Ranking the Best MtG Mana Rocks for Commander

I am doing this as the result of a request however I am surprised that I have not embarked upon it before as it is quite an obvious, powerful and highly played group of cards to consider. The reason that I have not done this before is that there are a couple of stages of ramp cards when it comes to artifacts. It is rarely much use playing power like Gilded Lotus if you don’t have any way to play it before turn five. Ramp that you can play on turns one or two with any reliability is generally not as powerful as the bigger cards but you need far more of it in decks and cubes. I will do this list based entirely on how often mana rocks are played specifically in artifact ramp decks. To do this list and include all archetypes would unfairly show up the cheaper colour producing mana rocks which are typically weaker in the decks trying to ramp up to something really big. A lot of the cards on this list are on my banned list. More oddly a lot of the cards on this list are lands, it turns out that they are some of the best and most important cards at performing the role of the early mana rock cards despite not technically counting as such.

This list includes every mana rock that I have played or seen played in the cube format and is surprisingly small as a result. Much of this is down to the imbalance of the early stuff making only the top quality fair things viable for cube use. I am starting with the best because they are much more obvious and far less interesting. When you are playing any sort of artifact ramp deck you will simply play every single card you have that is on the top 13 of this list, they are all just so nutty good. The interesting part is which of the fair ramp cards are best used to fill in the gaps your power cards are missing.

Sol Ring1. Sol Ring

Playable turn one for one mana and offers immediate ramp that turn and a double ramp the subsequent turns. There are no penalties, no downsides, nothing. Sol Ring is utterly unreasonably good, it is the honorary power nine that is better most of the time than the rest of the power nine. You could argue that colourless mana production is a weakness I guess… The only decks that don’t happily auto include a Sol Ring when they can are those like RDW and white weenie (sometimes) where the vast majority of the cost of their cards is R or W mana and not colourless. Sol Ring is doubly good as an artifact ramp spell because most of the other artifact ramp cards are incredibly easy to cast off the back of a Sol Ring.

2. The Good Mox

Very similar to Sol Ring in terms of power. The Mox offer the same ramp on the fist turn as Sol Ring but provide coloured mana as well allowing you to be much more flexible in what you can follow them with. On following turns they only offer a single ramp rather than the double Sol Ring offers making them somewhat less abusive. A good Mox draw is just a little unfair while a good Sol Ring draw is totally unfair.

3. Tolarian Academy

The very best of the naughty lands that tap for way too much. Because of cards like Mox and Sol Ring the Academy is bonkers, it can tap for several blue on turn one and only gets more obnoxious as the game develops. It is much narrower than Mox and Sol Ring as you need support cards for it to reliably tap for loads. Despite this is it easily one of the most powerful cards in the game when you get it right allowing you to do whatever you want from turn two onwards.

4. Mana Crypt

Sol Rings dangerous cousin the Mana Crypt is more potent ramp than the mighty Ring however it is only something you can play when you are able to win quickly. It is not a card you want with an infinite turns combo! As it is overall less playable the mana Crypt is easier to pick up than the premium mana ramp cards however when you are able to stomach 1.5 damage a turn then Mana Crypt is about as good as it gets.

5. Mishra’s Workshop

A land, that taps for three, from the get go, with no penalty, not even life loss or coming into play tapped. The mana is awkward to use, far far more so than with Sol Ring but when you are offered three times the usual for a land it is well worth finding things you can effectively play off the Workshop. It is fortunate for Workshop that it has great synergy with things like Tolarian Academy and the sorts of decks that want to generate lots of mana and use powerful artifacts.

6. Mana Vault

The first of the cards I haven’t banned along with the power for most forms of cube play. It is not uncommon to see this banned however, it is certainly one of the closest to the line. For one mana you can ramp two right away like a Dark Ritual or you can save it for a triple ramp on a later turn. It has great synergy with sac effects and untap effects and affords you great artifact synergy simply by being a useful one drop artifact. You can get it down and power up your other stuff without ever tapping it for mana! Used more for combos and big plays and not so much as a generic midrange ramp card.

