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I'm looking for artifacts similar to the crystals from the Ikoria set (e.g. Indatha Crystal) or the banners (e.g. Abzan Banner), but instead that produce white, blue or black mana.

I'm not opposed to lands either like Arcane Sanctum but I'm more interested in finding artifacts for my Alela, Artful Provocateur Commander deck.

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    Shards of Alara had a cycle 3 mana artifacts that tapped shard colors. I cannot remember there names though
    – Neil Meyer
    Sep 21, 2021 at 19:46
  • @NeilMeyer Obelisk of [Shard name] in this case Obelisk of Esper
    – Andrew
    Sep 22, 2021 at 13:13

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Scryfall offers a produces: operator that returns cards that produce the mana you ask for. It takes into account statements like “add N mana of any color” as well as treasure production and the ability to produce additional mana (like Heartbeat of Spring).

  • If you give produces: a set of mana types out of WUBRGC—the five colors plus colorless—it returns cards that produce at least those types of mana, possibly including others.
  • If you give it a number, it returns cards that produce exactly that number of types of mana. produces:6 is the maximum, which is all the cards that produce WUBRG and also colorless.
  • produces:any finds cards that produce any type of mana at all. (It's equivalent to produces>=1.)

These would be your primary options when searching for Esper mana generators the way you are:

  • Most helpful: produces:w or produces:u or produces:b will find cards that individually produce at least any of those colors, possibly including other colors and/or colorless.
  • produces:wub will find cards that individually produce at least white, blue, and black—a card that produces just one or two of these won't match. You can also do produces:esper for this result.
  • produces:any commander:wub will find Esper cards that produce at least one type of mana, no matter what it is, but it will also match cards that only produce colorless mana.

You've requested artifacts that tap for mana, but there are artifacts like Altar of Shadows and Caged Sun that produce mana without requiring being tapped for it. Since Alela doesn't interact specifically with tapping/untapping artifacts, it seems these may work well for you too.

I suggest one of these searches:

Technical notes on the produces: operator

The produces: operator can also take different comparators: produces>, >=, =, <=, or <.

When you're supplying a set of colors, produces: is equal to produces>= (at least equal to this set).

When you're supplying a number, produces: is equal to produces= (exactly this number).

This is fairly typical of Scryfall operators that take numbers and/or mana: if you see : followed by digits or a number of sets of mana, usually that operator will take some set of >=< too. The : case will default to the behaviour that's the most common or intuitive search for that operator.

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  • Looks like Obelisk of Esper is the only one that explicitly produces only those colours, though, instead of producing any colour.
    – nick012000
    Sep 21, 2021 at 22:15
  • @nick012000 Oh, yeah, I hadn't actually taken a look at that list. Also Dromar's Attendant. Only two artifacts that produce exactly esper mana! (None that produce esper + colorless)
    – doppelgreener
    Sep 21, 2021 at 22:23
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I found 97 matching cards on Scryfall using the following search

t:artifact o:/{T}:.*\badd\b.*({[WUB]}|any|that)/ f:commander ci:wub

This finds artifact cards with {T}:, add and {W} or {U} or {B}, or the word any (for "any color") or that (for "that color", referring to an earlier choice), in that order, that are legal in commander, and have a color identity that matches white, blue, and/or black, so that they are playable in an Alela commander deck.

For cards that can tap for all of those colors instead of just some of them, this search finds 59 cards:

t:artifact o:/{T}:.*\badd\b.*(({[WUB]}.*){3}|any|that)/ f:commander ci:wub

The difference is that this looks for three mana symbols that match {W}, {U}, or {B}. Technically this would also find cards that add {W}{W}{W}, but that doesn't actually come up.

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  • Only one of those actually produces all three colors.
    – Arcanist Lupus
    Sep 21, 2021 at 13:14
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    @ArcanistLupus The question (even before editing) asked for "white blue or black" mana (my emphasis).
    – Philip Kendall
    Sep 21, 2021 at 14:02
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    @PhilipKendall, do you mean like Indatha Crystal, which produces "W, B, or G"? The examples the OP lists are all 3 color producers. I agree that the wording is open to interpretation, but it's clear that the OP is more interested in three color producers.
    – Arcanist Lupus
    Sep 21, 2021 at 16:12
  • Note that this misses artifacts that produce mana of any color, such as Coalition Relic
    – Zags
    Sep 21, 2021 at 17:00
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This is a Gatherer search for Artifacts that have a tapped ability and mention the word "add" and either white or blue mana. It looks like most of them involve mana abilities, which makes sense. Obviously some of these are not going to be appropriate for certain circumstances, and I make no claim as to which might be more easily obtainable than others. We can refine the search to only list cards which are legal for Commander, and it only takes about 3 entries of the list so there are still plenty of choices.

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