve of this list is concentrated at the value three, and the mana dorks allows jumping from one to three starting on the second turn, increasing the ease of executing your game plan.

This mix of low costs with eight mana dorks and the possibility of explosive interaction between Planeswalkers and lands allows Nykthos Ramp to operate with only twenty lands, much lower than a traditional “Ramp” list.

Tron is a classic strategy when we discuss Ramp that try to subvert mana costs through interaction between cards using the classic 1 + 1 + 1 = 7*, that is, it seeks to gather Urza's three lands as soon as possible to generate seven mana as early as the third turn, which previously made it possible to cast Karn Liberated and today is focused on cards like Devourer of Destiny or Sire of Seven Deaths - after all, in addition to Urza's famous land cycle, the deck also has lands that generate for specific types and/or under specific conditions.

It is worth mentioning, however, that Tron is an exception. Its mana values ​​are very high, and the only reason it works with only 22 lands is that Urza's math is insane, and it can easily put those pieces together. Trying to replicate the same result with other decks without traditional mana acceleration is a recipe for failure.

Take, for example, the most recent iteration of Eldrazi Ramp in Modern. In addition to the eight-land setup that generates each, this list has 16 mana accelerations between Utopia Sprawl, Kozilek's Command, Malevolent Rumble, and the Talismans, as well as Sowing Mycospawn to fetch an Eldrazi Temple and guarantee a Devourer of Destiny or World Breaker as early as turn three or four.

Combo

Most deckbuilding and land count rules for combos depend on three factors:

In cases of decks that mix with other archetypes, such as a Combo-Control, the general rules of the second spectrum will be followed for deckbuilding, with the combo being just the win condition. For example, if a player wants to win games with the combo of Deceiver Exarch and Splinter Twin, they will probably have to follow the lines that an Izzet Control requires and use an average of 24, or 25 lands.

On the other hand, a pure combo depends on other factors to determine how many lands it needs. Two good examples of this include Storm and Lotus Combo.

In essence, these two lists have almost the same game plan: generate plenty of mana, cast a sequence of spells, and win the game with some key card and/or micro-interactions. What differentiates them is, essentially, the number of cards that generate mana in addition to lands.

Legacy’s Storm has the full package of cheap acceleration with Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Lion’s Eye Diamond and Lotus Petal, making it much easier to access explosive turns even with a reduced number of lands. Furthermore, due to the Storm theme, this is a deck that wants to draw as few lands as possible in the game, so 15 seems like an appropriate number, with other versions of the archetype in the format playing up to 10 or 12 lands.

Lotus Combo, on the other hand, relies on the interaction between Lotus Field and Thespian’s Stage to generate this abundance of mana, transforming Hidden Strings, Pore Over the Pages and Vizier of Tumbling Sands into the Cabal Ritual at home.

Lotus Field, by nature, requires a certain number of lands to work, in addition to the fact that the general mana curve of Lotus Combo revolves around values ​​one and two without easy access to “free mana” since Lotus Petal and Dark Ritual do not exist in the format, increasing the need for lands to around 20.

Modern's Temur Breach follows a similar logic and finds a middle ground between the two, with 18 lands and access to eight extra sources with Mox Opal and Mox Amber, but with addendum: in addition to the extremely low curve, Breach is an archetype that uses a set of Urza’s Saga as a utility land to search for mana rocks and even as an alternative victory condition, which justifies using 18 lands in a list that, in other circumstances, could be happy with 16.

The number of lands in your list is also influenced by the number of cards you can see as quickly as possible during a game, or by the number of cards that guarantee lands for you in your deck at the lowest possible cost.

The first case was initially conceived by a deckbuilder named Alan Comer in 1997, and became known as Turbo Xerox.

Turbo Xerox refers to the use of cards that allow you to “dig” for other cards - the famous cantrips - to reduce the amount of lands you use in your deck and, thus, have less chance of having bad topdecks in the match. Comer's theory was that for every two cantrips you put in your deck, you could reduce one land from your list - in theory, if you had 12 cantrips, you could reduce six lands and still play virtually 24 lands in a deck with 18 while having better topdecks than your opponent

Today, the Turbo Xerox concept is much more complex than when it was born because there are a dozen variables tied mainly to permanents that generate value and draws on their own, like Abhorrent Oculus or Psychic Frog, but its essence remains relevant to this day when we look at eternal formats. This Legacy Temur Delver list, for example, uses 18 lands with 12 cantrips, in addition to Dragon's Rage Channeler to filter the top, which makes it easier to access the lands and/or throw them into the graveyard when they are no longer needed.

