MTG Salvation

Flamekin Village 1.87 - haste is always great
Hanweir Battlements 0.75
Kher Keep 1.45 - excellent to protect your big boys against sacrifice effects
Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep 3.28 - probably a good number of the Dragons are lengendary
Spinerock Knoll 0.66 - good in a dragons deck
Myriad Landscape 1.02 - ramp

I wouldn't bother with Ghitu Encampment.

Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse are just tapped mountains, unless you really need shuffle effects? Otherwise don't include.

Scrying sheets and snow mountains. This let's you get some cards and now you can play Skred and Mouth of Ronom.

Ancient tomb, dwarven ruins and crystal vein. Getting your dragons a turn sooner is awesome.

My Zirilan of the Claw deck had the following mana base and it felt great.

1 dwarven ruins
1 crystal vein
1 ancient tomb
1 scrying sheets
1 mouth of ronom
1 valakut, the molten pinacle
1 cavern of souls
1 forgotten cave
1 smoldering crater
1 hall of the bandit lord
1 flamekin village
1 hanweir

25 snow-covered mountain

Crystal Vein - Dragons can be pricy and the land setback can be negligible on turn 6.
Drownyard Temple - If you have draw/discard effects this can ramp you.
Geier Reach Sanitarium - A land that loots in a color that needs as much card draw or selection it can get.
Sea Gate Wreckage - With enough colorless lands and mana rocks that produce colorless, this card gives gas in the late game.
Zhalfirin Void - More card selection.

EDIT: Oh, and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx is still around ten bucks. I'd get it while you can, as it's fantastic for monocolored decks.

Quote from JDviant »

I mostly build mono-R and the choices above are solid. Expanse/Wilds aren't that great like mentioned, but they do trigger Valakut. You could try swapping them out for Grixis Panorama, Naya Panorama, or Jund Panorama maybe. These aren't super good but they can help give you Val triggers but aren't dead draws otherwise since you can still pay for things with them. I don't run them but they're there.

I'm confused, why doesn't simply having Mountains trigger Valakut?

It's important not run too many non-basics if you truly want to get value out of Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle. So although there are lots of good suggests, you do want to keep it simple and just run a select few non-basics that can really help your cause.

Dormant Volcano like lands, are quite slow, as you have to return an untapped Mountain which does acually trip you up on occasion
Balduvian Trading Post is too low impactful in ability to risk having a single land removed (i.e. being 2 for 1).
Keldon Megaliths is also weak in ability to warrant being slow with enters tapped.

[EDIT]
Actually we've had a table discussion before about mono-red decks my friends play, and we've come to the realization that often a lot of the non-basics we wished were just simply Mountains instead during our games.

The Scrying Sheets has been a classic exmaple of that, as it doesn't get used during a game, because you never have time for it. Often we've thought it would have been better off being a Mountain, thus provided color.

So I will just reemphasize, don't get fancy with your land base.

Quote from JDviant »

Quote from darrenhabib »

I'm confused, why doesn't simply having Mountains trigger Valakut?

Mountains on the battlefield can't trigger a Valakut if you play it turn 10, whereas you can always sack the Panorama you played turn 6 to get that trigger.

There is no way that you can afford to save onto lands for this purpose. I will give you the 100% money back guarantee that you will lose more games by not getting the mana available as soon as you can, rather than waiting to do potentially 6 damage to a creature by being patient or even waiting for Valakut (or the 5th Mountain) to get a trigger. That is a guaranteed losing strategy.

Quote from darrenhabib »

Quote from JDviant »

Quote from darrenhabib »

I'm confused, why doesn't simply having Mountains trigger Valakut?

Mountains on the battlefield can't trigger a Valakut if you play it turn 10, whereas you can always sack the Panorama you played turn 6 to get that trigger.

There is no way that you can afford to save onto lands for this purpose. I will give you the 100% money back guarantee that you will lose more games by not getting the mana available as soon as you can, rather than waiting to do potentially 6 damage to a creature by being patient or even waiting for Valakut (or the 5th Mountain) to get a trigger. That is a guaranteed losing strategy.

Panoramas already tap for mana... you are just turning them into mountains late game.


Op, you should play Arch of Orazca... maybe Throne of the High City.
Blighted Gorge can be good too.
Also, Haven of the Spirit Dragon.

I do use a lot of the lands that haves already been mentioned in my zirilan of the claw deck.
But I am constantly joking "I drew the best card in my deck" every time I draw a basic mountain, drawing mountains are really important when I am always trying to double my mana.


I used to play the cycle lands but I actually just wanted to play the land more than I wanted to cycle them.

Cycling lands are best when you are using Rings or a cycling/recursion engine.

Buried Ruin is nice to get your mana rocks/doublers back.

Aside from a few utility lands (like strip mine) I would run nothing by basics and valakut.

I would also run blood moon and blood sun so yea. Don't want to hurt.myself by running too many non basics.

Running nonbasics in mono-red with Blood Moon and Blood Sun doesn't hurt you. However, the argument to keep your basic Mountain count high for mana doublers is a compelling one.

Is this Lathliss or Zirilan (or something else)?

Zirilan generally wants sac outlets via lands - although it does depend on build. I imagine lathliss cares a lot less.

I would probably just run valakut and basic mountains in mono red. Perhaps a few sac la d's just to make sure when they try to steal my dragons I can sac in response.

High Market (~$1.79) is worth looking at for sacrificing your dragons to avoid exile and theft. Red doesn't have much recursion out of the graveyard, but, it's a safer place for them instead of exile, especially if people run Exhume and Living Death.