Brewer's Minute: Building a Budget Mana Base in Modern
Hey, everyone. It's time for another Brewer's Minute. One of the hardest parts of building budget-friendly decks in Modern is making a reasonable mana base. Unlike Standard, which is comparatively slow, so we can get away with playing tapped duals and Evolving Wilds without losing too many percentage points, the Modern format is so fast that playing off-curve thanks to tapped duals will cost us a lot of games. Plus, the cheaper we can make the mana base (while still making it functional), the more fun, powerful non-land cards we can fit in under the budget! So, today, we are going to take a few minutes to talk about the best budget duals in Modern along with some of the differences between ally and enemy mana in the format.
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Breakdown
First off, fetch lands, shock lands, and filter lands are off the table for both ally and enemy color decks because they simply cost too much. If you have some of these cards in your collection, you should substitute them in for more budget-friendly duals—they will make your decks better—but today we are focusing on inexpensive lands that can be used to make a functional mana base.
As for ally colors, clearly the best budget cycle in the format is the core set buddy lands like Glacial Fortress and Sunpetal Grove. Remember: the biggest challenge of building a budget-friendly mana base is getting as many untapped duals as possible without breaking the bank, and the buddy lands come into play untapped much of the time, especially in two-color decks. Speaking of two-color decks, the Battle for Zendikar duals like Prairie Stream and Sunken Hollow actually work pretty well in a two-color builds as well, especially if you are playing enough basic lands. After the Battle for Zendikar duals, there's a huge drop off to the Shadows over Innistrad cycle, which are pretty bad because they enter the battlefield tapped far too often, but are still the third-best ally-color budget cycle in the format thanks to the lack of better options.
The good news is that enemy-color duals are far better. While the ally-color budget mana base is functional, even at its most optimal, it suffers from having far too many tapped lands, but with enemy colors, this isn't a problem. Most importantly, enemy-colored decks get cheap fast lands thanks to their recent printing in Kaladesh, and even discounting budget, there's a strong argument that the fast lands are the third-best cycle of lands in Modern behind fetches and shocks, which means they are a huge boon to budget players at their current price. Even better, the enemy colors also get extremely cheap pain lands thanks to several recent reprintings, which means that an enemy-color deck gets eight duals that will usually enter the battlefield untapped (while ally colors get somewhere between zero and one cycle). The third-best enemy-color cycle is the creature lands, which are also cheaper than you'd expect thanks to their recent printing in Battle for Zendikar block. While these lands come into play tapped, they offer enough upside to include in many decks. In Modern, if a land is going to enter the battlefield tapped, it needs to offer significant upside—more upside than gaining a life or even scrying one—and turning into a creature that can attack and block is enough that the creature lands are worth considering.
The lands above offer a good example of two-colored ally and enemy-colored mana bases for budget Modern, and while both are functional, the enemy-colored mana base is significantly better thanks to the presence of so many untapped lands. Perhaps more surprising, the 12 dual lands that make up the enemy-color mana base are actually cheaper as well—the Simic mana base will set you back about $26, while the Azorius build is closer to $35. While either of these mana bases can support midrange and control decks, playing an aggressive list with budget ally mana is risky, and you'll definitely lose some games thanks to lands entering the battlefield tapped, but the difference is even more important when dealing with three colors.
When it comes to three colors, there's a massive difference between wedge (think Khans of Tarkir) and shard (think Shards of Alara) mana. For the Khans wedges, like the Sultai mana base above, the mana is extremely good. While we may not get the traditional fetch-for-shock mana base, we get 16 dual lands that will almost always come into play untapped, which means we can fill our deck with around eight basic lands and have a sterling mana base for around $50.
Meanwhile, shards decks (like Esper above) have to lean heavily on the buddy lands, which are much better in two-color builds than in three-color builds because three colors means fewer basic lands and a higher chance of Glacial Fortress and Drowned Catacomb coming into play tapped. Shard decks only get a single fast land and a single pain land, which leads to even more clunkiness. While the budget shard mana isn't really bad, it is much, much worse than the wedge mana thanks to the lack of fast lands and pain lands.
Conclusion
The point of all this is that, when it comes to building competitive, budget friendly decks in Modern, the mana base has a huge impact on what is and is not viable. If you want to play an aggressive deck, you'll have much better luck with enemy-colored (two-color) and wedge-colored (three-color) builds. Enemy and wedge decks can also be midrange or control just as easily. Basically, these color combinations can support any type of deck. On the other hand, ally- and shard-color decks really need to be midrange or control thanks to the presence of so many tapped (and potentially tapped) lands. This is less of a problem with two-color decks, because the more basic lands you can play, the better the ally duals become, but I'd still rather play UR or WR aggro over UW or RB aggro, and I certainly wouldn't want to play an Esper or Jund (or the rest of the shards) aggro deck on a budget, although Mardu, Sultai, and the rest of the wedges should work fine.
Anyway, that's all for today. Hopefully, this land break down will be helpful when it comes to building your own budget-friendly mana bases in Modern. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
