[EDH/Commander] Mana base for five-color deck with one primary color?

[TrueNeutralPaladin]

Assuming that I have all shock lands, check lands, pain lands, shard and wedge taplands, signets, and usual mana rocks, and that I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars to acquirefetch lands (or $1000+ for original dual lands), what is the best mana base for a five-color primarily white EDH/Commander deck?

My initial thought is:

10 shock lands
10 check lands
15 plains
Command Tower
Cavern of Souls
Homeward Path
10 signets
Chromatic Lantern

This often produces access to all five colors and at least two white mana within the first six draws in virtual hands. Sometimes check lands would come into play tapped, sometimes untapped.

But sometimes RNGod says "Thou shall not have the mana!" And that's a lot of cards devoted to mana base, cutting into space for board presence, buffs, removal, etc.

Shard and wedge taplands would give two more shots at each color compared to check lands but always come into play tapped. Worth it?

And maybe I'm going about it wrong altogether. This is my first five-color commander deck. It's for a casual table, and it's a silly concept - running the Innistrad sisters, plus a bit of draw from black, blue, and green - but we do try to build to have a decent shot at winning of course.

Thoughts?

Edit: Adding test deck link below.

https://deckstats.net/decks/120533/1205976-test-deck-five-color-white-foc

[ApothecaryGeist]

Question:  What is the Commander of this deck? The only one I can think of that fits the bill of 5-colors but primarily white is General Tazri.  But then you mentioned Innistrad block.

But to attempt to answer your question ...

I would start with as many rainbow lands as would work with my deck ... Command Tower, City of Brass, Mana Confluence, Grand Coliseum, Exotic Orchard ... the list goes on.
Then I would just put in duals that have white.  If white is your primary color, then you want all the lands to produce white along with other colors.  You don't want to have an opening hand with a land that make red/black, another that makes blue/green, and another that makes black/blue and all the spells are double and triple white. 

Hope this helps.  If you give us more specifics about the deck - the commander, the strategy of the deck, the themes of the deck - we can probably give more assistance with non-land mana sources too.

Happy Brewing!

[WWolfe]

Jodah appears to be the commander from the list they've added since you asked.

As far as the question itself, seeing a decklist to see what the actual card make up is and mana curve along with the actual mana pip distribution would be helpful. ApothecaryGeist gave good advice though.

[TrueNeutralPaladin]

snip

Thanks for the advice, and sorry about the lack of details in the original post.  Using only white-producing duals was another option I've been considering but haven't tested yet. Jodah is the commander that I have in mind - his ability could be used to drop Avacyn, Gisela, Storm Herd, etc early. I added a link to my test deck above.

[Judaspriester]

What about the Battle lands like Luxury Suite? Unless you want to play 1vs1 commander they nearly always enter untapped. Sadly we just got allied versions of that lands til now.

[Soren841]

Still not sure why you would choose to focus on the worst color in EDH. Most 5c decks are mainly BUG.

[TrueNeutralPaladin]

As far as the question itself, seeing a decklist to see what the actual card make up is and mana curve along with the actual mana pip distribution would be helpful. ApothecaryGeist gave good advice though.

I might have asked for advice too soon - the deck is still in early planning. I posted because I was looking to feel out whether this kind of mana base is really feasible or not without fetches before investing too much time in the concept. The content so far is predominantly white - the big angels (Avacyn, Gisela, Reya, Lyra, Baneslayer), the "wrench into your plans" angels (Sigarda, Linvala, Jubilation), Storm Herd, Vengeful Archon, Zetalpa, etc. Some draw from other colors - Rhystic, Kaya, etc. Earthquake since the deck produces a lot of mana and features mostly flying creatures.

[TrueNeutralPaladin]

Still not sure why you would choose to focus on the worst color in EDH. Most 5c decks are mainly BUG.

I know it's not optimal - it's just a fun concept. My Gisela deck isn't half-bad - it's squeaked out some wins - and I thought it'd be neat to try running all of the Innistrad sisters.

[TrueNeutralPaladin]

What about the Battle lands like Luxury Suite? Unless you want to play 1vs1 commander they nearly always enter untapped. Sadly we just got allied versions of that lands til now.

Thanks for the suggestion.  I recently acquired all five of them, but I'm leaning towards using them in other decks, at least until I buy more copies of each. I might make it a priority if I think this deck will come together well.

