All 42 Lands in Commander in Magic Ranked

Last updated on March 22, 2024

Ancient Tomb | Illustration by Howard Lyon

Every Magic deck needs lands, with very few exceptions. Creating a good mana base can often determine whether a deck is going to be successful. This gets even harder in a singleton format like Commander when you can’t just fill out your mana base with playsets of the most optimal lands.

Luckily, there are some lands that always seem to pop up in Commander, and for good reason. These lands are either just good in general, or particularly good in the format. For example, the Bond lands like Training Center are infinitely better in a multiplayer format since they’re otherwise just tap lands.

I’m going to go through some of the best lands for the Commander format, hopefully making it slightly easier for you to put together a good mana base. I’ve tried to stick to cards that are good for a variety of Commander decks, so certain powerful lands that are only good for specific builds might not be here. If there are any great lands that didn’t make the list, feel free to discuss those in the comments!

What Are Good Lands in Commander?

Inventors' Fair | Illustration by Jonas De Ro

Good lands in Commander are often just good lands, but there are some lands that aren’t as good in other formats that shine here. For example, slow lands and check lands are typically a little slow or inconsistent for quicker formats, but in Commander when games go long they work a lot better.

Fetch lands, or other lands that allow you to search your deck, are also especially helpful since a 99-card deck needs to be thinned out a lot more than a 60-card one. While these lands are still great in other formats, they’re especially good in Commander.

#42. Myriad Landscape

Not all colors in Magic have great ways to find lands, so having a colorless option like Myriad Landscape is a really nice addition for Commander. Ramp is also more important if you’re playing casual Commander because you’ll likely have big expensive spells you want to cast as opposed to faster formats where the mana curve tops off at a lower number.

#41. Vesuva

Vesuva can become a copy of any of the great lands on this list. That does make some of them a little worse since they’ll enter tapped, but it’s still nice to have a way to double up on one of your best lands or possibly one of your opponents’ best.

#40. Bojuka Bog

In a game of Commander, it’s pretty likely at least one of your opponents is using their graveyard as a resource. Bojuka Bog allows you to exile some dangerous threats from an opponent's graveyard for free.

#39. Kessig Wolf Run

Kessig Wolf Run is a nice mana sink. Even if you end up flooded, you can still pump up any of your creatures to make them a decent threat.

#38. Maze of Ith

Maze of Ith has several good uses. If you need to hold off a particularly dangerous attacker, you can keep yourself safe with this land. Alternatively, if you want to get an attack trigger off something like Etali, Primal Storm but don’t want it to die in combat, you can use this on your own creature.

#37. Reflecting Pool

Reflecting Pool can be a helpful tool in any multicolor Commander deck. Later in the game, this can essentially be a land that enters untapped and can tap for any color you need. The one downside is that this can be “not great” as an early-game draw, but that’s not all that likely in a deck of 99 cards.

#36. Rogue’s Passage

Using Rogue's Passage to make one of your attackers unblockable can help you cash in on attack triggers, combat damage triggers, or just deal out a good amount of damage directly to your opponent. Using it with a creature like Blightsteel Colossus can even help win you the game.

#35. Check Lands

Any dual land that can enter untapped on a regular basis is a pretty good option for mana fixing in Commander. Check lands like Sunpetal Grove or Rootbound Crag have a decent chance of entering untapped, especially in 2-color decks.

#34. Lotus Field

Lotus Field can help give you access to multiple colors, and gives you a well-protected mana source. This card can also be a good addition to decks that can make use of lands from the graveyards.

#33. Plaza of Heroes

Plaza of Heroes is a great card for Commander since you always have a legendary spell to cast in your command zone. Once your commander is on the field, this land taps for any color in your deck. It’s also a good way to save your commander or another one of your creatures if need be.

#32. Reliquary Tower

Plenty of Commander decks have powerful draw engines that frequently make you have to discard to hand size. Reliquary Tower is an easy way to let you keep all the cards you draw and is less likely to be removed than an artifact like Thought Vessel.

