In a deck with 12 lands of the right basic type, you can count each, In a deck with 8 lands of the right basic type, you can count each, In a deck with 4 lands of the right basic type, you can count each. Warning 100 card historic brawl deck builder still only defaults to 24 lands. Average CMC First of all, you should take into account how many lands you actually need to play properly. Since typical Limited decks need their first 3land drops, would like to hit their 4thland drop, but dont necessarily need 5 lands by turn 5, the age-old standard of 17 lands indeed seems like a good number. By the way, when building mana bases for Guilds of Ravnica Standard or for Modern, you should not skimp on basic lands. Before describing my methodology in detail, I will start with a quick summary of the results that may be useful as a quick reference. Youmulligan any 7-card hand with 0, 1, 6, or 7 lands. In Limited, cutting a land when youre on the draw is fine for the same reasons. How many lands should a standard deck have? To illustrate, suppose that you would be 90% sure to have a white source on turn 2, that you would be 90% sure to have a green source on turn 2, and that (for expositional ease) these two probabilities would be independent. Now what if we would want to splash white rather than red, i.e., run Teferi, Hero of Dominaria instead of Nicol Bolas, the Ravager? An interesting observation is that the decks that won the last 3 Pro Tours, pointed out in red, all lie all above the regression line. Im pretty sure it shouldnt be 0%, as in Hearthstone, but cards like this Mountain Boar might help us get toward the sweet spot for maximum player satisfaction. On the draw, you only need 23 lands. There is no maximum deck size as long as you can unassisted shuffle your deck in your hands. The rest are spells. For example, I now recommend 16 white sources for Wrath of God, whereas this was 18 in my original article. Please use the 2022 update instead! This means you only need to hit 3 land drops to be able to win. You can get there by increasing the land count, by relying on non-land sources like Llanowar Elves or Adventurous Impulse, by replacing a few PlainswithUnclaimed Territory, Selesnya Guildgate, or Forest, or by accepting a lower level of consistency. For sure. That takes a lot of effort. Besides, there are plenty of factors that should influence your land counts as well, such as whether or not your deck contains additional sources of mana (e.g., Servant of the Conduit) or ways to spend excess mana (e.g., Duskwatch Recruiter). But how many lands does a 60-card deck actually need? But while a little bit of randomness is fun, too much randomness is not. To some extent, the above-mentioned cards help a little bit because they incentivize people to add more lands to their deck. In my experience, its a good number for cheap spells, but I would like to have a higher consistency for my top-end. I run a two color deck, so maybe 10/11 for each color and 4 dual lands, bringing me to about 26. Pingback: Are Limited Decks With Only 14 Lands Possible? Little bits of variance give weaker players a chance to beat better players, lead to games that play out differently every time, add excitement to draw steps, and make for interesting deck building decisions. This helps ensure a stable supply of lands throughout a game to build your mana pool, while avoiding any fallow fields in the early game or an unwelcome glut of surplus Swamps, Mountains or Islands . To go from 16 to 18, you could replace some basic lands withSelesnya Guildgate or Flower // Flourish, increase the land count, and/or rely on non-land sources like Llanowar Elves or Adventurous Impulse. One option is to cut the tap-duals to end up with four Temple Garden, 10 Plains, and 10 Forests. 6 How many lands should be in a 3 color deck? Assuming that you have enough green sources to consistently cast them on curve, I would count Farseek, District Guide, or Gift of Paradise as full sources of all colors that they could yield, but only for cards of converted mana cost 4 or higher. This means about 17-18 lands for a 40-card deck and about 24-25 lands for a 60-card deck. Another is to accept a lower level of consistency. So how can we fit in some 1-drops? I would roughly count each Field of Ruin as 1/2 a source for any color of basic land in your deck, but only for spells with converted mana cost 5 or higher. 8 How many lands should you have in a 60 card deck? Youmulligan any 6-card hand with 0, 1, 5, or 6 lands. So its about finding the right balance. on turn 4, and then boost them so on turn 5 you can have a 12/11 trample flying common ready to attack!". That cost is already too high to have those cards help your mana development much. This means that for Wrath of God, I now consider the probability of drawing at least two white sources by turn 4 on the play conditional on drawing at least four lands (after mulligans). For 3-color combinations, Grixis, Jeskai, Sultai, Naya, and Abzan are the only ones with two shock duals, at least until Ravnica Allegiance is released. ButI wouldnt go as far as actually going from 26 to 23 lands, despite what the numbers might suggest. You would also include several cheap card selection spells to find your colors. How many lands do you need in a normal deck? How many lands do I need for a mono color deck? But you wont be able to consistently cast Legions Landing, History of Benalia, or Leonin Warleader on-curve. