I'm on 35 lands with a functional mana curve of 3.0 (Greater Gargadon and Blasphemous Act functionally cost 1). However, I'm trying to see if I can squeeze another card in.
The deck tends to flood more often than not or just empty its hand in reasonably quick fashion and so I'm very tempted to go down a land to 34, especially when the strategy is a critical mass strategy such as artifacts where having an extra draw source or manarock would do wonders for the deck.
Keep in mind that I'm planning on cutting some high cmc cards and only leaving in answers that must be in the deck to deal with problems such as Stony Silence.
However, I am not a person who likes to be greedy and cutting down land count is a very bad habit to get into. As a result, I highly restrain myself.
What is your perspective towards cutting lands? If I run the best burst draw I should still draw them at a reasonable rate, yet if you cut too many you will miss land drops and be severely punished for it.
Well I'll give the the cliche answer of "depends what the content of your deck is?" .. which is actually completely true.
All my decks have quite a heavy spread of land counts (from 29-42), so I've very content aware of what exactly my decks can operate on and what it means to have the extremes of what the "shuffle" can dish out.
I will say that in the last year that I have probably on average gone down a land in almost all my decks.
The reason? I think because as time goes on, we literally have a better card pool to pull from, so there is an efficiency to decks that you can obtain, that you might not have had access to in the past. I find I have more filtering/manipulation cards in decks, so almost all decks have this ability to massage around higher or lower land counts, avoiding flooding or mana screw better on average.
I quite often play cards like Azor's Gateway and Treasure Map, and these really can push your land counts down or even up if need be. Sort of getting a bit off topic, but if your deck contains these type of hand/deck/graveyard/etc manipulations then land counts are not so important as you can avoid the flood/screw in both directions.
But I do think it's super important to be strict around cutting lands as your slots when you've been happy with a deck. It's easy to initially just cut lands to make room for cards that you want to "try", and this is not correct, because you're not really testing the cards in the way that you really want to.
I did check out your Marchesa, Marionette Master deck and I do think that you're on your limit. There is not a lot of draw/filtering/top deck manipulation/etc, so you're more limited to the shufflers spread. So probably in this case I'd say stick to the 35.
Without seeing your deck list I can't say for sure, but 35 seems low. I probably wouldn't cut another land.
When you say you are "flooding more often than not", there are some other things to consider: how prevalent are Howling Mine effects in your playgroup? It's is hard to imagine you flooding consistently unless you are used to drawing a lot of extra cards. It would suck to cut a land, only to find your deck stop working when your playgroup decides to drop Nekusar, for example.
Another thing is, how does your playgroup handle mulligans? Loose mulligans mean you can get away with fewer lands. Do you get more than one "free" mulligan like Sheldon's group? When someone goes down to 5 and still has trouble, do you show mercy and let them draw back up to 7? Just consider the possibility that if your mulligan rules are lax, you may be just be relying on the good graces of your friends if you maintain a land count that is too low.
My general advice in this format is, play more utility lands, and play more cheap card draw. Hope this helps.
35 or 36 lands is usually where I end up these days. I will go somewhat higher for decks with high mana curves or in colors/color combos without much access to cost-effective draw or ramp effects (mono-white or Boros, for example), whereas my lowest current land count is 32 in my Rashmi Paradox Engine deck, which is all about the rocks (and a few mana dorks) and about Rashmi-triggered draws. The deck has very rarely lacked for mana, and I can usually play Rashmi on turn 3 and occasionally on turn 2, but Rashmi and the rocks don't cast themselves. It is an unusual deck in which I feel comfortable going below 35. Even my Rhys the Redeemed deck, which runs a whole lot of mana elves and which pretty regularly starts producing obscene amounts of mana after turn 5 or so, runs 34 lands, 'cause you gotta start somewhere.
There is no rule. Where does your curve end? If it is around 4-5 mana, then you should be fine. If it is around 7-8 mana, you probably want to go up.
How much card draw and ramp do you have?
Do you have something to do with extra lands? I play Desolate Lighthouse in one deck to help if I flood.
Ultimately, it is a difference of 1/99 cards, and it is very difficult to properly estimate the impact on your deck, even if you goldfish/play with it a lot.
