Essential Spellbook - Tri-Lands and Beyond
Ketria Triome by Robbie Trevino
Three Colors Are Better Than One
If you're building a deck that incorporates more than one color, you'll need something better than Plains, Islands, Swamps, Mountains, and Forests. In order to cast spells reliably, most decks rely on lands that "fix" their mana by multiple colors of mana.
In the previous episode of Essential Spellbook, we discussed lands that tap for two colors of mana. We ranked these cards from 1 to 5 along a series of metrics, including:
- Enters Untapped: How often does the land enter the battlefield untapped and produce mana the turn it's played?
- Fixing: How many colors can the land reliably produce?
- Budget: Is the card's real-world price wallet-friendly?
- Usability: Does the card promote a clean gameplay experience, free of unnecessary complexity and delays?
- Types: Does the card have basic land types? This metric matters in relation to cards like Farseek and the fetchlands.
If you paid close attention, you would have noticed that few of the dual-colored lands in the previous article scored higher than a 3/5 on Fixing. Today, we're going to look at lands that produce more than two colors of mana, which are excellent options for decks that incorporate three or more colors. Some of them even excel in decks with only two colors!
(Bountiful Landscape | Art by Mark Poole)
Far Beyond Basics
As in my previous article, I'm going to try to cover every land I believe is universally playable in Commander. However, I'm going to exclude cards that I believe are unplayably underpowered compared to other cards with a similar price tag.
Let's go!
Trilands
Enters Untapped: 1/5
Fixing: 4/5
Budget: 5/5
Usability: 5/5
Types: No
The most straightforward cards in this category are the trilands, which enter the battlefield tapped and each produce three different colors of mana.
These cards are a solid budget option for decks that incorporate three or more colors, but they're held back by the fact that they always enter the battlefield tapped.
The trilands have also recently been eclipsed by...
Triomes
Enters Untapped: 1/5
Fixing: 4/5
Budget: 2/5
Usability: 5/5
Types: Yes
Also adorably nicknamed the "tricycle Lands," the triomes are improvements over the trilands in two ways.
First, for , they can be discarded in exchange for a fresh card from your deck. This is rarely useful, but can be a boon in the late game when lands decrease in value.
More critically, the triomes have basic land types, which means that they can be fetched, Farsought, and such. A deck that incorporates both triomes and fetchlands can have near-perfect mana fixing at the cost of speed, life, and money.
City of Brass and Mana Confluence
Enters Untapped: 5/5
Fixing: 5/5
Budget: 2/5
Usability: 4/5
Types: No
Two cards that behave identically in 99% of situations, City of Brass and Mana Confluence make every color of mana and always enter untapped. The catch? They demand a steep payment of 1 life every time they're used.
These cards take the idea behind the painlands to the extreme, offering additional flexibility at the price of costing life on every single activation. They're powerful options for high-power decks, aggressive decks, and decks with 4 or 5 colors, but that life payment is probably not worth the upside in slower decks with 2 or 3 colors.
Spire of Industry
Enters Untapped: 5/5
Fixing: 3/5
Budget: 5/5
Usability: 4/5
Types: No
It's a Mana Confluence that's great if you have an artifact and disappointing otherwise. Put it in your multicolored artifact decks, I guess. Insightful analysis!
Kindred Lands
Enters Untapped: 5/5
Fixing: 4/5
Budget: 1/5 (Cavern), 5/5 (others)
Usability: 4/5
Types: No
These lands produce any color of mana, but only for a certain creature type. Cavern of Souls is an obvious best-in-class card, but all three are solid options in a multicolored deck built around a single creature type.
Command Tower
Enters Untapped: 5/5
Fixing: 5/5
Budget: 5/5
Usability: 5/5
Types: No
We found it, folks! It's the perfect land!
Seriously, though, there's no reason that Command Tower shouldn't have a home in every single deck containing more than one color. For better or worse, this card is a pillar of the format that almost never gets cut from a multicolored deck.
Path of Ancestry
Enters Untapped: 1/5
Fixing: 5/5
Budget: 5/5
Usability: 4/5
Types: No
Path of Ancestry is mostly a tapped Command Tower, but it's also got some additional advantage in decks that care about a commander's creature type. Even in decks without any kindred synergies, Path will scry whenever you cast your commander. Consider running it in budget-conscious decks with 3+ colors or kindred decks with 2+ colors, like Lathril, Blade of the Elves.
Exotic Orchard
Enters Untapped: 5/5
Fixing: 4/5
Budget: 5/5
Usability: 4/5
Types: No
Exotic Orchard is technically worse than Command Tower, but in a four-player game with decks that often include two or three colors, it's rare that Exotic Orchard can't produce all five colors of mana.
