Hi again, it’s me; John Mana Rock. After my recent near-miss lawsuit over my name with Dwayne “The Mana Rock” Johnson, I’ve come back for even more mana ramp excitement! If you missed our first article on the series where we go over a bit about our criteria and what exactly mana rocks are, check that out here.
We’ll be using a rating scale to discuss these cards and how they rank up against others in this category:
S: The only reason you wouldn’t include this is personal choice, other synergy, or budget.
A: Always a solid choice, or is overwhelmingly good in a specific archetype.
B: Generally a good pick, can work well in most decks or very well in others with synergy.
C: Good in niche situations or specific decks, but might be outclassed by other picks if you don’t have specific synergy with it.
D: Generally outclassed by other picks. Only playable in very particular niches or if you just like the card and it fits your deck’s theme.
Let’s get down to business.
Cursed Mirror
This is a great example of a card that reads as pretty poor ramp, but it’s got such powerful late game utility that the tradeoff can be pretty worth it if you have the right synergy. A 3-drop rock that only taps for one mana of one color is a tough sell normally, but the ability to counter-punch with the scariest creature on the board means this is often far from a dead drop later in the game. If you’re a deck that has the ability to recycle artifacts or blink this and isn’t too strapped for mana in the mid-game that you can afford this, it’s a solid one.
Rating: B
Darksteel Ingot
A classic staple card that has definitely seen better days, but is far from a poor inclusion. Darksteel Ingot is a staple both in part that it just sort of works in pretty much any deck, but it dodges a ton of board-wide sweepers that normally just blow up your other ramp spells too. Or at least, it used to. With the growing prevalence of cards like Farewell, the value of this definitely goes down a bit in decks where you value the mana fixing less. That being said, the resilience of this makes it immune to many of the drawbacks that make mana rocks often feel a bit fragile, so if you do want the versatility of mana fixing, it’s always going to be a safe bet.
Rating: I’m giving this a C in general since any deck can realistically access it, but it’s definitely more valuable in 3+ colors. The growth of exile based removal has made it slightly less appealing than prior years.
Decanter of Endless Water
Yes, yes, yes. I think these effects stapled on to cards you already will want to include in your deck are super valuable for any archetype that ends up with a lot of cards in hand (which, frankly, is a lot of the current climate of popular Commander options), and being accessible by any color is super handy. I rated Thought Vessel well, and I see no reason why this isn’t also basically the same tier – you trade a pip of mana in the cost for color fixing, which is often fine for color intensive strategies.
The one caveat I want to mention is that I do think these are a bit overplayed. I see people jam cards like this in any deck, with the argument that you sometimes don’t know if you’re going to overdraw due to forced draw spells, flooding, etc. My answer to that is: do you really want to include a card in your deck that you have no means to actually use to its potential?
Rating: A, this is a fantastic card but you should include it when you reasonably think you’ll be able to take advantage of it.
Dragon’s Hoard
This is one of the better forms of these draw/ramp hybrid cards. Obviously, you won’t touch it outside of Dragons, but it’s absolutely worth playing there due to how easily this will net you extra cards when you don’t need to tap it for mana.
Rating: A, all but the fastest of Dragon decks will be happy to include it.
Endurance Bobblehead
Ignore the bobblehead counting clause for a second. Think of it this way – with no synergy at all, this is a mana rock that can also be a mini combat protection spell in a pinch. While I don’t think that’s absolutely insane or anything, it’s something worth considering in decks where your commander or key pieces will often be getting slammed when you swing in. Sorcery speed is really what holds this back, but I can see a case for Voltron decks or any decks where making sure you’re constantly swinging in with your commander.
Rating: C
Elementalist’s Palette
I mean, they pretty much wrote this for me. There are two places for this, big mana X spell decks and Hydras, and it’s aces in both of those strategies. It’s pretty much tailor made for them, so its not really worth playing aside from that unless you just happen to include enough X spells that you’ll get value off this. I’d argue you won’t see it a crazy amount in some Hydra decks as well, due to most being Green. That aside though, that doesn’t take away from the power this card has to gas up the archetype.
Rating: B
Eye of Ojer Taq // Apex Observatory
This one baffles me a bit. Technically, the payoff is really great, but I have never once seen someone play this card in Commander, let alone transform it. Three initial mana + Six mana + two cards (potentially from play, if not your graveyard) is a lot to dump into a card that turns off your mana rock, and while free-casting your spells is good, you could just play Omnipotence or something and free-cast everything. While this is color agnostic, it’s a lot of hoops to jump through.
Rating: C, I don’t quite think it’s bad, but it’s just a lot of effort even if the payoff has high potential. This also will eat award-winning amounts of removal like Joey Chestnut eats Hotdogs.
Forger’s Foundry
This one is tailor-made for spellslinger decks to be able to just chuck more spells. Recycling spells is always good, and while I don’t think this is anything to write home about, I’d never bat an eye at someone including it in a cast-heavy archetype. I do think it’s slightly more effort than it’s worth: often times I’d rather just play cheaper mana rocks or cards that generate/accelerate more mana so I can really start throwing cardboard around and cycle through my deck.
