Utility lands that tap for colorless: how many do you run?

[The Golgari Guy]

Today I noticed something interesting. I was wondering how many utility lands that tap only for colorless I have, on average, in my commander decks.

I am talking about lands such as Scavenger Grounds, Ghost Quarter and Gavony Township, that tap for colorless and have an additional ability. I know that the more colors the deck is, the fewer of these lands I'll run, to not mess up the mana too much, but I wanted to quantify this better.

The results surprised me. Here's what I found out for my decks (name of commander/n. of utility lands that tap for colorless):

Doran, the Siege Tower: 2
Galea, Kindler of Hope: 2

Meren of Clan Nel Toth: 2
Imoti, Celebrant of Bounty: 6
Araumi of the Dead Tide: 3
Xenagos, God of Revels: 5
Hamza, Guardian of Arashin: 3
Chatterfang, Squirrel General: 4
Lathril, Blade of the Elves: 0

Syr Konrad, the Grim: 4
Braids, Conjurer Adept: 6
Birgi, God of Storytelling: 4
Marwyn, the Nurturer: 3

I've included both active and inactive decks in order to improve the statistics. I should also say that I've counted Phyrexian Tower, which is a corner cases since it can add colored mana when you sacrifice a creature, however it's only included in 1 deck.

On average, I run:

• 4.25 colorless utility lands in 1-color decks
• 3.28 colorless utility lands in 2-color decks
• 2 colorless utility lands in 3-color decks

That is to say, the number of colorless utility lands that I include in an N-colors decks is almost exactly 5-N. I find this very amusing/surprising.

I'm thus curious to know: how many colorless utility lands do you run in your decks depending on the number of colors?

[Morganator 2.0]

Krenko: 4 or 3. Buried Ruin, Cavern of Souls, Command Beacon, Hall of the Bandit Lord. Is Cavern of Souls colourless?

Brudiclad: 3. Hanweir Battlements, Treasure Vault, War Room.
Edric: 1. Strip Mine.
Scarab God: 2. Academy Ruins, Tyrite Sanctum.
Sisay: 3. Hall of the Bandit Lord, Inventors' Fair, Miren, the Moaning Well.

Haldan+Pako: 0
Licia: 0
Mishra: 1. Buried Ruin.
Vaevictis: Arcane Lighthouse, Bonders' Enclave, Hall of the Bandit Lord, Treasure Vault, War Room.

I don't think number of colors has anything to do with this. There just aren't a lot of colourless lands that are worth using in every deck. The ones that are can be hard to get your hands on (like Cavern of Souls).

[The Golgari Guy]

I don't think number of colors has anything to do with this. There just aren't a lot of colourless lands that are worth using in every deck. The ones that are can be hard to get your hands on (like Cavern of Souls).

My reasoning is that the more colors you have, the more it hurts to have a land that only tap for colorless. Maybe too simple, but even in your decks it looks like the more colors you play, the fewer colorless lands you have (Vaevictis being kind of an outlier, I guess).

[Aetherium Slinky]

Interesting question. Let's see.

Merieke Ri Berit (the primer version) has 5: Academy Ruins, Hall of the Bandit Lord, Strip Mine, Volrath's Stronghold, Urza's Saga.

Toggo, Goblin Weaponsmith & Thrasios, Triton Hero has 1: Field of the Dead.

Rosheen Meanderer has 5: Bonders' Enclave, Karn's Bastion, Kessig Wolf Run, Rogue's Passage, Skarrg, the Rage Pits.

Animar, Soul of Elements has 5: Alchemist's Refuge, Forge of Heroes, Homeward Path, Kessig Wolf Run, Rogue's Passage.

Kami of the Crescent Moon has 5: Academy Ruins, Inventors' Fair, Mikokoro, Center of the Sea, Reliquary Tower, Terrain Generator.

Breya, Etherium Shaper has 4: Academy Ruins, Inventors' Fair, Phyrexian Tower, Volrath's Stronghold.

