But while a little bit of randomness is fun, too much randomness is not. Likewise, if random Aetherworks Marvel spins decide too many games, then players may feel that the game is out of their hands. Besides cycling lands, creaturelands, or land-search effects with an alternative ability in the late game, there are plenty of other cards that help mitigate mana flood, and these are invaluable tools for any Constructed deck.
It is somewhat surprising to me that in comparison, there seem to be fewer cards that mitigate mana screw. To some extent, the above-mentioned cards help a little bit because they incentivize people to add more lands to their deck.
But mana screws still happen from time to time, even with inflated land counts, and then there are not many cards that can help you. Just a random thought. Back to the math. For my second method of providing insight into the question of how many lands you need, I went over the last 3 Pro Tours Kaladesh , Aether Revolt , and Amonkhet.
I grabbed all Top 8 deck lists and all deck lists outside of the Top 8 that went or better in Standard. This yielded 78 deck lists in total. For each of these decks, I noted down the number of lands including, for this purpose, Attune with Aether and Traverse the Ulvenwald and the average converted mana cost of nonland cards.
Because nearly every one of these Standard deck had between 22 and 26 lands—with 24 the most common number by far, I then also added the Top 8 decks of the last 4 Modern Grand Prix events Kobe, Copenhagen, Vancouver, and Brisbane, for a total of 32 decks to get some decks with more extreme numbers of lands. My method also counted Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger as a card with converted mana cost 10, which is not completely fair either.
But with the time I had available, I was able to assemble a data set whose quality I would call sufficient. On a scatterplot for all decks, I plotted the best-fitting line for all the data points. Specifically, I used the least squares approach from simple linear regression to minimize the sum of the squared distances between the fitted line and all the data points.
I got a reasonable R-squared value loosely speaking, a statistical measure of how close the data points are to the fitted line of 0. The fitted model, based on my data set, is that the number of lands in a deck is given by 16 plus 3. But you can at least get a rough guideline from this analysis. Unless there's something unusual going on lots of mana creatures, for instance , I'd anticipate 26 lands being a good number for a card deck. I think there's a lot more flexibility in a card deck, as you are able to tune it more than a limited deck and depending on the deck's strategy, you may not need a large mana base.
I believe "conventional wisdom" is anywhere from 18 to 28 lands. Most people I know run lands in a 60 card constructed deck.
I think that mana curves are a little bit lower than they were in my day, due to today's card packing more bang for their buck! In my day we got 1 power for 1 mana and 2 power for 3 mana and counted ourselves lucky Bolster against a little bad luck, add another land or two depending on how bad you need it. Add a little mana fixing and take some out. Show 3 more comments.
Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Ian Pugsley Ian Pugsley 4, 28 28 silver badges 38 38 bronze badges. So what's the magic number for a card sealed deck? I was playing 16 lands, and had two 1cc creatures that could produce mana.
That meant that I was likely to play at least one threat every turn for the first few turns. It also means that I would be very unlikely to have cards in hand that I could not cast — for instance, a Craws Wurm when I did not have six mana. I count cheap less than three casting cost mana creatures and spells as half a land. This deck had three: Birds, Elves and Rampant Growth. The curve is very flat — only 6 cards that cost more than three mana.
However, Blaze is a mana intensive finisher and I really wanted to hit all my land drops, so I played, in effect, They can find land early, but by pulling lands out of the deck, they actually reduce the odds of finding a land later on.
This can be relevant. If you are hoping to draw land, you might want to consider not sacrificing cards like Sakura Tribe Elder until after you draw for the turn. Leaving that land in the deck does make it slightly more likely that you can draw it — but you have to weigh that against having the fetched land untap.
You might also want to consider the effect of cards like Rampant Growth on your chances of drawing lands if your deck revolves around big monsters. For example, if you are running a deck built around Spined, Craw and Scaled Wurms, Rampant Growth and Sakura Tribe Elders may be considered mana acceleration but should not replace lands. Elves and Birds of Paradise, which do not remove lands from the deck, should be counted as half a land. To complicate all of the above, consider what happens if you run two colors.
All the same calculations apply — but with respect to each color. In the deep, dark past, running two colored deck was very difficult. To get extra colors, you had to draw the lands, or play some marginal artifacts. Today, there are tons of easily acquired land fetchers, mana accelerators and mana fixers.
Sky Diamond. The Odyssey block cards that cycle for lands e. So, what are some reasons to play 15 or fewer lands? As always, the wonderful Frank Karsten has written an excellent piece examining the potential of very land-light Limited decks in great detail.
One particularly damning thing to note is this chart:. This table shows that with 7 Swamp and 7 Plains, you will have the required Plains to cast a turn-3 Territorial Hammerskull only So Well, there are two possibilities to consider, both of which reference relatively recent developments in Magic.
Both of these formats featured cycling as a primary mechanic, which was heavily featured in each color. Ikoria actually took this a step further by having cycling on so many different commons, meaning that decks focused on the cycling mechanic could play lots of cards that were effectively just blank cyclers.
With so many cheap spells available, Ikoria allowed deckbuilders to reach levels of greed previously thought impossible. Week 1 Ikoria frequently had players on 14 to 15 lands, but this eventually gave way to the land minimum you see here. The second nod in favor of playing 15 or less lands is the aforementioned BO1 algorithm which I touched on briefly in the land decks bit.
You actually want half or more of your Limited deck to be lands? This sounds insane at first but can basically be attributed to certain Limited formats having strange rares that greatly reward playing absurd amounts of land. A similar gimmick could be employed in Dark Ascension Limited thanks to this memorable piece of draft trash. With a deck of 39 Forests and one Lost in the Woods , you could employ a formidable cheese strategy.
Basically just aggressively mulligan into a Lost in the Woods and slam it on turn 5.
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