Is my budget 5-Colour mana base balanced for C17 dragons?

Commander Deck Help forum

Posted on Sept. 10, 2017, 7:53 a.m. by MrMoody7

I've attempted to upgrade the mana base in C17 dragons. Being a new Commander player, admittedly I've struggled to work out what I should have dropped in place of the new cards, so could more seasoned players tell me if this is a balanced and worthy mana base to play with? Any changes? Thanks in advance!

Mana base:

1x Bad River 1x Canopy Vista1x Cascading Cataracts1x Cinder Glade1x Command Tower1x Crumbling Necropolis1x Exotic Orchard1x Evolving Wilds1x Flood Plain 1x Forest1x Frontier Bivouac 1x Grasslands1x Haven of the Spirit Dragon1x Island1x Jungle Shrine 1x Krosan Verge 1x Opal Palace2x Plains1x Prairie Stream1x Mana Confluence1x Mosswort Bridge3x Mountain1x Mountain Valley 1x Murmuring Bosk1x Nomad Outpost1x Opulent Palace 1x Path of Ancestry1x Plains1x Rocky Tar Pit 1x Savage Lands 1x Smoldering Marsh1x Sunken Hollow1x Swamp1x Terramorphic Expanse

DrukenReaps says... #2

hard to get a good idea for me what it looks like presented this way. Also mana bases are usually done last so that you can see what colors you lean on most. Best I can do is point you towards this Under 100$ Budget 5 Color Mana Base for EDH. which was very helpful for me.

September 10, 2017 10:33 a.m.

multimedia says... #3

Hey, you're using 21x ETB tapped lands. This is a lot, making the manabase really slow. To speed up budget manabases rely on basic lands and dual lands which have interaction with basic lands, check lands such as Rootbound Crag and tango lands such as Cinder Glade. Check lands and tango lands also have interaction with eachother which is very helpful. Budget manabases that use green are also better off playing more basics because they can be tutored for with land ramp spells such as Rampant Growth and Cultivate. Pain lands such as Underground River are also better than lands like Bad River.

In theory using the ETB tapped fetch lands such as Mountain Valley while slow can work with the tango lands such as Smoldering Marsh. The problem with the way you've set-up the manabase is you're not using enough basic lands, only 8, to make this interaction worth it. Even if you fetch a tango land it's still going to ETB tapped because it requires at least two basic lands in your control.

A playable budget five color manabase that has an equal amount of all colors is hard to construct therefore my advice is to pick two colors as your two most important colors and then splash the rest. Rely on artifact ramp such as Signets: Gruul Signet, Simic Signet and green land ramp spells, basic lands and ramp creatures such as Sylvan Caryatid to help to fix your colors. This means including more artifact ramp and cards that can fix your colors of mana than you would probably like, but is necessary for the deck to function.

I don't know what your Dragon decklist looks like so I can only use the original Dragon precon's manabase as reference. Looking at the original precon red is the most important color because a lot of Dragons have heavy red casting costs. Green is second and it's just as important as red because you want to cast land ramp spells in the early game which can not only ramp, but also fix colors of mana. Black is next, white and blue should just be splashes.

Here's a manabase for you to consider. The manabase focuses on green and red as the two most important colors and splashes the rest of the colors. This example $44 manabase has 16 basic lands and includes 23 green sources, 23 red sources, 16 black sources, 14 white sources and 14 blue sources with 6 lands which ETB tapped. It's set-up to take advantage of the interaction between basic lands, check lands and tango lands.

I can further help you if you would like with the manabase, but I need to see the decklist your using the manabase with.


September 10, 2017 11:32 p.m.

MrMoody7 says... #4

multimedia Thanks, incredibly helpful. I'm using the pre-con decklist and haven't made any changes other than to the mana base so the above is an excellent starting point.

I'd like to use the Mirage fetchlands ideally, though. I've added back more basic lands as suggested, but have kept Opal Palace and Cascading Cataracts, dropping Krosan Verge, Murmuring Bosk and the remaining tri lands. So the new mana base looks like this:

Mirage Fetches

6 Mountain3 Forest3 Swamp1 Plain1 Island

Mosswort Bridge (I just like this card)

Mana ConfluenceHaven Of The Spirit DragonExotic OrchardCommand Tower

Savage LandsJungle ShrineFrontier Bivouac

Terramorphic ExpanseEvolving Wilds

Zendikar Duals

Opal PalaceCascading CataractsPath of AncestryMosswort Bridge

Views?

September 11, 2017 2:14 p.m.

multimedia says... #5

Hey, you're welcome. Thanks, glad I could help.

I recently made a budget upgraded version of Draconic Domination, Draconic Might (Budget). It might give you some ideas. Budget Commander decks to me are anywhere between $150-$200. I've done some playtesting with my version, played a few games with proxies and my results so far have been interesting.

The majority of the good Dragons are in Jund: red, green and black colors. Blue is in my opinion not needed at all other than to cast Ur-Dragon from the Command Zone. Kindred Discovery is a good card, but it's double blue which means I'm not playing it. I replaced it with Temur Ascendancy. There are a few Dragons with a single blue in their casting cost which I think would be fine to play because there's more ways to make blue mana to cast Dragons than non-Dragon cards. I've however decided to stick to mostly Jund colors for the Dragons and non-Dragon cards. Using only three Dragons who are white. I've chosen to really limit the amount of white and blue cards in the deck to focus more on a three color manabase than a five color one.

In my version I'm using a large ramp package; much more amount of ramp than the precon: five Signets, Sol, Fellwar, Horn, Rampant, Lore, Cultivate, Reach, Vegetation, Birds, Caryatid, Dragonspeaker and Selvala. Cards that are lacking in the precon are two drops; I filled this need with ramp, nine two drop ramp. I may have gone overboard with the amout of ramp, but I like having the option of actually casting Ur-Dragon.


September 11, 2017 4:59 p.m.

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