MTG Salvation

What are the best mana rocks for competitive decks? Which mana rocks are best in specific deck types?

Darksteel Ingot only in some very heavily artifact-themed decks.

Everflowing Chalice is great, just beneath the signets and talismans and Fellway IMO. 4/5. Astral Cornucopia I rate far lower, though some niche decks like it (Ad Nauseam where there's a Premium on low cmc rocks for example), so more like 2/5.

Fellwar Stone deserves a spot. It's frequently as good or better than a Talisman.

Basalt Monolith (Outside of combo I don't think it's super great)
Chromatic Lantern (I'd play it in a 5 color deck but otherwise meh)
Coalition Relic (One of the better rocks)
Coldsteel Heart (Pass, the two cmc rocks have way better options)
Darksteel Ingot (Meh, if nuking the board happens a lot it's good but relic is usually better)
Everflowing Chalice / Astral Cornucopia (Chalice is great, cornucopia sucks)
Gilded Lotus / Thran Dynamo (I like lotus a lot but think Thran is overrated
Grim Monolith (Better than basalt)
Mana Vault (Awesome)
Mind Stone (Pretty meh, the other two cmc ones are better)
Signets (Pretty damn good if you don't have talismans. But still solid)
Sol Ring (Staple)
Talismans (My favorite 2 cmc rocks)
Thought Vessel (Eh)
Worn Powerstone (Overrated)



Also
Mana crypt (Best rock in format?)

I personally stopped running Darksteel Ingot once Commander's Sphere became a thing. If artifacts get globally nuked, then I get a card, and if they don't and I'm in a jam, I can get a card.

That list is missing the best ones...
For competitive lists, ones that are really cutthroat, they probably won't be playing any 3cmc+ rocks unless they have some specific function or generate a lot of mana. This is because the 0-2cmc ones curve into one another very nicely. Plays like turn one sol ring > signet is pretty strong.
For my own personal list
A tier rocks
ring > crypt > vault > Grim Monolith
B tier
Mox Diamond, Prismatic Lens, Mind Stone, Fellwar Stone, Everflowing Chalice, Talisman of Dominance cycle
C tier, Lotus Petal
signets, diamonds, Thran Dynamo, Gilded Lotus
Niche Tier
Things like Blinkmoth Urn, Mox Opal, Copy Artifact, Helm of Awakening and other cost reducers

number of colors in your deck is a pretty big factor, its much harder to justify mana rocks in 3 colors, especially if one of those colors is green

Green being in the deck is totally an overblown factor. The thing is artifact mana ramp is much much more effective in the early game than the latter. Almost every rock you should be playing is going to tap for mana the turn you lay it down. Green decks benefit from artifacts just as much as any other. It's just a bit meta dependent, based on how competitive your circle is. Competitive players should have versatile, low cost removal options that can snipe these rocks before they give too much advantage.

Even in a Green deck, Sol Ring, Mana Vault/Crypt, and Gilded Lotus are still amazing. You just have much less reason to run 2 CMC rocks.
My opinions are pretty much in line with Dies_to_Doom_Blade.
I think I've gotten past the point of playing 3CMC+ rocks, with Lotus and Coalition Relic being the notable exceptions. Pretty much everything I've built recently wants its ramp down on turn one or two.

If you're asking does Darksteel Ingot have a place in the average optimized build, then the answer is no. Among mana rocks, 2 cmc is the highest cost you will see; there are some exceptions to this rule when some mana rocks like Basalt and Gilded Lotus double as combo pieces.

Quote from Swift2210 »

If you're asking does Darksteel Ingot have a place in the average optimized build, then the answer is no. Among mana rocks, 2 cmc is the highest cost you will see; there are some exceptions to this rule when some mana rocks like Basalt and Gilded Lotus double as combo pieces.

Basically, yeah. If it can produce three or more in an activation it's a potential combo piece which means you have to evaluate it slightly differently. I still don't know how I feel about Everflowing Chalice; Thran Dynamo is definitely the better card, but Voltaic Construct can't tell the difference. It's potentially a better and worse mind stone. And I don't know how many of the 2 cmc rocks that ETB tapped see competitive play either. Chromatic Lantern and Coalition relic are special snowflakes because they either fix you or potentially ramp you up even further the turn after they come down, while still letting you hold open mana.