I usually feel like I can shave one land, one time, for any given deck. Once you start trying to shave more lands for future cuts, I think you need to reassess.
If while playing the deck you find you are always short on land drops, I do not think adding back that one land is the answer. You would have to add 2-3 lands, or some early card draw, to have a real impact. I have, for example, cut spells like Fact or Fiction for Night's Whisper, since I just want to make sure to keep hitting land drops early.
Around what turn do you start flooding? Around what turn does your deck start to consistently see card advantage and draw?
It's going to depend in the cards you run. If a deck runs cheap cantrips and card selection like faithless looting or ponder then you can easily shave lands. If your deck relys on something like phyrexian arena or bident of thassa for drawing cards then you probably shouldn't shave lands.
Definitely depends on the deck. I usallu run about 36, but my mono-green elfball deck runs 27, and my Tatyova landfall runs about 40. If you often flood out, you may be able to cut one, but there is risk. Try it and see.
I have anywhere between 30 and 40 in my decks, though based on past experience I tend to lean on the higher side - more times I've sat there wishing I had one more land, than really flooding in any meaningful sense.
Granted, I am sometimes really bad at adding raw card draw to my decks, and have a tendency to forget utility lands exist. Got to make a conscious effort for both.
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Granted, I am sometimes really bad at adding raw card draw to my decks, and have a tendency to forget utility lands exist. Got to make a conscious effort for both.
I can definitely relate to how hard it can be to cut back on cards that let your deck do the cool stuff you want it to do in order to make room for card draw, but not doing so is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. Also, putting in enough card draw is one of the most reliable ways to get by with a slightly lower land ratio, because drawing more cards equates to drawing more land, which equates to making regular land drops.
On "The Command Zone" they talk about this, and how combined with upgrading" your deck with newly printed cards, it is easy to dillute your deck to the point that it goes from a well tuned machine into a broken down limon.
I persinally lean on the side of more lands than not, even in my aggressive Edgar Markov deck. I personally don't even play Mox Diamond in several decks because I hate those two land hands with Diamond, then ending up with only two mana for 4+ turns and maybe getting hit with artifact hate and flat out losing. That is why I personally prefer signets and other 2cmc rocks.
Why am I talking about Mox Diamond and signets when the question was about lands? Because I feel it is another good example of how I don't find 35 lands to often be enough to support Mox Diamond... so a deck going down to 34 seems too aggressive and asking to be punished.
So, yeah, it also depends on your ramp and how quickly you are trying to win versus how powerful you want your individual turns to be.
As has also been talked about on "The Command Zone," having a low curve is not just important for getting a fast win, but also simply getting to those turn 5 and 6's where you are casting 3+ spells and changing the game, instead of one big spell.
When I play Necropotence, I tend to pay two or even three more life than "needed" to get my hand back up to 7 cards. For example, if I have 4 cards in hand, I might pay five or six life so that I go up to nine or ten cards. That way, when I end up "flooding" with two to four lands in hand, I can just exile the ones I won't be playing the following turn.
Remember, mass card draw is your friend and drawing extra lands is not a bad thing. Especially when you play with cards like Crucible of Worlds. A good combination of "looting/rummaging" or otherwise digging is great, and throwing away junk lands is not that harmful. I hate opening hands with only one land, and often even two isn't enough. I have got to make those drops every turn.
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"Whatever style you wish to play, be it fast and frenzied or slow and tactical, the surest way to defeat your opponent consistently is by dominating him or her in the war of card advantage." - Brian Wiseman, April 1996
My Baral, Chief of Compliance deck has an effective average CMC of 2.x due to my commander being a Sapphire Medallion in the command zone. My curve effectively caps out at 5, but it's got more 0, 1 and 2 drops than 3, 4, 5 or 6 drops particularly due to my commander's cost reduction ability. Baral also loots nearly every turn due to the kind of deck it is. My mana base is 36 traditional lands, one Mox Amber and one Search for Azcanta for a total of 38 dedicated mana sources. What I want out of a game is to hit my first three mana sources on curve, a fourth not long after, and a fifth at Lady Luck's convenience. My mana base seems okay for such a goal given the other advantages inherent in the commander choice and deck it caters to. Who am I not to comply with the Chief of Compliance?