[Judaspriester]

What about the Battle lands like Luxury Suite? Unless you want to play 1vs1 commander they nearly always enter untapped. Sadly we just got allied versions of that lands til now.

Thanks for the suggestion.  I recently acquired all five of them, but I'm leaning towards using them in other decks, at least until I buy more copies of each. I might make it a priority if I think this deck will come together well.

Hmm.. I dont know what your playgroup thinks about proxies, but it might be an option to print and test them, before you decide to buy them.
At my playgroup we got a less restrictive proxy policy (print them, as long as you got the cards once), but i know that other groups are more restrictive.

[ApothecaryGeist]

Knowing now that you are building Jodah ...

I would disagree with building white as the primary color.  With Jodah everything above 5 mana, color is irrelevant.  You can cast EVERYTHING with only 1 mana of each color.  So you can still have Avacyn regardless of the deck's "primary" color(s).

Your primary colors are the colors of speels you want to hard cast.  These are primarily spells you will play in the early game.  For Jodah, these will be spells that ramp you and spells that put cards into your hand.

White is bad at ramp.  White is bad at color fixing your mana.  White is bad at card draw.  I would go with Simic (blue/green) as your primary colors.  Green for ramp.  Blue for card draw (including cards that dig like Brainstorm, Ponder, Serum Visions).

I would build the mana base with rainbows (as I said before) and the filter land, Crystal Quarry.  After that I would put in duals that are just blue and green.  And I would not use any of them that unconditioinally enter the battlefield tapped.  You want to start casting your blue and green spells immediately.  I would be sure to include basic lands so that your fetch spells have something to fetch for, and so you don't get completely hosed by Blood Moon.  I would also focus on mana rocks that make either simic colors (Simic Signet) and mana of any color (Fellwar Stone, Birds of Paradise, Darksteel Ingot).

Happy Brewing!

[TrueNeutralPaladin]

snip

Yeah, I recently started playing Magic again after a gap of a couple years, and I've quickly come to remember that blue and green have some tremendous advantages in Commander. But taking this concept away from white towards other colors seems to work against the idea - which is more-or-less "I like my Gisela deck... would it be feasible to turn it into a five-color deck and run the other sisters, some multicolor angels, and other white heavy hitters?" I've had the idea for some time - and had a growing stack of cards set aside for it - and wanted to solidify a deck list now since Seraph of the Scales is a good fill-in for the long-lost WB sister.

But then that might be the way to go - keep the Gisela deck and use Jodah for something else. The mana base seems to take up too many slots as currently designed.

[Judaspriester]

If you want to see another example for a 5c mana base:
https://deckstats.net/decks/112190/1047892-najeela-warrior-tribe/

@ApothecaryGeist In stead of Crystal Quarry I strongly reccomend Cascading Cataracts. Its more flexible with the colors and indestructible (what might come handy in some metas).

[WWolfe]

The mana base that's been suggested for this deck idea really doesn't take up more slots than it should in any deck...

35-38 lands
7-10 ramp spots (mana dorks, ramp spells, artifact/enchantment ramp, etc.)
7-10 card draw
3-5 mass removal
3-5 spot removal (mass & spot should include creature removal as well as artifact/enchantment/etc. depending on your meta)
30-35 cards that are the focus of the deck (including your commander)

These numbers will vary based on the deck and you can have cards that overlap between purposes, Explore or Growth Spiral, though somewhat situational, could technically count as both a ramp spot & a card draw spot, or in a life gain deck Fumigate could kind of count as both a board wipe & a focus of the deck card. Cards with multiple modes are great as well for the flexibility, Merciless Eviction for instance. Also with removal, exile beats destroy as it's much easier to return something from a graveyard than it is from exile (Path to Exile beats Murder, not just because of mana cost).

(Some of these may not be the best example but I'm working on 2 hours sleep here as I was up basically all night playing between the LGS and a friends house)

[TrueNeutralPaladin]

snip

Sure, but taking the base too far from white means Jodah will practically be required to be on the board to do much of anything (with the pool of cards that I had in mind), giving the deck a rather large weak point - take out Jodah, take out the deck. And if he has to be recast multiple times with commander tax, then he's not offering much advantage.

At least that's my initial thought about it. But I'm with you on the topic of sleep - I just got home from work a couple hours ago and I'm about to crash. Thoughts getting a bit muddled.

Edit: But then again, with the rainbows and green fetch, perhaps access to white mana sources would be sufficient. I'll give it some more thought after I've had some sleep.