All 12 Sol Lands in Magic Ranked

Last updated on March 30, 2026

Ancient Tomb | Illustration by Howard Lyon

Magic is a game of advantages. Controlling more resources than your opponents is a simple way to build an advantage that wins games, and the two most important resources in MTG are cards and mana.

Cards that generate a mana advantage are often among the best in the game; there’s a reason “Bolt the Bird” has lived in the Magic vernacular as long as it has, a reason why cards in older Magic formats are often banned for the mana advantage they generate.

Sol lands are a great way to get a serious mana advantage, but which ones are right for your deck? Let’s find out!

What Are Sol Lands in MTG?

Arid Archway | Illustration by Raymond Bonilla

Sol lands tap for 2 colorless mana, with the name coming from the ever-iconic Sol Ring. It’s an alluring prospect for a land; making them tap for twice as much mana offers a powerful mana ability and incredibly potent ramp. The power of these colorless cards means we rarely get new ones, and they typically have some form of restriction or downside stapled to the effect so they don’t break the game outright. Some of them still do.

Honorable Mentions

Urza's Tower, Urza's Power Plant, and Urza's Mine are a famous trio that generate or more if they're all under your control. This condition is a significant one, but definitely worth the mention for any player interested in this list.

Scorched Ruins doubles the output of a Sol Ring for the one-time up front cost of two lands, and Mishra's Workshop provides but is restricted to artifact spells, and cost + availability. Since these two lands are hard to get and use I'm able to help you see them here, but not rank them.

#12. Watermarket

You aren’t playing Watermarket without a liberal Rule 0 discussion to allow Un-cards, but I can buy this being a powerful inclusion to a Commander deck dedicated to watermarked cards from Ravnica sets, or something similar.

#11. Muraganda Raceway

Aetherdrift‘s Muraganda Raceway is the newest addition to this small group. It’s kinda neat, but it falls short of excellence.

Sol lands are often good because they offer an early mana advantage; start your engines! makes this unfortunately fair because it takes a few turns to reach the bonus. There are other “slow” Sol lands that don’t kick in right away, but this one takes much more work to enable than, say, Temple of the False God, so I’m pretty unimpressed.

#10. Untaidake, the Cloud Keeper

The double whammy of entering tapped and having a heavy restriction attached to the mana makes Untaidake, the Cloud Keeper too niche for general use. I’m sure your Jodah, the Unifier deck gets a kick out of it, but it doesn’t fit in many other places.

#9. Guildless Commons

Bounce lands are generally powerful; you can reset MDFCs, they’re a form of card advantage, and they offer combo potential, either by playing nicely with a mechanic like landfall or going crazy with cards like Amulet of Vigor and Kodama of the East Tree.

The trouble with Guildless Commons is that it’s distinctly worse than any of the guild-associated bounce lands that tap for colored mana, and there are enough of those that you probably never need this one.

#8. Arid Archway

Arid Archway is Guildless Commons with a whiff of desert upside, though not nearly enough to make it an exciting card.

#7. Shrine of the Forsaken Gods

Shrine of the Forsaken Gods asks you to jump through some hoops for its Sol mana. At least it functions as a regular land, so the deckbuilding cost is minimal assuming all of your deck’s top end is colorless. If you aren’t all-in on artifacts or Eldrazi, steer clear of this one.

#6. Crystal Vein

Crystal Vein belongs in combo decks; this is essentially a ritual stapled to a land, so it works well in the decks you’d expect to run Dark Ritual and similar cards: decks that don’t mind throwing away a card for a temporary advantage since they’ll leverage it to win the game that turn.

#5. Temple of the False God

Temple of the False God’s a Commander staple that I’ve railed against in the past, but I’ve come around on it… mostly.

This card doesn’t belong in every EDH deck. You shouldn’t put this in your 32-land Boros () deck that already misses land drops, but it’s a good reward for green decks with land-centric ramp.

Not tapping for mana early sucks, but what’s life without a little risk?

#4. Ugin’s Labyrinth

Ugin's Labyrinth lends Eldrazi and Tron decks a pretty powerful land. It plays like a Chrome Mox that lets you redraw the card once you have the mana to cast it naturally. You don’t even need to imprint a card for it work like a normal land.

There’s a deckbuilding cost associated with this, but it’s far less restrictive than other entries here, and much easier to turn on, so I like it quite a bit.

#3. Eldrazi Temple

Eldrazi Temple only asks that you play Eldrazi for your mana advantage—a pretty low cost considering this was one of the major instigators of Eldrazi Winter in Modern a few years back.

Narrow cards come in two flavors: Some like Untaidake are so niche as to be hardly playable, and others like Eldrazi Temple offer more than enough to build around.

#2. City of Traitors

City of Traitors is a bit of a strange land, but it often works out well—at least in high-powered Magic formats. It plays out similarly to Crystal Vein, except you can squeeze more mana out of it.

#1. Ancient Tomb

Ancient Tomb is undoubtedly the best of these cards, and one of Magic's best lands. Paying life for mana is virtually always a boon—just look at how busted Phyrexian mana is. This is practically the same deal, except you can spend it on whatever you want!

It’s not for every deck, I suppose. You don’t want to create 2 colorless mana in an aggro deck full of color-heavy costs. But it has a wide range of applications with a nearly negligible cost.

Best Sol Land Payoffs

Sol lands are most useful for playing high-impact yet expensive cards ahead of schedule. Much of this occurs in Legacy, where Dragon Stompy decks use Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors to power out stax pieces like Blood Moon and Trinisphere before their opponents have a chance to develop a board state. They’re also key pieces to initiative decks—they’re a significant reason behind White Plume Adventurer’s ban.

Sol lands also work well with cards that allow you untap lands. Cards like Candelabra of Tawnos, Turnabout, Kelpie Guide, Turnabout, and Bumi, Unleashed become significantly more powerful when they untap lands that produce more mana than they or their abilities cost.

Wrap Up

Shrine of the Forsaken Gods | Illustration by Daniel Ljunggren

Getting a swift mana advantage in Magic, especially off something like an Ancient Tomb, often feels like cheating. That’s what gives these lands such prestige (some of them, at least), and it makes them game-warping where they work.

What’s your favorite sol land? How do you exploit the mana advantage? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!