If you’re familiar at all with Commander, you’ll have heard a lot of talk about Ramp. If you’re newer to the game: Ramping is the term for spending your mana on sources of additional mana to use on later turns. Think of it like an investment; spend more mana now to have access to more later. Due to the nature of Commander being a multiplayer format were players have high starting life totals, raw aggression isn’t as potent as it is in a 1v1 format, so the early turn are best used setting up your board and hand to be in a more advantageous state for the rest of the game. While Ramping is not the only way to aid in setting up your game plan for success, it’s widely considered to be universally helpful and always a safe addition to most decks – if not a necessity for some.
This Ramp can come in many forms, such as: adding more lands to the battlefield, creatures that tap for mana, or what we’re going to talk about today – mana rocks. A “mana rock” is a colloquial term for an artifact that’s primary purpose is tapping for mana, similar to a land.
Today, I want to finish talking about some mana rocks that fall into a specific category: the 2-drop rocks. If you didn’t read Part 1, you should check it out!
Liquimetal Torque
First and foremost, Liquimetal Torque enters untapped and taps for colorless, so it already is a pretty solid card with little overhead if you aren’t tight on colors. The upside on this one is one of my favorites from the list, letting you turn another nonland card into an artifact for a turn. This has two great use cases: if you’re in an artifact-centric deck, you can get some nice benefits off having an extra artifact for a turn from many spells you’ll naturally be running. Even if you aren’t in an artifact deck though, this lets you turn things into an artifact so you (or another player) can make them vulnerable to artifact removal. Someone casts a Vandalblast? Pick the scariest creature or enchantment on the board and watch it go down. This one is great, and I find the active effect to be just versatile enough to find a home in many deck lists.
Millikin
Cards being in your graveyard is often really helpful for a lot of decks, but it can get in the way of decks that scry often if you have something you want to leave on the top of your deck but need the mana. I love Millikin for decks that do utilize their graveyard though, as the incremental mill adds up over the course of a game. I wouldn’t really include this without a reason to, though.
Mind Stone
Another classic, Mind Stone is well revered for good reason. It’s a mana rock when you need it, and it cycles off the board when you don’t. It’s good early, and it’s flexible later. This is a very popular card for good reason, and I frequently find myself using it in 3-or-less color decks where the lack of fixing isn’t an issue. It’s also cheap as chips, so I’ve never minded just owning a bunch of copies to throw in everything.
Myr Convert
Myr Convert was a card I forgot about until writing this article, but I think has potential. Having the constant threat of Toxic can be really scary in decks like Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive where you can reliably get this guy in for damage. Paying two life to tap for mana isn’t great, but getting the color of choosing when you do can be really useful for this bracket of mana rocks. It’s not for everyone since it’s really best used as a sort of “backup” mana rock, but if every part of the card is useful to you in can be a sweet package deal.
Obsidian Obelisk
While this might be pretty obvious after reading the card, Obsidian Obelisk really is just based on how many multicolored spells you have in your deck. If you have a lot, this will be a great flexible mana rock to use. If you don’t, you’re probably better with another choice due to it coming in tapped.
Ornithopter of Paradise
Ornithopter of Paradise is a great card, and frankly in my humble opinion is one of the best of these artifact-creature-dork-rock cards. It enters untapped (although being a creature means it has summoning sickness, so it enters only semi-usable), it has a flying body that can carry Auras, Equipment, and counters. It can block scary fliers in a pinch, and it has the scariest creature typing ever written on a magic card: Thopter. Seriously though, this card is really great and often finds it’s way into my creature heavy decks without access to green dorks.
Paradise Mantle
This is cheating a bit, but for the cost of 1 (one) mana, Paradise Mantle lets you turn any creature into a mana dork. This is one of the more expensive cards on the list (8-9 USD at the time of writing) and has had limited reprints, so this one loses some points in accessibility compared to the others, but if you have Equipment synergy or just are fine turning your board into mana generators this can be really good to get out early.
Pillar of Origins
It’s specific to typal decks, but it’s good if like 1/3 of the cards in your deck are that same typing. I definitely prefer other ramp pieces to Pillar of Origins, as I think there are usually less drawbacks in being more restricted on colors but not tied to a specific type of card to cast, but similarly to what I mentioned earlier with Automated Artificer, it has a good home when you’re just mostly throwing out creatures with a variety of color identities anyway.
Plague Myr
Very similarly to Myr Convert, Infect is more potent than Toxic most of the time, but it’s got one less power and only taps for colorless. Really the difference between the two depends on how much you need the colored mana, although often I’d imagine the lack of needing to pay life and access to good ol’ fashioned infect will tip the scale towards Plague Myr in mana cases if you’re picking between the two. Similarly, it’s great in decks that can pump it’s stats up or sneak it in with evasion.
Planar Atlas
Planar Atlas enters tapped and taps for colorless, but has the upside of doing this weird Impulse-esque land scrying maneuver when it enters. This can be quite handy for smoothing out rough hands or just more easily filter out some non-land cards from the top of your deck. It is a “may” trigger, so you don’t need to do this if it’s not beneficial for you. It’s not bad, I would argue there are better ways to smooth out bad hands through card draw, but it can be handy just to have less “feels bad” games where you get mana screwed. If that happens often to you often (and let’s face it, this happens to all of us sometimes), check this one out for a try.
