Best Budget Lands for Commander Under $2

Your mana base is the most important part of your commander deck. Doesn't matter how many cool spells you're running if you can't cast them. The problem is that good lands are expensive. Shock lands run $10 to $15. Fetch lands are $20 and up. Original duals cost more than most people's entire decks.

You don't need any of that. There are dozens of lands that fix your colors, enter untapped in the right situations, and cost pocket change. I've been building budget commander decks for years and these are the lands I keep coming back to.

Lands every commander deck should run

These go in basically any multicolor deck and cost almost nothing.

Command Tower taps for any color in your commander's color identity. No conditions, no life payment, always enters untapped. If you're playing more than one color, this is the first land you add. It's been reprinted so many times that you can find copies for under fifty cents.

Exotic Orchard taps for any color that a land your opponents control could produce. In a four-player game of commander, someone is almost always producing the colors you need. It enters untapped and usually acts as a second Command Tower. About thirty cents.

Path of Ancestry enters tapped, which stings, but it taps for any color in your commander's identity and gives you a free scry when you cast a creature that shares a type with your commander. In tribal decks this card is ridiculous. Even outside tribal, free color fixing for twenty cents is hard to argue with.

Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds are functionally identical. Sacrifice them to search for any basic land. They fix your colors, thin your deck slightly, and trigger landfall if you care about that. Both cost under a quarter.

Check lands

Check lands enter untapped if you control a land of the right type. Since budget mana bases lean heavily on basics, these are almost always untapped when you need them.

Glacial Fortress, Sunpetal Grove, Dragonskull Summit, Drowned Catacomb, Rootbound Crag, Hinterland Harbor, Isolated Chapel, Woodland Cemetery, Sulfur Falls, and Clifftop Retreat make up the full cycle. They've been reprinted enough that most sit between fifty cents and a dollar fifty.

These are probably the single best budget dual land cycle. In a deck with 15 or more basics, you're almost never paying the "enters tapped" penalty. Run every one that matches your colors.

Pain lands

Pain lands always enter untapped. They tap for colorless free, or they tap for one of two colors at the cost of 1 life. In commander, where you start at 40 life, that's nothing.

Adarkar Wastes, Brushland, Karplusan Forest, Sulfurous Springs, Underground River, Caves of Koilos, Shivan Reef, Llanowar Wastes, Battlefield Forge, and Yavimaya Coast are the full ten. Most are under a dollar thanks to multiple reprints in recent sets.

Pain lands never enter tapped. That alone puts them above most budget options. One life per activation is irrelevant in a format where you have 40. Run them without thinking twice.

Utility lands that do more than fix colors

Not every good budget land is a dual. Some of the strongest lands in commander do something extra.

Myriad Landscape enters tapped, then you can pay two and sacrifice it to search for two basics that share a type. It's ramp on a land. Non-green decks especially love this because they don't have access to Cultivate and Kodama's Reach. Fifty cents.

Rogue's Passage makes a creature unblockable for four mana. In commander, getting one big creature through for lethal commander damage wins games. Twenty-five cents.

Reliquary Tower removes your maximum hand size. If you're drawing a lot of cards, this keeps you from discarding down to seven. No color fixing, but the effect is worth the slot in decks that fill their hands. Thirty cents.

Scavenger Grounds exiles all cards from all graveyards for two mana. Graveyard strategies are everywhere in commander. Having a land that doubles as graveyard hate costs you almost nothing in deck construction. Under fifty cents.

War Room draws a card for three mana and life equal to your commander's color count. In mono-color and two-color decks, this is cheap repeatable card draw stapled to a land. Gets worse as you add colors but still playable in three-color. Seventy-five cents.

Slow fetches and panoramas

Bad River, Flood Plain, Grasslands, Mountain Valley, and Rocky Tar Pit are the original slow fetch lands. They enter tapped, then you sacrifice them to search for a basic land with a specific type. They're worse than real fetch lands, obviously, but they still fix colors and trigger landfall. Most sit around a dollar.

The Alara panoramas (Bant Panorama, Esper Panorama, Grixis Panorama, Jund Panorama, Naya Panorama) work similarly. They tap for colorless normally, or you pay one and sacrifice them to fetch a specific basic. Good in three-color decks that match the shard.

Gain lands and temples

I'll be honest with you. Gain lands that enter tapped and gain you 1 life are fine in very casual decks but I'd avoid them if you have access to anything else on this list. The life is irrelevant and entering tapped consistently slows you down.

Temples are better. Temple of Silence, Temple of Malady, Temple of Epiphany, and the rest of the cycle enter tapped but give you a scry. That scry adds up over the course of a game. Most temples are between fifty cents and a dollar. If you're already running other tapped lands and want the extra card selection, temples are a reasonable choice.

Tribal lands

If you're building a tribal deck, a few lands give you extra value.

Unclaimed Territory and Secluded Courtyard both let you name a creature type when they enter and then tap for any color to cast creatures of that type. They're basically Command Tower for your tribe. Under fifty cents each.

Cavern of Souls is the premium version at $40-plus, but these budget alternatives do 90% of the same job. You lose the "can't be countered" text, but the color fixing is identical.

How to build a budget mana base

Here's the framework I use for two and three color decks:

1. Start with 36-38 lands total
2. Add Command Tower and Exotic Orchard
3. Add every check land and pain land in your colors
4. Fill remaining color-fixing slots with Path of Ancestry, Terramorphic Expanse, Evolving Wilds
5. Add 2-3 utility lands (Rogue's Passage, War Room, Reliquary Tower, whatever fits your strategy)
6. Fill the rest with basics, weighted toward whatever color you need most in your early turns

That gives you a functional, consistent mana base for maybe $5 to $8 total. You'll cast your spells on time, and you won't feel bad about any of the slots.

Track your collection and see which of these lands you already own with GrimDeck's free MTG collection tracker. Import your cards and we'll show you what you've got to work with.