Quote from BlackVise »

It's a shame that you put Astral Cornucopia and Everflowing Chalice together, as well as Gilded Lotus and Thran Dynamo togethe. Everflowing Chalice is 1/3 less mana intensive than Astral Cornucopia, which makes a big difference, whilst Thran Dynamo costs 1 less than Gilded Lotus - a difference that scales quite a bit with the competitiveness of the deck and playgroup.

I think the reason for this is that OP doesn't play very competitively, so the differences are less pronounced in their meta (look at their decks, and I guess the fact that they consider Ingot to possibly have a place in competitive EDH)

As OP though, this does differ on the types of deck. I'd think at the top level competitive decks the best mana rocks are not represented in the list. Stuff like the Legal Mox and other hyper cheap rocks.

I know people love mana vault, and may this is just how I play and build decks, but unless I have some bomb early play or general like Maelstrom, or I'm running storm and need another dark ritual effect, or I'm playing some Ad Nauseam combo gimmick, I rarely feel that it is worth including in most designs.

The 4 to untap and only at a specific time in a turn is a pretty big turn-off, and in multi-player makes its controller vulnerable to misplays or susceptible to essentially being time walked if they waste their early turns untapping it only for it to blow up.

I value grim monolith over this mana vault simply due to the timing restrictions of untapping it. Yes 1 more mana is very relevant, but that is just my opinion.

There is also a slight threat assessment when valuing mana rocks. I love the signets, but in multi-player games I will almost always pack a diamond over a signet. The CiTP is an issue for faster decks that want to up their storm count for essentially 1 mana, and want to do more than drop it on turn-2, but in multiplyaer a signet is a more likely target to randomly be destroyed over a diamond, and with a half-ass landbase for colors it makes little difference.

Quote from Macabre »

I know people love mana vault, and may this is just how I play and build decks, but unless I have some bomb early play or general like Maelstrom, or I'm running storm and need another dark ritual effect, or I'm playing some Ad Nauseam combo gimmick, I rarely feel that it is worth including in most designs.

The 4 to untap and only at a specific time in a turn is a pretty big turn-off

In competitive decks they almost never untap the vault, they just use it for that one big turn, then try to quickly win. 1 life per turn isn't going to cost you the game in competitive settings.

I understand that, and by doing so it has essentially become a colorless dark ritual. I wouldn't really consider dark ritual a mana rock, and doing so makes its tier highly irregular when compared to the others when considering quality.

Basalt Monolith: Good in decks that have artifact untapping effects or want explosive turn 1-3 plays (Brago, Teferi, Narset). Great for combos.
Chromatic Lantern: Bad
Coalition Relic: Good in non-green decks with commanders that have a CMC of 5 or more.
Coldsteel Heart: Bad/extremely niche
Darksteel Ingot: Bad
Everflowing Chalice: Good in Teferi. That's about it.
Gilded Lotus / Thran Dynamo: Good but niche.
Grim Monolith: Amazing in tons of places
Mana Vault: Even stronger
Mind Stone : Bad/niche
Signets: Amazing outside of green. All 2-3 color non-green decks should be running these.
Sol Ring: Second best rock in the game.
Talismans: Almost as good as Signets
Thought Vessel: Decent. Somewhat niche.
Worn Powerstone: Good in Teferi and occasionally Narset. That's about it.

I really like Ingot in my Sliver Overlord deck so as to have a target for Harmonic Sliver if I've destroyed everything already, or want to keep some things around.

I think Sol Ring, Mana Vault, and maybe Grim Monolith are good enough to go into any deck. Otherwise it's highly dependent on the color combination and deck build.

Not much to say that hasn't already been said.

I could see darksteel ingot in a place planning to abuse it aka MLD.deck.

Or in casual metas like mine.

Coalition Relic is almost universally better.

It is interesting to see Chromatic Lantern rated so highly. In a competitive deck with an optimal land base, how relevant is the extra fixing?

It is surely not better than Worn Powerstone, right?

Quote from BlackVise »

I would argue that Dark Ritual is one of the most underplayed cards in this format - the acceleration it can provide can set you turns ahead of your opponents for such a little investment.

I agree that it is criminally underplayed. For some reason it gets dismissed as a bad card for commander when oftentimes it is as good or better than Mana Vault in decks with Black.