Looks like I typically have 5.

[The Golgari Guy]

Looks like I typically have 5.

Very interesting! Looks like this depends a lot on personal deckbuilding practices.

[Bonethor]

My nearly monoU Gyruda: 2, terrain generator and Volrath's Stronghold (deck has a lot of island synergies and tries to lean on those)

Kediss/Malcolm artifacts/tokens matter: 4, Hanweir Battlements, Academy Ruins, Inventor's Fair and War Room - should probably switch one for Treasure Vault actually.. anyway gets away with a few more utility lands due to leaning towards artifacts/treasures

Licia the color hungry: 1, Slayers' Stronghold, color pip heavy deck

Wort, the Raidmother: 1, Kessig Wolf Run, deck has some synergies with basics

Niv-Mizzet Reborn: 0, hard enough to deal with the colours as is..

Mikaeus, the Lunarch: 2, Forge of Heroes, Rogue's Passage. Very casual theme deck, haven't really thought about more options.

Volo: 3, Alchemist's Refuge, Mirrorpool, Cloudpost, deck has pretty good fixing due to leaning into green.

Pramikon: 2, Karn's Bastion, Mage-Ring Network. Has a super friends / proliferate subtheme.

That's most of mine, seems to match your 5-N pretty well actually! Of course there's some differences but it seems like a decent average/ballpark figure.

[Aetherium Slinky]

Looks like I typically have 5.

Very interesting! Looks like this depends a lot on personal deckbuilding practices.

I try to add as much utility to my lands as possible without sacrificing colour production. A land slot with extra utility saves me a card elsewhere.

[The Golgari Guy]

Looks like I typically have 5.

Very interesting! Looks like this depends a lot on personal deckbuilding practices.

I try to add as much utility to my lands as possible without sacrificing colour production. A land slot with extra utility saves me a card elsewhere.

Makes sense! Personally I love utility lands, but I also don't have super optimized manabases (no fetches...) and thus I try to not include too much otherwise I have games where I'm in trouble with colored mana. The numbers I have were the result of multiple adjusting after several games in which a colorless sourced screwed my tempo... But of course it depends on the manabase!

[ApothecaryGeist]

I'm not counting fetches like Blighted Woodland or Myriad Landscape.  Also not counting filter lands like Cabal Coffers or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx.  These things are in the deck specifically to fetch colored lands and/or make bunches of colored mana.


Arixmethes - #6 - Ash Barrens (should I count this one?), Dark Depths, Reliquary Tower, Rogue's Passage, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, Thespian's Stage
Yurlok - #1 - Reliquary Tower
Garth - #1 - Strip Mine
Umbris - #3 - Reliquary Tower, Rogue's Passage, Scavenger Grounds
Ragavan - #4 - Access Tunnel, Rogues Passage, Treasure Vault (should I count this one?), War Room
Mimeoplasm - #3 - Rogue's Passage, Temple of the False God, Underdark Rift
Emiel - #4 - Kor Haven, Mystifying Maze, Temple of the False God, Strip Mine (recently removed & will likely replace with an alternate LD land, like Ghost Quarter)
Kathril - #4 - Gavony Township, Nesting Grounds, Rogue's Passage, Tyrite Sanctum
Atla Palani - #5 - Field of Ruin, High Market, Mutavault, Rogue's Passage, Temple of the False God
Grenzo, Dungeon Warden - #8 - Ancient Tomb, Command Beacon, Homeward Path, Isolated Watchtower, Molten Slagheap (also not sure if this one counts), Sanctum of Eternity, Temple of the False God, Zhalfirin Void
Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar - #2 - Ash Barrens (again, ?), Blasted Landscape
Haunt of Hightower - #4 - Geier Reach Sanitarium, Rogue's Passage, Scavenger Grounds (recently removed, needs replaced), Temple of the False God
Pramikon - #2 - Reliquary Tower, Rogue's Passage
Balan - #9 - Animal Sanctuary, Cloudpost, Glimmerpost, Mishra's Workshop, Reliquary Tower, Temple of the False God, War Room (recently removed, needs replaced), Wasteland, Urza's Saga
Athreos - #5 - Arcane Lighthouse, Detection Tower, Hall of Heliod's Generosity, Reliquary Tower, Vault of the Archangel
Questing Beast - #5 - Cavern of Souls (should this count in a tribal deck?), Maze of Ith, Reliquary Tower, Rogue's Passage, Temple of the False God