If you need to produce mana outside your commander's color identity for some reason, it can even be stronger than Tower!
Reflecting Pool
Enters Untapped: 5/5
Fixing: 3/5
Budget: 3/5
Usability: 4/5
Types: No
Reflecting Pool is similar to Exotic Orchard, but it looks at your own lands rather than other players'.
The Pool is usually less reliable than the Orchard, since it will never produce a color that you don't already have access to. However, this card can be useful in multicolored decks looking to cast color-intensive spells, like Counterspell or Necropotence.
Thriving Lands
Enters Untapped: 1/5
Fixing: 4/5
Budget: 5/5
Usability: 3/5
Types: No
With the Tthriving lands, we begin our exploration of "cheap lands that provide decent mana fixing but always enter tapped." If you're working on a tight budget, you can do much worse than these cards.
The thriving lands do lose a few points of usability because it's annoying to remember what colors you chose when they entered.
Vivid Lands
Enters Untapped: 1/5
Fixing: 4/5
Budget: 5/5
Usability: 2/5
Types: No
Close relatives of the thriving lands, the Vivid lands can produce any color of mana, but only twice. You can't afford to play too many lands that enter tapped, so these cards rarely make the cut, but budget 4- and 5-color decks might play a couple Vivid lands.
Keeping counters on your lands is more inconvenient than you think, however.
Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds
Enters Untapped: 1/5
Fixing: 4/5
Budget: 5/5
Usability: 3/5
Types: No
The identical twins Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds can each be sacrificed in exchange for a tapped basic land of your choice. In the average deck with two colors, these cards perform poorly, since they enter tapped and will only ever produce a single color.
However, these cards can find a home in two types of budget decks. First, decks with four or five colors have few options for cheap lands that can access all their colors. Second, these cards synergize with commanders like Omnath, Locus of Creation that value lands entering the battlefield or land cards in your graveyard. If your 3-5-color budget deck cares about lands, these cards could be a great inclusion.
Additionally, the newly printed Escape Tunnel is a third, better copy of these cards.
Landscapes
Enters Untapped: 3/5
Fixing: 4/5
Budget: 5/5
Usability: 3/5
Types: No
I think these guys are underrated. They're pretty specific to three-color decks, but in the right context they blow the benchmark set by Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds out of the water.
Note that, because of the mana cost of the landscapes' cycling abilities, these cards can only be played in decks that include all three of their colors. The Panoramas provide (significantly inferior) alternatives that fit in any deck.
Streets of New Capenna Tri-Fetches
Enters Untapped: 1/5
Fixing: 3/5
Budget: 5/5
Usability: 3/5
Types: No
In three-color decks, these cards function similarly to Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds. You won't see them very often in Commander, but I can imagine them fitting into certain budget decks, so they just barely make this list.
These cards are currently only available in five of the ten possible combinations of three colors.
Prismatic Vista
Enters Untapped: 5/5
Fixing: 4/5
Budget: 2/5
Usability: 3/5
Types: No
Prismatic Vista is the Monopoly Man's version of Terramorphic Expanse. For one life and about $30 USD, your basic land enters untapped! A good card for decks with many colors, assuming you've got disposable income to burn.
Fabled Passage
Enters Untapped: 3/5
Fixing: 4/5
Budget: 4/5
Usability: 3/5
Types: No
Unlike Vista, Fabled Passage demands no life payment. However, the land it finds enters tapped for the first three turns of the game. This is almost always a downgrade in comparison to Vista, but Fabled Passage is also much cheaper! Also, you can play both!
Myriad Landscape
Enters Untapped: 1/5
Fixing: 3/5
Budget: 5/5
Usability: 4/5
Types: No
This one straddles the boundary between "land that fixes your mana" and "utility land," but I decided to include it because it's very popular in Commander. Myriad Landscape is slow as heck, but getting two lands for the price of one is often worth the wait. This card especially excels in nongreen decks, which have few options for land-based ramp.
Gemstone Caverns
Enters Untapped: 3/5
Fixing: 3/5
Budget: 2/5
Usability: 3/5
Types: No
Here's a weird one! Gemstone Caverns essentially lets you jump ahead in the turn order, playing a free land at the start of the game at the cost of starting with a smaller hand size. This card performs tremendously in high-power Commander games, but it usually isn't worth the downside in more casual environments.
(Thriving Heath | Art by Alayna Danner)
I Feel Like I Forgot Something...
You know the drill: tell me what I did wrong! Nitpick my rankings! Fill the commends section with praise for Cryptic Spires! I dare you!
Next time: utility lands!
Please note: card prices listed in this article are accurate at the time of writing, but prices can vary over time and between locations.