Some interesting competitive (Duel Commander) results from mtgtop8.com. Simply going by the number of appearances in top-performing decks since 1/1/2015:

Sol Ring -- Banned
Mana Vault -- Banned
Grim Monolith -- Banned

1. Coldsteel Heart/The Diamonds -- 236 copies
2. Signets -- 208 copies
3. Mind Stone -- 126 copies
4. Talismans -- 92 copies
5. Worn Powerstone -- 89 copies
6. Coalition Relic -- 82 copies
7. Everflowing Chalice -- 78 copies
8. Thran Dynamo -- 57 copies
9. Basalt Monolith -- 56 copies
10. Gilded Lotus -- 28 copies
11. Thought Vessel -- 20 copies
12. Chromatic Lantern -- 11 copies
13. Darksteel Ingot -- 3 copies

Probably about half of these were Maelstrom Wanderer and Mono-B Combo decks.

Quote from narejED »

Everflowing Chalice: Good in Teferi. That's about it.
Mind Stone : Bad/niche
Talismans: Almost as good as Signets
Thought Vessel: Decent. Somewhat niche.

You seem to really underestimate the power of 2 cmc rocks. In all honesty they're much, much stronger than the 3 cmc ones and up, and totally grease decks so well, whether they provide colors or not. Everflowing chalice is a 2 cmc rock that scales if you need it to, never ever bad. Talismans are actually stronger than signets since they can tap on turn two for mana, and Thought vessel, while it's secondary effect is niche, is a great boon to the small circle of good, etbing untapped 2 cmc rocks.

Look at it this way: This format has a lot of decks that want to ramp up as fast as possible. Having a good amount of 2 cmc rocks enable plays like turn 1 crypt/ring > another rock, or turn 3 2cmc rock > another 2cmc rock. They just chain into one another so fast that anything above 3 cmc just can't keep up.

Quote from Exkudor »

But you should also consider that the majority of the people voting here won't have a clue about competitive manabases and will vote from their casual to semi-competitive experiences.

I completely agree with this thought!

Quote from seriph0 »

You seem to really underestimate the power of 2 cmc rocks. In all honesty they're much, much stronger than the 3 cmc ones and up, and totally grease decks so well, whether they provide colors or not. Everflowing chalice is a 2 cmc rock that scales if you need it to, never ever bad. Talismans are actually stronger than signets since they can tap on turn two for mana, and Thought vessel, while it's secondary effect is niche, is a great boon to the small circle of good, etbing untapped 2 cmc rocks.

Look at it this way: This format has a lot of decks that want to ramp up as fast as possible. Having a good amount of 2 cmc rocks enable plays like turn 1 crypt/ring > another rock, or turn 3 2cmc rock > another 2cmc rock. They just chain into one another so fast that anything above 3 cmc just can't keep up.

I completely agree with this thought!

I find it ironic that you quoted a portion of my comment in which I'm praising a 2 CMC rock, then immediately try to tell me that I'm undervaluing them. Always smart to read an entire comment before trying to form a response.

Certain 2 CMC rocks are amazing. Grim Monolith, the Signet cycle, the Talisman Cycle, and Fellwar stone are great. Rocks that come in tapped or only tap for colorless are a tier or two lower, since they are much less useful for casting color-intensive spells. I'm sure you're aware of this though, since you seem to think you know what you're talking about.

Surprisingly, despite many people who voted being rather casual players, the scores for the rocks thus far are relatively close to their actual value.

Quote from narejED »

I find it ironic that you quoted a portion of my comment in which I'm praising a 2 CMC rock, then immediately try to tell me that I'm undervaluing them. Always smart to read an entire comment before trying to form a response.

Certain 2 CMC rocks are amazing. Grim Monolith, the Signet cycle, the Talisman Cycle, and Fellwar stone are great. Rocks that come in tapped or only tap for colorless are a tier or two lower, since they are much less useful for casting color-intensive spells. I'm sure you're aware of this though, since you seem to think you know what you're talking about.

Surprisingly, despite many people who voted being rather casual players, yourself included, the scores for the rocks thus far are relatively close to their actual value.

Mainly because the ones I responded to you call niche or bad. They're not at all, whether they tap for colored mana or not. In a highly tuned list you shouldn't ever have much problem with mana, even if your rocks tap for colorless. I've run many of the colorless rocks in quite a few decks and almost never have color problems. I have even ran Prismatic Lens in competitive decks just to round out my 2 cmc rocks.

I'll give you that on the whole you seem to have the right mind, but the ones I listed are still strong.