Khans of Tarkir Mana Bases

Khans is coming out soon I'm itching to get brewing and try out new cards like many of you I suppose but I don't want to jump too far ahead for a few reasons. Mainly, the full set is not out yet but also I haven't properly read through all the cards and tried to evaluate their playability /  power level for constructed decks. I'll be applying a cost-return evaluation method for each card in the near future. To do this though, it's necessary to have some critical information to understand what the cost of the card really is.

The critical information available which gives an idea as to understand exactly how easy / difficult the mana cost is for cards in the new standard and it comes from the mana available.

Here is the relevant stuff we'll have access to:
5 Friendly colour combination fetchlands
evolving wilds
full 10 temples
5 enemy colour painlands
5 wedge tri-lands
mana confluence
1 full cycle of taplands

We know Khans is a wedge - based set. Many of the cards so far are N colourless (as low as 0) plus XYZ wedge colours.

My first impression was that it would be very tough to expect to cast such cards on-curve (meaning the same turn as their total mana cost, like turn 4 for a 1WGB card). The reason I thought this is two-fold; from experience of similar costed cards from Shards of Alara but also from the available mana from lands. I expected the bases to have too many enter tapped lands from temples to tri-lands to guildgates-style taplands that would functionally push the cost of a card up by 1 turn. Indeed, I flat out dismissed trying a non green-based wedge as you don't have access to Sylvan Caryatid (and of course Courser for Fetchlands interaction) but after some digging I revised this assessment.

I looked back to type 2 decks around shards-zendikar block when we last had access to fetchlands and roughly similar lands to get an idea of what a mana-base would look like.

Heres a mana base from the PT-winning Jund deck that year:
(27 lands)
2  Dragonskull Summit
4  Forest
2  Lavaclaw Reaches
3  Mountain
4  Raging Ravine
1  Rootbound Crag
4  Savage Lands
3  Swamp
4  Verdant Catacombs

and a high-placed Naya deck:
(24 lands)
4  Arid Mesa
5  Forest
3  Misty Rainforest
2  Mountain
2  Plains
1  Raging Ravine
1  Rootbound Crag
1  Sejiri Steppe
2  Stirring Wildwood
1  Tectonic Edge
2  Terramorphic Expanse


I think these kind of mana bases as they're tried tested and tweaked could be used as templates for the upcoming standard as we'll have access to very similar cards (fetches, tri-lands, enter tapped lands with bonus abilities etc)

Note the two green-based decks above ran several mana-elf type cards (6+) so I suppose that needs to be taken into account. This might on the surface suggest if you have Elvish mystic / Courser / Caryatid you can lower you land count. The opposite I think is true when Courser is involved; you would likely want even more lands to maximise the Couter / Fetchland interaction.

So I'm assuming you are trying to build a 3-colour deck with the powerful 2 and 3 colour cards from a particular wedge. Your mana base will look something like this:

6 or 7 Fetchlands
9 or 10 basics
8 or so enter tapped lands

which works out to be something like 25 lands. IF you take as an exmaple, Jeskai (WUR) wedge and try to build a reasonable base using the above template, you might have a mana base that looks something like the following:
4 Flooded Strand
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Polluted Delta
4 Trilands
2 Mountain
4 Plains
2 Island
2 Temple of Enlightenment
1 Temple of Epiphany
1 Temple of Triumph
3 Shivan Reef
1 Battlefield Forge

I didn't quite pull these numbers out of my backside. Part of your mana base for 3 colours decks is the Fetchlands. You only get 1 that crosses properly over two colours, so this tells me you would need to be slightly more directed towards UW with a bit of r rather than a perfectly even split among the colours. It also means you likely want to slightly weight your pain / temples to be toward the 3rd colour to give you sufficient access (red here).

Also, I think 8 enter tapped lands is almost perfectly correct for a wedge manabase. You essentially cannot afford to have these be your lands drops on turn 2 or 3 if you want to expect to cast your spells. So I want enough that I can reasonably expect ( a majority of the time) to have one available as my turn 1 play but not too many that I am stuck with them for my turn 2 or 3 (or possibly turn 4) land so I can actually cast my wedge spells.

So something like turn 1 temple into turn 2 painland / basic / fetch into turn 3 painland / basic / fetch allows you to a good colour mix of 2 total mana on turn 2 as well as full wedge access on turn 3.

When I realised this I was quite taken aback and the power level of many wedge cards went up a full notch in my mind as you can reasonably expect to cast them on-curve.

I think knowing you have a reasonable mana base for your 3-colour cards might change your perception of cards when you look at evaluating things for the new standard.

A small ntoe on two colour mana bases though.I'm assuming they will tend to be more aggressive decks as if you're a slower more controlling deck, I expect there to be very little reason not to play one of the wedges. This means enter tapped lands are a LOT worse to borderline unplayable.

Here is what you'll have access to for a "friendly" 2 colour base.
4 Fetchlands
4 mana confluence
maybe 2 or so temples
basic lands
....
that is....that's just not very good.

The enemy coloured decks have things a little better
4 Mana confluence
4 Painlands

Fetchlands just replace basics here for the purposes of thinning but that is a deck that will take a LOT of damage from it's lands.

I would even go as far to say you would be better running a 23-land mono-colour deck with 8 fetchlands. I cannot see an anyway evenly 2-coloured aggro deck having reliable mana. Fetchlands fix mana for THAT TURN and not necessarily for future spells (as in, if you find a forest to allow you to play that green spells this turn, it doesn't really help with future access to W) so Windswept Heath is not temple garden.

So a quick summary:

You can play a reasonable non-green wedge mana base
The mana does not almost completely consist of taplands
2 colour aggressive mana bases are very tough
Fetchlands fix mana for THAT TURN and not necessarily for future spells
You'll be running at least as many basics as fetchlands
Don't overlook Evolving Wilds
Start with this template for your wedge mana base:
6 or 7 Fetchlands
9 or 10 basics
8 or so enter tapped lands


Feedback / opinion / critique welcome

- AJ