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. Moreover, since we only have one shock dual, its less likely that the checklands will enter the battlefield untapped. Can you have more than four non basic lands? 60 Cards. Each provides three painless colored sources, and there is simply no other land that can do that. It also depends on your deck and the format. Correct Colors Let's say you're playing a red-white deck. As you can see in the data sets, many decks have maybe 2 lands more or 2 lands fewer than this formula would indicatein the end, every deck is different, cheap card drawing spells or mana creatures can influence the counts, and the average converted mana cost doesnt say everything. Having better mana bases is highly correlated with tournament success. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. But this will be a bit different. By "land's" I mean land cards, artifact ramp, spells that search for lands, effects that produce mana, cost reduction effects, and effects that produce extra mana. You can find the rules for specific formats in the table below. Likewise, Peter Vierens 24-land control deckis closer to a 27-land deck thanks to eight 1-mana cyclers, but it was still seen as a 24-land deck under my assumptions. Lands that generate more than one colour of mana or that have special abilities are always a great shout. The one exception is Commander, which uses 100 cards. The deck currently runs: 36 lands (21 Plains) (used to run 34 lands; 19 Plains) 4x manarox ( Sol Ring, Hedron Archive, Pearl Medallion, Marble Diamond) 2x land filters ( Oreskos Explorer, Gift of Estates) The numbers won't match exactly, but they'll be close enough. The total cost of all your cards for each of your colours. Bolstering Briar for Classic Constructed in Flesh and Blood, The Brothers War Limited MTG Set Review: Black. For such a deck, Id say that 25 lands is probably the right number. While there is no maximum deck size, so long as players are still able to shuffle it without help, the minimum number of cards that each deck must have is 60. Pingback: MTGYou #182 Mana, is she Curvy MTGYou.com, Pingback: So You Wanna Build a Deck THE GAM PODCAST, Pingback: Magic Math: Ravnica Allegiance Edition Perfect Remedy, Pingback: | MTG Coon, Pingback: Building A Consistant Manabase - Greatness At Any Cost. There's a good article somewhere around here about it, but I'm a little er stuck at the moment. Although this number would be higher in a more precise model that takes into account that these two probabilities are not independent, the basic effect would still be present. This means that you can run Nullhide Ferox and Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants in the same deck. Richard Garfield talking about MTG being a game first {Self} Magic the Gathering Avacyn the Purifier Cosplay! So whats an acceptable number of taplands? You keep all other hands. Pingback: To Splash or Not to Splash in Limited? For 2-color decks, I would also count Evolving Wilds as a full mana source for both colors. If (contrary to what I initially assumed) the deck contains non-land mana sources as well, the numbers in my tables should still act as good guidelines, but you can count some of these non-land mana sources as (partial) colored sources as well. Given a 60-card deck with a given number of lands, I started by determining the probability of keeping any opening hand with a certain number of cards and a certain number of lands. When you build a standard 60-card deck in MTG Arena, the program automatically adds 24 lands, which is 40% of your deck. Also, there are diminishing returns. Join us discussing news, tournaments, gameplay, deckbuilding, strategy, lore, fan art, and more. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. Not overstuff your deck with Lands and ramp cards. For Commander decks, the equivalent to 25 lands in a 60-card deck is 25 * 99/60 = 41.25 lands. That takes lands. There are many Magic formats, but mostly the rule is 40 for Limited (Draft and Sealed), 60 for Constructed. But it also basically counts as a taplandits like Selesnya Guildgate in spell form. Instead, I proposed that it is sufficient to have access to the required mana 90% of the time on the play. The extra draw step makes a big difference! For decks with 3 or more colors especially, you should keep an eye on the number of lands with the right basic land type. For example, if you want to broaden the white splash with Swiftblade Vindicator, then that would come at the cost of Boros Guildgate (which can screw up the curve for an aggro deck) or Unclaimed Territory (which is far from ideal for a non-tribal deck) or extra Plains (which reduces the reliability of turn-3 Chainwhirlers). Thats still not super consistent, but I wouldnt be comfortable going lower, and you cant reach the 90% level of consistency that I liked for colored sources of mana without going up to 28 lands. