Chromatic LanternChromatic Lantern | Art by Ben Hill

My partner makes fun of me because whenever I build a deck, the thing I neglect the most is lands.

I will look through my bulk lands from my most recent prerelease and put in what I can find. Lots of basics, regardless of the amount of colors in the commander's color identity. Some of you might be thinking and acting the same as me, but are we okay like this? What are the considerations?

How Important Are Lands?

There is a lot of context about lands, lots of things to take into consideration. First of all is the color identity of your commander. Basic lands aren't always the enemy. In mono colored decks, basics are friends.

In an Urza, Lord High ArtificerUrza, Lord High Artificer or a Magda, Brazen OutlawMagda, Brazen Outlaw, basics are hugely useful, even in cEDH. Basics don't come in tapped, like some multicolored lands. They're often more fetchable than any other type of land. Because your commander only needs one color, there is no need to make many trades on efficiency. You'll likely only go with other kinds of lands for utility.

Moving up slightly to two color decks, things get a little iffy with basics. You are more likely to see both your colors in an opening hand of only basics, but the efficiency goes down quite a bit.

You have to think about a handful of things. First is having the colors you need in the various combinations you will need. The problem is some of the best dual lands are the ones that come in with a clause or two that negatively affect you. Blood CryptBlood Crypt and Breeding PoolBreeding Pool are examples of duals that would come in untapped the turn they enter, but you have to pay two life.

These cards will also cost you a pretty penny. Blood CryptBlood Crypt could run you 15-20 dollars. Breeding PoolBreeding Pool will cost about 10 dollars. That's a lot of money just for a land base, isn't it? That's the question we'll get into later.

While cards like Boseiju, Who EnduresBoseiju, Who Endures might blow up one of your opponents' artifacts, enchantments, or nonbasic lands, you can search for a card like Elegant ParlorElegant Parlor because it has a basic land type but is a dual land. This gives some of these duals some unique advantages to a land like Command Tower, which isn't fetchable in any way.

Surveil lands struggle coming in tapped, which makes cards like Hallowed FountainHallowed Fountain better. Dual lands that are fetchable are good, but ones that come in untapped as well are even more important.

Having access to a land drop with useable mana on each of your turns increases what you can do. This is also compared to other players who might have access to more mana than you through ramp with artifacts or ramp spells. You need to keep tempo, by gaining at least one more mana each turn than you had the turn before. Reid Duke wrote a lovely article about this.

Having that extra mana is more you can hold up for interaction. It's more mana for big blowout spells like InsurrectionInsurrection. It's a big deal late in the game, that one additional mana.

When we scale up to three, four, and five color decks, access to all of your colors are a bigger deal. Decks like Scion of the Ur-DragonScion of the Ur-Dragon require all five colors on turn four or five to keep up pace with other decks. I should know; I run this deck. It's a five color deck that needs all five colors to cast the commander.

All the spells in the deck require various different combinations of colors that you need to be able to guarantee. Lands that tap for more than one color are huge. Triome lands like Ziatora's Proving GroundZiatora's Proving Ground will guarantee access to even more colors, even though it comes in tapped.

On early turns you can risk a Triome for access to colors later because in the early game, you likely can't cast anything anyway.

How Much Does it Matter Really?

There is a reason that players skimp out on lands, either in the number of them in a deck and/or in their access to colors. The reason is because in the grand scheme of what you can do in a game of Commander, it's not heavily reliant on lands. It's important, don't get me wrong, but it's not the most or second-most important thing.

Having things that further your game plan in your deck are far more important, right? We want to have good removal, good synergy, and board wipes. We want to protect our commander. Aside from landfall decks, the kinds or number of lands in your deck might negatively affect you only occasionally, but not necessarily all the time.

That's the sort of logic that I work with when I build the first iterations of my decks. I want to see how much my deck can do, if it all works together, before tuning. I want to see if the idea comes together at all.

Good lands are expensive. Commander decks in general aren't cheap. It could easily run you between $3-400 just to put together something competitive. Why should any of that budget go to something like tempo? In lower power games, most other players have lands coming in untapped, and you might not lose the tempo advantage there either. The deck can win, can function, being behind one additional mana every turn.

My deck can still do the thing, if I only occasionally get locked out of a color or don't see enough lands. It's okay to lose because of luck of the lands. Right?

It Actually Matters A lot

I'll explain my logic with a deck I love. Scion of the Ur-DragonScion of the Ur-Dragon is a deck I built after MagicCon: Vegas. I was standing in line to get into the convention hall, talking with some strangers. Someone mentioned a Scion of the Ur-Dragon Secret Lair that would be on sale. I hadn't heard of this card.

