![]() Reanimator is another option, getting cards in your graveyard so you can Reanimate them later using cheaper spells and abilities reduces the cost to actually play a deck, and thus the land base you need to build up. Jodah, Archmage Eternal ( ) makes every spell you cast able to be played for, Kaalia of the Vast ( ) lets you cheat in Angels, Demons and Dragons whenever she attacks, and there's always cards like Elvish Piper and Quicksilver Amulet. Paying the cost of a card isn't the only way to play it, and if your deck uses one of these strategies you won't need as many land on the field at once. The medallions lose some of that usefulness pretty quickly as more colors are added, it's not usually worth 5 slots in a deck, but fit very nicely into a deck with only one or two colors. These like creatures are easier to destroy than lands, and aren't a replacement for them. Creatures are, however, easy to destroy, particularly as many of the mana producing ones have low toughness like Birds of Paradise or Llanowar Elves.Īrtifacts that produce mana are common too, there's no single card in more EDH decks than Sol Ring, some of the moxes and medallions can be pretty helpful too. Land isn't the only source of mana you can have in your deck - Elves can get by on less actual mana than some other deck types because so many elves themselves can tap for mana, both accelerating your deck and making more land coming less desirable or useful. Yes EDH is a slower format, but having to come from behind and catchup to your opponents does put you at a disadvantage when they play spells and you can't. What's the average cost of your spells? How many X cost spells and abilities do you have? If your deck doesn't need much mana to run, missing land drops won't be as big of a problem, if you're playing something like Dragons which tend to be expensive, you'll need to get your mana base set up pretty quickly and can't afford to miss as many land drops too early on. There are some exceptions to this, for instance I have a Reaper King ( ) deck that most cards are artifacts and don't care about the colors on the field, letting me trim some land from what would normally need to be more land heavy to support all 5 colors. With a mono color deck, you will be getting all of your colors usually on your first turn, with 3 colors usually takes 5 or so mana generating cards and in all 5 colors you can still be waiting for that last color sometimes after a dozen lands are already out. Lands that can tap for multiple, or any color blunt this, but have downsides, and are always one Ruination or Blood Moon away from keeping you out of the game for good. It's always a bad feeling to never hit that last color and have a hand full of things you can't cast. This is mostly because you need to get your colors on the field sooner, and the more lands that can make each color, the more likely you are to do this. The more colors you have in a deck, the more land that deck will need - a mono color deck doesn't need specific lands to play their spells, my Marrow-Gnawer ( ) can get away with a lot less land than my Nekusar, the Mindrazer ( ), which can get away with less than my General Tazri ( ). Lets go over the things that determine how much you'll need one at a time. There's a lot of things that go into deciding how much land goes into a deck, the general rule for minimum is 1/3 of the deck, so in EDH that would be 32 cards, but that is a pretty bare minimum and most decks will need more than that. This is actually a more complicated question than it sounds. you don't want to be stuck on four lands when your couple of Signets and Thran Dynamo get wiped.Īs an example, the Devour for Power Commander deck shipped with 40 lands and four mana-generating artifacts, but it is fairly heavy on costs. I've run 34-36 land decks successfully, but usually you see 37-40 with some of the previously mentioned accelerators.Ībnormal decks (with huge numbers of accelerators) will run as few as 32 lands (the equivalent of running about 13 in a 40-card limited deck), but I'd recommend starting around 40 and cutting around one land per three accelerators (if you're trying to cut land, and not running very high-cost spells).ĭo also remember that running fewer lands with more mana rocks leaves you open to blowouts when someone wipes artifacts with Austere Command, Merciless Eviction, Shatterstorm/ Creeping Corrosion, etc. ![]() In addition, the number of "mana rocks" (mana-generating artifacts) and dual lands/mana filtering/land fetch cards are usually higher.Ĭonsidering that, the 40% lands rule is still fairly close to normal (lightened obviously for the reasons above). Because of the slower pace of play in EDH/Commander, it isn't as drastically important to hit 5-6 land drops in 5-6 turns.
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