Zvi Moshowitz is widely regarded as one of the greatest deck builders of all time. His ability to analyze a format and exploit weaknesses is a tangible thread of a legend. If one only looked at how he solved Pro Tour Tokyo and Invasion Block Constructed there would be evidence of his greatness. The fact that he went on to develop Mythic for Pro Tour San Diego and Mono-Green at Pro Tour San Juan just add to the Hall-of-Famer’s pedigree.

So when a player of Zvi’s caliber says he looks at the mana available in a format first, it behooves everyone to listen.

Mana is the foundation of the vast majority of games of Magic. Sure, Dredge manages to do stuff without ever spending mana but that is the most glaring exception. Often, cards are deemed “strong” or “weak” because of their required resources. Without access to the correct mana, spells are stranded in hand.

Pauper is not exempt. While mana bases are the best they have ever been thanks to the Return to Ravnica block Gates and Khans of Tarkir block Gain Lands the access to multiple colors lags behind Standard and is lapped multiple times by other non-rotating formats. It could be said that the Pauper is more heavily defined by the mana available because of the relatively flat power level of its spell suite - there are no board wipes or Planeswalkers coming to the rescue here.

How does one go about building a mana base for Pauper? I am going to endeavor to answer that question today. But before we can explore that frontier we should survey what already exists.

Basic Lands

It is going to be impossible to discuss Pauper without bringing up Basic lands. They are the foundation for many mana bases and actually contribute to strategies. Producing a single color and coming into untapped these five cards pull their weight.

Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds

Pauper’s fetchlands provide access to any color of mana (provided it is present in your deck) at the cost of it entering the battlefield tapped. This is a heavy drawback for more aggressive strategies as it sacrifices the ability to deploy a threat in exchange for mana diversity.

Gates and Gain Lands

While the Gain Lands are effectively upgrades on the Gates (sorry Gatecreeper Vine), combined they provide access to eight sources for each color pair. The issue again is that they enter the battlefield tapped, exchanging speed for better mana.

Bouncelands

Also known as Karoos, these lands hail from the original Ravnica block. Producing two colors of mana, they (you guessed it) enter the battlefield tapped and require a land be returned to your hand. Better suited for slower decks that can take advantage of the extra mana and not suffer as greatly from the tempo hit, they see less play today than they have in the past. Still powerful- the ability to “draw” a land is good - the format has shifted away from a place where these are commonplace.

Urza’s Saga and Onslaught Cycling Lands

The difference between these two cycles is that the first cost two colors to be traded for a new card and the latter requires a single colored mana. Both sets have seen play as a hedge against flood.

Panoramas

These fixers from Shards of Alara enter the battlefield untapped - I know, right? - and tap for colorless. For a colorless mana and a tap and sacrifice activation they can go get one of three shard associated basic lands - think a central color and its two allies (or any three continuous colors on the color wheel). The fact that they can tap for mana on their own is an advantage over Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse.

Zendikar, Worldwake, and Battle for Zendikar spell lands

Our original sojourn to Zendikar saw two cycles of spell lands. Bojuka Bog, (Khlani Garden), Teetering Peaks, and (Kabira Outpost) all see regular play while the others have seen occasional time in the spotlight. The latest cycle has only recently come to Magic Online but Mortuary Mire and Fertile Thicket look to be hitting battlefields often in the future.

Artifact Lands

The cards that make Affinity work, they also see play in decks packing Trinket Mage to impersonate Borderland Ranger. These also get included in Metalcraft decks, builds with incidental artifact synergy, or as a way to combat Wrench Mind.

The UrzaTron

When Cloudpost got banned this trio took over as the big mana engine of choice. Limited by their ability to produce colorless mana they have carved out a niche in the metagame.

Colorless Utility Lands

Quicksand, Haunted Fengraf, and Radiant Fountain have all seen play. The ability to go in any deck matters and the effects they provide are far from negligible.

Shimmering Grotto and Unknown Shores

On their own these lands produce colorless mana, Sink a mana into them and you can get any color you want. The downside here is having to tap two lands for a single mana.

