Building a Commander mana base

Updated 1 November 2026

More Commander games are lost to mana trouble than to any opponent. Too few lands, or the wrong colours, and your best cards sit in your hand. The mana base isn't exciting, but it's the part of the deck that most rewards a little care.

How many lands?

Most Commander decks run between 36 and 38 lands. Brewhall uses 37, alongside 62 spells. Adjust from there:

• Go up to 38 or more if your commander or key cards cost five or more, or if your deck rewards playing lands.
• Go down to 35 or 36 if you have a lot of cheap ramp and a low curve.

Mana rocks and land searches count for a lot, but they're not lands. A hand with one land and two mana rocks often still can't cast them. Keep the land count honest first and treat ramp as extra.

Balancing your colours

Count the coloured mana symbols across your spells. If two thirds of them are green, roughly two thirds of your coloured sources should make green. Then look at when you need each colour. A colour you need on turn two deserves more sources than one that only shows up in a late-game finisher.

Your commander matters most of all. If it needs two of one colour, make sure that colour is well covered, because you'll want to cast your commander every game.

Which nonbasic lands are worth it?

In every deck

Command Tower is the clearest pick in any deck with two or more colours: it makes any colour your commander has. Lands that search for a basic, such as Evolving Wilds, help too, especially in decks that care about lands entering.

Two colours

A handful of dual lands helps, but basics can carry a two-colour deck. Prefer duals that enter untapped, or tapped lands that do something extra, over plain tapped lands.

Three or more colours

Fixing becomes the priority. Use tri-lands, dual lands for each pair and green land searches that can find any basic. Think about cutting a few colourless utility lands, since every land that can't make your colours makes the deck harder to cast.

Mono-coloured decks

You don't need fixing, so you can play almost all basics plus a few utility lands. There are also lands that reward being mono-coloured, which Brewhall adds automatically for single-colour commanders.

Utility lands

Lands that do something beyond making mana, such as drawing cards, making creatures or giving you an unlimited hand size, are a free way to add power because they take a land slot rather than a spell slot. Just don't overdo colourless ones in a multicolour deck.

Ramp and the mana base work together

Ramp is how you get ahead, and the land count is how you avoid falling behind. With 8 to 12 pieces of ramp, ideally several costing two mana, a 37-land deck will usually cast its spells on time. Higher bracket decks run more ramp, because games are faster and falling behind early is harder to recover from.

Test it: draw some opening hands

Shuffle and draw seven a dozen times. Count how often you'd keep the hand, meaning at least two or three lands, ideally in both colours you need early. If you'd mulligan often, add a land or swap a tapped land for an untapped one. Most online deck sites, including Moxfield and Archidekt, have a sample-hand button for this.