Welcome back my beautiful readers, to another edition of “why can’t this guy count past 3” in our series talking about mana ramp in it’s most primal form; the rock. If you’re catching up in the series, you might want to go look at the start of it where we discuss more details on criteria and what we’re ranking, check that out here. Today’s entry will start to cover the last section of the standard “taps for mana” cards in the 3 drop category, but these all will generate colorless mana rather than a particular color.
We’ll be using a rating scale to discuss these cards and how they rank up against others in this category:
S: The only reason you wouldn’t include this is personal choice, other synergy, or budget.
A:Â Always a solid choice, or is overwhelmingly good in a specific archetype.
B:Â Generally a good pick, can work well in most decks or very well in others with synergy.
C: Good in niche situations or specific decks, but might be outclassed by other picks if you don’t have specific synergy with it.
D: Generally outclassed by other picks. Only playable in very particular niches or if you just like the card and it fits your deck’s theme.
Ashnod’s Altar
I’m bending the rules a bit to talk about this card, both because it feels disingenuous not to when chatting about ramp, as well as the fact that this not tapping is explicitly what makes it so good. Ashnod’s is a staple of the sacrifice/aristocrats archetype for good reason: it provides incremental ramp in the early-mid game, explosive ramp scaling well into the late game, and a free sacrifice outlet you always have access to. It also provides an easy source for a metric butt-load of combos that can easily work with many of the cards your deck will likely have anyway. The caveat of needing to have things to sacrifice is pretty much the only restriction, but since those tend to be essential to the engines these decks play anyway, it’s hardly a drawback.
Rating: A, it’s a frankly irreplaceable staple of the archetype, and the only reason I won’t grant it the fabled S tier is that it often can’t find a home in taller-board or lower creature count strategies.
Basalt Monolith
Basalt Monolith is…weird to look at in terms of ramp. The issue is that it doesn’t really ramp you, naturally at least. The idea is that you can basically “stockpile” mana for later turns by untapping this when you have the mana to spare/ability to set up for a power turn. If you aren’t paying for the untap cost though, it’s not going to ramp you for long…unless you have another way to untap it.
This is where the real juice of this comes in. You see, nobody plays this card to use it fairly. You play this card because you can untap it for free via artifact shenanigans, blinking it, or general other untapping of nonland permanents. It also is a great piece in combos, as you can use things like Forsaken Monument to make this tap for more mana than it takes to just immediately untap it, making infinite mana. My personal favorite use case is using it with Mesmeric Orb to deck yourself, because winning with Laboratory Maniac instead of Thassa’s Oracle is quite based in 2025.
Rating: B, it’s got a really crazy power ceiling, but your deck has to be ready to use it effectively.
Dungeon Map
I’ll be honest, I think this is pretty bad even in dungeon decks. There are absolutely more mana efficient ways than the 3 (4 including the opportunity cost) mana to get one dungeon advancement, and I’d much rather just run a better rock to fuel better dungeon cards unless I was really desperate for access to the mechanic on an artifact.
Rating: D
Hieorphant’s Chalice
While I think this one’s pretty shit too, there’s actually a reasonable use case for it in Blink decks since it provides value beyond just being able to tap it again when you blink it out. 1 drain really adds up when you’re doing it a billion times on top of all your other high value triggers. I really wouldn’t touch it outside of blink though.
Rating: D, I still personally prefer running more efficient rocks in most of the blink decks that would want this, but I do think it can put in some work there. Don’t just jam this in lifegain decks though.
Honor-Worn Shaku
This one’s just actually bad, if it happened when you did something with a legendary permanent, this could do some cool stuff for sure, but it being a literal price to this is a crazy opportunity cost that definitely will struggle to find use.
Rating: D
FromTheShire:Â Strong disagree on this one, this isn’t just legendary creatures so you can be turning enchantments, artifacts, even planeswalkers into ramp, and there are lot of creatures that really want a way to become tapped. Plus there are multiple infinite combos you can pull off with it like pairing it with Saffi Eriksdotter and Cadric, Soul Kindler. A B for me.
Kyren Toy
As someone who wasn’t playing during MM, I saw this card and audibly went “What the hell are YOU?” I don’t really like most of the mana storage cards, and I’m not sure this one is an exception. I think if you’re committed to the charge counter bit this is a fun way to show them off, but I wouldn’t use this aside from that.
Rating: D
Magnifying Glass
That’s a crazy price to get a Clue token, I don’t think you ever really want to be doing that. Even in decks that care specifically about Clue tokens like Alquist Proft, Master Sleuth have much more efficient ways than this to actually get Clues, so I’d wager you have better choices if you aren’t totally strapped for Clue generators.
Rating: D
Author’s Note: Skipping over a few cards like Mana Prism here because they’re power crept by other cards in the 2 drop slot.
Orazca Relic
Ascend can be a surprisingly easy mechanic to get rolling in Commander, and this means you can play this, immediately get the city’s blessing, then sacrifice it in a pinch later. I think I would like this more if this tapped for mana, but the flexibility isn’t awful.
Sadly, it’s still pretty D tier worthy because it really just doesn’t compete with some of the other 3-drops in terms of value.
Rating: D
Powerstone Shard
This is my “hear me out” card of this batch – I think in decks that copy artifacts, this is absolute gas, even in EDH. Think of it this way, if you copy this once you have two Worn Powerstones, if you copy it twice you have three rocks that tap for 3 mana each – that’s a hell of a lot of mana. I understand you could just… copy better mana rocks and get more value, but I think if you’re able to keep pushing copies of these out they get pretty stupid. The niche is slim, but commanders like Orvar, the All-Form are quite popular and can leverage this pretty well.
Rating: C, I do think it’s a really tough niche to fill but it does lend itself really well to the ever-growing copy effects that are floating around the format now.
That’s a wrap! We’ll keep at it in the next episode. In the meantime, stay fresh and keep your mana rocky.
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.
