Land Recommendations & Staple Detection

Mana bases are where new Commander players get stuck. You know you need around 35-38 lands, but which ones? There are thousands of options, spread across 30 years of Magic history. Some enter tapped, some don’t. Some cost $0.25, others cost $50, others cost $1000. And half the advice online assumes you have a $500 budget just for lands.

We built land recommendations as a part of our “Brew” tools to make this simple and repeatable. Tell us your colors and your budget and we’ll help you figure out what to add.

The Problem with Land Advice

Most mana base guides give you a tier list and wish you luck. “Run duals and fetches” is great advice if you have $2000 to spend. For everyone else, it’s not actionable.

And even if you know what lands are good, you still have to figure out which ones you already own, which ones fit your color identity, and which ones are actually worth buying at your budget. That’s a lot of tabs.

We wanted something simpler: show me the lands I should add, filtered by what I can actually afford, and tell me if I already own them.

How It Works

When you’re building a deck, head to the Mana Base stage and click the Recommendations tab. You’ll see two things:

Missing Staples

These are the high-impact lands that work in your deck’s colors but aren’t in your list yet.

We categorize every Commander-legal land into types (shocks, fetches, checks, pain lands, etc.) and assign a power tier from S down to D:

• S-Tier: Original dual lands (Reserved List, if you have them, you know)
• A-Tier: Fetch lands, shock lands which are the gold standard for most decks
• B-Tier: Fast lands, pain lands, check lands great with minor conditions
• C-Tier: Slow lands, tri-lands, bounce lands enter tapped but pull their weight
• D-Tier: Basics and simple taplands

The missing staples list shows you what’s legal for your color identity, sorted by power tier. Owned lands float to the top with a green “Owned” badge so you can add them immediately. Lands you don’t own show up too, giving you a shopping list for later.

Upgrade Suggestions

Already have lands in your deck? We’ll show you what the community considers upgrades.

This data comes from StrictlyBetter.eu, a community-driven database of card improvements. If you’re in Green and Black and running a Forest and you have a Bayou, we’ll surface that. If you own the upgrade, one click swaps it in.

Budget-Friendly by Default

Here’s the part that actually matters for most players: price tier filtering.

Filter the recommendations to show only lands under $1, under $10, or under $50. The tiers are cumulative—selecting “≤$10” shows everything from budget to mid-range, not just the $5-10 bracket.

I use this constantly. When I’m brewing a new deck, I’ll set the filter to ≤$1 first and see what staples I can grab for almost nothing. Temple of Silence, Tainted Field, Caves of Koilos since there’s a lot of power at the budget end. Then I’ll bump it up to ≤$10 to see if there are obvious upgrades worth the investment.

You can also filter by: - Power tier (show me only A-tier and above) - Enters untapped (for faster mana bases) - Category (just show me check lands)

Combine these with the ownership badges and you’ve got a filtered view of exactly what to add.

Ownership Integration

Every land recommendation shows whether you own it.

• “Owned (2)” in green means you have copies available
• “Owned (Assigned)” in gray means you own it, but it’s reserved for a built deck
• No badge means you’d need to acquire it

This is the integration that makes recommendations actually useful. Generic tier lists can’t tell you that you already own a Sunken Hollow sitting in your collection. We can.

Basic Land Autofill

Once you’ve added your nonbasic lands, we can fill in the rest. The autofill analyzes the color pips in your spells and distributes basics proportionally. If your deck is heavy blue with a white splash, you’ll get more Islands than Plains.

The target land count adjusts based on your ramp density too so more mana rocks and dorks means fewer lands needed.

What This Means for Your Deckbuilding

Building a mana base used to require either deep format knowledge or hours of research. Now it takes a few minutes:

1. Open the Mana Base stage
2. Check your missing staples filtered to your budget
3. Add the ones you own, note the ones to buy later
4. Review upgrade suggestions for lands already in your deck
5. Autofill basics to hit your target count

You’ll end up with a mana base tuned to your colors, your collection, and your budget.

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Ready to build a better mana base? Sign up for Icarian and start brewing.