How to Build a Mana Base for Multi-Color Commander Decks

The most overlooked part of Commander deckbuilding is the mana base. Players spend hours choosing their 63 non-land cards and then throw in 36 random lands as an afterthought. But your mana base determines whether those 63 cards ever get cast.

A great mana base means you can reliably cast your spells on curve, in the right colors, without too many lands entering tapped. A bad mana base means you spend the first four turns watching your opponents play while you stare at lands that produce the wrong color.

How Many Lands Should You Run?

The standard recommendation is 36-38 lands for most Commander decks. Here is how to fine-tune that number.

Run 38 lands if:

Your average mana value is 3.5 or higher
Your deck has few mana dorks or artifact ramp
Your commander costs 5+ mana
You are new to deckbuilding (more lands = fewer non-games)

Run 36 lands if:

Your average mana value is below 3.0
You run 10+ mana rocks or dorks
Your commander costs 3 or less mana
Your deck has a lot of card draw to find lands naturally

Run 34 lands if:

Your deck is extremely low to the ground (average MV under 2.5)
You have 12+ non-land mana sources
You have extensive card selection (cantrips, scry, surveil)

Never go below 33 lands unless you have a very good reason. Missing land drops in Commander is miserable.

Two-Color Decks

Two-color decks have the most straightforward mana bases. You need lands that produce both of your colors without too many entering tapped.

Budget Mana Base (~$5-15)

A budget two-color mana base can be built almost entirely from cheap or free cards:

15-16 basics of each color (30-32 total basics)
Command Tower (under $1)
Exotic Orchard (under $1)
Path of Ancestry (under $1, scry bonus for tribal)
Temple of the relevant color pair (the scry lands, under $1 each)
Relevant bounce land (like Azorius Chancery, under $1)
Ash Barrens (under $1, basic land fixing)

Total: 36-37 lands for under $5.

Optimized Mana Base (~$50-100)

Add these upgrades in order of priority:

Shock land (like Breeding Pool) - Comes in untapped for 2 life. $10-20 each.
Check land (like Hinterland Harbor) - Comes in untapped if you control the right basic. $2-5 each.
Pain land (like Yavimaya Coast) - Always untapped, taps for colorless or either color for 1 life. $1-3 each.
Filter land (like Flooded Grove) - Converts one color into the other. $5-15 each.
Fetch land (like Misty Rainforest) - Finds shock lands and basics, thins your deck. $15-40 each.

Premium Mana Base ($200+)

The original dual lands (like Tropical Island) are the gold standard but cost hundreds of dollars. The practical ceiling for most players is shock lands + fetch lands, which provide 90% of the consistency at a fraction of the cost.

Three-Color Decks

Three-color mana bases require more thought. You need lands that produce all three colors, and you cannot rely on basics as heavily.

Land Count Distribution

For a three-color deck with relatively even color requirements:

10-12 basics (split based on which colors you need most early)
10-12 dual lands (lands that produce two of your three colors)
3-5 tri-color lands (Command Tower, Exotic Orchard, Tri-land, Path of Ancestry)
4-6 utility lands (colorless lands with useful abilities)

Budget Three-Color Fixing

Prioritize these cheap options:

Tri-lands (like Arcane Sanctum) - Enter tapped but produce all three colors. Under $1.
Gain lands (like Tranquil Cove) - Enter tapped, gain 1 life. Under $0.25.
Evolving Wilds / Terramorphic Expanse - Find any basic. Under $0.25.
Opal Palace - Colorless or any color in commander's identity, with a +1/+1 counter bonus.
Myriad Landscape - Ramp that finds two basics of the same type.

Key Principle: Minimize Tapped Lands

The biggest mistake in three-color mana bases is playing too many lands that enter tapped. Each tapped land costs you a full turn's worth of mana. In a format where Sol Ring and fast mana can put opponents two turns ahead, entering tapped repeatedly is devastating.

General guideline: No more than 8-10 tapped lands in a three-color deck. If a land enters tapped and does nothing else special, seriously consider replacing it with a basic.

Four and Five-Color Decks

Mana bases for four and five-color decks are expensive to build well. Here is the reality:

Budget Approach

If you are on a budget, lean heavily on:

Command Tower (produces all colors)
City of Brass / Mana Confluence (all colors, costs life)
Exotic Orchard (usually produces what you need)
Chromatic Lantern (artifact that fixes all your mana)
Tri-lands for your three most important color combinations
Green ramp spells (if green is in your identity, use Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, and land ramp to fix colors)
Basics in your two most important colors

The Green Advantage

Five-color decks that include green have a massive advantage because green ramp spells find basic lands of any type. A five-color deck with green can run Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, Farseek, Nature's Lore, and Three Visits to find whatever colors it needs.

This is why most budget five-color decks lean into green ramp rather than expensive land bases.

Utility Lands Worth Including

Beyond color fixing, some utility lands are good enough to include in almost any deck:

Rogue's Passage: Makes a creature unblockable. Great for Voltron or commander damage strategies.
Reliquary Tower: No maximum hand size. Useful if your deck draws a lot of cards.
War Room: Draws a card. The life cost scales with your color count.
Arch of Orazca: Draws a card if you have the city's blessing (10+ permanents).
Castle series (Castle Vantress, Castle Ardenvale, etc.): Enter untapped with the right basic and have useful activated abilities.

Warning: Do not overload on utility lands. Every colorless utility land is a land that cannot produce colored mana. In a three-color deck, running five colorless lands can lead to hands where you cannot cast anything.

Common Mistakes

Too many tapped lands: The biggest mistake. If more than a quarter of your lands enter tapped, your deck will feel sluggish.

Wrong basic count: Not running enough basics makes land-ramp spells worse. Cards like Cultivate need basics to find. Run at least 8-10 basics even in three-color decks.

Ignoring color weight: If your deck has 20 green cards, 15 blue cards, and 5 white cards, your mana base should reflect those proportions. Do not split evenly.

Skipping ramp for expensive lands: A Breeding Pool is nice, but if you are choosing between a $15 land and three solid ramp spells, the ramp spells will improve your deck more.

Tools for Mana Base Building

Building a mana base manually is tedious. You need to count pips, balance colors, and track how many tapped vs untapped sources you have. AI deckbuilding tools like Manacove can handle this automatically, suggesting a mana base that matches your deck's color requirements and budget.

For more on ensuring your deck curves out properly, read our guide on Commander mana curves. And if you are building on a budget, our budget building guide covers how to get the most out of affordable mana bases.