Lands in Magic: The Gathering are vital. They produce the mana you need to cast spells, summon creatures, and activate abilities. Without lands, your deck would not function. Most decks rely on them to supply the colored mana or colorless mana required to carry out a game plan. If you want to win consistently, you need to understand how different lands work and how they fit into various mana bases.
This article explains the main land types in Magic, including the basic land types and the many kinds of nonbasic land. You will see how they apply to formats like Standard, Modern, Legacy, and Commander. Each section will focus on a specific category of lands or strategies. By the end, you will have a clear idea of how to pick the right deck and the right lands for your style of play.
Keep in mind that lands in Magic have been around for quite some time—since the game’s start. Over the years, new land cycles and creative designs have been introduced. They each offer unique benefits and drawbacks. Some let you pay two life to come in untapped, others come in as a tapped land but gain you one life, and still others give you strong abilities that can alter the course of the game. Understanding your options is key.
Basic Lands
Basic lands are the first thing new players learn about. There are five basic land types: Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest. Each basic land can tap for one mana of its color. You can include any number of each basic land in your deck. The game does not restrict you to four copies for these cards.
- Plains produce white mana.
- Islands produce blue mana.
- Swamps produce black mana.
- Mountains produce red mana.
- Forests produce green mana.
When you are playing lands, these basics are often the best choice if you do not want to worry about life payments or awkward enters-the-battlefield conditions. They always come in battlefield untapped unless a spell or ability says otherwise. The vast majority of decks include some number of basic lands, even if they run many nonbasic ones. This is because certain powerful spells or effects, such as Blood Moon or Back to Basics, punish you for using nonbasic lands. Having a few basic plains, islands, or other basics can save you in those matchups.
You also might need basic lands to reveal lands for certain cards or to fetch with specific spells or abilities. Some ramp spells say “search your library for a basic land card” and put it on the battlefield. If you do not run enough basics, you may fail to find what you need.
Dual Lands
Magic also has many dual lands that can tap for two colors of mana. Some of the most famous are the original “Alpha duals,” like Volcanic Island (which taps for blue or red) and Underground Sea (which taps for blue or black). These lands have basic land types (like Island or Swamp), but they are not considered basic land. They count as nonbasic land because they do not have the “basic” supertype.
Original dual lands come in untapped and do not make you pay life. They do not enter the battlefield tapped. This efficiency makes them very powerful and rare. But these lands are typically only legal in older formats like Vintage or Legacy. Most players will not see them much in casual games unless the local group allows it, or unless someone has a set of Dual Land proxies.
There are many other cycles of dual lands that come with a trade-off. Some ask you to pay two life to come in untapped (these are usually called shock lands). Others come in tapped unless you reveal a certain type of card or have two or more opponents. Each cycle of dual lands has pros and cons. For example:
- Shock lands (e.g., Watery Grave, Blood Crypt): They enter tapped unless you pay two life. They also have basic land types. This means you can search for them with fetch lands.
- Pain lands (e.g., Adarkar Wastes, Llanowar Wastes): They tap for colorless mana with no penalty, or they tap for one of two colored mana at the cost of one life.
- Crowd lands (a nickname for the lands from Battlebond, such as Training Center): These enter untapped if you have multiple opponents, making them great in a Commander deck.
- Other cycles like filter lands (e.g., Flooded Grove) let you convert one color into two different colors. They can help you produce the exact mana combination you need.
Dual lands help you run multiple colors without worrying too much about missing the right color early on. However, keep an eye on how many life points you lose if you rely on shock or pain lands. Some matchups punish you for taking too much damage from your own mana base.
Fetch Lands
Fetch lands are lands that let you search your library for a land with specific types. A well-known example is Bloodstained Mire, which allows you to pay one life, tap, and sacrifice it to find a Swamp or Mountain. This action not only fixes your mana but also thins your deck. In many formats, you can fetch up a shock land, an original dual land, or even a basic land if you need it.
Deck thinning is a small perk. The real power is that you can choose which land to grab, so you get the colors you need when you need them. In a deck that uses multiple colors, fetch lands keep you flexible. They also let you shuffle your library, which can matter if you put two cards on the top of your deck with a scry effect or if you see the top card and do not want it.
But fetch lands can also cost you life. Over a long game, paying one life repeatedly can add up. This is especially noticeable if you are also paying life for shock lands. So, always weigh how many fetch lands you want to include in your deck.
Pain Lands and Shock Lands
Many players get confused by the difference between pain lands and shock lands. They both cost life in different ways.
