How do you do a mana base?
The first question to ask is how many lands should I include. The simple answer is to look at other formats and use that as a guidelines for a 100 singleton mana base.
| Format |
Draft (Low Curve) |
Draft (High Curve) |
Constructed (Low Curve) |
Constructed (High Curve) |
100 Singleton (Low Curve) |
100 Singleton (High Curve) |
| Lands |
16 |
18 |
23 |
27 |
38 ? |
45 ? |
| Total Deck Size |
40 |
40 |
60 |
60 |
100 |
100 |
| Percentage |
40% |
45% |
38% |
45% |
38% |
45% |
The second question is what lands should I use. That is infinitely more complex, and much more subjective. Here are a couple of my personal guidelines.
7. Blue decks should play
Trinket Mage and 1-2 artifact lands.
9. Black decks should play
Volrath's Stronghold. It is one of the more back-breaking cards in the format.
11. Any 2 color deck that isn't red should at least play its signet to avoid
Blood Moon effects.
12. Play 1-4 Ravinica Bounce lands. They're risky but they also have great rewards of stretching out your mana.
Here are the top lands you should consider for a 100 singleton deck.
| Tier 1 - 2 Color - Nonbasic Lands |
| They're not just duals, they can search out any kind of land when combined with "dual land type" duals. Watch out for Bind type effects and |
| These are the most expensive dual lands for a reason, they are really good. |
| These lands are high risk / high reward. They come into play tapped, so they're slow and vulnerable to bounce/land destruction, but they also fix mana and count as two lands in one. I usually like to have 3-4 in a deck. |
| These are better than duals in a two color deck. Otherwise, they are still very useful. |
| These duals have the best cost/value ratio of any rare dual land. They are cheap and not too shabby. |
| Must have in any deck playing both colors. They have a medium sized price tag, and they are really nice. |
| White/Black |
Black/Green |
Green/Blue |
Blue/Red |
Red/White |
| I know they're not out yet, but when they come up, they'll be staples. |
| Great Cheap Common duals are hard to find. They are especially good with Winter Orb, Garruk and Armageddon type decks. |
| I don't really like the pain lands, but there are fewer options in enemy colors and these make the cut. |
| Tier 1 - Multi-Color - Nonbasic Lands |
| Don't play too many "enters the battlefield tapped" lands, but a couple of these go a long way. |
| Between these and Vivids, you can pick your lands to suit your needs. Once again, don't play too many tapped lands. (more than 5-6) |
| Very good if you have the expensive lands to search for. Otherwise you might be better off with the Alara Tri-lands or Vivid Lands. (Depends on deck, 0-5) |
| Tier 1 - Man-Lands - Nonbasic Lands |
| Man-lands are very important for smoothing land draws. Which ones you use will depend on your colors, collection, and preferences, but make sure to add a few (2-4) |
| Wasteland |
 |
| Wasteland |
| Many games are won because of Wasteland turning an opponent's otherwise good hand into trash. Wasteland is perhaps the only essential land in the format. |
So, let's get back to building our U/G snake deck.
Basically I used this deck as a starting point in my last article to show how to create a deck from a concept and filling it out with the "best cards" of our appropriate colors. In this case the concept was "snake tokens" and opposition. I must caution that you shouldn't just mix the most popular cards together into a deck.
You need to pay attention to what you're trying to accomplish and try not to dilute your focus. For instance Natural Order is a great card for a reanimator deck that is base green, because it can summon a Hellkite Overlord or a Woodfall Primus out of nowhere. In this deck, it can't pull much out. Sure, I could add a Simic Sky Swallower to the deck so Natural Order would have a decent large target threat, but then what happens when we draw the Sky Swallower and don't have the mana to cast it. By adding Natural Order we end up changing this deck from a U/G tokens deck to a U/G ramp deck. Not that there is anything wrong with a ramp deck. The problem is that if we try to have a deck that focuses on tokens and ramping up to a large threat, we're not going to do well at either task.
