How many lands & ramp cards for EDH? | MTG commander guide 2021

We simplify the math and teach YOU how to calculate how many lands and ramp cards you should play for your EDH decks. ESPECIALLY if you want to minimize this number in order to squeeze in more fun cards!
Comment with your thoughts and opinions, we wanna know if you found this useful or not!
Visit tapandsac.com/... for the in-depth article and data.
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[@bobcatqueen3359]

I love that this is one of the only videos I've seen to explain the maths behind the answer as opposed to just saying "play x lands" or "it depends".

[@Krunschy]

Really love the structuring of the video, hitting it off with the simple answer most people came for, while including the assumptions. Still gonna watch all the way through, as every deck is different and I really want to get this right.

[@QMTG]

Thanks! Hope you found it useful :)

[@MTGJosh]

Been playing magic for over 10 years and finally someone has made the video (backed up by the stats) I was craving! Thankyou so much! Great content and I will be watching more of your content.

[@QMTG]

Glad I could help!

[@Mr.Stompie]

I always enjoy videos on this subject, and I am not sure why. They do not really influence my deck building at all at this point, but I still find enjoyment. My personal base line is 37 lands, and 10 pieces of ramp. The numbers can go up or down depending on the deck of course.

[@QMTG]

Seems like a decent baseline. I too enjoy these kinds of videos for some reason :)

[@simonnice9030]

This is a really interesting video! I really like this part of Commander and Magic in general (tinkering with your deck and making it more and more consistent). I don't like having too many tutors and other cards to "cheat" consistency but I like the math behind how many cards of a certain type you should have in your deck! I currently run four commander decks: Tanazir, Kyler, Liesa, Shroud of Dusk and Lathril. Out of these four all but Lathril have a mana value of five, making the ratio discussed in this video quite perfect for them. Lathril on the other hand, has soo many mana dorks and an average mana value of 2,70 so in that deck I only carry about 34 lands to great effect.

[@grecalmagro]

1:35 - You just earned my respect, more than the title says but honest enough to wrap up quickly without quick baiting. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👍🏼👊🏼

[@moonysh3827]

Please do a similar video with card draw in EDH ! 🙏

[@QMTG]

We might!

[@MagicalHackerMTG]

I don't really have a preference for how much I will need to mulligan, but I'm more interested in reducing the number of games where I'm drawing too many lands or drawing too few, even when I have the right number of lands in my opening hand.

[@QMTG]

Ooh yeah that's a good question. Hmmm. I'll think about it, but it seems slightly trickier as we have to consider how many lands you want to draw over the course of the game (i.e. how many lands you want on each turn) as well as how many cards you expect to draw over the same number of turns.

[@martinfarrell7010]

This video was extremely helpful, I especially love the statistics as a lot of the more popular channels that cover the same topics don't go into the math and kind of just talk about it subjectively or give a rough number.

[@QMTG]

Glad it was helpful!

[@andredenegri8633]

Great content! I love the analysis and numbers, stands out from similar content.

[@QMTG]

Thanks! That's what we were going for

[@mintifur]

This channel has been a great source of information for me building my Karador deck. Creature-based ramp helped, thank you!

[@QMTG]

Great to hear!

[@Hyxtrem]

Thanks a lot to both of you. It was exactly what I was searching for. Excellent.

[@QMTG]

You're welcome! Glad you found it useful

[@fastydave]

This will be good for my friends getting into EDH. I've tried to explain the math and I get that deer in headlights look lol. The visuals here will be more valuable to newer players for sure. One question I have is when counting lands and MDFCs. Should we always assume they are going to be played for land or for the spell?

[@QMTG]

Yeah, hope it helps! MDFCs really depend on whether you really want to play the spell (then you should count it as a spell) or if the spell is not really necessary but just a bonus effect - then you should count it as a land.

[@scottricks1676]

Love the deep dive into the numbers!