I vary between 34 and 38 lands on average (with 36 lands being the main average). I wouldn't go below 34, but for 34 land decks I make certain that I plenty of card draw, and plenty of ramp.
I vary between 34 and 38 lands on average (with 36 lands being the main average). I wouldn't go below 34, but for 34 land decks I make certain that I plenty of card draw, and plenty of ramp.
All of this! I really like the 36-38 land range, with 34 being the lowest I will currently go.
The average deck wants between 35-40 lands. But that's not to say there aren't exceptions. I've seen competitive decks get away with 30 lands and still be extremely reliable. If you're playing a bunch of Moxen and/or mana dorks, you can easily shave lands if need be.
There are two kinds of decks, ones that need to make a land every turn until they win, and those that don’t.
Those that don’t, they are generally highly synergetic (combo) setups, where something like Isochron Scepter and Dramatic Reversal combine, or you need no more than 4-5 mana to execute a Doomsday pile. Those decks would run about 30 or so land, and also include Mox Diamond, and generally all the Turn 1 ramp available in the format. And after about Turn 2, they don’t want to see any more land, and every card in the hand needs to be able to play, or it’s a liability.
Needless to say, most decks are not in this category. For the others, about half or more of your deck won’t be playable if you are stuck on 3 mana, to include the part of your deck that’s most capable of winning the game. That means that you need to make a land drop every turn or your chances to win start falling dramatically. With that kind of deck, the absolute lowest I would go is 33 land. But also, the closer I could get to 33 with the cards available to those colors, the better I believe the deck is likely to perform. That kind of a deck generally is not doing anything Turn 1-2, so filling those cmc’s with small draw and ramp is just better mathematically than having a steady supply of your second to last land in hand.
Point being, there is more than one way to ensure land drops than just your land count. Draw spells at 3 mana or less will help you greatly. Having more expensive draw is possible, but only if your deck has a lot of ramp cards at 3 and less mana, such that you could often use one to play a 4cmc draw spell on Turn 3 when you are needing a land. You want to be using those cards that get you better performance out of your deck in general.
Taken another way, you can generally only count on 3-4 land from your deck in the first few turns, no matter what you do. Any deck will want a 3 hand land to be otherwise keepable, and a lot of 2 land hands also, and then after your opener there is a good chance to draw only 1 or 0 lands in your first 3 or 4 cards. And for land counts in the thirties that most people run, there is not a very large magnitude of difference mathematically in how often your deck gives you a chunk of 3-4 off the top with no land. You can add or drop a land or two, and you don’t just become immune against flood or screw. Draw and tutors are really the only way to consistently get what you want from your deck.
super late reply, but i saw the thread and i wanted to respond
my Jhoira of the Ghitu deck had 35 lands and ran well every time. i had plenty of draw and plenty of ramp, and most games i would hit my land drops and/or get plenty of ramp out
i recently cut a land to go down to 34 and i'll see how it goes
i've got decks that'll hover around 34 and that's about right
i've got some that are as low as 28
as times goes on you're going to start replacing things with spells that are more efficient and generally cost less mana. so now you're getting more bang for your buck on less.
you might also run more ways to ramp accelerate, again allowing you to do to do more with less.
how many ways you have to draw cards also makes a huge difference, something that can draw more tends to need less because it can dig deeper for those lands
so there really isn't any hard rule when it comes to land counts. not knowing your build or your commander also makes input very difficult. for example i have a tatyova build that sports 36 lands, and that's been perfect. i've also got a jhoira weatherlight captain build that runs just 28, and that too has been perfect. the point is there are a ton of variables here so the only thing you can really do is keep testing and keep changing. 35 seems too high? go ahead and cut a few. 35 seems too low? add a couple. flood can always happen, but if you're shuffling right, its about how consistently it happens.
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I'm on 35 lands with a functional mana curve of 3.0 (Greater Gargadon and Blasphemous Act functionally cost 1). However, I'm trying to see if I can squeeze another card in.
The deck tends to flood more often than not or just empty its hand in reasonably quick fashion and so I'm very tempted to go down a land to 34, especially when the strategy is a critical mass strategy such as artifacts where having an extra draw source or manarock would do wonders for the deck.