So, now we need lands for our deck. Using my guidelines, here are the lands I would start with.
Now, is this deck any good? Probably not. I've tested it a bit, and I've had a little bit of success. The deck needs a few more Naturalizes on a stick, such as Wickerbough Elder and Nantuko Vigilante. Also it really needs a few cards I don't really want to buy right now, ie. Force of Will, Engineered Explosives, (Mystic Tutor). I've also discovered that a white splash may be needed in order to find Opposition easier. Enlightened Tutor and Idyllic Tutor could be really helpful.
But, this article is about mana bases, so I want to stick to mana bases.
So, let's look at the mana bases of the some champion decks. Here is the first decklist.
Analysis - Wasteland and Volrath's Stronghold are obvious inclusions in most decks. There are only 4 lands that come into play tapped all the time. That's pretty good. Also, this deck uses mostly search lands, filter lands and duals to get the mana it needs. It has only 2 basic lands, which means Anathemancer can be painful to this deck, however, it's using Tainted Pact so it doesn't want duplicates of lands. With Tainted Pact you want no more than 2 of each basic land (normal and snow-covered versions).
Now, here's a U/G decklist that is very similar to the Snake deck I've suggested earlier. It's mana base is geared towards basic lands because U/G typically has problems with Dwarven Miners and it wants to utilize Primal Order against the right decks.
Analysis - This deck wants to maximize the number of basic lands it can put into play. To this end, it has 8 search lands. Search lands also help a lot when you have a Sensei's Divining Top out. In green/blue we don't have access to Volrath's Stronghold, but we have Pendelhaven Tolaria West and Wasteland as the powerful utility lands in the deck. I'm actually surprised not to see Academy Ruins in this deck, but I'm guessing the need to have basic lands might outweigh the benefit to getting back broken artifacts.
Conclusions - All dual lands are not made equally. Although there are a whole lot of lands out there, most of the good decks seem to use the same cycles of duals and a small list of utility lands. Below is the frequency list of the nonbasic lands that appeared in the top 8 decklists from the first 7 100 singleton premier events.
| Land |
| Wooded Foothills |
47 |
| Windswept Heath |
44 |
| Flooded Strand |
42 |
| Wasteland |
42 |
| Bloodstained Mire |
35 |
| Polluted Delta |
32 |
| Treetop Village |
31 |
| Reflecting Pool |
30 |
| Mishra's Factory |
30 |
| Savannah |
28 |
| Temple Garden |
26 |
| Pendelhaven |
25 |
| Mutavault |
23 |
| Terramorphic Expanse |
21 |
| Breeding Pool |
21 |
| Underground Sea |
20 |
| Sacred Foundry |
19 |
| Tolaria West |
19 |
| Taiga |
18 |
| Stomping Ground |
18 |
| Watery Grave |
18 |
| Flagstones of Trokair |
18 |
| Steam Vents |
18 |
| Wooded Bastion |
17 |
| Tundra |
17 |
| Hallowed Fountain |
17 |
| Volrath's Stronghold |
16 |
| Flooded Grove |
16 |
| Jungle Shrine |
15 |
| Grasslands |
15 |
| Krosan Verge |
13 |
| Badlands |
13 |
| Horizon Canopy |
13 |
| Selesnya Sanctuary |
13 |
| Overgrown Tomb |
