Building A Consistent Manabase

By Guest Author FlyingDelver

 

I follow the rules which Frank Karsten has given us concerning mana sources, mana count, and mana curve. Magic is a game of strategy and statistics, and the latter is particularly important when deck building.  Frank Karsten does a great job of breaking that down in his articles here and here.

When it comes to examining statistics in deck building, the differences can be extremely small, to the point where they’re almost indiscernible, but GBx decks operate on those extremely thin margins. The point is to gain every single competitive edge, no matter how insignificant it may seem. The punishment for stumbling is much harsher in today’s modern, and that is why it is so important to focus on the little details. You should play with this mantra in mind: If you stumble, you lose.

Jund

There are always certain requirements for a Jund manabase which will never change from a mathematical point of view (the bold numbers represent the highest requirement for each respective color):

These are normally the limiting factors for the color requirements of a Jund manabase, so this should be the basis from which we build our decks. We should fulfill these requirements in order to maintain as much consistency as possible.

There are other factors  to consider as well. The exact number of lands to run in a Jund deck is a big debate going on in the community with some feeling 24 lands is correct and others 25. I think the answer is rather simple:it depends on the curve of your deck.

If you run only a few one-mana spells, but many two and three-mana spells, as well as a several four-drops, you want to play 25 lands. This way, you’ll have a higher chance of hitting land-drops four and five on a consistent basis. This should allow you to curve out so that spells don’t jam up in your hand and ensure that you get the most value out of your mana and spells. If you have a clunky mana-curve, you need to make sure you run an appropriate land count.

The rule is simply this:

DO NOT cross this line with 24 lands. I once saw a list running four Bloodbraid Elf and seven to eight three-drops in a 24 land manabase. This is greedy as hell.

The land count is also intertwined with the amount of creature lands and other potential tapped lands. The rule is simply:

Creature lands in particular can be awkward or even devastating in an aggro matchup. You don’t want them to hinder your curve early on. The only exception to playing four creature lands in a 24 land manabase is IF and only IF you expect a heavy midrange or control meta. Since games go longer in these matchups the extra creature lands don’t hurt you as badly.

Here is the manabase shell that you can play around with:

The number ranges can be explained by this:

The Twilight Mire substitutes the ninth fetchland (Bloodstained Mire), so you have to decide between those two. When you run two Swamps and two Forests, run a fetchland distribution of four Verdant Catacombs, two to three Bloodstained Mire and two Wooded Foothills. When you play two Swamps, one Forest and one Mountain, choose four Verdant Catacombs, three to four Bloodstained Mires and one Wooded Foothills as your fetchlands.

Now with this recipe in mind, let’s look at a couple of different examples.

This version contains 18 black sources, 18 red sources and 18 green sources (17 green if you don’t run the 25th land in the form of Treetop Village). So this manabase is perfect if you want to play Anger of the Gods in the sideboard and also pretty good when you want to play Finks as well (for the 25 lands build).

This version contains 18 black sources, 18 red sources and 17 green sources (16 if you run 24 lands and 17 if you run 25 lands, again the cut is the Treetop Village). This manabase is also perfect if you run Anger in the board, but can’t quite support Finks.

The basic theory applied to Jund also applies to Rock as well. Here are the typical mana requirements for a Rock manabase (the bold number represents the highest requirement for a given color):

The limit of this manabase is the 18 black sources and then depending on which green cards you run, between 14 and 18 green sources. Most Rock decks want to run Field of Ruin, which is obviously great, but you need to be aware that FoR does not count as a mana source for any card with CMC one through three. This means FoR does not help with casting Liliana on turn three, making the manabase really tight.

The creator of Rock, Sol Malka, does not advocate for running FoR at all, but rather Ghost Quarter. His reasoning is that he builds his deck with the understanding that it’s not a Tireless Tracker deck. He doesn’t care about getting up to five or six lands. It also lets him interact with opposing lands for one mana instead of three, and that can be very relevant against Tron. Also, since UW Control plays both FoR and Paths, you will be out of basics quickly making your own FoRs worse. His point is that when you are not trying to go as large (four Trackers), you should play Ghost Quarter, but this is still up for debate.

One difference between the Jund rules and Rock rules for manabases is that Rock decks have always been able to run four creature lands, regardless of whether they have 24 or 25 lands. The reason for this is that the manabase is overall not really painful. You can afford to fetch for basics more often and rely less on your creature lands for mana fixing. Of course, they are still important considerations since they can hinder your ability to cast spells on curve by entering the battlefield tapped. The overall shell for a Rock manabase should be the following:

• 4 Verdant Catacombs
• 0-2 Black Fetchlands
• 4 Blooming Marsh
• 3-4 Field of Ruin / Ghost Quarter
• 3-4 Swamp
• 2 Forest
• 2-3 Hissing Quagmire
• 2 Overgrown Tomb
• 1-2 Treetop Village
• 1 Twilight Mire

If you play 24 lands, then only run three FoR/GQ. You can’t get to 18 black sources otherwise. If you play 25 lands, then you can run four FoR/GQ or a fifth black fetchland. When you run the fourth FoR/GQ, then you have to run three Hissing Quagmires in order to maintain 18 black sources. If you run the fifth fetchland you can run a 2/2 split of creature lands while also achieving 18 green sources. If you run Ghost Quarter in general, you can play a fetchland instead of the fourth Swamp, which generates another green source.

