Lands and Manabase in EDH - Pt.1
If you know the EDH format, you know that mana fixing is one of the most essential part of creating a functional deck. Although there are some amazing lands that assists you in doing so, not all of us have an extra $500 to create a perfect mana base. Here are some tips on building a resilient ‘budget’ mana base!
This specific part of the article is trying to tackle on which tap land to use. More to come in future articles!
1. Gain Lands & Guildgates
Out of all the tap-lands, these are one of the worst one available, these lands has came in many varieties but I want to focus specifically on these two types. It is best to avoid using these lands, they do not give you any significant advantage beside color fixing, even though they are readily accessible I would prefer to be able to reap more advantage out of my tap-lands. (Maybe for flavor)
When should I use the guildgates/gain lands? In certain decks, you are limited to very little color fixing. Khans And Enemy color combination have less ‘good’ color fixing compared to friendly color and these are the rare cases on when you should consider these abomination. Use them only if you do not have any other options, even though some decks appreciate the life gain (Karlov, Oloro) or able to use the ‘gate’ land typing by playing ‘gatekeepers’ these lands are the lowest on the list of cards you should consider.
2. Fastland, Temples and Bouncelands
As we now enter the higher priced cards, these color fixing lands place higher on the rank of budget color fixing. The three most accessible tap lands are the temples, Kaladesh fast lands and the bounce lands (Due to recent MM Printing). These three type of lands are great on their own way, here is why!
Kaladesh Fast Lands, being recently printed they are relatively cheap, these enemy color pairing lands provide an interesting argument on why you should include them. First, you should always consider these lands if your commander is 2 Color Enemy pair, it provides fast mana and its definitely better than a guildgate. Second, only consider including these fast lands in a 3 color combo deck with super low CMC. Due to it’s ‘speed’ I include the UW and BW fast-lands in my Zur deck which has average cmc of 1.9. Beside that, if speed is not something you are worried about and you want to durdle; these lands is not for your deck. (Insert a flawless transition to Scry lands)
Temples Or Scrylands, these are on of the lands that is printed on the rare level. They are essentially a guild gate that has card selection attached to them. These are one of the ‘higher-end’ tap lands you could include in your deck. When should you include them? If you need the extra card selection in your deck, these are the best one you could get. Both Boros, Selesnya and Gruul are the perfect example of color combination that has little to no card selection, thus these lands should be high in you priority list.
What about decks that has card selection already, can I include them here? Yes you can, these lands are pretty great, but I would not go out of my ways to obtain all of them, I would probably include only 1-2 in a 3 color deck and no more than 3 in a 4 color decks. Lets say you playa a Jori-En EDH deck, due to her ability to make you ‘draw’ these extra scry is super helpful; even if its just a tapland. @goblintinkering (Back me up on this :p).
If you play Sidisi, Brood Tyrant, the extra scry could be helpful due to her mill ability; but again these are very special cases.
My Sidisi deck is UGB (Simic-Black) in color weight, and I would only include the GB & UB scry lands. Why? Simply put, since black component of the deck is mostly reanimation spells, the scry would be relevant to set up my graveyard, and it fixes the color for the reanimation spell.
Bounce Lands, These are a unique lands that was highly picked in draft, giving card equality on entry it is nothing to scoff at. Here is a simple why yes and why not chart on bounce lands.
Reasons To Include:
- Helps with landfall
- Good lands unter Winter Orb/Static Orb
- Help to reuse your lands that has an ETB trigger
Reason To not Include:
- Prone to Strip Mine
- Comes in play tapped, and feels bad if you bounce another tap-land
- Not a great land if you have it as your only 2 lands on the opening hand
I uses 1 tap land in my Sidisi Deck, which i mentioned before is color is U>G>B. I use the GB lands, why? first the color green gives you access to more color fixing be it mana dork or ramp spells; thus getting it early is good to ramp further into your curve. Black and green being my splash color means that most of my spells are not color heavy on those; so with just one card, it could help me access to my tertiary color reliably. Why not use the UG then? Simply put, I would rather run a land that doesnt come into play tapped for my main colors.
More to come! #elrichplaysedh
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