It's worth noting, however, that not all cantrips have the same reduction value for Turbo Xerox: the fewer cards your spell lets you see, the less value it has in reducing lands.

Consider, for example, the difference between Ponder and Opt. The former lets you look at up to three cards from the top, and if you don't like what you see, you can still shuffle your deck to get access to a fourth card, essentially digging four for one mana. Opt, on the other hand, only lets you look at one card from the top, and if you don't like it, you can just throw it at the bottom and draw another. The amount of information it provides is significantly less, and consequently, it finds lands from the top less frequently than Ponder.

In this case, it's worth considering the example of Impulse as well: it digs four cards from the top and does so as an instant, so it would theoretically be superior to Ponder in finding lands. However, Impulse costs , which means using more resources to cast it and, consequently, needing more lands to play it consistently, invalidating by half its ability to reduce the amount of them in your list.

The same result of reducing lands in your deck can be done with another category: Manafixing.

Manafixing involves using a certain number of cards that allow you to find lands and fix your mana. Some may confuse this category with Ramp cards (such as Rampant Growth and Farseek), but they are mechanically distinct: a Ramp card, while fixing your mana, has a higher cost to do so and usually costs two or three to play, putting the land directly into play to speed up higher-cost spells, while Manafixing will usually put the card into your hand but give you another benefit for one mana.

Recent examples include Bushwhack, which found a home in Standard Tempo decks for splashing other colors without increasing the number of lands required, and Attune with Aether, which interacted so well with the Energy mechanic that it had to be banned from Standard in its day for making access to colors too easy for an archetype that was inherently strong in the Metagame while allowing to play three or even four colors without increasing the number of lands in the lists.

What these two cards have in common, however, is that in addition to fixing mana, they do something else that interacts well with the rest of the list. A card that just searches for a basic land to put into its controller's hand is unlikely to see competitive play and is weak unless your deck can benefit from it in some way.

There are cases where Ramp and Manafixing can be found on the same card.

Some mana dorks are included in this category because they cost very little while fixing their controller's color requirements. Symbolic examples include Birds of Paradise for adding one mana of any color and costing only while putting a body on the board, or Deathrite Shaman, considered the best mana dork that has ever existed and one of the best creatures in Magic: The Gathering for not only fixing mana, but also serving as a threat, graveyard hate and even being able to hold the game for a few turns.

In all cases, these cards allow their controller to reduce the number of lands similarly to Turbo Xerox, but not always with the same effectiveness, since archetypes such as Midranges with cards with a mana value of four or higher will still need 23 or more lands to function even with access to Deathrite Shaman or Birds of Paradise.

In addition to the ideal number of lands, it is important to know how to divide the colors of your basic or utility lands to complement the duals. Typically, the easiest way to do this is by counting the number of mana symbols on your cards and separating them accordingly, usually with a division of one mana source of that color for every two symbols, including duals.

To make things easier, Cards Realm has a a land calculator that helps you figure out how many lands your deck needs based on the mana value of your cards and which colors are predominant in them.

There is one factor that should also be considered: what is the most important mana symbol in your first turns?

Let's say, for example, that your deck has plenty of red cards, but relies heavily on jumping from one to three mana with Llanowar Elves and Elvish Mystic to work. In this case, opting for more copies of utility lands or green basics may make sense to ensure consistency in accessing on the first turn if the rest of your mana base doesn't support much flexibility in both colors.

The same goes for if your deck's main first-turn play is a Thoughtseize to disrupt your opponent's plans: lands that generate will have priority to ensure more chances for this play to happen, or if you have a very high number of blue cantrips, which allow you to dig deeper for lands of other colors.

The color priority logic should also consider cards with very high colored costs. For example, if your deck plays a set of Invoke Despair, it is almost mandatory that all your lands can generate in some way to ensure consistency in casting this card on turn five, even if your one-mana removal is Shock, or you use a card with a cost of - which is not advisable unless there are many untapped duals in the format.

That's all for today!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thanks for reading!