Rupture Spire and Transguild Promenade

Similar to the previous entry these lands can produce any color of mana. The drawback is steep as they enter the battlefield tapped and ask you to pay a colorless when they hit the board - otherwise they have to be sacrificed.

Odyssey sacrifice lands

Tapping for one color and sacrificing for any, these lands have never seen play.

Invasion sacrifice lands

Tapping for one color and then sacrificing to add two mana - one of each of their central color’s allies - had one job in Pauper: fueling Storm combo. Without Storm, these lands have seen no play

Mercadian Masques depletion lands

Entering the battlefield tapped these lands can produce a color or two of that color. They can only use the second ability twice before being sacrificed. These lands also found a home in Storm decks and have some added utility, but have yet to make subsequent appearances.

The Borderposts

Allied mana rocks from Alara Reborn, they can either be cast for three mana (a colorless and then one of each color the artifact produces) or they cost a single colorless and ask for a basic land to be returned to your hand. These enter the battlefield tapped. While not lands, they have more in common with the lands than the entries that follow.

Non-Land Options

A quick and dirty rundown of other options for fixing mana, loosely grouped:

● Wayfarer's Bauble, Traveler's Amulet, Wanderer's Twig, Expedition Map

● Prophetic Prism, Prismatic Lens, Mycosynth Wellspring

● Signets, Cluestones, and Banners

● Landcyclers (Onslaught, Conflux, and Alara Reborn)

While far from an exhaustive list, this does cover many of the tools available to the Pauper deck builder. They are the pieces upon which a foundation is built. Selecting the proper ones, however means understanding what is going on above ground. The following attributes help to inform the choices that go into a crafting a mana base.

Curve

All decks have to be concerned with their mana curve. Think about the current state of Mono-Black Control. The deck has two key two drops - Cuombajj Witches and Sign in Blood - and vital three drops in Chittering Rats and Phyrexian Rager. The deck also lacks important proactive one drops. As such it can afford a tapped land on turn one but absolutely wants to hit untapped lands on the following turns (ideally producing black). This is what we talk about when we discuss mana curve - the ability to cast your spells at the optimal time given a reasonable draw.

Speed

Similar to curve, the idea of speed is based around how fast the game plan takes. A deck like Stompy wants to take far less time than a deck like Dimir Teachings. The former wants to be able to cast its spells early while the latter can take more time to develop its mana to cast game ending spells. As such it can afford more tapped lands (but not too many as it is still a control deck that operates at instant speed) than Stompy.

Color Density

Almost as important as a deck’s curve and speed is the density of its colored mana requirements. The more symbols of different colors that exist in a list the wider the variety of mana needed to make the deck hum. It gets even worse the more colored symbols there are - running Counterspell alongside (Liliana’s Specter) is going to be a challenge given the lands available. The more dense the color requirements, the fewer colorless lands can be included.

What has come so far is hardly an exhaustive list of the rules of building a Pauper mana base. Rather it serves as a bedrock for understanding what goes into constructed a successful deck and for knowing where a deck might not succeed. Let’s look at some of the potential builds in Pauper and establish some guidelines for consideration.

Specialty Mana Bases

Currently there are two successful decks that lean heavily on a specialty mana base: Tron and Affinity.

Affinity comes in many different varieties but the most successful focuses on three colors - blue for Thoughtcast, green for Carapace Forger, and red for Atog, Fling, and Galvanic Blast. Some decks touch white and others black. Here the answer is to simply pack a deck full of the correct artifact lands and string colored requirements together with Springleaf Drum, Prophetic Prism, and Chromatic Star. Due to the wide variety of colors required to make the deck run, Affinity rarely features lands that enter the battlefield tapped or utility lands, instead choosing to focus entirely on Artifact Lands.

Tron, however, has far more nuance. While various builds use Chromatic Star, Chromatic Sphere, Expedition Map, and Prophetic Prism to filter mana, there are always some lands that are capable of producing color naturally. The more colors in a Tron list the more flexible these lands need to be. Single color lists may be able to get by with only basics and on color utility lands - think Khalni Garden in Mono-Green Tron. Two color lists can rely more on Gates and Gainlands while three color Tron leans hard on, Shimmering Grotto, Prophetic Prism, and Chromatics to generate their minimal colored requirements, instead loading their build with high impact spells with hefty colored mana costs.

