The 12 Best Mana Rocks For Commander In MTG

In Magic: The Gathering‘s Commander format, mana is everything. Without mana, you can’t cast spells, and if you can’t cast spells, you’re going to be left behind. A game of Commander is an arms race to see who can build up the most resources to pull off their deck’s gameplan, and mana rocks form a foundational part of that strategy.

Mana rocks are artifacts that can produce mana. They can be an excellent way to ramp, as you can play as many of them on your turn as you can afford. They’re so central to the Commander format that many of its most ubiquitous cards are mana rocks. But which are the most popular ones you should be running in your deck? Here are the top ten mana rocks for Commander.

Updated by Ryan Hay October 21, 2024: A good mana rock is hard to find, but thankfully, you don’t have to look too far. We collected some of the best mana rocks around to include in your Commander decks, mixing pure mana generation with artifacts that have some powerful abilities tacked on to them. While some might be a bit specific, these are the best mana rocks you can find in Commander. Also, one of the best mana rocks ever printed, Mana Crypt, saw a ban in 2024, so that card is getting the axe.

12

The Great Henge

The Green Machine

The Great Henge is an absolute beast for virtually any deck that uses green. It used to be heavily played when Throne of Eldraine was in Standard but has since found life as a popular mana rock in Commander.

The Great Henge costs seven generic and two green mana, although its cost is reduced by the greatest power among creatures you control. It taps to add two green mana and two life, and it even puts a +1/+1 counter on any non-token creature that enters the battlefield under your control before giving you a card draw. Green decks tend to struggle a bit when it comes to consistency, but The Great Henge smooths that out.

11

Chromatic Lantern

All The Colors At Once

Chromatic Lantern is both a mana rock and a mana fixer all in one. Costing just three generic mana, it can tap for any color and lets lands you control also tap for any color. If you’re suffering from mana drought in a multi-colour deck, Chromatic Lantern can be an absolute lifesaver.

Chromatic Lantern is an essential card for any deck running three or more colors since it also lets your non-mana producing lands, or ones that only produce generic mana, into functional lands. It can also let you use Fetch lands as regular lands since they all gain the ability to tap for mana.

10

Thought Vessel

It might not be the biggest mana-producing mana rock out there, producing just one colorless mana, but that isn’t the point of it. Thought Vessel’s second ability is the main appeal of it, as it gives you no maximum hand size.

For decks that draw lots, Thought Vessel is invaluable. You won’t have to discard down to seven cards at the end of the turn, giving you a major advantage over any other player. You could argue it isn’t quite as good as a Reliquary Tower, which does the same thing but is a land that is more difficult for an opponent to remove, but it’s still a vital tool in a huge number of decks.

9

Cursed Mirror

Looks Vaguely Familiar…

Another mana rock with a specific color associated with it, Cursed Mirror only adds one red mana to your mana pool, but in exchange, you get a copy of any creature on the battlefield for the turn, giving it haste so you can put it to good use right away.

While it might seem a bit limited at first, you can do all sorts of shenanigans. This mana rock goes infinite with Astral Dragon, giving you infinite dragon tokens, and if you play it with the dragon Bladewing the Risen, you have infinite death triggers thanks to the legendary rule.

8

Laser Screwdriver

Never Leave Home Without It

Making mana should always be your top priority with your mana rocks, but if you can get three other abilities out of it, why not? Laser Screwdriver lets you make one mana of any color, and it has a few bonus effects. You can pay one mana and tap Laser Screwdriver to tap an artifact, not the most exciting, but not the worst and can have some applications in long games of Commander.

Moving down the card, the third ability costs two mana and gives you a surveil trigger, letting you manipulate the top card of your deck so you can smooth out your draws a bit. This ability is particularly good later in the game, where you’ll have extra mana and need to have the best draws possible. The final ability costs three mana and lets you goad a creature, forcing it to attack another player if it can, and potentially removing a threat off your opponent’s board.

7

Fellwar Stone

Jared’s Favorite Rock

Fellwar Stone is interesting because it produces mana of a color another player could create. With three opponents, there is a high chance of someone sharing a color with you to make Fellwar Stone usable, but there is always a chance that you’ll be left with a mana rock that can’t produce colored mana you can use for anything other than generic costs.