Keep in mind that I'm planning on cutting some high cmc cards and only leaving in answers that must be in the deck to deal with problems such as Stony Silence.
However, I am not a person who likes to be greedy and cutting down land count is a very bad habit to get into. As a result, I highly restrain myself.
What is your perspective towards cutting lands? If I run the best burst draw I should still draw them at a reasonable rate, yet if you cut too many you will miss land drops and be severely punished for it.
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All my decks have quite a heavy spread of land counts (from 29-42), so I've very content aware of what exactly my decks can operate on and what it means to have the extremes of what the "shuffle" can dish out.
I will say that in the last year that I have probably on average gone down a land in almost all my decks.
The reason? I think because as time goes on, we literally have a better card pool to pull from, so there is an efficiency to decks that you can obtain, that you might not have had access to in the past. I find I have more filtering/manipulation cards in decks, so almost all decks have this ability to massage around higher or lower land counts, avoiding flooding or mana screw better on average.
I quite often play cards like Azor's Gateway and Treasure Map, and these really can push your land counts down or even up if need be. Sort of getting a bit off topic, but if your deck contains these type of hand/deck/graveyard/etc manipulations then land counts are not so important as you can avoid the flood/screw in both directions.
But I do think it's super important to be strict around cutting lands as your slots when you've been happy with a deck. It's easy to initially just cut lands to make room for cards that you want to "try", and this is not correct, because you're not really testing the cards in the way that you really want to.
I did check out your Marchesa, Marionette Master deck and I do think that you're on your limit. There is not a lot of draw/filtering/top deck manipulation/etc, so you're more limited to the shufflers spread. So probably in this case I'd say stick to the 35.
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When you say you are "flooding more often than not", there are some other things to consider: how prevalent are Howling Mine effects in your playgroup? It's is hard to imagine you flooding consistently unless you are used to drawing a lot of extra cards. It would suck to cut a land, only to find your deck stop working when your playgroup decides to drop Nekusar, for example.
Another thing is, how does your playgroup handle mulligans? Loose mulligans mean you can get away with fewer lands. Do you get more than one "free" mulligan like Sheldon's group? When someone goes down to 5 and still has trouble, do you show mercy and let them draw back up to 7? Just consider the possibility that if your mulligan rules are lax, you may be just be relying on the good graces of your friends if you maintain a land count that is too low.
My general advice in this format is, play more utility lands, and play more cheap card draw. Hope this helps.
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How much card draw and ramp do you have?
Do you have something to do with extra lands? I play Desolate Lighthouse in one deck to help if I flood.
Ultimately, it is a difference of 1/99 cards, and it is very difficult to properly estimate the impact on your deck, even if you goldfish/play with it a lot.
I usually feel like I can shave one land, one time, for any given deck. Once you start trying to shave more lands for future cuts, I think you need to reassess.
If while playing the deck you find you are always short on land drops, I do not think adding back that one land is the answer. You would have to add 2-3 lands, or some early card draw, to have a real impact. I have, for example, cut spells like Fact or Fiction for Night's Whisper, since I just want to make sure to keep hitting land drops early.
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It's going to depend in the cards you run. If a deck runs cheap cantrips and card selection like faithless looting or ponder then you can easily shave lands. If your deck relys on something like phyrexian arena or bident of thassa for drawing cards then you probably shouldn't shave lands.
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Granted, I am sometimes really bad at adding raw card draw to my decks, and have a tendency to forget utility lands exist. Got to make a conscious effort for both.
I can definitely relate to how hard it can be to cut back on cards that let your deck do the cool stuff you want it to do in order to make room for card draw, but not doing so is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. Also, putting in enough card draw is one of the most reliable ways to get by with a slightly lower land ratio, because drawing more cards equates to drawing more land, which equates to making regular land drops.
I persinally lean on the side of more lands than not, even in my aggressive Edgar Markov deck. I personally don't even play Mox Diamond in several decks because I hate those two land hands with Diamond, then ending up with only two mana for 4+ turns and maybe getting hit with artifact hate and flat out losing. That is why I personally prefer signets and other 2cmc rocks.
Why am I talking about Mox Diamond and signets when the question was about lands? Because I feel it is another good example of how I don't find 35 lands to often be enough to support Mox Diamond... so a deck going down to 34 seems too aggressive and asking to be punished.
