Heyo!

I feel it’s important to return to the mana base not only because it’s so important, but because it’s boring.  I mean, it’s treated as though it’s boring, but it’s not.  Or rather, it shouldn’t be.  It’s like the gas in your…wait, no.  Bad example; that’s boring.  It’s like your shoes…no, that’s worse.

Maybe it just is boring….you tell me.  Anyway, let’s generate some value!

Value is a synergy that exists between cards that makes their interaction better than they are under any other circumstance.

I’ve been through quite a few decks and variations and I feel it a common misnomer is that good decks need expensive mana bases to really work efficiently.  This is actually, not true.

It may impact how you need to frame your approach, but there’s no reason that a budget friendly deck can’t dominate!

My astonishment here was not only at how consistently I could drop a 5 CMC, 5 colour commander on turns 4 and 5, but how effective many of the more budget friendly cards were, in particular the Panorama series.  These are lands that enter untapped, tap to produce a colourless and search up to the battlefield tapped 1 of 3 basic lands (Jund Panorama for instance will find you a basic Swamp, Mountain or Forest).

I may have undervalued the Triomes a wee smidge when they were revealed.  Yes, they enter tapped, but having the option to target them was nice, as they boast 3 types of lands (though it doesn’t count as a basic)! I’ve concluded the best practice here would be to pick 2 of the Triomes that span all 5 colours, with the 6th overlapping colour being the key colour for the deck – in this case, green.

But wait there’s more!

The check lands rock in this configuration!  The check lands are dual lands that will enter untapped provided you already have a land with a basic type they care about in play, which synergizes amazingly well with the Triomes as well as the Panorams.  There certainly come turns when I’ll have a check land in hand and the Panorama that just doesn’t fetch anything the check lands cares about, but every deck misfires.

And therein lies the epiphany – the problems I’ve had with many of my other decks are not expressly with the operation itself so much as poor decisions made on my part at early stages with my needs 2 or more turns out.  This more budgeted approach has forced me to consider my needs and my resource availabilities more seriously which has resulted in better gameplay in general.

Korvold benefits from getting first choice in card allocation; unsurprisingly functions very well, however it doesn’t function proportionally well when considered against the deck’s monetary value.  I other words, if it’s worth 5 times the amount as my 5 colour deck, it doesn’t win 5 times as much, even in head to heads.

Give these cheaper options another careful look and see if there are options right for you!

Choosing a Commander

Choosing a Theme

Brewing

What Do I Want the Deck to Do?

Deck Building

How to Build a New Deck
How to Upgrading a Precon
Upgrading your strategy (play big creatures)
How to Focus your Deck
How to Balance your Land base