- Pain lands: Adarkar Wastes, Llanowar Wastes, and others let you tap for colorless mana with no penalty, or tap for two specific colors at the cost of one life. This pain effect repeats each time you tap for colored mana.
- Shock lands: Watery Grave, Blood Crypt, and other such lands give you the choice to pay two life as they enter. If you do, they come in untapped. If you refuse, they enter tapped. Their best feature is that they have basic land types, so you can fetch them with Bloodstained Mire or a similar fetch land.
In an aggressive format, paying life can be a big deal. In slower formats or in Commander, the life cost is not always a problem. People often run shock lands and fetch lands because the color-fixing benefits outweigh the life payments.
Crowd Lands for Multiplayer
Crowd lands is a nickname for the cycle that appeared in the set Battlebond. Examples include Training Center and Morphic Pool. These enter the battlefield untapped if you have two or more opponents. That makes them ideal for multiplayer games, especially Commander, where you usually have three or more opponents. With crowd lands, you get strong color fixing without the typical life drawbacks of shock lands. The downside is that in a one-on-one game, they almost always enter tapped.
Filter Lands
Filter lands like Flooded Grove or Cascade Bluffs let you pay one mana (often colorless, or a single color) and convert it into two specific colors of mana. If your deck needs spells with many colored mana symbols, these can help. But filter lands can be awkward if you do not have the correct mana to activate them in the first place.
Filter lands are more common in older formats or Commander decks that have expensive spells with tricky color requirements. They are less common in Standard, which rarely has enough need for this filtering effect. But in the right deck, a filter land can solve big color problems.
Other Kinds of Nonbasic Lands
Nonbasic lands extend far beyond duals and fetches. They come with interesting abilities and can fit many strategies. Each land card in this category can be a powerful puzzle piece if it matches your game plan.
Utility Lands
Utility lands often produce colorless mana. But they also have mana abilities or activated abilities that do more than just add mana. Some give you late-game power by letting you do something special.
- Blast Zone: Enters with a charge counter and can gain more counters. You can sacrifice it to destroy each nonland permanent with a certain mana value.
- Bojuka Bog: Enters the battlefield tapped, taps for black, and exiles a player’s graveyard when it comes in. That is strong against graveyard decks.
- Ancient Tomb: Taps for two colorless mana, but deals two damage to you each time. This helps you accelerate into bigger spells.
- Urza’s Saga: Technically an Enchantment Land — Saga, which can create Construct tokens and tutor small artifacts.
- Dark Depths: Comes in with ice counters. Once all counters are removed, you create a 20/20 legendary creature with flying and indestructible.
Some utility lands, like Akoum Refuge, produce colored mana and grant a small effect (gain one life) but enter tapped. Others provide more explosive plays. Think about whether your deck can handle colorless mana. If you run too many utility lands, you might not produce the one color you need at crucial moments.
Storage Lands
Storage lands can store storage counters by tapping and paying mana. Later, you remove those counters to produce multiple mana at once. These lands usually come in tapped, but they can be crucial in a slow, control-oriented deck that wants to build resources for the late game. If your deck can survive long enough, you can gain a big advantage when you remove all those counters.
Reveal Lands
Some lands enter untapped if you reveal a certain kind of card in your hand. For example, you might need to reveal a basic land of a certain type or show an appropriate color spell. If you cannot, they come in tapped. These are common in sets that encourage synergy with card types.
Examples of Iconic Lands
- Volcanic Island: Part of the original duals, taps for red or blue, has land types Mountain and Island, does not enter tapped.
- Underground Sea: Another original dual. Taps for blue or black.
- Blood Crypt: A shock land that taps for black or red. You can pay two life to have it enter untapped.
- Watery Grave: A shock land that taps for blue or black.
- Flooded Grove: A filter land that converts one green or blue mana into two mana of any combination of green or blue.
- Dark Depths: A unique land that eventually creates a 20/20 indestructible flyer named Marit Lage.
- Ancient Tomb: Taps for two colorless mana but deals two damage to you each time.
- Adarkar Wastes: A pain land that taps for colorless with no penalty, or white or blue at the cost of one life.
- Llanowar Wastes: Another pain land, producing colorless or black or green at a cost of life.
- Akoum Refuge: A tapped land that gains you one life when it enters, and it can tap for black or red.