13 |
| Godless Shrine |
12 |
| Crumbling Necropolis |
12 |
| City of Brass |
12 |
| Brushland |
11 |
| Vivid Grove |
11 |
| Mystic Gate |
11 |
| Sungrass Prairie |
11 |
| Vivid Meadow |
11 |
| Blood Crypt |
11 |
| Academy Ruins |
11 |
| Vault of Whispers |
10 |
| Seaside Citadel |
10 |
| Mountain Valley |
10 |
| Seat of the Synod |
10 |
| Simic Growth Chamber |
10 |
| Murmuring Bosk |
10 |
| Sunken Ruins |
10 |
| Blinkmoth Nexus |
9 |
| Vivid Creek |
9 |
| Karplusan Forest |
9 |
| Vivid Crag |
9 |
| Arcane Sanctum |
9 |
| Dimir Aqueduct |
9 |
| Fire-Lit Thicket |
9 |
| Azorius Chancery |
8 |
| Thawing Glaciers |
8 |
| Tree of Tales |
7 |
| Battlefield Forge |
7 |
| Cascade Bluffs |
7 |
| Yavimaya Coast |
7 |
| Graven Cairns |
7 |
| Exotic Orchard |
7 |
| Ghitu Encampment |
7 |
| Keldon Megaliths |
7 |
| Flood Plain |
6 |
| Great Furnace |
6 |
| Llanowar Reborn |
6 |
| Barbarian Ring |
6 |
| Ancient Den |
6 |
| Ancient Ziggurat |
6 |
| Vivid Marsh |
6 |
| Mikokoro, Center of the Sea |
5 |
| Izzet Boilerworks |
5 |
| Urza's Factory |
5 |
| Cephalid Coliseum |
5 |
| River of Tears |
5 |
| Boros Garrison |
5 |
| Adarkar Wastes |
5 |
| Mossfire Valley |
5 |
| Tranquil Thicket |
5 |
| Nimbus Maze |
5 |
| Rugged Prairie |
5 |
| Miren, the Moaning Well |
4 |
| Gruul Turf |
4 |
| Lonely Sandbar |
4 |
| Twilight Mire |
4 |
| Faerie Conclave |
4 |
| Gilt-Leaf Palace |
4 |
| Sapseep Forest |
4 |
| Savage Lands |
4 |
| Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth |
4 |
| Grove of the Burnwillows |
4 |
| Ancient Tomb |
4 |
| Forgotten Cave |
4 |
| Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree |
4 |
| Golgari Rot Farm |
3 |
| Underground River |
3 |
| Secluded Steppe |
3 |
| Dreadship Reef |
3 |
| Skycloud Expanse |
3 |
| Darksteel Citadel |
3 |
| Rakdos Carnarium |
3 |
| Gemstone Mine |
3 |
| Minamo, School at Water's Edge |
3 |
| Calciform Pools |
3 |
| Temple of the False God |
3 |
| Llanowar Wastes |
3 |
| Shizo, Death's Storehouse |
2 |
| Rith's Grove |
2 |
| Naya Panorama |
2 |
| Rocky Tar Pit |
2 |
| Mirrodin's Core |
2 |
| Secluded Glen |
2 |
| Tendo Ice Bridge |
2 |
| Bant Panorama |
2 |
| Fetid Heath |
2 |
| Elfhame Palace |
2 |
| Grand Coliseum |
2 |
| Shivan Oasis |
2 |
| Shivan Reef |
2 |
| Undiscovered Paradise |
2 |
| Nantuko Monastery |
2 |
| Orzhov Basilica |
2 |
| Centaur Garden |
1 |
| Forbidding Watchtower |
1 |
| Contested Cliffs |
1 |
| Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers |
1 |
| Keldon Necropolis |
1 |
| Rootbound Crag |
1 |
| Glimmervoid |
1 |
| Ruins of Trokair |
1 |
| Oboro, Palace in the Clouds |
1 |
| Crystal Vein |
1 |
| Dakmor Salvage |
1 |
| Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep |
1 |
| Grixis Panorama |
1 |
| Caves of Koilos |
1 |
| Arctic Flats |
1 |
| Skarrg, the Rage Pits |
1 |
| Bad River |
1 |
| Havenwood Battleground |
1 |
| Ancient Spring |
1 |
| Stalking Stones |
1 |
| Vesuva |
1 |
| Highland Weald |
1 |
| Drowned Catacomb |
1 |
| Sulfurous Springs |
1 |
| Sunpetal Grove |
1 |
| Desert |
1 |
| Cabal Coffers |
1 |
| Zoetic Cavern |
1 |
Well, thanks for reading. Hopefully this article has helped peak your interest in 100 singleton.