So basically, the best manabase for a 24 land build is as follows:

This manabase runs 18 black sources and 17 green sources. You basically don’t have much wiggle room here. This manabase only loses a smidge of consistency when it comes to casting Finks. You can get away with that by playing a bunch of Dark Confidants, which can help dig for lands, in conjunction with Twilight Mire which can produce double green from a swamp. In that sense it kinda feels like 17.5 green sourcesand since Kitchen Finks is usually in the sideboard, it’s admissible.

When it comes to 25 land manabases, you have two options:

The other thing you can do is add a fifth fetchland instead. This is a way to achieve 19 black sources and 18 green sources so that everything gets cast easily. However, the extra fetchland makes your manabase slightly more painful.  You also now have the freedom to change one Quagmire into a second Treetop. This would net you 18 black and 18 green, which is perfect.

Here are some other variations that you can experiment with that consist of 25 lands:

The last GBx deck I want to talk about is Abzan. The principles of building a good manabase with Abzan are the same as Jund and Rock. Here are the typical required manasources for Abzan (the bold number represents the highest requirement for the colour):

So depending on what exact cards you play, your white source requirement can actually be really different. You are fine with 18 black sources and 14 green sources pretty much all of the time, but white is not clearly definable. It depends on how heavy your white splash will be. There is the option to only splash for Lingering Souls and sideboard cards,and then there are versions like Abzan Traverse that splash more heavily for cards like Path to Exile.

The required amount of white sources needed when building an Abzan deck that is only splashing white for Souls and sideboard cards would be 12. However, some people are also running a couple of Paths in their lists. For them, I would crank the requirements up to 14 sources. Since the best versions include Tireless Tracker as a top end threat, you should be playing 24 lands. Builds with 25 lands are pretty uncommon to run in Abzan, as there are not many four drops that are popular enough to support in the maindeck. Cards like Siege Rhino see play, but it’s usually only a one-of Gideon, Ally of Zendikar played in sideboards. Here is the basic recipe for an Abzan manabase:

Most of the time three creature lands in a 24 land manabase will be best. As for the basics, there is not much wiggle room. If you don’t run Path, you can theoretically run a 2/2 split of Swamps and Forests, but beyond that, the extra Plains is needed as a white source for Path. So this would mean a 2/1/1 split of Swamp/Forest/Plains.

 

As for the fetchlands, the distribution should be the same as Jund. If you run two Swamps and two Forests, then run four Catacombs, three Marsh Flats and two to three Windswept Heath. If you run two Swamps, one Forest and one Plains, then run four Catacombs, four Marsh Flats and one to two Windswept Heath. Also note that we do not run less than nine fetchlands. This is due to Tracker being way more impactful with more fetchlands. If you opt for more Blooming Marshes, then you need to run nine fetchlands. Otherwise, you can run upwards of 10.

This build has 20 black sources, 18 green sources and 14 white sources. This list is capable of casting anything except for maybe Gideon out of the sideboard. This version is fine if you don’t want Gideon or other white cards, as it’s rather pain-free when you run three fastlands. There are two adjustments you can make if you want:

Here are some possible variations to play around with.

With this in mind, the recipe for this build looks like the following:

Here, the manabase is very tight and again there is not much wiggle room. You have to run the basic split of two Swamps, one Forest and one Plains because you want to grab every color basic with Traverse the Ulvenwald. Otherwise, you can’t count it as a white mana source. The only real wiggle room is the choice of playing 19 or 20 lands, and typically, a second creature land counts as the difference.

Here is a possible manabase you can build in Abzan Traverse:

The 20th land to play is the Shambling Vent. Overall, this adds up to 19-20 black sources, 19 green sources and 15-16 white sources. Note that these numbers are very high, but they aren’t 100% consistent like actual lands. The three Traverses are counted as all three color sources, but won’t add anything to turn one plays and the same goes for Bauble. The requirements for the turn one plays (now excluding the traverses and baubles) are 15 black sources, 14 green sources and 11 white sources. So we can see, the manabase is quite dependent on the Bauble and Traverse package to function. Without it, you can only cast Path consistently on turn three (which you may want anyway). With this in mind, the addition of the 20th land does not quite help with the turn one plays, but does help to curve out better when no Traverse is involved. It helps to reach a higher consistency and makes the manabase less dependent on Traverse for mana fixing.

 

Next time you evaluate a deck, instead of looking at how many Dark Confidants they’re playing or whether they have Leyline of the Void in the sideboard, look at the manabase, and whether they’re playing the appropriate amount of colored sources for their spells. Remember that the spells are always tied to expected metagame whereas the manabase is not. The manabase is tied to the spells being played. Help other GBx aficionados increase their consistency and deck performance by following the guidelines. Thin margins are important and as I said earlier, you don’t want to stumble because when you stumble, you lose.

Cheers,

-FlyingDelver