Recently I have been brewing up Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign, as a commander deck. The deck was going well, with only 3 cards with even mana costs, and those being Lightning Greaves, for protection, and Strionic Resonator and Helm of the Host, which serve to increase my statistical chance of hitting an odd card with Yennett's trigger.
This was fine until I remembered that lands have an even converted mana cost, since 0 is considered even in magic. So now I run into a problem where to increase my chances past 60% or so, I need to decrease my land count. This can be compensated for by replacing lands with odd CMC mana rocks, but this still makes my deck low on lands and still dependent on them, as most of the mana rocks would end up at 3 CMC. To allow my deck to function, it needs Yennett on the field.
This leads to a few questions:
- What is my optimal amount of lands to increase my chances to a consistent amount and still have the mana to make my deck function? How few lands can I realistically go?
- What should I do to compensate for the lack of mana? Which mana rocks are worth it?
- Can this be compensated for with library manipulation and draw such as Ponder, Brainstorm, and Portent? If so, how many of these small cantrips must I run to make them effective?