- Marcus, Shuyin Knight of Zanarkand on Magic Online.
13 Comments
good article. im enjoying 100cs at the moment. as a sidenote, i think River of Tears is not functioning properly. i was recently playing some 2-man queues and River of Tears was NOT tapping for ANY mana during my opponent's turn. I e-mailed MTGO and hopefully brought it to their attention.
I noticed that bug the other day as well. Hopefully they will get if fixed soon.
Note: This was written and submitted right before Master's Edition 3 was released. So, yes, I know the Scrubland, Bayou, etc are all now online, and yes they are staples of the format.
Also Karakas and Bazaar of Baghdad are staple broken lands in the format.
Karakas protects your legends as well as makes your opponent's legendary much less scary. I expect it to see a lot of play with Vendillon Clique, Venser, and possibly Mangara of Corondor....
Bazaar of Baghdad just gives reanimator another really powerful weapon, as well as Dredge based strategies and it gives Squee a nice reason to show up
I just bought one Karakas and I can tell you that it is an insane land. Opposing legendary creatures lose all their value while you have it on table whereas it takes two instant speed removals for the opponent to remove yours. Simply amazing.
LE
Thanks for these guidelines for building a mana base in 100CS.
It's expensive to accumulate one of each good land for this format. The cards you've listed add up to something like $400 by my count, and pretty soon you can add $50(?) for the Zendikar fetches.
Still, I think this format is easier to break into than most. As an example, you can get a mana base for green/white decks for about $50, which isn't so awful, depending on your budget. Compare that with tournament decks' mana in other non-pauper formats.
I'm glad you listed the fetch lands first, because I think those are the first ones anybody should buy to get started with Singleton. If you get a few of those and just a couple of dual lands (or Ravnica duals to save cash) in your favorite colors, you can get a ton of mileage out of those few cards. You especially get a lot of use out of green duals, because they can also be searched out using Nature's Lore, Three Visits, Yavimaya Druid, Krosan Verge, etc. That's better value than something like a filter land or an M2010 dual that you only get to use when you draw it out of your 100 cards. Also, it should be stated that fetches are an important means of shuffling your deck when using Sensei's Divining Top or Sylvan Library.
If budget is really an issue I wouldn't try a deck with more than 3 colors. Obviously 1 color and 2 color decks are going to be a lot cheaper than the multi-color monstrousities that many players are running.
Monored decks are the cheapest and they can really hate out the expensive duals with Blood Moon effects, and Miners.
The duals and cards are ordered so that you can go down the list and pick out the land for a 2 color deck relatively easily.
I started out making 2 color decks and as I got more cards I now try for 3 color decks. However I still don't have the collection for much of a solid mana base beyond 3 colors.
One thing I would be interested in hearing more about is figuring out how many lands to include. I think it's particularly hard to gauge the right number in this format, because it takes more games of play testing to develop a feel for it for a given deck. Even when you get manascrewed a few times, you have to wonder if it's just the inherent randomness of the larger deck size giving you a bad run.
Does it seem like people go just a bit thinner on lands in this format than in other formats? I don't recall seeing 43-45 lands in any 100CS decks, even though that percentage has shown up in 60 card decks from time to time. The format isn't as fast as some others, so does it make sense for decks to be a tad thinner to avoid drawing more dead lands than your opponent in the late game?
It should be noted that a lot of decks do run a bit lighter on mana because of cards like Ponder, Brainstorm, Chrome Mox, Tithe, Aether Vial, and Weathered Wayfarer, which can usually thin your lands a bit.
Honestly I think a lot of the decks out there don't run enough land. However that's just my opinion, based on how many lands you need to have to not miss the first 4 lands drops...