#31. Inventors’ Fair

Inventors' Fair is a good tool for any artifact deck or a combo deck that uses an artifact as part of its combo. You also likely won’t need as much colored mana in an artifact-heavy deck so utility lands like this aren’t as big of a risk.

#30. Scorched Ruins

Even after sacrificing your two lands to Scorched Ruins, it’s still a positive mana trade playing this land. This works well in colorless decks and decks that don’t mind getting some lands in the graveyard.

#29. War Room

War Room is a good source of card draw for decks with colors that might not naturally have other good options. The fewer colors in your deck, the better this card ends up being because you won’t have to pay as much life.

#28. Slow Land

The Innistrad slow lands like Deserted Beach and Overgrown Farmland are great for Commander because games usually go a bit longer than in other formats. That means you’ll usually get a chance to play your slow lands untapped.

#27. Field of the Dead

Field of the Dead can be a powerful tool for a landfall or lands deck, especially if you’re dropping multiple lands on each of your turns. You’re going to be playing lands anyway, so you might as well get something extra for doing it.

#26. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth are both very good for mana fixing in multicolor decks including either black or green. They’re also good for enabling landwalk abilities.

#25. Inkmoth Nexus

Inkmoth Nexus can be a nice addition to any infect deck, and it also works well in equipment or aura decks since you can pump it up and make it a pretty serious threat. It’s a bit harder to remove than a typical creature since opponents need to do so at instant speed while it’s still a creature.

#24. Bond Lands

The bond land cycle (including Training Center) is handy for any multiplayer format since they will usually come in untapped. By the point in the game where it’s down to just you and one other opponent, you’ll likely already have enough mana so the only drawback to these lands won’t really affect you.

#23. Thespian’s Stage

Thespian's Stage can become the best land you have or the best one any of your opponents have. It can also copy lands like Scorched Ruins without needing to deal with its ETB effect. There’s also the classic trick of using it to become Dark Depths and get Marit Lage out quickly.

#22. Pain Lands

Pain lands like Caves of Koilos and Karplusan Forest are some of the stronger dual lands since they always enter untapped. In Commander, they’re even better because you have more life to use as a resource.

#21. Wasteland

As you can tell from this list, all the best lands are non-basic ones. That means Wasteland can blow up some of your opponents’ best tools at no extra cost.

#20. Strip Mine

Strip Mine is just a slightly better Wasteland because it can also hit basic lands. If your opponent has only one source of a specific color and it happens to be a basic land, you can really slow them down. This isn’t the most likely scenario, but the possibility gives it a slight edge over Wasteland.

#19. Boseiju, Who Shelters All

Boseiju, Who Shelters All allows you the peace of mind of knowing you’ll be able to cast an important spell without it being countered. If you’re about to pull off a combo or just cast a spell that’s important for your game, this can be the difference between a win and a loss.

#18. Otawara, Soaring City

Otawara, Soaring City’s bounce ability can be nice for stalling opponents or putting one of your own cards back in your hand. If you have your commander on the field, it also helps to reduce the price of this card, making it a good pick for the format.

#17. Tricycle Lands

The Ikoria triomes, like Ketria Triome, and the completion of the cycle from Streets of New Capenna like Xander's Lounge are a unique tri-land cycle that have all three basic land types for the colors they generate. This means they can be fetched, plus they have cycling so they aren’t a dead draw later in the game.

#16. Phyrexian Tower

There are plenty of decks where sacrificing a creature to Phyrexian Tower benefits you both by giving you mana and by allowing you to cash in on death triggers. Having a sacrifice outlet that doesn’t cost mana is also always a good addition for an aristocrats deck.

#15. Boseiju, Who Endures

Boseiju, Who Endures is a pretty comprehensive form of removal, and it’s cheap to cast, even without the cost reduction. Being a legendary land isn’t as big of a drawback in Commander as in other Constructed formats because you can only have one of each card anyway.

