Essential Spellbook - Tri-Lands and Beyond

Kieran Sheldon • October 16, 2024

Miscellaneous
Ketrio Triome cover art
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!

Fantasy illustration of a jungle river with a volcano on the horizon

(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.

Fantasy illustration of a field with multicolored wildflowers

(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.

Kieran Sheldon

Kieran Sheldon

Kieran is a writer and game designer who's been playing Magic since Zendikar (original flavor). They own a lizard named Monty who looks remarkably like Flamecache Gecko. Kieran's favorite commander is Kynaios and Tiro, their favorite card is Sunforger, and their favorite creature type is Myr. How can you not love the lil robot toucan guys?