Mtg how much land in a deck

If you see your CMC get closer and closer to 1, you can consider running fewer lands by going down 1 or 2 but rarely going below With a higher CMC of 2, 23 lands. Once you get to 2. Though this is a very rough guideline for a card build, it is just that: a guideline. Get out there and start building your MTG deck!

But, what about other decks? I'll save you the trouble of going through and calculating the average CMC for a bunch of different lists. Here's my breakdown of some common decks in Modern. As you can see, the pattern is pretty consistent.

Of course, the above chart doesn't include all of the decks in Modern because decks like Tron which have lands that tap for multiple mana or decks with a lot of nonland mana sources more on this in a minute complicate the calculations.

However, from the above information, we can get three simple rules of thumb. Of course, there are other factors at play. Likewise, a deck like Death's Shadow Aggro that is extremely land-light can get away with playing fewer lands in part because it has 12 cards that cycle for free.

However, these topics are a bit beyond our general rule of thumb, but maybe we'll discuss them in more depth in the future. However, I did want to talk a little bit about nonland mana to wrap things up.

For this, let's use a Gr Devotion deck as an example:. The Gr Devotion list seems to fly in the face of everything we've been talking about. Its average nonland converted mana cost is extremely high at 3. Based on our rule that with an average CMC of 2. This leads us to another rule:. Count nonland mana sources like Birds of Paradise and Mind Stone , et al. Now, let's go back to the Gr Devotion list. While it only has 21 lands, it has a massive 16 nonland mana producers, including Utopia Sprawl , Birds of Paradise , Arbor Elf , and Garruk Wildspeaker.

If we count each of these as half of a land because they function as lands but need at least one land on the battlefield to start working; plus, they are more fragile than lands , the land count in Gr Devotion rises all the way up to 29—exactly what we guessed it should be based on our research. Based on our rules, the deck should have 25 lands. How does it manage to function without getting clunky? It has four copies of Mind Stone counting as two lands, which brings the land count up to a more realistic 25!

Anyway, enough examples. Let's wrap things up with a chart showing how many lands I believe you should play at each average nonland CMC. As I mentioned before, things are more complicated than this when you consider cantrips, card advantage, and such, but this should give you a good start for making sure you have the right number of lands in your deck. When you're working with basic lands, a two-color deck is virtually always where you'll strike the right balance between power and consistency.

If you only want to play one color, that's a perfectly fine choice, but if there's an appealing card that you'd like to play in a second color, you can feel safe in doing so. With two colors, you'll be able to cast both colors of spells in most games not all games, but what most players would consider "an acceptably high" portion of games. With more than two, you'll begin to notice problems. However, that's a description of the simplest case. A deck builder is like a carpenter—the better the tools the carpenter has access to, the more complex projects he or she can undertake.

Nonbasic lands, as well as nonland ways to produce mana, can be quite powerful, and can assist you in playing multiple colors in your deck. If you have access to a bevy of cards like these, which have the ability to produce multiple colors of mana, you can begin to feel comfortable playing a three-color deck if you choose to. Playing with more than three colors is a rather advanced technique; I recommend against it until you feel very comfortable with two- and three-color decks.

Even when playing multiple colors, it can be in your best interest to center your deck primarily around one or two colors, and be a little bit less reliant on the rest. Say, for example, you have a sealed deck that's primarily red and green, but you want to play with one copy of Garruk, Apex Predator.

It might be fine to only play with four or five sources of black mana in your deck. You'll often find a way to make black mana by the time you're ready to cast your Garruk, and even if you don't, having one card stuck in your hand for a little while isn't a complete catastrophe.

This is commonly referred to as splashing a color. To play a deck equally reliant on all three colors of mana is possible, but difficult. After all, the more things that can go wrong, the less often things will go exactly right.

Here are a few more guidelines to use as a starting point:. The question of mana isn't fully answered once you've decided how many and what types of lands to play. It also influences what spells you play with and the overall structure of your deck.

The mana curve refers to the balance that deck builders should aim for between cards of varying mana costs—cheap cards and expensive cards. You can also refer to a deck as having a "high mana curve" or a "low mana curve. On the other hand, if your deck was made up entirely of weaker, one-mana spells, you wouldn't be making the best possible play on any turn beyond the first one.

There's a lot of value in having at least a couple of cards of each mana cost. Like most things, the mana curve is not an exact science. Players often search for "master formulas" for how many cards you should play with at one mana, two mana, three mana, etc. But the fact is that it's a question that depends a lot on context. What cards do you have access to?

What's your strategy for winning the game? What are your opponents likely to be doing at each point in the game? The concept of the mana curve is important to all decks, but it's most clearly illustrated in the case of a fast creature deck. If your goal is to play creatures and unload a lot of damage very quickly, you really want to come out of the gates starting on turn one or turn two.

Some card creature decks have been known to play twelve, fourteen, or even more creatures that cost one mana! Again, this is a question of strategy. If your goal is not to win with a quick creature rush, playing dozens of one- and two-mana creatures will water down your deck and reduce the number of more powerful spells that you can play with. You should have some plays that you can make early in the game, but there's no mystical number for how many it should be.

Ask yourself how fast your opponents are likely to be. Do you have to start defending yourself right on turn one, or might it be okay if you sometimes don't play anything until turn three? It's a sad fact, but every new player learns these concepts early in his or her Magic career.

These things can happen to any player, with any deck, at any level of competition—it's simply part of the game. But not to worry!