#14. Recursion Lands

The incomplete cycle of recursion lands, Hall of Heliod's Generosity, Volrath's Stronghold, and Academy Ruins, are good in most decks that they can fit in. Wizards did a good job pairing colors with the type of cards that these lands can get out of your graveyard, making them an excellent fit for themed decks, and they’re just good in general.

#13. Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx works well in most mono-color decks, so long as you are running a lot of permanents. It won’t always be able to pay out big amounts of mana, but when you’re only running one color you can afford a land that just taps for colorless sometimes.

#12. Shock Lands

Aside from true duals, shock lands like Steam Vents or Godless Shrine are the best dual lands you can run. They have the basic land types so they can be fetched, and they can enter untapped basically any time you need. In Commander especially, losing 2 life really isn’t all that big a deal.

#11. Cavern of Souls

Cavern of Souls is basically an auto-include for any typal deck. It’s great for mana fixing, but it also allows you to cast big creatures and know they won’t be countered.

#10. Mana Confluence + City of Brass

Mana Confluence and City of Brass aren’t flashy, but fast mana of any color is always a very helpful thing to have in a land. One damage isn’t that bad of a price in a format where you start with 40 life.

#9. Command Tower

Everything good about Mana Confluence and City of Brass is the same about Command Tower, with the added benefit that it doesn’t cost you anything.

#8. Growing Rites of Itlimoc / Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun

Growing Rites of Itlimoc isn’t technically a land, but the one it transforms into, Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun is so good I figured it deserved a spot on this list. It also isn’t too difficult to transform in creature-heavy builds, especially since it can help find you one.

#7. Mishra’s Workshop

Mishra's Workshop is a very powerful addition to an artifact deck, but this card is also hard to get your hands on. If you don’t mind proxies or are playing on a free platform like Cockatrice, I’d stick this in pretty much any artifact build.

#6. Cabal Coffers

Cabal Coffers is one of the best lands to include in a mono-black deck. It won’t take long for this land to start generating a ton of black mana for you, allowing you to keep up with or outpace your opponents in a color that struggles playing extra lands on its own.

#5. Gaea’s Cradle + Serra’s Sanctum

Gaea's Cradle and Serra's Sanctum are both incredibly powerful in the right decks. Green is a good color for creature-heavy decks, and white is pretty much always in enchantment decks, making these auto includes in either one if you can afford it.

#4. Urza’s Saga

Urza's Saga has a lot of helpful qualities. The Construct you can make with it can be very powerful in artifact decks or just give you the option to make a body if you don’t have an early creature to play. It can also fetch you a Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, or another helpful artifact like Shadowspear. This is also an enchantment you can play for free which can be good in enchantment matters decks.

#3. Fetch Lands

Fetch lands like Flooded Strand and Verdant Catacombs help you find the lands you need and help thin out your deck. In a singleton format, it can be very helpful to have ways to search through your deck and find the exact land you need at a given time.

#2. Ancient Tomb

Ancient Tomb is basically like two land drops in one, giving you a good head start earlier in the game or helping you get to your bombs more quickly later on. Two damage isn’t too bad in Commander, so the benefits definitely outweigh the damage.

#1. True Dual Lands

For multicolor decks, it’s hard to beat the original dual lands like Taiga or Tundra. They always come in untapped and they’re fetchable so they’re very efficient.

Commanding Conclusion

Cabal Coffers | Illustration by Don Hazeltine

Finding the right lands for your Commander deck can be tricky with over 800 that are legal in the format. Hopefully, this list has helped you suss out some of the best options for the format, and find ideas of the types of lands you want.

Did I miss any of your favorite Commander lands? Which of these lands do you usually run in your decks? Let me know in the comments or on Draftsim’s Twitter.

Thank you for reading, I’ll see you later!