Fix Your Mana for Pocket Change

If you have five dollars to spend on a two-color or three-color deck, spend it on lands. It's not the exciting answer. But a deck that has the right colors on time wins more than the same deck with one more big spell in it, and most good two-color lands cost well under a dollar.

Players have a nickname for every type of dual land, and nobody explains them to you. So here's what each name means, when that land is good, and which ones we've got.

Check lands

They "check" for a basic land type. Glacial Fortress enters tapped unless you control a Plains or an Island, then taps for white or blue. In a two-color deck with a normal number of basics it's untapped pretty much every time after turn one. Hinterland Harbor, Clifftop Retreat, Rootbound Crag and Sunpetal Grove are the same idea in other color pairs. Glacial Fortress, Hinterland Harbor and Clifftop Retreat are all in EDHREC's top 100 most-played Commander cards.

Battle lands

Cinder Glade enters tapped unless you control two or more basic lands, so it's a little slow early. The reason to play it is the type line. It's a Mountain and a Forest, which means anything looking for those types will find it. Check lands look for those types. So if Cinder Glade is already out, your Rootbound Crag enters untapped. Prairie Stream and Canopy Vista are the white-blue and green-white ones.

Reveal lands

Port Town wants you to show a Plains or Island from your hand when you play it. Do that and it's untapped. These are best in your opening hand, when you're still holding other lands, and that happens to be when check lands and battle lands are weakest. Game Trail, Furycalm Snarl and Fortified Village cover other pairs. You can reveal a battle land for these too, since it has the basic types.

Pain lands

Brushland never enters tapped. It taps for colorless at no cost, or for green or white and pings you for 1. New players hate paying life for mana. In a format where you start at 40, you won't notice it. Battlefield Forge is red-white.

Filter lands

Flooded Grove is also always untapped. On its own it only makes colorless. Feed it one green or blue mana, though, and it gives you two back in whatever combination of green and blue you want. That turns two Forests and a Flooded Grove into double blue, and it'll bail you out more often than you'd guess. Rugged Prairie is the red-white one.

Slow lands

Overgrown Farmland and Haunted Ridge enter tapped unless you control two or more other lands. They're bad on turn one or two and you won't think about them again after that. Since Commander games go ten-plus turns, that's a good deal. Ours are the Reality Fracture printings.

Temples

Temple of Enlightenment and Temple of Mystery always enter tapped. In exchange you scry 1, so you look at your top card and can send it to the bottom. They're the slowest lands on this page and we'd add them last. They're fine on a turn when you weren't going to use all your mana anyway.

One more, for any deck

How many?

In a two-color Commander deck, six to eight dual lands and the rest basics will do it. Three colors needs more like twelve. Don't cut basics too far, because check lands and battle lands both depend on them. It also helps to mix the types, since they're good at different stages of the game.

Two-color lands in the binder

To see only your colors, open that list, turn on Fits my commander's colors under the Color filter and pick them.