[@briankober9016]

Awesome stuff guys! Thank you

[@QMTG]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@the_names_rob]

37 lands, 10 early ramp [2cmc or less (ie llanowar elves, natures lore, arcane signet etc)], and 3 late ramp [huge mana source, 3 cmc or more ( ie Growing Rites of Itlimoc, Sword of Hearth and Home, Smothering Tithe)]. For lands I try to do color fixing that doesnt come in tapped. So Ill rank what lands I go to first. Im leaving out true duals because their so expensive 1. Fetch 2. Shocks 3. Battlebond Lands 4. Pain Lands 5. Slow Lands I also use 3+ color fixing lands. The ones I like are command tower, path of ancestry and reflecting pool. In addition I try to jam utility lands in. I like the MDFCs and Channel Lands which go into any deck. Then there are archtype specific utility lands.

[@AxelShaw]

Very informative. Thank you guys, you did an awesome job :)

[@QMTG]

Glad it was helpful!

[@Papiness]

Deck composition is one thing but SHUFFLE quality (especially after games) is just as important

[@JohnnyYeTaecanUktena]

Thought experiment for ya: Would K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth count as ramp? just playing him turns all of your black mana pips into Phyrexian mana meaning you can either pay a black mana for that pip or 2 life per pip. Sure you need to hit 4 mana first to even play K'rrik so ramp into him but after that he gives way more value than the 4 cmc rocks that give less such as Khalni Gem as a example 4 cmc when it enters you return two lands to your hand and you can tap it to give two mana of any color into your pool. If you ask me i would say K'rrik is ramp himself as you can easily recoup that life by attacking with him as he has life link and whenever you cast a black spell he gets a +1/+1 counter, so a very dangerous card indeed as as a card alone he is a competitively viable commander for mono black storm especially if you play Tendrils of Agony or Aetherflux Reservoir and if you go the Aetherflux route Leshrac's Sigil wins you the game because you can bounce it infinitely to just burn everyone with Aetherflux Reservoir and it CAN be as fast as turn 1 vs 3 other people but that is not really consistent a turn 2 or 3 win is.

[@QMTG]

How many lands & ramp do you put in your decks and how did you get that number? Link to article: tapandsac.com/2021/04/how-many-lands-ramp-need-in-commander-deck

[@Mr.Stompie]

Did you mean to pin this comment?

[@stub0794]

I’d say land tax is a backup ramp. It only has an effect if you are falling behind in lands.

[@QMTG]

Yeah, but then that's not really ramping in the sense of getting ahead on mana. If you're already ahead or on par, it doesn't instantly give you access to more mana. It's definitely a gray area though

[@FinetalPies]

It's funny how you mention how subjective "what is Ramp?" can be as a question, because you mentioned Exploration and Land Tax together as not ramp. But to me I think Exploration is Ramp and Land Tax isn't. (Though I agree Mana Vault isn't) Though I agree with excluding the edge cases from calculations, seems like there's a subset of "ramp" when it comes to fitting a good number of cards in your deck, but you can also have extra cards that...do also accomplish ramp (Like 5+ cmc rocks and Exploration)

[@cococrispy1337]

Do this video but with card draw please

[@QMTG]

That's a great idea tbh

[@edelchristop7]

Very helpful!

[@QMTG]

Glad you think so!

[@rodrigoavila4133]

How do you guys factor in card advantage to your strategy? If I’m drawing an extra 6 cards per game, should I reduce the amount of lands to reduce flood? Please elaborate.

[@QMTG]

Unfortunately in this example we don’t factor that in. You’d first of all have to define what flooding means to you, then calculate the number of lands you want to draw accordingly. We might do another video regarding flooding and Color fixing though :)

[@rodrigoavila4133]

@@QMTG 5 lands in play and 5 lands in hand is somewhere I don’t want to be. I would really be interested in that video. Thanks!

[@benjammin4262]

I believe the math is skewed in the calculator you used. It yes, you do want 3 lands, but you specifically also don't want more than 5. The calc looks like it shows you the chances of you getting 'at least' 3 acceptable cards (lands), not from 3-5 as your graph shows. That would bring the acceptable number of hands down with that many lands right?

[@DontStopTheHustle]

You talked about the odds of getting a ramp spell and lands, but how do you use the calculator if you want a number of lands in your opener and a specific ramp spell like nature's lore?

[@CheshireCat87]

7 ramp seems really low.

[@moedark4390]

this game wequires toto concentwation