Building a Good Manabase

[Ephraim]

I have a deck that I'm working on and I'm very satisfied with the 40 or so cards I've selected to make up the meat of the deck. However, I'm trying to make this deck more competetive, which means that a base consisting mostly of basic lands just won't cut it. Therefore, I am planning on investing in Dual Lands to flesh out the manabase. I've been testing online to try to figure out which Duals to buy. However, because I've never worked with Dual Lands in abundance before, stabilizing the manabase is quite a challenge for me. I'm going to post the deck, but don't worry about the card choices that I've made or that it's actually a 1.5 deck, and not Type 1. The two formats are similar enough that the manabase should be the same - and since I'm a budget player, I'd ask you to avoid suggesting Moxen/Lotus, anyhow.

BLACK
//1
2 Blood Pet
4 Carrion Feeder

//2
2 Abyssal Gatekeeper
2 Mesmeric Fiend
2 Diabolic Intent
4 Oversold Cemetery

//3
3 Buried Alive
1 Dross Harvester

//4
2 Highway Robber

GREEN
//2
2 Survival of the Fittest

//3
2 Cartographer
2 Uktabi Orangutan

WHITE
//2
2 Monk Realist

BLUE
//3
2 Raven Familiar

COLOURLESS
//2
2 Jinxed Idol

//3
2 Wizard Replica (blue activation cost)

LAND
9 Swamp
2 Forest
1 Plains
4 Windswept Heath
4 Tundra
4 Bayou

This manabase hasn't worked at all and I've determined that the 4 Tundra is the problem.

I elected to use Windswept Heath because it allows me to fetch up Basic Plains (critical protection against Blood Moon) and Basic Forest (allows me to cast/activate Survival of the Fittest). With the ability to fetch Forests, Bayou was my first choice for Dual Land, since green and black are this deck's most prevalent colour.

After that, my ability to analyze the manabase breaks down. Should I include any Tundra at all? Should I just use Underground Sea? Tropical Island? Savannah? Scrubland? Do I need more basic lands? Fewer?

Thanks, in advance, for any help you can offer me and any other newbies out there in building a stronger manabase.

[Razvan]

Generally, a good deck has to have a main color. Few decks get away with having 2 main colors (Madness being one of them).

In your case, it's probably black or green. Thus, you want all your dual lands to produce mana of the main color. Maybe 1 or 2 (at MOST) can be of the secondary and tertiary colors.

Also, use 4-5 fetchlands. Each Fetchland can fetch up to SEVEN dual lands, which is more than enough.

Also, and you don't do it, which is good, the deck should only use cards with double-color casting cost if the color is the main color. I cannot stress that enough:).

[Ephraim]

Is it necessary that all of my fetchlands be able to search for all of my Dual Lands?

In this case, since Black will be my primary, all of my Duals will include Black. However, it is important to me to be able to search up Basic Plains, since by running a lot of Dual Lands, I make myself susceptible to Blood Moon.

You seem to have confirmed that 4 Bayou is a good choice for this deck. I don't think I need Scrubland, with only 2 White cards in the deck. Underground Sea would probably be a good choice as well. However, there is no single fetchland that can get all of Bayou, Underground Sea, and my Basic Plains. Would it be a bad idea to include 3 Windswept Heath and 2 Flooded Strand as my Fetchlands or do I need to rethink my strategy for getting around Blood Moon. With 4 colours in the deck, I've really begun to consider using Birds of Paradise. (Which, by the way, would certainly be a Viridian Acolyte, while I save up the money to get all of these nasty, expensive cards)

[Jacob Orlove]

The problem with your basic plains strategy is that youhave to fetch it right away against anything that could be running blood moon, because it won't work after the moon comes down. And if you plan on Survivaling for your creature, you'll need a basic forest too. Most of the time, though, you'll want to fetch duals, to cast your spells. I would just cut the Monk Realists altogether, and run Elvish Lyrist or something instead. It's just not worth the hassle to your mana base just to get the Realist. With three colors, you could get 4 Bayou, 4 Tropical Island, 4 Wooded Foothills, a Volcanic Island (if you want, so the foothills can get U), and some basic forests and swamps. You could also add a bit more red, and run Anger and some other cool red creatures, if you wanted.

[Ephraim]

I think I'll try that, Jacob_Orlove. My initial fear was that the Lyrist  was too slow. Now that I see what Monk Realist is doing to the manabase, I'll just cut him from the deck and stick with 3 colours. (Anger would be neat, but I think he's unnecessary - and would require contortion of the manabase again)

[Matt]

You could also use that new Viridian guy over Lyrist. Costs more, but doesn't have to tap.

[Ephraim]

I considered him, but there's usually not 3 disposable green mana on the table for me to play with (although with the manabase shown below, that might have changed), so I would end up waiting another turn to use his ability anyhow. I'll try with the Lyrist and see if that provides sufficient coverage. It probably should. Against Red decks, I can just make it a point to dig that one out early.

For the record, I'm testing with Anger, right now, and it hasn't been a problem yet. The landbase is as follows:

6 Swamp
4 Forest
4 Bayou
4 Tropical Island
1 Badlands
1 Taiaga
4 Wooded Foothills

[Jacob Orlove]

Edit: oh, I missed the part about anger. Never mind.

[Ephraim]

No, by Taiga, I mean Taiga. Wooded Foothills fetches Mountains or Forests.

Tropical Island: Forest + Island
Bayou: Forest + Swamp
Taiga: Forest + Mountain
Badlands: Mountain + Swamp

With Black and Green as the primary colours, I can fetch up either Badlands or Taiga to get a Mountain to satisfy Anger and one of my primary colours, whichever one I need most at the time. If I were to include Volcanic Island, it would be in addition to Taiga and Balands. In fact, Taiga is really the most useful of the three, because it allows me to satisfy Anger's condition, as well as power up Survival of the Fittest to go find him.