It’s a card that used to see a lot more play until better alternatives came along, but that doesn’t make Fellwar Stone bad by any stretch of the imagination. The Fellwar Stone was an important artifact in Magic’s older lore, where Jared Carthalion used it to help infiltrate an ancient castle.

6

Relic Of Legends

Turn Your Legendary Creatures Into Mana

Magic: The Gathering has more and more legendary creatures than ever, making this mana rock a solid inclusion in any deck. For three mana, you get a mana rock that adds any mana color to your mana pool; it’s a little plain, but it’s solid for a mana rock.

The real power comes from the ability to untap Relic of Legends by tapping a legendary creature you control. If your commander doesn’t require you to tap it to get value out of it, or you have a high threshold of legendary creatures in your deck, you can power up some expensive spells early in the game.

5

Commander’s Sphere

An Essential Artifact

One of the most iconic cards in the format is Commander’s Sphere. Costing three generic mana, it can tap to produce one mana of any color in your Commander’s color identity. Considering every spell in your deck can only have those colors, that isn’t a potential downside in the same way Fellwar Stone might be.

You can sacrifice Commander’s Sphere to draw a card as an added bonus. Considering you can do this at instant speed, it effectively makes the card something an opponent can’t remove without giving you a small advantage. You can do this in response to artifact removal or later in the game when you don’t need the mana rock as much as you need some extra card draw.

4

Talismans

A Plethora Of Colors

Technically, only a handful of the ten talismans see regular play in Commander and some more than others. But they all do the same thing, so we’ll lump them all together.

The Talismans are a cycle of ten artifacts that cost two mana. They can either be tapped to produce a colorless mana, or one of their two colors while also dealing one damage to you. For example, Talisman of Creativity (the most popular Talisman) can tap to make a red or a blue mana, while Talisman of Hierarchy makes a white or a black. These are versatile mana rocks that can slot into most two to four color decks easily.

3

Ravnica Signets

One For Each Guild

Like the Talismans, this is a cycle of artifacts where some are more popular than others. The Signets are the only mana rock on this list that need mana paid into them to get mana out, but in exchange, they produce two mana, one of each of the color pairs related to their Ravnica Guild. Izzet Signet makes a blue and a red, Orzhov Signet makes a white and a black, and so on.

It can be a bit tricky to keep track of in-game, especially when you’re drowning under a sea of mana sources, but Signets are a great way to push your limited mana resources just that little bit further.

They’re also good mana fixers. If you’re getting mana flooded in one color and screwed in another, Signets are a good way of evening things out and ensuring you always have some access to both.

2

Arcane Signet

Commander Bread And Butter

This is the card that replaced Fellwar Stone. It costs the same, but instead of tapping for any color an opponent can produce, it can tap for any color full stop.

Arcane Signet is a controversial card, and many players and Magic designers think it was a mistake. Launching in Throne of Eldraine – a notoriously overpowered set – it highlighted how careful designers have to be when making cards for Commander. Cards don’t rotate out, and very few get banned, so when mistakes like this come along, they tend to stick around forever.

Regardless, Arcane Signet is an incredible mana rock because of its flexibility. There’s only one card more prevalent than it in the format, which is…

1

Sol Ring

Only The Best

Sol Ring is way, way too good. It’s so good that Commander is the only format where it’s entirely legal, with it being restricted (only one copy in a deck) in Vintage and outright banned in Legacy. There are regular discussions about whether Sol Ring should be banned in Commander, too, but no decision has been made so far.

Costing one generic mana and tapping for two colorless Sol Ring is an automatic inclusion in almost every Commander deck. It’s included in every preconstructed deck Wizards of the Coast has released and is found in the vast majority of decks.

Sol Ring is undebatably good – it’s a Mana Crypt without the damage and is way cheaper to buy. But some also feel it’s detrimental to the Commander format, as its inclusion in almost every deck means that there’s one less card slot available for creative or fun deckbuilding. It’s a formality – you open your deckbuilding website of choice, add Sol Ring and Arcane Signet, and then get to work on building the deck.