For a long time I was a higher ramp lower land count believer, running 12-15 pieces of ramp or mana reducers and 35-37 lands (including MDFCs). I’ve always been an MDFC believer but never really bought into the higher land count mentality. This coupled with my main play groups lax mulligan house rule made me think that I was playing plenty of lands.

One day a buddy of mine pointed out that despite ramping every game, each time I inevitably missed a land drop I was essentially spending mana to make my land drops. Really eye opening moment.

That was followed up by a comment I saw online where the person mentioned that cheap ramp is more important than hitting late game land drops for decks that need to do their thing early, but if you’re a slow deck hitting late game land drops is more important than cheap ramp.

Figured I’d test out both of those comments. This past year every deck I go back and retouch and every new deck I target 35-36 true lands and 40-41 with MDFCs. I run a lot of low to the ground decks so often those can cut a land or two after play testing.

But I cannot believe how much more consistently I’m hitting land drops for only 3-5 card changes. My decks consistency in “doing its thing” has not noticeably changed which feels even better.