Budget Land Choices
If you cannot afford expensive dual lands or fetch lands, you can still build a solid mana base. Many players use Evolving Wilds or Terramorphic Expanse to fetch a basic land. There are also cheap duals that enter tapped, like Akoum Refuge or the guildgates from Ravnica. They will slow you down a bit, but they still work. Pain lands might be cheaper than shock lands, giving you an untapped source at the cost of life each time you produce colored mana.
Focus on consistency. Maybe you do not need the fastest mana base if your local meta is slower or your deck can handle a few tapped lands. Over time, you can upgrade to shock lands, fetch lands, or filter lands if you want.
Land Synergies and Strategies
Many Magic decks revolve around land synergies. Some want to maximize the number of lands entering the battlefield. Others want to pick specific subtypes, like Coast or Gate, to power up certain spells. Here are a few examples of land-based strategies:
- Landfall: Cards with landfall trigger an effect whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control. If you can play extra lands each turn or reuse fetch lands, you might get multiple triggers in a single turn.
- Locus: Lands like Cloudpost produce more mana for each Locus you control. With enough Loci, you can generate absurd amounts of colorless mana.
- Gate decks: Cards like Gatebreaker Ram or spells that fetch Gates can form a synergy with nonbasic lands that have the Gate subtype (like Azorius Guildgate).
In Commander, you can run any weird synergy you find, as long as you can make it consistent over 99 cards plus a Commander. For example, you can combine Dark Depths with Thespian’s Stage or Vampire Hexmage to get a 20/20 creature quickly.
Managing Colorless vs. Colored Mana
Some cards, like Ancient Tomb, provide a lot of colorless mana. Others let you produce colorless mana at a flexible rate. But many spells, especially ones with multiple colored mana symbols, do not benefit from colorless sources. This conflict can cause awkward starting hands if you draw too many colorless lands and cannot cast your colored spells.
At the same time, colorless mana can enable abilities on cards like Urza’s Saga or pay for certain spells that do not require a specific color. If your deck has ways to generate colored mana from other lands or spells, you might handle a couple of colorless-producing lands easily. But do not go overboard.
Building a Reliable Mana Base
When picking lands for your deck, think about the balance between consistency, speed, and synergy:
- Consistency: Do you have enough sources of each color? If you run cards with double or triple cost in one color, you probably need more lands of that color. For example, a black-heavy deck might need many Swamp-producing lands.
- Speed: Do you need to play fast? If so, do not include too many lands that come in tapped. Consider shock lands or pain lands for untapped access to colored mana.
- Synergy: Are you trying to do something special with your lands, like using Dark Depths or focusing on landfall triggers? Maybe you want blast zone as removal or you want to store counters on a storage land for the late game.
Look at your game plan and decide how crucial fast mana is. If you need to cast something important on turn one or turn two, do not fill your deck with tapped lands like akoum refuge. If you can wait until turn three or four, it might be less of a problem.
Lands in Commander Decks
Commander is a unique format where you pick a legendary creature or Planeswalker as your Commander and build a 99-card deck around them. You can only use one copy of any land card or other card, except basic lands. This rule changes how you pick your mana base.
- Command Tower: Taps for any color in your Commander’s color identity. A must-have in multiple colors.
- Exotic Orchard: Taps for any color that an opponent’s land could produce. Great for larger games.
- Crowd lands like Training Center: They come in untapped in most Commander pods.
- Utility lands like bojuka bog: This exiles an opponent’s graveyard in a pinch.
- Dark Depths combos: If your Commander deck can handle that synergy, you can make a 20/20 flier quickly.
- Pain lands or shock lands: Good if you need fast mana. The life loss in Commander is often less critical than in one-on-one formats.
Commander games often go longer, so you may afford more enters-the-battlefield-tapped lands. You might also choose filter lands if your deck has heavy color requirements. Some Commander decks even run fancy combos with lands like Thespian’s Stage, Vesuva, or Field of the Dead. Just watch out for your color distribution. You do not want to keep a hand with only colorless sources and no way to cast your Commander.
Basic Land vs. Nonbasic Land
As your deck grows more complex, you might be tempted to cut all your basics for fancy nonbasic land cards. But be careful. The vast majority of metagames include some type of punishment for nonbasic lands. Cards like Blood Moon, Price of Progress, or Ruination can catch you off guard. Having a basic plains or island or another basic land type can protect you from a total mana lock.
Nonbasic lands might also clash with your Commander’s color identity. In Commander, every card in your deck must align with your Commander’s identity. This includes the activated abilities on lands. If your Commander is mono-white, you cannot add a nonbasic land that has a black color identity in its text box.