That's 16 decks.  Balan and Grenzo both have a large colorless component.  Grenzo has eldrazi with colorless costs.  Balan is equipment tribal with lots of generic costs.  For these decks, colorless is a feature rather than a bug.  I will disregard those two for this discussion.  That leaves #14 decks.


Average is 3.5.  Median for these decks is 4.

[The Golgari Guy]

I'm not counting fetches like Blighted Woodland or Myriad Landscape.  Also not counting filter lands like Cabal Coffers or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx.  These things are in the deck specifically to fetch colored lands and/or make bunches of colored mana.

Personally I've counted them, including Krosan Verge which I have in 3 decks, but I see your point.

I've run the numbers for your decks:

- For 1-color decks you have an average of 6
- For 2-color decks you have an average of 4.6
- For 3-color decks you have an average of 3
- For 5-color decks you have an average of 1

So it looks like also for you there's a strong correlation between the number of colors of the deck and the number of colorless utility lands! 

But you play more than me, the formula is closer to 6-N instead of 5-N.

[The Golgari Guy]

So, thanks everyone for the data!

I've corrected my counting with the convention of ApothecaryGeist (i.e., not counting lands as Myriad Landscape or Krosan Verge) and put all the data together. Here's what I've learnt (I'll use the abbreviation CUL for colorless utility lands):

• In 5-color decks, we run on average 0.50 CUL, with a standard deviation of 0.71 and a standard error of 0.50
• In 3-color decks, we run on average 2.41 CUL, with a standard deviation of 1.87 and a standard error of 0.45
• No data for 4-color decks ?
• In 2-color decks, we run on average 3.32 CUL, with a standard deviation of 1.86 and a standard error of 0.40
• In 1-color decks, we run on average 4.27 CUL, with a standard deviation of 1.85 and a standard error of 0.56

I've defined the standard error as standard deviation divided by the square root of the sample size. It's clear that these sample sizes are quite small, so this error should be taken with a grain of salt. Also we don't know if the distributions are Gaussians, although we may expect them to become so in the limit of large sample sizes.

The conclusion is that my heuristic formula "# of CUL in a N-color deck = 5-N" is not so far from what we are doing on average!

I've also learnt that you people like Pramikon a lot 

Please let me know if I've missed something!


Here are the data in case you want to analyze them yourself:

Garth   1
Niv-Mizzet-Reborn   0
   
Doran   1
Galea   1
Haldan-Pako   0
Licia   0
Mishra   1
Vaevictis   5
Breya   4
Merieke   5
Toggo-Thrasios   1
Animar   5
Pramikon   2
Licia   1
Yurlok   1
Mimeoplasm   3
Kathril   4
Atla-Palani   5
Pramikon   2
   
Meren   2
Imoti   5
Araumi   3
Xenagos   5
Hamza   2
Chatterfang   4
Lathril   0
Brudiclad   3
Edric   1
Scarab-God   2
Sisay   3
Rosheen   5
Gyruda   2
Kediss-Malcolm   4
Wort   1
Volo   3
Athreos   5
Arixmethes   6
Umbris   3
Emiel   4
Grenzo-Dungeon-Warden   8
Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar   2
   
Syr-Konrad   3
Braids   5
Birgi   4
Marwyn   3
Krenko   3
Kami-of-the-Crescent-Moon   5
Mikaeus-Lunarch   2
Ragavan   4
Haunt-of-Hightower   4
Balan   9
Questing-Beast   5