Prismatic Lens
Prismatic Lens taps for colorless mana and enters untapped, which is already a fine start, but it can also filter your mana in a pinch. I really like this card, even if it’s not flashy. I tend to like this more for the 2-3 color deck range, where you don’t really need to invest as much in mana fixing as a 4-5 color deck, but it helps smooth out the occasional bump where you might be missing a color pip you need.
Séance Board
Séance Board is a new one, and it has such a weird setup that I was hesitant to include it, but in aristocrats decks or removal heavy strategies, this basically isn’t a downside. It does mean you often won’t get to use it right away, but the potential ceiling on this card is crazy high compared to the rest of this list. You have to have enough of the card types this requires for it to be worth running so it still is quite niche, but I thought it was worth a mention due to how bonkers it can get if left unchecked for too long.
Solar Transformer
Assuming you are in an Energy deck, Solar Transformer is great because it generates a bunch of energy, which is always super helpful. Assuming you are not in an energy deck, I think this is actually still a solid contender. Ignore the energy part – what this really does is let you get three taps of any color mana, and the rest of the time you can tap it for colorless. This makes it surprisingly flexible, letting you fix your mana early, and ideally will be reduced to colorless only by the time you already have enough other mana sources on board. Obviously best in an Energy deck, but I can see some merit as some cheap and effective mana fixing for a lot of other decks.
Sphere of the Suns
I think Solar Transformer mostly invalidates Sphere of the Suns card unless you explicitly want charge counters for any reason, as it eventually becomes literally dead on board.
Spell Satchel
Spellslinger decks can leverage Spell Satchel to draw some more cards in the mid game pretty easily. I do think purely from a ramping perspective that it’s not as great as some of the other options here, since it still costs quite a bit to draw cards, but stacking book counters on this won’t be too hard for many cantrip heavy decks. If you think you’ll actually use the draw at times, feel free to check this out, but if you don’t think you’ll really need it you’re probably better with another option that’s more effective on early turns.
Springleaf Drum
I’m cheating my own rules again, but I wanted to give a special shoutout to Springleaf Drum for decks like Humans, Goblins, and any other archetype that goes wide with tokens but doesn’t have access to traditional mana dorks. This effectively just turns anything into a dork when you need it and often is only offline when you get your entire board wiped. I’ve played this regularly in Goblin decks for a long time and have had quite a bit of success with it, so I highly suggest trying it out if you like those types of decks and haven’t given this a whirl before.
Star Compass
Star Compass is sort-of the reverse of Felwar Stone, since it ideally wants you to have a good chunk of basics and a good chunk of colors, but in reality the amount of basics you have will decrease with the more colors you have. I think it’s pretty solid in that 2-3 color deck range, but of course your mileage will heavily vary based on how many basics you run since it’s not really usable if you don’t have a basic on board.
Tablet of Compleation
Tablet of Compleation is a slow grind, but if you can get it out early it’s a decent value engine in the mid game. It benefits a lot off Proliferating, and realistically requires very little mana investment, just a bit of time investment. I don’t think it’s too bad, but I think you’re mostly playing this for the draw part rather than the ramp part, and ceiling of this is pretty hard to hit if you aren’t manipulating the counters on it.
The Talisman Cycle: Talisman of Progress
I value The Talisman Cycle: Talisman of Progress similarly to the Signet cycle – while they only generate one color or the other, they can be tapped on their own for colorless. One life is a small tax to pay for the right mana when you need it, and entering untapped is always a pretty nice bonus for these. They’ve been reprinted quite heavily in the past few years and are mostly accessible for the majority of players now, so I think they’re all solid pieces for most decks. I value them pretty much equally as the Signet cycle, although if I have to pick between the two I tend to lean towards the Signets.
The Irencrag
There’s merit in ramp that can turn into something more useful in the midgame, although I think The Irencrag really only should be considered if you’re in some sort of Voltron deck, Equipment deck, or something that really benefits from having available stat buffs to creatures to make this worth slotting in. As I’ve mentioned, untapped colorless mana isn’t really too bad of an overhead for this though, so it’s not like you’re losing anything for playing it.
Thought Vessel
I have a lot of debate in my playgroup on if Thought Vessel is worth just jamming in every deck for scenarios where you end up with a lot cards in hard, or if you should only include it when you intentionally are trying to pick up your deck in your hand. I tend to lean more towards the latter, but I do think that the overhead on this is so low that you’d be pretty hard pressed to not play this when you don’t need the mana fixing. It can save you from weird scenarios where players wheel or you get a bunch of cards returned to your hand. If you are in a draw heavy deck though, I find this one to be pretty much an auto-include, especially now that it’s been reprinted to be super accessible.
Thran Turbine
The last card we’ll look at is another cheat-y one, but Thran Turbine is worth mentioning because it can be really useful in decks with a lot of active ability costs. If you’re playing a deck where the commander hinges on active ability costs with colorless mana, such as something like Rhys the Redeemed or Zevlor, Elturel Exile, this can be a great way to focus spending your mana on proactive spells while using the turbine to cover the cost of some of these abilities. Much more niche than the rest of the list, yes, but it’s got a really good spot in some decks and is surprisingly cheap for quite an old card.
That’s a wrap! Let us know if there are any other ramp related topics you want to see us cover. Enjoy your games!
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