"[my mana plan] is to mulligan a lot and hope other players will let me mulligan for free multiple times"
just did me so much psychic damage

I agree with the point that you are trying to make, that decks can (and should) run as few lands as possible and more non-land mana sources. Unfortunately this only works if a deck has enough card velocity to find their lands, which isn’t discussed at all in this video. Fewer lands also significantly hurt mulligans, since a majority of the non-land mana sources in casual start at 2 mana. Playing a land every turn is the MOST POWERFUL thing you can do in brackets 2-3, bar none, and replacing a free land with an Arcane Signet that costs 2 mana because it’s the mana source you drew on turn 4 is actively bad.

The reason cEDH decks can get away with running 25-28 lands is for 3 reasons: 1) the ubiquity of powerful card advantage engines like Rhystic Study and Mystic Remora that allow for drawing 5+ cards per turn cycle; 2) the need to have as much mana as possible starting turn 1, incentivizing less lands and more low cost, non-land mana sources, as this can allow for backbreaking value plays like turn 1 Rhystic or Necropotence; and 3) the ability for games to be over by turn 3, negating the need to draw additional lands. Very few casual decks have anywhere near this kind of card velocity or explosive game plan, so higher land counts are needed to prevent excessive mulligans and “non games” due to lack of mana.

Ultimately, a deck’s land count is a function of its mana curve, ramp/mana advantage strategy, AND consistency of card velocity. 38 lands is a good rule of thumb for where to start with a deck, and will end up being the right count for most decks. Decks with higher card velocity and a more focused mana advantage strategy can run fewer lands, but this should be done with care.

There’s a philosophy in deck building about lowering your curve. When Lurrus was legal in all the formats, it wasn’t so much that new decks were created, but efficient decks that already had a low curve were rewarded. Creating a gameplay advantage for good deck building, beyond simply having a good deck, heavily skewed every format. Things are not much different in Commander. There’s a very good bracket 4 Karlov/Lurrus deck that is designed around cheap creature synergy. The deck gets by with 28 lands and some artifact mana. The benefit of this style of deck is that you can usually keep your opening 7 cards.

I always start with 38 lands.
I rarely go lower.

In casual commander games if you're making your land drops every turn, you have a chance to come back. CEDH decks can get away with their land counts because they're not expecting the game to go significantly beyond turn 3

Okay, glad you’re making this video, because i’ve been looking at your lists like “how TF are you getting away with that land count in CASUAL commander??” lol

I understand it's not the case at the highest power, but at lower brackets, it's better to play MORE lands and card draw. Hitting a land every turn is very powerful, and with enough card advantage and utility lands, flooding becomes a non issue, especially if your commander is relatively cheap or provides card advantage. If you draw enough cards, the difference between 33% and 40% lands is negligible to your ability to keep playing, but being low on lands before you get that card advantage going can be devastating.

Oh lord, this is what I get for championing 43 lands on the Discord ? Real mature...

I tend to play 36-38 lands (I do count MDFC lands as lands for this category) and somewhere between 5 to 10 other sources based on overall curve and stategy, but I try to have these things either let me get my big spells/commander online earlier and/or have other utility for the deck.

In most cases, I've found 41-50 mana sources about right for the kinds of decks I like to play (I lean heavy into Gruul, Izzet, Simic, Temur, and Sultai). That being said, I've also found card flow to be as important as mana sources. You both want enough mana to cast your spells, but also the ability to find mana when you need it.

My gut says 32-16 doesn't quite line up with battlecruiser commander. I think it's because the lands are reliable drops, where the rocks are still interacted with fairly often AND can get stuck in hand on particularly bad draws. I think the many videos saying to go 40 lands are optimizing for slowish environments where it's more important to hit a land drop every turn than it is to sometimes do your entire game plan 2 turns early. Where, in fact, people might get mad at you for winning too fast. To me, the 40 lands push is almost a defining characteristic of battlecruiser style play.

I personally default to 40 lands, as it means I am 70% likely to hit my first 5 land drops without any extra draw power, and hopefully by turn 5 I can get some sort of draw engine online which (at bracket 2-3 where I play pretty much exclusively) lets me find the rest of my land drops. I think your recommendations here don’t consider the typical mana curves for casual gameplay, I think basing the numbers on CEDH significantly underestimates the number of mana sources a casual deck should run, since casual decks will almost always have much higher curves

I've never found a channel where I have disagreed with so many takes but still enjoyed watching 🤣

This adds an interesting perspective to the debate. Coming from 1v1 formats, I think there's a key factor being overlooked:

The fundamental difference between cEDH/multiplayer Commander and 1v1 formats is resource scale. In multiplayer, you're facing 3 opponents generating 3 lands per turn, 3 card draws per turn, and 120 total life. In 1v1, it's just 1 land, 1 draw, and 20 life.

This drastically changes optimal mana base construction. In 1v1 highlander formats like Canlander and Archon, we see:

- Canlander: 38-42 mana sources, heavy use of powerful artifact mana
- Archon: More actual land cards, less artifact acceleration (the broken artifacts are banned in Archon)
- Both formats: No 2-mana ramp spells outside niche builds

The reason is efficiency - in 1v1, you can't afford to spend mana on things that don't directly impact the board. But in multiplayer, that calculation changes because of the resource differential.

My takeaway: Your mana base should match your format's resource dynamics and your specific gameplan, but you'll generally need more sources in multiplayer than competitive 1v1 formats.

I've actually started to pull the opposite way for "casual" commander, in that I used to run 33-36 lands (generally) and 8-10 accelerators (ramp, rocks, etc.), but now, outside of Landfall decks or decks where my target is like a 6+ CMC commander, I've actually started running 40-42 lands (including adding some extra utility lands where it makes sense to do so), cutting most if not all accelerators, flattening my curve a bit, and replacing the last 6-8 "ramp" slots with more card draw effects to keep the gas coming.

My experience - at least in my pods - is that I've had better success just curving out with a drop every turn and playing a meaningful threat, control piece, or extra bit of gas than playing a rock instead of a threat and then not having a land drop later. Doubly so if my commander or partner pair allows me to pretty consistently move along that curve. I had way too many patterns of, like, getting to 4 mana on turn 3 with a rock and then missing a drop on turn 6 anyway lol.

This probably doesn't apply in CEDH but I typically like to run some number of cycling lands and that ends up feeling close to a "just right" balance between making early land drops and not having as many dead late game draws. Particularly in a 3 color deck it is really easy the end up with a healthy number of these between the tri-lands, cycling dual lands and Onslaught block lands that cycle for one mana.

"Let me teach you about mana curve" does sound like one of the CHEESIEST pickup lines of all time.

I literally LOL'd; especially with Forrest's delivery.

By playtesting and adding removing one land/source at a time until you feel a sweet spot.

Another great conversation

@ReminderText brought me here and I can't wait to soak up all your vids 🤩

Use MDFC lands to increase the utility of those unneeded lands.