Paying Attention to Format Restrictions
In some formats, certain lands are banned or restricted. For example, the original dual lands do not appear in formats like Standard or Modern. Certain nonbasic lands might be considered too strong or have been removed from the card pool. Always check format legality before finalizing your deck.
In Standard, your options are limited to recent sets. You might not have fetch lands at all or might rely on special cycles, like reveal lands or “fast lands” that enter untapped if you have a small number of lands in play. In Modern, you have access to shock lands, fetch lands, some older cycles, and interesting utility lands. In Legacy or Vintage, you can use almost anything, including Volcanic Island or Underground Sea.
Mulligan Decisions
Your choice of lands affects which opening hands you can keep. A hand with the wrong mix of basics and nonbasics might force a mulligan. For instance, if you see one land but it’s a tapped land and you have no cheap plays, you might have to ship the hand back. If you have a fast land but it only produces colorless mana and your spells require red mana, you have a problem.
Be honest about how your deck mulligans. If it can handle going down a card, you might be more flexible with risky land counts. If you rely on hitting your land drops exactly on time, you should build a more stable mana base.
Landfall and Other Synergies
Some strategies want you to play many lands quickly. Landfall abilities in sets like Zendikar reward you whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control. If your deck uses fetch lands, each fetch crack triggers landfall twice (once for the fetch land itself, once for the land it fetches). That can be strong with creatures or spells that get +1/+1 counters or deal damage each time landfall triggers.
Other decks focus on reanimating lands from the graveyard. If you can repeatedly sacrifice lands, you might get repeated triggers. Or you might have cards that say something like “play with the top card of your library revealed. You may play lands from the top of your library.” This synergy ensures you do not miss land drops.
Late Game Considerations
In the late game, you might not mind that a land enters tapped if it has a powerful effect. You might prefer a utility land that can remove threats or create extra tokens. Also, some decks run spells that turn lands into creatures or create mana sinks. If you can tap for large amounts of mana, you might close out the game with a big X-spell or an activated ability.
Storage lands are an example. They build up counters over turns you do not need the extra mana, then explode in the late game when you remove those counters to produce a burst of mana. This can help cast expensive spells that tip the balance in your favor.
Mull Over the Details
When selecting lands, check small details:
- Do they have a land type (like Plains or Swamp)? That matters for spells that reference basic land types or let you fetch those types.
- Do they come in tapped? Is that acceptable for your deck’s curve?
- Do they offer any special ability that supports your game plan?
- How much do they cost in terms of real money if that matters to you?
- Are they legal in your chosen format?
A single land might seem unimportant, but it can change the outcome of certain matchups. The synergy between your spells and your lands can be the difference between winning and losing.
Putting It All Together
It takes practice to master lands in magic the gathering. You want to choose a balance of basics and nonbasics that support your spells. If you are running multiple colors, consider dual lands that do not slow you down. If you can afford them, fetch lands and shock lands are a classic combo for color fixing. If not, look at cheaper cycles.
In Commander, you might mix and match single copies of many different lands. You can run a commander deck that uses pain lands, crowd lands, filter lands, and more. As long as you have enough ways to produce your Commander’s colors, you are on the right track.
Watch your life total if you rely on shock and pain lands. Some decks can handle it, some cannot. Also, keep in mind if your local meta includes nonbasic land hate. In that case, adding basic lands is wise.
Final Thoughts
Lands are the backbone of a deck. You will cast many spells in Magic, but you almost always need mana. A good mana base helps you cast the right spells at the right time. When you explore new lands—whether it’s a flashy mythic from the latest set or an older staple like Flooded Grove—think about how it fits in your deck’s plan. Do you want to speed up your game, or do you prefer a safer, more stable approach?
Sometimes, it is fine to have one land that only produces colorless mana if its effect is worth the risk. Other times, you need to cut that land because it causes too many awkward draws. Always adjust based on your results. Track which lands cause you to stumble and which ones save you.
In the end, your lands are just as important as your creatures and spells. They define your mana resources and your deck’s flow. If you spend enough time on this aspect of deck building, you will see your consistency and power improve. That is the beauty of Magic: The Gathering. Even something as simple as a land can shape the fate of an entire match.
Playing lands might feel basic at first, but the variety in Magic is huge. From a humble basic plains to a fearsome land like dark depths, each can change how you play. So next time you build or tune a deck, pay close attention to your mana base. Make the best use of basic land types, nonbasic land choices, and synergy with your spells. After all, the land is where every game of Magic truly starts.
