Your Manabase Deserves Better 

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Hitting your land drop every single turn is one of the most powerful things you can do in a game of Magic.

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."

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

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.

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 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.”

Lands are once per turn zero drop mana rocks that your other cards rely on to work.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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 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.

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.

Your technical while grokable videos are exactly what newer players need and experienced players appreciate seeing put into words. Great work!

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

Really appreciate the thought stimulating content Alex. My decks have definitely seen improved performance rates since I started following your channel. Thanks again!

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!

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!

Really well articulated video! I had to rewatch a few areas because this gets so technical. But very fascinating. Great video topic! 😊

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.

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 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

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.

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

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.

Really good content! I will try to apply this to my decks, thanks!

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 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.

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 have a lord windgrace deck running 43 lands, and a Francisco Keleth lurrus companion decks running 26. And that's correct for each.

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 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.

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 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.

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

This is great. Thank you!

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.

Really glad I found your channel. Great videos!

I’ve gotten my radkos cEDH deck down to 23 lands, that said this is excellent information.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'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

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

Not all deck builds require one to hit land-drops every single turn for the entire course of a game. Some folks put in too many lands, others put in not enough. (Though the norm now is too many on average.) If the highest CMC in your deck is 4, you don't need 24 lands in a 60 card deck. If you are playing Commander and the most expensive card in your deck is 6, you don't need 35+ lands in your deck. There isn't a required amount of lands for any deck, it varies depending on the deck and the cards being used. When I played mono-green stumpy type decks, i ran 18 lands in the 60, but I had 12 mana dorks and other ramp, allowing me to fish lands out of the deck. So I didn't NEED to have 20-24 lands in order to cast my 7+ CMC cards. Just like a lono-red deck I played back in Extended. 16 lands, average cmc for the deck was 1.7, and the most expensive casting cost in the entire deck was 4, and that had a "free" alternate casting cost anyway..... (note for both of those decks, I play tested them with higher count manabases, and kept taking lands out of them because I was drawing TOO MANY LANDS and not enough other stuff. After WEEKS of playtesting, I ended up having consistent and competitive decks, with very low or light mana bases. Simply because they didn't NEED more lands. Now. There is a single deck I use that I would say has "too many lands" but again, after testing and playing the deck, lands had to be added into it for consistency purposes. Of course the average casting cost for that deck is 7, so it needs to have those extra lands with the ramp and mana rocks. (Its a commander deck. 41 lands. Black/white with Taysa, Envoy of Ghosts as the Commander. ) It really does come down to personal preference and deck needs.

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

Here is a simplistic but effective method for finding colours with the least effort possible (whilst limiting human biases; we are only talking about finding enough sources than an actual land count): [0] Add up each pip per colour. Now you have totals for each colour which then can be figured as density of a whole (if you have 120 total pips, what percentage is green, blue, etc). Now your lands should reflect this spell density*. *Expect when you need timing requirements. [1] To do micro analysis: (let's say you want to ramp to 6 mana in EDH and then play your commander (4 or 5 colours) + counter spell), this is when you want to use a hypergeometric probability calculator. In this fictious example, your commander is 4 or 5 colours and you only have 3 single pip red spells (3+1 red pips total in your deck) in your 99. What is more important to you is having your commander out faster than ever seeing a red spell from your 99. A hypergeometric calculator can help you see how few red sources you actually need to have a 2x red sources by turn 6 (one extra for redundancy). [2] The last analysis I do is divide spells into piles of turn 2 playable, turn 4 playable and turn 6 playable. Then I count pips based on timing. Using the hypergeometric calculator also helps to clearly show what I’m needing in my land base to make these benchmarks. (My hope is that after turn 6, I have 2 or 3 sources for each colour and likely have little to no bottle neck).

Great video! Have you seen Sam Black's take on mana rocks (90% of decks don't need them, just play more lands!). I've been trying this with my fairly-optimized playgroup and it has def paid off so far.

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 triomes... 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.

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 love video essays and I love Magic. Subbed!

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...

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 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.

I, for one, would love to hear your thoughts on specific cycles of lands and when to use them.

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.

Arcades, the strategist is a bad example of when to run more lands with draw engine in the command zone. There are like a thousand defender ramp pieces and since you draw off of playing defenders I found it better in my list to lower the land count in order to run more ramp cards like Axebane Guardian and Overgrown Battlement which are insanely powerful.

