The Top 50 Best Cards You Should Craft for Explorer

Table of Contents

When Do I Craft Lands?
White
Blue
Black
Red
Green
Multicolor
Colorless

Hello everyone! With Standard almost at it’s big rotation, a lot of players have been playing or gained a large interest in Explorer. With 20 new Explorer Anthology 1 cards being added on July 28, 2022, I certainly can’t blame them! Explorer is an extremely fun eternal format that has a lot of powerful strategies in it.

However, it can still obviously be a little tough on the wildcards considering there are so many good decks out there! If you knew the very best cards of the format and the ones that were most likely to see play, it could save you a substantial amount of time and wildcards! As a general rule of thumb, if you are looking to play Explorer, purchasing the new Anthology bundle will be the most economical option rather than crafting them using Wildcards. With that, here’s a list by color of the top 50 cards in Explorer you should consider crafting, but before we jump right in, let’s talk lands.

When Do I Craft Lands?

Realistically speaking, a good mana base is the life blood of many of these decks. It’s a tough decision knowing when to craft lands as they technically are never mandatory for any deck, but they will make the deck substantially more consistent. However, lands are also the easiest cards to move from deck to deck as, if the lands are good and you’re playing that color(s), you’re likely to use them. I would recommend crafting them rather highly as they are so transmissible, but again, it isn’t mandatory.

Another thing to note is that all lands are not created equal, certain lands see substantially more play than others. I’ll rank those lands here, but a very important thing to keep in mind is that you don’t need a playset of these lands necessarily to have the amount you need. For example, while many decks play the Kamigawa channel lands, you generally only need one copy and you’ll never need more than two. While they are powerful, you don’t need that many which is a great deal! So here’s how I would rank the lands.

Shock Lands (Pay 2 life to enter untapped) – e.g. Hallowed Fountain
Pathway Lands – e.g. Hengegate Pathway
Slow Lands (need 2 other lands in play to enter untapped) – e.g. Deserted Beach
Channel Lands – e.g. Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire
Check Lands (enters untapped if you control a land with a certain basic land type) – e.g. Glacial Fortress
Creature Lands (lands that have an activated ability to turn into a creature) – e.g. Cave of the Frost Dragon
Fast Lands (lands that enter untapped if you control two or fewer other lands) – e.g. Concealed Courtyard
Tri-lands (lands that can tap for three colors) – e.g. Raugrin Triome
Eldraine Castles – e.g. Castle Ardenvale
Scry Lands (lands that always enter tapped, but let you scry 1) – e.g. Temple of Enlightenment
Allied Cycling Lands (lands that always enter tapped, but have Cycling 2) – e.g. Irrigated Farmland

You’ll likely notice that this list is split up. The first 7 lands, while still ranked, I would say are all great land cycles are you will commonly see in Explorer decks. The next 4 are significantly less common as well as weaker than the previous 7. However, before crafting any land, make sure you know what strategy you’re working towards as you don’t want to craft unnecessary or too many lands. Now that we finished the lands, we can get to the top 50 cards in Explorer!