They mentioned that it would be a cool Reanimator deck. I became obsessed with this Dragon-Typal Reanimator deck. I ended up building it. As usual, I neglected the mana base. I wanted to play the deck and Dragons aren't cheap. Five-color mana bases are expensive as well. Ten Shocklands and ten Surveil Lands, and ten Triomes; that will run you nearly half the budget of your deck.

I played this deck over and over, trying to figure out what Bracket the deck was. These explosive turns, totally powerful and exciting, were possible, but in other games, I was so behind. I couldn't catch up, couldn't guarantee my commander on-curve, and struggled to ramp up quickly enough.

It got to the point where, I felt the deck was too inconsistent to be strong enough to play with the big boys. I thought I was building a Bracket 4 deck, but it turned out to be more of a Bracket 3. Dragons are so strong and Reanimator is so strong as a subtheme. I was sure to cheat out Dragons quick and efficiently, but I just couldn't get there.

Recently, after tons of nagging from my partner, I decided to spend my entire Magic budget for the month on updating my land bases in all of my other decks. I had a decent amount of Shocks from Edge of Eternities, but I grabbed the off-color rotation ones as well to upgrade the Scion. I didn't get ten of each, but I grabbed a few here and there.

It isn't a perfect land base, but I put some Shocks in. I put some Triomes. And instantly, like night and day, the deck started performing more consistently and more aggressively.

I could consistently get Scion out on turn four or five. I could cast those big dragons like Dragonlord DromokaDragonlord Dromoka on-curve. My mana dorks were more efficient. I was surprised how it performed after the small change.

All of my other decks that got a land facelift performed even more aggressively, spiking their power. It was eye-opening for me. I could cast more spells over the course of the games, could optimize my turns, and was never behind, waiting to take a big turn. What Reid had written about tempo, getting that additional mana, and using my turns aggressively changed the Bracket of the deck.

Chromatic Lantern

I want to slightly derail my conversation for a second to address something related to this topic. It has to do with mana bases, I promise. I was spooking around Bluesky as usual and I saw the community was arguing about something again. Honestly, the Magic community is usually in disagreement about something. It keeps things lively, if not exhausting at times, but I digress.

They were back on whether you should run Chromatic LanternChromatic Lantern. Some people argued that Josh Lee Kwai on the Command Zone Podcast argued against this card. He doesn't go into too much detail, but I think he's right.

Before we talk about why he's right, I want to address some of the dissenting opinions.

Money. This is not nothing. I think it's the strongest argument to run Chromatic Lantern and weaker mana bases when building a deck. Strong land bases, while better than Chromatic LanternChromatic Lantern, are much more expensive than a three-dollar rare. Proxying isn't available for everyone to do to get that mana base until you can afford it.

Sometimes you want to play Chromatic LanternChromatic Lantern and not think about how many pips of what you want to play. Not everything is about efficiency and power.

I wasn't running Chromatic LanternChromatic Lantern in my five color Dragon-Typal Reanimator Scion of the Ur-DragonScion of the Ur-Dragon deck even before I upgraded the land base. The one, huge, fatal flaw to Chromatic LanternChromatic Lantern is that you're unlikely to see it. It's one card in 99 and it doesn't do much.

It ramps you one mana at the rate of a Commander's SphereCommander's Sphere, which I don't think we should be playing either (Talismans are more efficient). It fixes your mana, but it doesn't make your lands come in untapped. There are so many budget friendly options that guarantee you more value.

If you're running green, SpelunkingSpelunking is a three-mana card that makes your lands come in untapped, draws you a card, and potentially ramps you a land. With cheap, tapped dual lands, your problems are solved. It's a four-dollar card at its most expensive. To Josh's point, lands are so protected and cheap in terms of mana bases these days that running them is a better way to ensure your colors.

The tempo battle is still there, with things coming in tapped, but it's better than not fixing your colors and waiting to see one card in the 99. SpelunkingSpelunking might solve one aspect of this problem--the part with the lands coming in tapped--but if you're not running green and don't see it, it's not helpful.

Ultimately, I just think it's better to under-tempo yourself and spend 15$ dollars on cheap tapped duals than play Chromatic LanternChromatic Lantern. Obviously, this is if you want to optimize your decks. If that's not your goal, then play whatever you'd like. I just think if we're talking about if the card is "bad," like Josh talks about in his video, it absolutely is.

Conclusion

Ultimately, mana bases are hugely important to creating a strong, efficient deck. It doesn't seem like a big deal, but it really is. Play more than 36 lands and make sure you have access to all your colors, even if they come in tapped. It'll change the game for you. But that's just what I think. What do you think? Let me know! I'm @Strixhavendropout at Bluesky.

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