I really liked the original commander mulligan rules. You were basically NEVER mana screwed. You drew 1 land? Keep the land and just mulligan away all 6 nonlands, even the important ramp spells and synergy pieces. You will end up with 3 lands very reliably. You drew 2 lands? You are allowed to keep 1 or 2 nonlands and mulligan away the 3-4 remaining nonlands. You will end up with 3 lands very reliably. You drew 3 lands? Throw away your 5+ mana stuff and draw some more lands and low mana stuff You drew 4 lands? Since you are running a low land count in your deck, beeing "flooded" a bit is fine. You will likely draw into gas. Draw 5-7 lands? Throw away the lands down to 3 or 4 and maybe some high mana stuff. Your hand will be golden. And if you do a 2. mulligan and go down to 6 after this, you probably have a playable hand 99,9% of the time. With the new mulligan rule there is much more randomness with flooding and mana screw. In some games you just start out with an heavy disadvantage. Makes the game feel very wonky to me. I pretty much never had to go to 5 in EDH during my first couple years. Now it happens all the time.

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

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

This is pretty great advice!! However, it's definitely very dependent on the deck itself, like you said. My Rivaz of the Claw deck runs 32/33 lands, and it still floods occaisonally. That's because the gameplan is to Ramp early enough that you can cast a 7 or 8 mana dragon on turn 3 or 4, most of the time four. I've played and tweaked it for so long that I have it very finetuned at the best number for me, having to take them out one by one over time!! But, I like this advice still, because I want to build bigger mana soon

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.

I just want to say how much I love your channel, I have stopped playing commander, but holy cow you make me want to. 💀

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

Much like playing green ramp spells can enable a slightly greedier manabase if you're playing blue and run alot of cantrips you can afford to skimp a little on lands, this is sometimes called Turbo xerox math. My personal formula is that ponder, preordain, and serum visions are worth about 1/3 of a land, most other 1-2 mana cantrips are worth either 1/4 or 1/5 of a land depending on their cost and how deep they dig. Even so I tend to consider 34 lands a hard floor for my decks, and you probably only want to do this in decks where you're digging for specific cards anyway or are playing cards work well with high densities of instants and sorceries

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

As a side note, running high counts of hand sculpting cards (ex. Ponder & Preordain) also changes the number of lands you should run.

I used to play with 30 lands tlbut thats mostly because i am lucky to own some 0cmc rocks and always have a really low mana curve and mulligan really aggresiveky. I eecently went up to 33 though ssome modal dmcs from zendikar found reliably fills out spots for removal and card draw and doubles as a land in a pinch and channel lands too. As the flexibility helps which meant I was slightly less likely to miss drops in the times where it mattered. I also design decks with an idea of a card draw, ramp, removal and them ratio too sometimes you can find cards that both are on theme and the basics which is a bonus and ensures i have enough of everything i need to play the game at any given moment. Sometimes a card can do more than one thing of thats the case i class it as one depending which mode i would useit for in most occasions.

I think having powerful draw effects/card advantage not only enables you to play more lands since you have enough draw to get through it, it also enables you to have fewer, since youll draw to hit your drops. This is riskier, as its more dependent on that draw, and you have to play a bit more ramp to guarantee you hit your threshold to cast your engine. Assuming youre playing a relatively average spread of ramp and lands, 1 more ramp piece is stastically more likely to help you get there than 1 more land, thus more room for fun stuff amd variance! In other words, I like to think you can get away with fewer lands, if you play your cards right.

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 RU-vidrs 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.

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 been a 37 land enjoyer since a buddy of mine in our usual play group started trying to talk me into it. Has made all of my decks way more consistent, and my mana bases aren't that expensive. I don't run any fetches, no Sol Ring in any of my decks, and instead just beefed up the land base with good draw and ramp spells weaved throughout to fill in the mana gaps where something like a Sol Ring would usually be helpful. If your deck is constructed well and you were considerate with your average CMC compared to your land count, this should really never be an issue. Stuff like Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, etc. are intended to help you execute your strategy ahead of curve, but often end up just letting you hit curve because you cut lands for other things you thought were more important than a good mana base.

I run about 18-22 basic, around 10 dual, and lands into creature type. Then as many dorks and artifacts as i can fit, including additional land drop, so cultivate is a 2 land drop spell. I also run with World Tree and managed to get a Chromatic Orrery in a pack. I aim for about 45-50 cards to be land/mana based. I then run about 5 (X=power) card types. My 5clr with Sisay, is a lot of 3-5 mana legendaries. I am running quartzwood crusher, Drider, Peregrin Took, and other various token generators with doubling season, Ojer Taq, roaming throne, and maskwood nexus. I have not played it yet, but i can't wait too see if it works.