Rating: B
Fountain of Ichor
By technicality this card isn’t awful, and it’s worth literally pennies. I think this card sucks pretty bad though since it’s pretty much the same as some of the 2-cost mana rocks, and you’re just paying more for the mana fixing. If you really need the creature flexibility, you should probably just look at playing more creatures.
Rating: D, it’s really a draft card that can sometimes be goofy in a Dino deck.
Glittering Stockpile
Storm and Spellslinger decks can do some really terrifying shit with a lot of mana at once, and this helps perfectly set up for that explosive “win the game” turn most decks are chasing down. Even if you aren’t in one of those archetypes, I think this is really good for most decks that either have a high mana curve or play at instant speed, since you can just pitch this for a ton of mana if it ever gets blown up.
Rating: A, it’s pretty much only held back by color restriction, but the sacrifice letting you get any color helps it out in that department. I think this card is pretty underrated honestly.
Glistening Sphere
I know what you’re thinking; it’s infect support and f- that garbage. Ignore the last bit, think of that as a nice little cherry if you happen to be playing things that incrementally can make poison tokens, like with Toxic.
Infect really isn’t something that people want to build up, you usually want to win in one go. The decks that want this are the other types of decks that might make use of this card: superfriends and counter decks. Proliferate can really jump your board state yards forward in those types of decks, so trading some speed off your mana rock to help advance your mid-game power can be a great boon to have. If you happen to have a way to make this tap for three mana, it just becomes a real force.
Rating: A, not because I think every deck wants it, but because I can’t argue with it being included in nearly 1/3 of the decks with the most popular commander (Atraxa, Praetor’s Voice) alone. It’s really strong if you can support it, and we pretty much got an entire set worth of support for this type of stuff.
Heraldic Banner
I try to be objective in a lot of my writing, even though all review-style content like this has to have a degree of bias in it. I’m going to throw that out the window for a moment, this card is absolutely gas.
Every mono-color creature deck that goes even a little bit wide on creatures should run this. Zombies, Goblins, freakin’ Crabs or whatever. It’s going to end up providing a pretty scary amount of additional stats for a mana rock, I promise. The most annoying part of this card is just remembering the anthem when the board gets hectic.
Rating: A for mono-color decks or decks that at least skew to one color for creatures, but pretty lackluster at a B or C outside of that. It’s a sleeper hit of this series, give it a try if you haven’t.
Haunted Screen
Flavor? Fantastic. Gameplay? Criminal.
Rating: F for flavor, but no respects are paid to this one.
Honored Heirloom
Graveyard hate should be an essential part of deckbuilding for most players, as it forces interaction with an archetype of deck that can often avoid it, and many decks that aren’t even dedicated to recycling things from the bin still have recursion ready to go. Cards that provide that interaction in a flexible way get a bonus from me. While I think this is definitely not the best source for graveyard hate, it’s honestly not too bad and is just stapled to something you’d be including in your deck anyway. If you really can’t squeeze a separate slot for some sort of graveyard hate, you could do much worse. You’ll be happy to have it when you need it.
Rating: Shockingly, I’m going to rate this a C because I actually think it’s underrated just as a way to have some sort of spot removal for graveyards in your deck. If you already have a source of graveyard removal though, this is like a D. I do think this effect can often be done better by lands.
Hourglass of the Lost
I somehow glazed over this card, because I have never seen it until making this review. It’s a really neat recursion piece, I think realistically it shines in decks that can manipulate the counters or that often will have high CMC targets to bring back with this later in the game. If you happen to have a lot of cards around certain mana values, you can just keep this on standby to get them back easily. That being said, I don’t think it’s great as a ramp piece since you do lose access to this to bring those cards back, and timing this well can be really difficult if you aren’t intentionally putting things in your graveyard.
Rating: C
Inherited Envelope
It’s not really worth bringing if you don’t have other ring-related things, but an extra tempt is handy if you’re already building into it and worth remembering for that reason alone. It’s decent if you already have The One Ring since the second version of tempt gives you some nice card selection.
Rating: 1 (One.) use case.
Intelligence Bobblehead
You need like 3-4 bobbleheads for this to start to really get going, so I’d really only consider this one if you’re just committed to running all of them.
Rating: C
Lantern of Revealing
It’s a mana rock with Super Land Scry that lets you potentially ramp off your ramp, but has the steep price of 4 mana to do this. I’m going to be honest, this really only goes in top of deck manipulation strategies. If you’re really balling an want to play the like 1/3 chance of just randomly hitting a land for most decks, you can feel free to play Casino Magic as much as you like, but I’m leaving this one to the scrying professionals like Yenett, Cryptic Sovereign.
Rating: D, it’s relegated to one archetype and even there I think it’s pretty rough.
We’re chugging along nicely! We’ll be back with more coverage soon, in the meantime feel free to check out some of our other mana-rock reviews if you missed them.
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