There’s also the classic trick of using it to become Dark Depths and get Marit Lage out quickly. Even if you end up flooded, you can still pump up any of your creatures to make them a decent threat.

The fewer colors in your deck, the better this card ends up being because you won’t have to pay as much life. Plaza of Heroes is a great card for Commander since you always have a legendary spell to cast in your command zone. Once your commander is on the field, this land taps for any color in your deck. It’s also a good way to save your commander or another one of your creatures if need be.

This card can also be a good addition to decks that can make use of lands from the graveyards. Creature lands don’t traditionally see much Commander play since they can be rather inconsequential and small, but Cactus Preserve makes up for that—at least, the small part. I wouldn’t play this with commanders with a mana value less than 5, but it’s a solid way to incorporate an additional threat into your mana base. I won’t pretend tapped lands are great, but the Temple cycle of lands originating from Theros are some of the better ones.

Shock Lands

They have either no need for lots of mana or they have other ways to cast their spells and generate more mana. I should actually be pursuing the acquisition of dual lands – not dumping them for cards that often became bulk after they rotated out of the format. That often ends up being a creature to get an extra attacker or blocker, but there’s plenty of value to be found from copying noncreature permanents like swords or a timely—and surprise—Ghostly Prison. Each deck must contain exactly 100 cards, including the commander(s). No cards in any player’s deck may have a color identity that does not match or is not a subset of the color identity of the commander(s). Players are only allowed one of each card in their deck, with the exception of basic lands, but they can use cards from throughout Magic’s history.

Honorable Mention: Fetch Lands

For example, the Bond lands like Training Center are infinitely better in a multiplayer format since they’re otherwise just tap lands. The typical number of mana sources you should run in your EDH Deck is 43 to 55. Your land base should be between lands and your mana rocks and other sources should be 10-15. What I’m trying to say is you don’t have to go swapping lands around every day because you drew bad at an FNM or Saturday Commander event. Run some test games with friends or at a local shop for a few days if you think something is wrong with your lands. Even a few weeks if it’s something you’re having trouble pinpointing.

#31. Pain Lands

You need to be a lands-matter or self-mill deck to really leverage Echoing Deeps; playing this to copy a fetch land or something simply isn’t worth it. But doing shenanigans with Strip Mine or Cabal Coffers or something is far more interesting. Fetch lands, or other lands that allow you to search your deck, are also especially helpful since a 99-card deck needs to be thinned out a lot more than a 60-card one. While these lands are still great in other formats, they’re especially good in Commander.

I had to grind test after test to figure out how many lands to insert. There are hundreds of lands legal in Commander, so uncovering the best takes some work. Hopefully, this list has helped you suss out some of the best options for the format, and find ideas of the types of lands you want.

It loses all abilities generated from its rules text, its old land types, and any copiable effects affecting that land, and it gains the appropriate mana ability for each new basic land type. 100.2a In constructed play (a way of playing in which each player creates his or her own deck ahead of time), each deck must contain at least sixty cards. A constructed deck may contain any number of basic land cards and no more than four of any card with a particular English name other than basic land cards. There are a couple of tricky decks with 99 lands and a commander like Child of Alara, but that’s another story. You’re probably going to want a lot of lands on the field, so you’ll be shooting for the land range in your deck.

As per Magic rules, only 4 of each nonbasic land can be in a deck at any one time. Nonbasic lands often depict notable locations from the relevant set’s style guide. Me and the wife just started building decks and we have a few dual-land cards that gain +1 life when used. If you’re consistently getting mana screwed or flooded, then you’ve found the issue. But please don’t take one bad draw to mean you need to change up your land base. I’ve seen some players do it before and they only made it worse for themselves.

How would you go about figuring out the number of lands to put into your commander deck? I always start with 38 mana producing lands and 6 mana producing artifacts then tweak from there. I usually go with 40 lands -1 land for each 2 non-land mana sources as a base rule.

Your color ratio of spells will usually feature one color more than another if you’re in a combo. Or one color in your deck might have a ton of spells that cost double or even triple of that color. Maybe they flood out early in the game but then they’ll draw that super powerful X-spell or a creature with a dangerous activated ability.

I wouldn’t just run this over an Island; I’d make edh deck this the first card in any blue deck I touched. Inkmoth Nexus, one of the best creature lands in Magic, can be a nice addition to any infect deck, and it also works well in equipment or aura decks since you can pump it up and make it a pretty serious threat. It’s a bit harder to remove than a typical creature since opponents need to do so at instant speed while it’s still a creature. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth are both very good for mana fixing in multicolor decks including either black or green. War Room is a good source of card draw for decks with colors that might not naturally have other good options.