I'm not 100% about this (lot to digest from the video, as always) but I suspect psychologically flooding out feels worse than mana screw. Mana screw feels like you didn't get to play the game, while mana flood feels like you forgot to bring a deck (seeing cards you can't use vs. not seeing cards at all). This might be why I end up making a lot of mana bases with too few basics; even flooding out with nonbasics lets you at least see some of the decisions you made, experience interesting card text, etc. (EDIT: On reflection, lower than ideal mana counts tend to lead to playing the game slower rather than not at all; this doesn't feel like a "failure" as much as not hitting enough gas does, even if it ultimately causes you to lose) The other big thing (which you do cover a little, but which I think should not be underestimated) is that nobody's really excited to run land. Ultimately when you deckbuild the final word on which cards go in is "which cards do you want to put in", and there's an inherent bias against land due to this if one is not taking a pure data-based approach or compensating by adding an amount of land that makes them feel bad. In particular you talk in an earlier video about the ideal state of a deck being that one has a bunch of cards they want but can't fit; this is dangerous to any vital deck component (sidenote: single-target interaction often feels bad because by spending a card to remove a card from one opponent you're technically putting your other two opponents ahead by comparison), but especially so to land since cutting it does not feel bad...until later, anyway! (Brief sidenote: I did some very unscientific clicking around the most recent precon decklists and found those tend to play 36~39 lands with a couple of forties; this probably affects what a newer player thinks of as the correct land count, and decks upgraded from precons seem likely to maintain the same land quantity for convenience) Finally, a stronger version of the Rona argument is that you "only need enough land to hit your draw engine"; once you do, your required land count to play the rest of the game drastically decreases. Tayam, for instance, is configured to hit 4 reliably (3 lands + ramp) and then largely stops caring since it gets to crank out exactly as many lands as it needs as part of the deck's regular operation. As usual this video has me thinking I need to reassess most if not all of my deck collection (notably I have a 4mnath that runs like 50 lands and I am beginning to suspect it is one of my most powerful builds in part because the land count is so high!) and half of my thoughts on the subject now feel like excuses for maintaining a suboptimal status quo rather than doing this work, which is...confronting, but ultimately good.

Just dropping a comment since this showed up in my feed and it was great! Subbed

I will say Card Draw, Mana Fetching Effects, and Mana Sources play into how many Land Cards should be in your Deck. I like to make the Deck run on 2 lands in opening hand if non-green, and 1 forest if the deck has any green in it. Granted, I hate getting flooded, so I like usually playing green and puking lots of lands on the board in the first 3 turns, then I already have the resources to play what I draw.

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.

I’d love that video on each land type and when it should/shouldn’t be added, honestly.

I do fall victim to adding lands last, but I use it as a chance to rip bad cards from my deck. I build a deck that is 60 non-lands, and then pick and choose the least synergistic ones to be replaced by lands. I run practice hands between edits to test the land count, and continue adding and removing lands until satisfied.

Cedh decks run

there are way more colour fixing options than more lands and more money, pretty much every colour combo has access to some sort of colour fixing and draw filtering (especially in green and blue respectively) and if you're willing to commit to them there are some budget manabase options that are a lot better than you'd think, for example, a proper gates package can do wonders in the right deck.

When people ask me how many lands they should run I always say "more than they think".

dude this is awsome

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'll admit that i tend to run a lower land count than most. With the Highest ever being 40 in my big stompy Karametra deck with an average cmc of about 7. And the lowest being 25 in my Urza Lord High Artificer deck that had a average cmc of 2.3. But for a vast majority of my decks, 36 is my quick go to for lands, with at bare minimum 8 pieces of ramp.

Because most players (from experience) run budget lite mana bases I think this video is overall very informative to a broad base. I think my only ponderance is on the opening statement “this hand would be good with more lands.” It is an intrinsically silly statement, along the lines of “oh, if I kept this hand I would have drawn the fix.” Because magic is random (to the best a physical game can be) it means that even decks with 90%+ odds of drawing land dense hands can suffer screw despite lands being 1/3-1/2 of your remaining deck.

I often run into the opposite problem despite running fewer lands than normal. I have a 60-card deck with 22 lands in it. I can tutor some lands, and my next draw is nonetheless going to be another land. There is no sleight of hand or any trickery of the sort. That's just what happens. As a result, I eventually will be top-decking because I've played all my stuff. On the flip side, I once had a red/white burn deck (60c) that ran only 16 lands. As long as I had two lands, I was probably going to win. I understand the philosophy behind running more lands than less, as being flooded on mana means you'll be probably able to cast anything _if_ you draw into it. But I often feel I am losing opportunities to gain more better options when I draw land rather than something else. Mathematically, if 1/3 of your deck is lands, you should have two lands in your opening hand, and you'll draw a third in time for turn three. Thus, I should be running cards that are mostly CMC 3 or less. But for EDH, obviously 33 lands is far too few. I've typically run 35. Sometimes I might get a little mana screwed in EDH with 35 lands, but usually I have enough ramp (including non-land ramp) that it's rare. But I think I've found my new comfort zone around 36-37 lands. For me, it's not a matter of being so attached to cards that I don't want to cut them. I just think 40 lands - 2/5s of my deck, is nonsense. Every land you have in excess is a missed opportunity for additional value.