Sultai is a color triad that blends Magic's best ramp, removal, and card advantage into a single powerful force. Essentially, when you set yourself up with a proper base of Sultai Lands, card advantage, and answers to threats, you know you have the solutions to anything your opponents throw at you. It's a terrifically comforting feeling.

Once you've added Command Tower, City of Brass, Fabled Passage, and Mana Confluence to your Sultai deck, you'll find yourself with 31-35 more Land slots, which is where we come in. As a reminder, my general hierarchy of Lands is:

1. Lands with multiple types that can enter untapped like Breeding Pool

2. Lands without multiple types that enter untapped Yavimaya Coast

3. Land with multiple types that come into play tapped but with an added benefit like Hedge Maze

4. Lands with multiple types that enter tapped like Haunted Mire

5. Lands with no types that enter tapped like Foul Orchard

The Top 7 Sultai Lands in EDH

1. Opulent Palace
2. Zagoth Triome
3. Filter Lands (Sunken Ruin)
4. Basic Land Type Tap Lands with Cycling (Fetid Pools)
5. Surveil Lands
6. Battlebond Duals
7. ShockLands

The usual caveat applies: the best trio of dual Lands for Sultai is the trio of Tropical IsLand, Underground Sea, and Bayou. If you don't have a spare $2,100 lying around, though, here are the best dual Lands for the Sultai wedge:

7. Opulent Palace

Strike one: enters tapped. Strike two: can't be fetched. There's no strike three, though, and so Opulent Palace gets a respectable single. Lands that tap for more than two colors of mana are infrequently printed, and once you've spent a turn tapped, Opulent Palace asks nothing further of you. Never my favorite Land to see in my opening hand, the underpowered OP still sets a good baseline for playable Lands.

6. Zagoth Triome

Barring any Amulet of Vigor or Spelunking shenanigans, Zagoth Triome will always come into play tapped. That's the only downside of this exceptional Land, which can be pulled out of your deck with various fetchLands, Farseek, or Nature's Lore or Cycled away for a fresh card when drawn late.

Zagoth Triome is my favorite turn one fetch if I don't have anything to cast on my initial turn, and when your Lands are abundant later in the game, Cycling for three is crucial, albeit pricey. A full order of magnitude better than Opulent Palace while serving a similar role.

5. Filter Lands from Shadowmoor

• Sunken Ruins
• Flooded Grove
• Twilight Mire

For three-color decks, the filterLands from Shadowmoor/Eventide give you more of what you already have, but they interact well with each other and offer painless mana fixing that can vary from turn to turn. Unlike the Odyssey/Commander filterLands (Shadowblood Ridge, Viridescent Fen), they can natively tap for colorless in a pinch and are thus less awkward on early turns. Both Flooded Grove and Twilight Mire have been reprinted enough that they're approximately a buck; Sunken Ruins has been less frequently reprinted, but it's still an affordable $10.

4. Basic Land Type Tap Lands with Cycling

• Fetid Pools
• Rain-Slicked Copse
• Festering Thicket

You run into diminishing returns with Lands that come into play tapped. A Sultai mana base that runs the trio of Surveil Lands, the trio of Cycling duals, and the trio of ShockLands will sometimes stumble when drawing multiple TapLands.

Still, we recommend the Cycling duals from Amonkhet for Green decks, as they can be Cycled away and then recurred with Icetill Explorer, Ramunap Excavator, or Conduit of Worlds.

They're especially good in Zimone and Dina and Glarb, Calamity's Augur, both of whom benefit from Instant-speed draw effects.

Completely useless outside of multiplayer formats, they're premium duals in Commander, meaning they vary in price based on frequency and accessibility of reprints. It's worth budgeting for the ones in your preferred colors, as they truly are that potent.

3. Surveil Lands

• Undercity Sewers
• Hedge Maze
• Underground Mortuary

A relatively recent innovation from Murders at Karlov Manor, the Surveil Lands have rapidly become crucial in Commander and tournament Magic. Even if you're not trying to trigger Copy Catchers, Matoya, Archon Elder, or Eye of Duskmantle, Surveilling is worth a fraction of a card by itself and -- as these have multiple Land types -- the Surveil Lands can be fetched out.

They will always enter tapped, which is a downside, but you have more control over when they enter and so you can sequence better. Especially great in Yarok, the Desecrated or Muldrotha, the Gravetide, these are rock-solid dual Lands that are just a step behind the best two cycles.

2. Battlebond Duals

• Morphic Pool
• Rejuvenating Springs
• Undergrowth Stadium

The Battlebond trio of duals have a very slight downside, in that they don't have actual Land types, but they are painless and enter untapped the majority of the time. In the very late game, when at least one player has been eliminated, they will enter tapped, but the ability to have an untapped source of multiple colors of mana early game with no other investment is huge.

ShockLands

• Watery Grave
• Breeding Pool
• Overgrown Tomb

For approximately thirty dollars, you can buy a copy of each of these Lands, cards that you'll be playing for years to come. A set of shockLands from Ravnica: City of Guilds may never leave their sleeves once purchased. Two life for access to two types of mana is a great trade, and if you can't pay the life, you can let them come into play tapped.

Time has conclusively proven that the shockLands are only exceeded in playability by the original Alpha/Beta/Unlimited/Revised dual Lands, and they're a fraction of the price of a single original dual.

Wrapping Up

Lands are the infrastructure of Magic and, like most infrastructure, we only notice them when they fail us. All kinds of formulae and traditional wisdom exist to help you build a mana base, but every deck is different, and so every mana base must be slightly different.

That said, the Lands in this article will make sure you're able to curve Rhystic Study into Icetill Explorer (or Phyrexian Arena into Conduit of Worlds in lower brackets).

There are other Lands to consider, from the "Pain Lands" like Yavimaya Coast to the new Turbulent Lands (Turbulent Fen). Depending on your deck's priorities, it's worth experimenting to see what suits your playstyle.

If you have only one takeaway from this, it's this: buy Shocklands. They haven't been made obsolete in twenty years, and it's doubtful they will anytime soon. They're Standard-legal right now, and they're as cheap as they're going to get. Good enough for Modern, eternally good enough for Commander, no matter your color combination, you need the shocks and you'll never regret picking some up.