7. Grim Monolith

Slightly safer and slightly fairer the Grim Monolith is the other Mana Vault. It only ramps one on the turn you make it so it is far less common to have it surprise someone with a big play however once it is down it is going to do a big old ramp into something scary. It can be untapped at instant speed any time you like or it can just be left tapped doing nothing to hurt anyone. Most of the “unbeatable” openers in unpowered cube come from Vault and Monolith but they do require very tailored decks to appropriately use the power they offer. They are not quite as broken as the silly Workshop and Academy yet they are basically just as narrow.

8. Ancient Tomb

Lands that tap for three are too good even when you can only use them to cast a small fraction of the cards in the game. Lands that tap for two are pretty darn good, most that have seen print have seen play in some form or another and Ancient Tomb is the best of the bunch. It can be used right away and costs a mere two life. Being able to play a turn one Grim Monolith or even just a humble Talisman allows for some serious things to happen very fast indeed. Ancient Tomb follows many of the same deckbuilding guidelines as Mana Crypt. You want to win fast and you want lots of cards you can play with two colourless mana. As Tomb is a land not a spell you cannot usually cast anything coloured with it on turn one making it a little more restrictive than Crypt.

City of Traitors9. City of Traitors

The other Ancient Tomb is a lot less painful and may be tapped many more times throughout the course of a game than you are able with Tomb. Sadly the City doesn’t tend to stick around long enough to get tapped more than the Tomb does. You want to make City early and get loads of ramp out of it however you also want to make it as you last land so that you don’t just put it in the bin after two taps. This makes it less reliable ramp and an inconvenient card but still almost always played happily in places you play Ancient Tomb. Even making it on turn one and losing it on turn two is four mana from one card which is pretty good. Often you can use that early burst to gain enough tempo to secure the game. Someone making conventional land drops will be behind in mana until turn four overall.

10. Mox Opal

Tapping for any colour is nice but does not make up for the need of metalcraft for this to do anything at all. Fortunately, as is the case for Academy and Workshop you typically play lots of artifacts in the sorts of decks that abuse many of these cards and as such you should have a pretty reliable Mox Opal, typically online from turn two in unpowered cubes and turn one in the powered. Narrow but comfortably one of the most powerful magic cards in the right environment.

11. Metalworker

Another somewhat narrow mana ramp card that not only requires you to have a heavy artifact count in your deck but also costs three mana and comes with all the drawbacks of being a dork (summoning sickness and ease of killing). The reason Metalworker sits so high on this list is simply down to the raw mana production the card offers. I have seen these tapping for over 20, I have seen them tap on turn 2 for 10. That kind of mana lets you do basically everything you could want to all there and then. Metalworker likes cards such as Lightning Greaves or even Spellskite to help protect it and speed it up. Needing cards in hand is not really a drawback as you don’t need mana when you have nothing in hand to play! Even when you only tap for 2 or 4 Metalworker is still nutty good. Even the green mana producing dudes don’t really compare well to metalworker.

12. Gilded Lotus

Gilded Lotus is often the card you use your early ramp to get out. Once you have a Lotus in play you feel incredibly powerful, able to cast whatever you like and simply overwhelm your opponent. Gilded Lotus is by far and away the most common non-creature Tinker target. Three best mana rocks of any colour typically means you can do useful things immediately after making the Gilded Lotus thus effectively reducing its cost to two. While not the most appropriate comparison it would be pretty clear how overpowered a 2 mana Gilded Lotus that came into play tapped was! Likely better than Sol Ring, certainly close.

Thran Dynamo13. Thran Dynamo

Gilded Lotus’s colourless little brother the Thran Dynamo is a fine card in many of the same ways the Gilded Lotus is. The difference between four and five is not actually that much in the kinds of decks you play them in. Trying to cast something actually useful off the back of a Thran Dynamo is substantially harder than it is with Gilded Lotus which means you actually do tend to pay four mana for the card rather than the pseudo two for Lotus. Dynamo typically sets you back a turn so that all your following turns are terrifying. It is almost always the second or third big ramp card used in artifact ramp decks but it sees almost no play outside those archetypes.

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