Interesting Article. A lot of 100s articles have hyped particular builds or combos but yours seems more in the direction that the format needs: IE: tech101. In particular I like your land analysis which while it might not be 100% seems pretty dead on to me. I posted my own take on 100s a few days ago that should show up in a week or a month on here but I don't go into any of that instead focusing on my rather dismal start in the current ongoing mymtgo tourney and with some indirect advice for beginners like myself. (Not that I am a beginner player or even really new to the singleton idea but when starting a new format it is best to just assume you know nothing or very little and go from there.)
One thing I note there is that the singleton card pool is extremely expensive unless you just happen to be a 7 year vet with many fine cards under your belt. Even though my nonbeta account is well over 4 years old and has a respectable size it doesn't really have the cards to field a good 100cs deck. I can field a mediocre deck that manage wins through sheer luck, determination, some bad luck/play on my ops part and perhaps good play on mine. This is against decks that have the cards you list above. Against other mediocre collections mine stands up well. Any thoughts on that?
One thing I take exception to however is the stated need for a maindeck Wasteland (which I don't own). As I understand it the popular and winning monored builds run very few nonbasics and none are threats worth a wasted land drop (except maybe a wastelands) and the same goes for whiteweenie and mbc.
Classic is extremely expensive because it can use some of the most expensive cards in existence. 100 singleton uses all the cards that classic does and even has a larger deck size. You can't reasonably assume that the best decks are going to cheap.
The good news is that once you've constructed a 100 singleton deck, you can keep playing it without the need to change it too much once a new set comes out. It's a big up-front cost, but a small cost to continue playing.
Having said this, there are some ways to cut down on the cost of building a deck. In fact, you mentioned them in the last part of your reply. Mono-red, White-Weenie, and Mono-black are basically the cheapest competitive/ semi-competitive decks out there.
If you're going to go cheap, go mono-colored, or one color with a splash of a second color.
I don't use the term must-include lightly when it comes to Wasteland. Even against the decks you mentioned Wasteland has decent targets. White-Weenie has Karakas and Kjeldoran Outpost. Mono-black has Volrath's Stronghold and Cabal Coffers, and Mono-Red has Mishra's Factory, Mutavault, the Keldon lands, and possibly the Ravnica Bouncelands. Even in the worst case, Wasteland is still a colorless source of mana. I would even consider playing Ghost Quarter in some instances simply because of how strong some of the lands are in this format.
I've won or lost more games due to Wasteland than any other card. When I am playing I specifically try to play around it. Play out the basic lands first, then the Fetchlands then the other lands. If I have a comes into play tapped land, I can usually expect that it'll be wastelanded before I can use it. It is usually the first land I find with Weathered Wayfarer and it often functions like a colorless timewalk.
Even if Wasteland is only mediocre against 1 of the 8 top decks out there, I'd still make it the first nonbasic land that goes into my deck, and it would be the last nonbasic land that I would cut.
is a man land i use in my midrabge naya deck
One minor Land you missed for your UG land base you constructed: Blood Stained Mire
Even prior to ME3 this was a good source of UG mana by including an Underground Sea and a Taiga. It just depends if you want to run those 2 nonbasics over 2 basics for the chance at an extra UG source. So it wasn't necessarily always correct, but it was often overlooked by people even though I know a few who used that strategy.
Yes, that is definitely worth mentioning. But as you said it's not cut a dry whether including them is really worth it when it increases your suceptibility to nonbasic land hate.
I personally think that UG has too much of a problem dealing with Miners and Magus of the Moon to really want to up your nonbasic land count that much. Also if you draw the Underground Sea and Taiga before popping the Mire, you've just created a dead card for yourself. Granted that is a rare possibility, but it's still an added risk.
If the deck had a more creature stealing focus, then adding red mana makes a bit more sense, because stealing a miner could be quite good. In other words a blue deck with; Old Man of the Sea, Threads of Disloyalty, Vedalken Shackles, Sower of Temptation, etc...
Also if you don't already have those duals, it can add a significant cost to the deck that is probably not worth it for 1 more fetchland.