So, yeah, it also depends on your ramp and how quickly you are trying to win versus how powerful you want your individual turns to be.
As has also been talked about on "The Command Zone," having a low curve is not just important for getting a fast win, but also simply getting to those turn 5 and 6's where you are casting 3+ spells and changing the game, instead of one big spell.
When I play Necropotence, I tend to pay two or even three more life than "needed" to get my hand back up to 7 cards. For example, if I have 4 cards in hand, I might pay five or six life so that I go up to nine or ten cards. That way, when I end up "flooding" with two to four lands in hand, I can just exile the ones I won't be playing the following turn.
Remember, mass card draw is your friend and drawing extra lands is not a bad thing. Especially when you play with cards like Crucible of Worlds. A good combination of "looting/rummaging" or otherwise digging is great, and throwing away junk lands is not that harmful. I hate opening hands with only one land, and often even two isn't enough. I have got to make those drops every turn.
All of this! I really like the 36-38 land range, with 34 being the lowest I will currently go.
Those that don’t, they are generally highly synergetic (combo) setups, where something like Isochron Scepter and Dramatic Reversal combine, or you need no more than 4-5 mana to execute a Doomsday pile. Those decks would run about 30 or so land, and also include Mox Diamond, and generally all the Turn 1 ramp available in the format. And after about Turn 2, they don’t want to see any more land, and every card in the hand needs to be able to play, or it’s a liability.
Needless to say, most decks are not in this category. For the others, about half or more of your deck won’t be playable if you are stuck on 3 mana, to include the part of your deck that’s most capable of winning the game. That means that you need to make a land drop every turn or your chances to win start falling dramatically. With that kind of deck, the absolute lowest I would go is 33 land. But also, the closer I could get to 33 with the cards available to those colors, the better I believe the deck is likely to perform. That kind of a deck generally is not doing anything Turn 1-2, so filling those cmc’s with small draw and ramp is just better mathematically than having a steady supply of your second to last land in hand.
Point being, there is more than one way to ensure land drops than just your land count. Draw spells at 3 mana or less will help you greatly. Having more expensive draw is possible, but only if your deck has a lot of ramp cards at 3 and less mana, such that you could often use one to play a 4cmc draw spell on Turn 3 when you are needing a land. You want to be using those cards that get you better performance out of your deck in general.
Taken another way, you can generally only count on 3-4 land from your deck in the first few turns, no matter what you do. Any deck will want a 3 hand land to be otherwise keepable, and a lot of 2 land hands also, and then after your opener there is a good chance to draw only 1 or 0 lands in your first 3 or 4 cards. And for land counts in the thirties that most people run, there is not a very large magnitude of difference mathematically in how often your deck gives you a chunk of 3-4 off the top with no land. You can add or drop a land or two, and you don’t just become immune against flood or screw. Draw and tutors are really the only way to consistently get what you want from your deck.
my Jhoira of the Ghitu deck had 35 lands and ran well every time. i had plenty of draw and plenty of ramp, and most games i would hit my land drops and/or get plenty of ramp out
i recently cut a land to go down to 34 and i'll see how it goes
Real games always play out differently.
Run 25 lands in an aggro deck. Mana flood can still happen.
Run 40 lands in a deck with ramp. Mana screw can still happen.
i've got decks that'll hover around 34 and that's about right
i've got some that are as low as 28
as times goes on you're going to start replacing things with spells that are more efficient and generally cost less mana. so now you're getting more bang for your buck on less.
you might also run more ways to ramp accelerate, again allowing you to do to do more with less.
how many ways you have to draw cards also makes a huge difference, something that can draw more tends to need less because it can dig deeper for those lands
so there really isn't any hard rule when it comes to land counts. not knowing your build or your commander also makes input very difficult. for example i have a tatyova build that sports 36 lands, and that's been perfect. i've also got a jhoira weatherlight captain build that runs just 28, and that too has been perfect. the point is there are a ton of variables here so the only thing you can really do is keep testing and keep changing. 35 seems too high? go ahead and cut a few. 35 seems too low? add a couple. flood can always happen, but if you're shuffling right, its about how consistently it happens.