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. At least 60 cards must be in your deck. Frank holds a PhD in cooperative game theory and stochastic operations research, so when he's not traveling the world, he enjoys applying his mathematical background to Magic-related problems. The numbers for 17 lands in Limited are similar to the ones for 25 lands in Standard. Suppose that in a 60-card deck, youd want to hit your 3rdland drop with 90% certainty and your 4thland drop with 75% certainty. Next, here is a sample mana base for a Dimir deck: This is the 24-land mana base I would suggest for a deck that wants to cast Thoughtbound Phantasm on turn 1 and Blood Operative on turn 3. That takes lands. As a general rule of thumb, you want somewhere between 33 and 42 lands in a Commander deck. Basic lands do not have this restriction. There are some low-curve decks that might want to keep a 1-lander and/or mulligan a 5-lander, and there are some high-curve decks that might want to mulligan a 2-lander and/or keep a 6-lander. Here is a sample 24-land mana base for a Grixis deck: This list has 10 red sources, 18 blue sources, and 16 black sources. A standard 52-card deck comprises 13 ranks in each of the four French suits: clubs (), diamonds (), hearts () and spades (), with reversible . For convenience, lets just say that these two effects cancel each other out and that my way of counting is a decent general guideline. Note that to properly interpret the first column in this table, number of lands, you should count cards like Attune with Aether or Aether Vial. You could argue that card draw spells should count for less because you dont always have the time to cast them, but you could also argue that they should count for more because you may draw into another card draw spell to dig further. The number of cards in an MTG deck varies depending on the game format. If you're building a Limited deck, then you need to have at least 40 cards. But since Azorius and Orzhov are not supported in Guilds of Ravnica, you only have one shock dual. Likewise, if youre splashing Teferi, Hero of Dominaria in a deck with 18 blue sources, then thats pretty much the same as splashing a 4W card. Then, you would only be able to cast Emmara, Soul of the Accord 90% * 90% = 81% of the time on curve. It really depends on what kind of deck you play. For delve, this depends on how quickly your deck can fill the graveyard. All in all, this mana base is akin to having 7 taplands, which is far too many. If youre splashing Justice Strike in a mono-red deck where each land produces red mana, then thats equivalent to splashing a 1W card. Typical decks (one or two colors, curve out around six or seven) will typically to . Now the reasons you'd want to play a deck of 117 are extremely few, so I'd reconsider your approach anyways. Pingback: So You Want to Play 1-Drops in Standard? The first approach is based on raw probability calculations. A cheap scry 1 effect in a deck with 8 black sources counts as approximately 0.1 black sources. You could, of course, stubbornly stick to 16 and accept a lower level of consistency, but I would consider that greedy. This means about 17-18 lands for a 40-card deck and about 24-25 lands for a 60-card deck. We collect MTG top decks for Standard , Modern , Legacy , Vintage , Pioneer and many other formats. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. To explain the methodology behind the above table, lets start with a recap. As a final note: these adjustments are only necessary when the colored mana consistency of both colors might be an issue. But if we look at expensive spells, then an inability to cast them due to drawing the wrong lands could be much more impactful. How many lands should be in a 2 color deck? Typically, you see three variations. In Standard, cheap spells whose main aim is to fetch a land (. Okay, now on to the results! If you are playing more than a couple cards with mana costs of five or higher, increase the number of lands. This calculation is also fairly straightforward, but Ineed to be a little more careful in distinguishing all the cases. Flower // Flourish in a Selesnya deck counts as a full white and green source for cards costing 2 mana or more. Because nearly every one of these Standard deck had between 22 and 26 landswith 24 the most common number by far, I then also added the Top 8 decks of the last 4 Modern Grand Prix events (Kobe, Copenhagen, Vancouver, and Brisbane, for a total of 32 decks) to get some decks with more extreme numbers of lands. Even then, its clear that some color combinations are better off in Guilds of Ravnica Standard than others. MTG Commander deck building ratio As a general rule of thumb, you want somewhere between 33 and 42 lands in a Commander deck. Pingback: 61 | Izzet MTG News Flash, Pingback: Playing the Game Land Count & Mana Costs 2imu's. But mana screws still happen from time to time, even with inflated land counts, and then there are not many cards that can help you. Edit: not casting but putting on the battlefield, my mistake. For a deck with these mana costs, I would roughly count each Evolving Wilds as 2/3rds of a source of each color. This notion of 90% consistency, which was mostly based on experience and intuition, was then sharpened further. Steel Leaf Champion, which requires 23 green sources, does not yet fit in the above mana base. Once you've got your theme, you need to flush out the deck itself.