This is a topic that's interested me for a while now as I've been playing EDH for over three years at this point. Back when I started, the standard was to use 40 lands and 60 non-land spells because those ratios made sense when compared to the ratios of a standard 60 card deck. Over the years though I've noticed land counts falling to the mid to lower 30s. Is this because of the overwhelming presence of mana rocks, falling curve, or something else?
It depends on the deck. Mono-color decks can get away with running fewer lands. The mana curve is a big deciding factor as well, the smaller the curve, the less lands you need.
With that being said, a lot of people are just bad deckbuilders who don't run enough land and wonder why they keep getting mana screwed. I tend to start at 40 lands, and then adjust from there depending on how many mana rocks and ramp cards I'm running, the color requirements of the deck, and the mana curve. Most of my decks end up around 38ish lands.
I use 35 as both a base and a soft minimum. It is somewhat low, but I try and run low curves and ramp. If I have land problems, it is almost always a color problem. Additionally, the mulligan rules may be the reason some players run fewer lands.
absolutely depends on your deck and mana curve. It's offset by the amount of mana rocks and mana dorks you run.
You might notice a drop in average land count in a deck over time as other sources of mana get added to the deck. This is because as the game progresses past turn 5-6, hitting land drops is not as important if you have other mana sources that you can depend on.
As you tweak the deck and slowly lower the mana curve, the need for large amount of mana / land (by the end game) drops as well.
In the beginning however, the amount of land in your opening hand has nothing to do with the amount of mana your deck creates from other sources. Having a ton of mana rocks and mana dorks is useless (baring the 0-mana cost ETB untapped rocks) if you struggle to make those first few land drops . The chances of having 2-3 land in your opening hand (or sustaining land drops / ready access to mana through turn 5) drops as you lower the over all land count. Because of that my starting point is always 40 lands, where I am comfortable and reliably getting a good opening hand.
Even some high mana rock decks i usually don't dip below 37 because there's nothing worse than the opening hand / 2 muligans later, and through turn 4, not having access to enough mana.
EDH:
Currently Piloting:
Dama, Sage of Stone | Karador, Ghost Chieftan | Sigarda, Host of Herons | Elbrus, the Binding Blade / Withengar Unbound | Grand Arbiter Augustin IV | Genju of the Realm | Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
Pretty much any deck I build has 35-42 mana producing cards. Don't forget that not all lands are mana producers and should treated as spells i.e. Maze of Ith.
This is a topic that's interested me for a while now as I've been playing EDH for over three years at this point. Back when I started, the standard was to use 40 lands and 60 non-land spells because those ratios made sense when compared to the ratios of a standard 60 card deck. Over the years though I've noticed land counts falling to the mid to lower 30s. Is this because of the overwhelming presence of mana rocks, falling curve, or something else?
could be curves are getting lower. It could also be that players are abusing the partial paris rule a little, which means they might run fewer lands than they would otherwise. Most of my decks have 37 lands even with lots of ramp. You need lands to be able to play the ramp in the first place. I have plenty of card draw and a few mana sinks to use if I get mana flooded. It's better to have too much mana then not enough. If you have too much mana it's easier to take some of that away for other stuff then it is to take your spells out for more mana.
I used to put 40 into my decks and typically play more battlecruiser style EDH, at least somewhat anyway. Even still I noticed I was often drawing lands instead of threats well into the game. Most games would end with 15 lands on board in a R/W deck (which has little to no ramp/land tutor). While that's better than my cohorts who normally run like 30 lands or less (I keep telling them to add way more) it still was excessive. I decided to drop most of my decks to more like 36 lands. I find that I'm way happier with that number personally. Some of my decks can even run on closer to 34 or 32 if I run enough land tutors/ramp/artifact ramp but I often find I'm not as comfortable that way.
I remember at one point reading an article about lands in 60 card decks. One of the suggestions the author had made was that for every 2 land tutor/ramp/mana artifacts your deck runs you can remove one land or something like that until you get down to about 17 lands. I actually tested that in a G/R casual fireball deck. It fairly consistently netted turn 4 20 damage fireballs on a land base of 18 lands because the entire deck was either ramp, land, or fireballs. I don't know how that translates to EDH or what density of land tutors you would need to survive on a super low land count. I would imagine in EDH its probably closer to every 3-4 land tutors you can remove 1 land. Of course, this makes no consideration to mana curve or anything of that sort.
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If yours is like mine (and most) and you use the "free partial paris" mulligan for EDH, then you can definitely can and should get away with playing less lands.