Tron has the ability to run a land based tool box thanks to Expedition Map and in some cases Ancient Stirrings. This makes lands like Bojuka Bog, Mortuary Mire, and Haunted Fengraf far more likely to see play even if they are unable to produce the correct color of mana.

Mono-Color

Building mana bases of a single color should be easy- include the right number of basic lands and be on your way.

If only.

As mentioned before, a deck like MBC has different mana requirements than a deck like Delver. The goal here is to include enough basic lands that you can reasonably hit key land drops. Looking at some common mono-color decks, we can see what these land drops are:

MBC: 5

Delver: 4

Goblins: 3

Stompy: 3

When building a mono color mana base there is less emphasis on hitting the right colors and more about finding enough lands. MBC can afford to run between three and five lands that enter the battlefield tapped without sacrificing the ability to hit key land drops. Compare this to Delver (or Stompy or Goblins). These decks do not need to hit as many lands to operate and as such they tend to run fewer lands - between 16 and 18. At the same time they also run fewer lands that enter the battlefield tapped. On occasion Stompy and Goblins will run a single spell land. Delver decks can add lands above 17 to find home for Quicksand, but there Spire Golem asks for more copies of Island.

The consistency of a monochromatic mana base provides additional flexibility for a mana base. However, in order to take full advantage of the benefits of being a single color, these decks will often eschew non-basic lands in order to operate optimally on a turn by turn basis.

Two-Color

Decks built along guild lines need to be able to not only cast their spells, but also overcome the loss of tempo by adding a second color. Take Izzet Blitz for example. This lightning quick deck needs access to at least a single red and single blue mana to operate. Beyond that it can use its suite of cheap instants to power up a Nivix Cyclops and help facilitate a kill with Temur Battle Rage. Because this deck has incredibly specific mana requirements, running Evolving Wilds make sense because it lets the missing color be fetched. Lacking multiple double-color spells decreases the likelihood of color school. A card like Stormbound Geist out of the sideboard would change the math, as it increases the need for blue mana. In these cases, the deck may want to add some number of Swiftwater Cliffs for a land that can produce blue and red.

Compare this to Hexproof. Hexproof needs to hit Forests for Utopia Sprawl and green mana for Abundant Growth and its threats. However, white is needed for Ethereal Armor and Armadillo Cloak. In this deck Blossoming Sands makes more sense than Evolving Wilds because Hexproof needs its lands to stick around but also likes when its white sources also tap for green, enabling Ethereal Armor lands produce threats.

In two color decks, the thing that matters most is hitting the correct color on the optimal turn. For decks that have an even color split and are designed to win quickly, then fetchlands may be the answer. In slower decks, or decks that are biased heavily towards one color, Gainlands may make more sense.

The longer the game plan, the more these decks can afford to run Bouncelands. Ideally these lands act as insurance for hitting additional land drops. These lands want to hit the board on turn four, allowing the slower deck to leave up two mana to threaten an answer.

Three or more

These decks represent an unexplored frontier in Pauper. With the advent of the best mana ever, it makes sense to see greedier mana bases. The rise of Kuldotha Jeskai is a result of this abundance of mana. The problem these decks will have to overcome is trying to fit the right colors without sacrificing board presence. Some decks try to ameliorate this by running only dual lands. Others add green for supplemental fixing. A few brave souls go the Tron route and lean on Prism to provide the right colors.

Pauper currently has the best mana in its history. While monocolor decks rule the day, we may well be entering an era where two and three color builds are commonplace. The key to making these builds work is understanding when they will need their mana, and making sure the cards don’t stop the deck from running. Because you don’t want to be the Jund player with only Jungle Hollows in play holding all your Lightning Bolts.

Keep slingin’ commons-

-Alex

SpikeBoyM on Magic Online

@nerdtothecore

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