Beginner Series

The Land & Mana Base Guide

Your deck's plan doesn't matter if the mana isn't there to cast it. Here's how color count, fixing, and a few key utility lands decide whether your deck actually works.

Beginner

Mono-color

Two-color

Three-color

Four/five-color

Basics

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The basics

Every deck needs 36–38 lands, but "37 lands" means something very different depending on how many colors your commander needs.

A mono-color deck can run almost all basics and never think twice. A five-color deck needs its mana base to be treated like its own subsystem — dozens of decisions about fixing, life loss, and tempo all bundled into "which lands do I run." The more colors you need, the more of your 37 land slots get spent just making sure you can cast your spells at all, instead of doing something extra.

The number one reason new Commander decks feel bad to play isn't a weak game plan — it's a mana base that can't reliably produce the colors the deck needs.

— common deckbuilding lesson

The official rule

Lands are covered in section 305 of the Comprehensive Rules.

Comprehensive Rules · Rule 305.1

"A player who has priority may play a land card from their hand during a main phase of their turn when the stack is empty. Playing a land is a special action; it doesn't use the stack."

Comprehensive Rules · Rule 305.2

"A player can normally play one land during their turn; however, continuous effects may increase this number."

Comprehensive Rules · Rule 305.8

"Any land with the supertype 'basic' is a basic land. Any land that doesn't have this supertype is a nonbasic land, even if it has a basic land type."

Worth knowing: "landfall," which we'll cover below, is technically an ability word, not a keyword — per rule 207.2c, it has no rules meaning of its own and exists only to flavor-group cards with similar "whenever a land enters" text.

Examples

Two-color vs. four-color, same deck size

A two-color deck can run 8-10 dual lands plus basics and reliably have both colors online by turn 3-4.

A four-color deck needs those same 37 land slots to cover four colors — meaning far fewer basics, much heavier reliance on triomes, fetches, and rocks just to function.

Both decks might run "37 lands," but the four-color deck's mana base is doing dramatically more work per card.

Cracking a fetch land

You play a fetch land (like Evolving Wilds) and immediately sacrifice it to search your library for a basic land, putting it onto the battlefield.

You've spent one land drop but effectively played a specific land, thinned one card from your deck, and — if you control a landfall card — triggered landfall twice (once for the fetch, once for the land it found).

The cost: you're down a card in a deck full of no-longer-random draws, and depending on the fetch, possibly some life.

How to take advantage of it

The fixing ladder. As color count goes up, climb this ladder: basics → dual lands (weigh tapped vs. untapped tradeoffs) → fetch lands → triomes → mana rocks/signets as backup fixing. Mono and two-color decks can stop early on this ladder; three-plus color decks need most of it.

Game-winning and game-saving lands. A few lands are worth a slot in almost any deck of the right colors because they can single-handedly swing a game — a land that turns into a real threat, or bails you out of a bad board state, essentially for free since it still taps for mana the rest of the time.

Utility lands: when they earn a slot. A land that does something besides tap for mana is a small tax on your fixing. Two-color, lower-curve decks can usually afford one or two; greedy four-or-five-color decks often can't spare the slot, since every land needs to pull its weight on color fixing first.

Cracking lands — the tradeoff. Fetch lands thin your deck and fix your colors, but cost life and a small tempo hit (you don't get to hold up the mana the same turn in some cases). That tradeoff is worth it more in decks that want graveyard triggers or repeated landfall than in decks that are already stretched thin on card advantage.

Landfall decks — a dedicated approach. If your deck cares about landfall, more land drops per turn matters more than a slightly higher land count. Fetch lands are premium here since they trigger landfall twice per activation (once entering, once for the land they find), and effects that grant extra land drops (like Exploration or Azusa, Lost but Seeking) become some of the best cards in the whole deck.