36 is my sweet spot.
With rocks and draw I rarely ever had a problem with mana, then after my group started doing partial Paris it became ridiculously easy.
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I used to start running lands at 33-35 but started getting either mana/color screwed. Now I run about 36-38 and find that perfect. Exceptions being mono colored decks or decks that have an incredible amount of mana acceleration.
You really shouldn't be cutting lands to make room for ramp. What makes ramp good is allowing you to exceed the 'normal' 1-per-turn limit of available mana. It's wasted if you're missing land drops.
I have 2 pretty tuned, dedicated lists. One mono-W with 35 lands. It also curves @ 1.88 average cmc, so that seems fine. The other is B/G with 35 lands, but also running Chrome Mox, Lotus Petal, and Dryad Arbor as additional sources, along with a surfeit of 1 cmc mana dorks, and it does pretty well, CMC 2.19. My R/W deck runs 38 and has 7 rocks in it including Sol ring, but it's curve is a lot higher than the other 2.
I think it's about 1/3 if you're monocolored, 1/3 your average cmc, and 1/3 the amount of 1-2 cmc ramp spells you play. I know a lot of animar players that like to run 32 lands, but they get hit hard of one of their dorks gets hit with removal T1-2.
That's just what I do, but anything between 35-40 seems the sweet spot for me, depending on what I'm running. I tend to run a little lean though, for some reason I draw pretty luckily a lot of games irl and I'll admit to that affecting my land count by 1-2 slots >.<
36-39 with about 10 more slots dedicated to ramp/rocks. I find the games where I dont draw my ramp early, the tend to go poorly and the games where I get the proper ramp early, go smoother. I also try to keep my average CMC below 4.5-5 MAX. Late game being able to cast several of your more expensive cards in a single turn is very valuable.
RAMP RAMP RAMP
Decks with green also tend to run smoother. Green just has the superior ramp always.
Magic players have had the urge to skimp on lands since 1993. Now that the focus is on socializing instead of winning, mana denial is soft-banned, and mulligan rules are extremely lenient with partial Paris and pity mulls, now those tendencies are legitimized. In a no-holds barred control-heavy scenario, the decks with more mana and card drawing tend to win. But that's not the whole story.
How would land counts in Legacy change if every player got a free Brainstorm each game, and Wasteland was restricted? Probably getting closer to EDH.
tl;dr: My decks land counts vary between 37 and 44 lands, but all of them play ~50% potential mana sources with as much affordable library manipulation as I can cram into the deck box.
My rule of thumb is 38 lands minimum, Always. From there, the question is, "What's the Game plan?", followed by "How much ramp is necessary?".
I'm pretty much always the Control/Stax player at the table, so I Never want to miss a land drop. ~12 rocks/ramp, sometimes more, sometimes less depending on archetype and colors. Damia gets 20, Lyzolda gets maybe 9, etc...
If I played MonoX, I Might drop down to 37 land... might. Nothing ruins my night like being mana screwed.
We usually mulligan partial-paris, however, so take that as you will.
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Playing (Only) EDH:
Sleeved: BUG Damia Stax GW Trostani Rock UBR Nekusar Wheel.dec
Shelved: BR Lyzolda Midrange RW Gisela Tokens GWB Karador Rock UBR Thraximundar Stax B Drana Big Mana Tribal
Disclaimer: All comments made through EDH-Only coloured glasses.
Looking at the bigger picture for mana, I usually devote 50 cards to mana producing or mana fetching. There 50 include lands/ramp/land fetches or artifact fetches. From there i work out the numbers for lands and mana rocks. My mono black and grixis edh decks both run 33 lands with 17 mana rocks/land fetches. Seems to be working out just fine.
It doesn't matter how many mana rocks, land fetching, sifting, or other acceleration is in the deck. The mana curve makes no difference. And I don't even take into account the 1 or 2 lands that don't tap for mana.
I just jam 38 in there and so far it seems fine.
If it feels like I'm a little choked on land, I adjust the other cards in the deck, but I keep the land count the same.
(I don't have a Lands.dec. That would be the exception.)
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With that being said, a lot of people are just bad deckbuilders who don't run enough land and wonder why they keep getting mana screwed. I tend to start at 40 lands, and then adjust from there depending on how many mana rocks and ramp cards I'm running, the color requirements of the deck, and the mana curve. Most of my decks end up around 38ish lands.
Some decks have abnormal curves, but this works for your average deck. I also do not agree with subtracting lands for average mana rocks like signets.
