Few Magic: The Gathering formats are quite like Commander. Featuring life totals of forty rather than the traditional twenty, as well as decks containing ninety nine cards (plus a commander), individual Commander games are generally longer than games of any other Magic format. As players are playing longer games, there is a greater emphasis on the resources that players have access to within a game. When it comes to resources in Magic, few are as vital as the lands players are utilizing. The Commander format has countless lands players are able to access, so today, we’re counting down the strongest lands player’s can use in Commander!
In order to keep this list interesting, rather than focusing on lands such as “fetch lands” and “bond lands” that provide color fixing, we’re going to dive into lands that provide utility rather than color consistency.
10 Vault Of The Archangel
A large-scale multiplayer format, Commander is often home to large and impactful creatures and abilities that can alter the course of game at a moment’s notice. Due to this larger scale nature of the format, token-based decks are an incredibly popular choice that many players choose to utilize.
Vault of the Archangel is a land that for the cost of four mana, can provide all creatures under its owners’ control with deathtouch and lifelink. This is an incredibly powerful ability with value that scales over the course of a game as its controller controls more and more creatures. This ability is one that is reminiscent of one that may be found on an artifact or enchantment, but due to its nature as a land, it may be put into play with no immediate investment of mana.
9 Bojuka Bog
One would be hard pressed to find a mono-black Commander deck (or any other deck with black in its color identity) that would not want to have a Bojuka Bog within its mana base.
Though Bojuka Bog may only be tapped for black mana and enters the battlefield tapped, upon entering the battlefield, it exiles target player’s entire graveyard.
Commander is a massive format teeming with numerous strategies that seek to utilize their graveyards in a plethora of ways. Bojuka Bog is a card that can immediately hose a player and remove vital cards of their strategy from the game without paying a single mana. In conjunction with cards as the “bounce lands,” a player can benefit from Bojuka Bog’s ability numerous times.
8 Inventors’ Fair
Similarly to the previous two entries on this list, Inventor’s Fair is a card packed with powerful abilities that have the luxury of being included on a land.
Gaining it’s controller one life at the beginning of its controller’s upkeep as long as they control three or more artifacts, if that three artifact requirement is met, this land may be sacrificed at the expense of four mana to allow its controller to search their library for any artifact and put it into their hand.
As artifacts are an integral part of Commander, with most decks containing their fair share, Inventor’s Fair is an inexpensive and reliable way for players to tutor for the exact artifact that they need at a given moment.
7 Myriad Landscape
Games of Commander are often decided by which player was able to accumulate more resources in a given span of time. While certain color combinations are able to quickly accelerate their mana and card drawing, other colors aren’t so lucky.
Fortunately, those color combinations still have access to Myriad Landscape. Entering the battlefield tapped, Myriad Landscape can only be tapped to produce colorless mana. However, these drawbacks are offset by the power of the cards’s second ability. For the cost of two mana, Myriad Landscape may be sacrificed to allow its controller to search their library for two basic lands of the same type and put them directly into play. This means that even color combinations such as Boros with notoriously bad means of mana accelerating still have means of putting additional lands into play.
6 Urborg Tomb Of Yawgmoth
A one of the strongest lands affiliated with black, any deck capable of containing Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth should be doing so.
Urborg’s ability is very simple: it makes each other land a swamp in addition to its other types. This means that in a multicolored deck featuring black, all lands immediately become more flexible, causing even basic lands like forests to tap for two colors of mana.
Additionally, as this ability impacts opponents lands as well, Urborg enables creatures with swampwalk, making them unblockable at all times.
5 Nykthos, Shrine To Nyx
When it comes to mono-colored decks, one would be hard pressed to find a deck that wouldn’t want to be running a Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx.
While the vast majority of lands are only capable of tapping for a single mana, while it requires an investment of two mana to activate, Nykthos can be tapped for an amount of mana equal to its controller’s devotion to a given color. This incentivizes its use in mono colored decks that are capable of upping their respective devotion rather quickly, as Nykthos will be capable of ramping into game-winning spells.
4 Reliquary Tower
The only resource that rivals mana in importance in the Commander format is card draw. It is often thought that the player who draws more cards over the course of a Commander game will be the winner. However, while players can hypothetically possess an infinite amount of mana sources at once, by default, players have a maximum hand size of seven.
Without any mana needing to be invested, Reliquary tower is a land that provides its owner with an unlimited hand size. This ability is extremely useful and allows players to stockpile powerful responses and other important pieces to their strategy in their hand with no foreseeable drawback.
3 Thespian’s Stage
In a format such as Commander, flexibility is key. Decks are large and are only capable of containing one copy of each card, so cards with multiple uses can be incredibly helpful over the course of a game.
Thespian’s Stage exemplifies this sentiment, possessing the ability to becoming a copy of any other land for the cots of two mana. This allows its controller to get additional value out of their best lands by creating another copy. Thespian’s Stage can also be used to even the playing field providing its controller with a copy of an opponents most useful land.
2 Cabal Coffers And Gaea’s Cradle
Cabal Coffer and Gaea’s Cradle are easily the most impactful lands that black and green decks are capable of utilizing respectively.
Each of these lands become more and more effective over the course of the game as players gain access to increasingly substantial sums of mana. Cabal Coffers taps for an amount of black mana equal to the number of swamps under its owners control while Gaea’s Cradle taps for an amount of green mana equal to the number of creatures its owner controls. Each of these lands are incredibly powerful in their own right, but often only help players who are already in a good place within a game.
1 Ancient Tomb
Flexible and impactful, there isn’t a single Commander deck that wouldn’t benefit from the inclusion of an Ancient Tomb.
Capable of tapping for two mana, Ancient Tomb deals two damage to its controller whenever it’s tapped. As Commander players start with forty life, this loss of life trivial when compared to the advantage it provides a player, allowing them to access larger and powerful spells much more quickly than they would otherwise. Due to Ancient Tomb’s nature, it is an excellent card to have access to in any stage of a game.
NEXT: Top 10 Strongest Mono-Blue Commanders In Magic: The Gathering