You might notice a drop in average land count in a deck over time as other sources of mana get added to the deck. This is because as the game progresses past turn 5-6, hitting land drops is not as important if you have other mana sources that you can depend on.
As you tweak the deck and slowly lower the mana curve, the need for large amount of mana / land (by the end game) drops as well.
In the beginning however, the amount of land in your opening hand has nothing to do with the amount of mana your deck creates from other sources. Having a ton of mana rocks and mana dorks is useless (baring the 0-mana cost ETB untapped rocks) if you struggle to make those first few land drops . The chances of having 2-3 land in your opening hand (or sustaining land drops / ready access to mana through turn 5) drops as you lower the over all land count. Because of that my starting point is always 40 lands, where I am comfortable and reliably getting a good opening hand.
Even some high mana rock decks i usually don't dip below 37 because there's nothing worse than the opening hand / 2 muligans later, and through turn 4, not having access to enough mana.
EDH:
Currently Piloting:
Dama, Sage of Stone | Karador, Ghost Chieftan | Sigarda, Host of Herons | Elbrus, the Binding Blade / Withengar Unbound | Grand Arbiter Augustin IV | Genju of the Realm | Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
could be curves are getting lower. It could also be that players are abusing the partial paris rule a little, which means they might run fewer lands than they would otherwise. Most of my decks have 37 lands even with lots of ramp. You need lands to be able to play the ramp in the first place. I have plenty of card draw and a few mana sinks to use if I get mana flooded. It's better to have too much mana then not enough. If you have too much mana it's easier to take some of that away for other stuff then it is to take your spells out for more mana.
My Saffi deck
I remember at one point reading an article about lands in 60 card decks. One of the suggestions the author had made was that for every 2 land tutor/ramp/mana artifacts your deck runs you can remove one land or something like that until you get down to about 17 lands. I actually tested that in a G/R casual fireball deck. It fairly consistently netted turn 4 20 damage fireballs on a land base of 18 lands because the entire deck was either ramp, land, or fireballs. I don't know how that translates to EDH or what density of land tutors you would need to survive on a super low land count. I would imagine in EDH its probably closer to every 3-4 land tutors you can remove 1 land. Of course, this makes no consideration to mana curve or anything of that sort.
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If yours is like mine (and most) and you use the "free partial paris" mulligan for EDH, then you can definitely can and should get away with playing less lands.
With rocks and draw I rarely ever had a problem with mana, then after my group started doing partial Paris it became ridiculously easy.
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I think it's about 1/3 if you're monocolored, 1/3 your average cmc, and 1/3 the amount of 1-2 cmc ramp spells you play. I know a lot of animar players that like to run 32 lands, but they get hit hard of one of their dorks gets hit with removal T1-2.
That's just what I do, but anything between 35-40 seems the sweet spot for me, depending on what I'm running. I tend to run a little lean though, for some reason I draw pretty luckily a lot of games irl and I'll admit to that affecting my land count by 1-2 slots >.<
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Decks with green also tend to run smoother. Green just has the superior ramp always.
my isperia deck has 40... because it has no ramp only draw.
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How would land counts in Legacy change if every player got a free Brainstorm each game, and Wasteland was restricted? Probably getting closer to EDH.
tl;dr: My decks land counts vary between 37 and 44 lands, but all of them play ~50% potential mana sources with as much affordable library manipulation as I can cram into the deck box.
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I'm pretty much always the Control/Stax player at the table, so I Never want to miss a land drop. ~12 rocks/ramp, sometimes more, sometimes less depending on archetype and colors. Damia gets 20, Lyzolda gets maybe 9, etc...
If I played MonoX, I Might drop down to 37 land... might. Nothing ruins my night like being mana screwed.
We usually mulligan partial-paris, however, so take that as you will.
Playing (Only) EDH:
Sleeved:
BUG Damia Stax
GW Trostani Rock
UBR Nekusar Wheel.dec
Shelved:
BR Lyzolda Midrange
RW Gisela Tokens
GWB Karador Rock
UBR Thraximundar Stax
B Drana Big Mana Tribal
Disclaimer: All comments made through EDH-Only coloured glasses.
It doesn't matter how many mana rocks, land fetching, sifting, or other acceleration is in the deck. The mana curve makes no difference. And I don't even take into account the 1 or 2 lands that don't tap for mana.
I just jam 38 in there and so far it seems fine.
If it feels like I'm a little choked on land, I adjust the other cards in the deck, but I keep the land count the same.
(I don't have a Lands.dec. That would be the exception.)
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