The 30 Best Mana Dorks in Magic

Last updated on July 4, 2024

Delighted Halfling | Illustration by Livia Prima

We here at Draftsim respect people of all backgrounds and from all communities, so rest assured when I talk about the honorable and established “mana dork” in Magic, I mean it with the utmost respect. And as someone who went through the gamut of dweeb, nerd, and poindexter insults in my formative years, I feel like dork’s a somewhat prestigious title by comparison.

Mana dorks are a Magic staple. See, there’s this premise that you’re going to play one land per turn, increasing your access to mana by 1 each turn, and mana dorks skirt that rule altogether. In fact, mana dorks have been helping you cheat at the established rules of the game since Alpha‘s day one, and today we’re compiling the best of these little cretins in one space.

Shove that Cursed Totem where the sun don’t shine, and use your creatures to tap for all the mana you need!

Let’s get to it!

What’s a Mana Dork?

Joraga Treespeaker | Illustration by Cyril Van Der Haegen

A mana dork is Magic slang for a creature that produces mana, almost always via an activated mana ability.

But it’s never really that simple, is it? When people talk about mana dorks, they’re usually referring to a specific kind of creature low on the curve, and one you can use each turn to produce at least 1 mana.

Let’s narrow it down a bit.

I want to focus specifically on 1-drops and 2-drops here. You might argue that any creature that taps for mana should count as a mana dork, and that’s fair if you do, but that “dork” part usually means “small early-game creature” to me.

I also want creatures that can produce mana every turn, which excludes creatures that produce Treasure tokens on ETB, or creatures that sacrifice themselves to find lands, like Sakura-Tribe Elder. It also needs to generate actual mana, so no cost reduction here.

Basically, if it’s a creature, it’s cheap, and it gives you mana that your lands wouldn’t be able to produce on their own, it qualifies for the list. Nit-picky, I know, but I’m not interested in discussing whether Dockside Extortionist and Nyxbloom Ancient count as mana dorks.

Honorable Mention: Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary

Since this list is geared mostly towards Commander, it doesn’t make much sense to rank the banned Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary. This is a zero-effort ramp piece that can take you from 2 mana on turn 2 to 6 mana on turn 3, just by playing the game normally. You have to skew towards forests, but that’s not exactly hard in a mono-green deck. Every now and then you’ll hear someone say, “I think Rofellos could be unbanned in Commander,” which is a clear indication they’ve never played with or against the card.

#30. Magus of the Vineyard

Some group-hug decks just want players to have as many cards and as much mana as they can handle, which is the type of deck Magus of the Vineyard slots into. I’m not huge on effects like this myself, since opponents will get the first crack at the mana, then potentially kill this green creature before you even got a benefit.

#29. Manaweft Sliver + Gemhide Sliver

In my personal experience, Manaweft Sliver and Gemhide Sliver are the most important cards in the 5-color sliver Commander decks. They provide so much mana to those decks, fix their color requirements, and add to the combo-centric play patterns of The First Sliver alongside a haste enabler. They’re nearly functionally identical, with Gemhide affecting all slivers. The sliver mirror-match is hilarious, after all.

#28. Intrepid Paleontologist

Intrepid Paleontologist gets a nod for being a strong typal payoff, but it earns a low rank by virtue of being very deck-specific. It has similar graveyard-hate potential as Armored Scrapgorger, but there’s not much reason to run it outside a dinosaur deck, where it’s admittedly quite awesome.

#27. Thieving Varmint

A mana dork made especially for a dork like me. I love theft decks, and Thieving Varmint is a double-dork for stolen cards. It didn’t even really need deathtouch and lifelink here, but it’s nice that my mono-black (?) mana dork can trade off with a ground threat when the time comes.

#26. Prize Pig

Every three instances of lifegain awards you an extra mana from your Prize Pig, which is just good enough to make the cut in Food decks or those rare Witherbloom lifegain decks.

#25. The Metal Myr

If your deck cares about artifact creatures and early-game mana acceleration, you could do worse than the metal myr. They’re not great, considering you could just play an on-color talisman or Mind Stone for roughly the same effect, but Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch gives them a home, and some decks specifically want access to artifact creatures.

#24. Deranged Assistant + Millikin

Every deck wants more mana, and some decks want to fill their graveyard. Check off both those boxes and Deranged Assistant and Millikin start to look more appealing. On the gradient of “unplayable” to “amazing,” they fall squarely in the middle, somewhere around “just fine.”

#23. Bramble Familiar

Bramble Familiar is half unexciting mana dork, half awesome adventure. There’s some neat play to it, since you can use it for mana early, then theoretically bounce it back late to access the adventure. It caught some buzz with the release of Jace Reawakened, since a plotted Bramble Familiar can be cast for its adventure.

#22. Zhur-Taa Druid

Goblin Anarchomancer unfortunately doesn’t fit the criteria of our list, but Zhur-Taa Druid’s pretty close in design. Passively pinging all opponents is a nice add-on to just tapping for mana, even if this human druid it’s not as explosive as its goblin shaman friend.

#21. Incubation Druid

Incubation Druid excels in decks that can put +1/+1 counters on it; it’s less exciting (but still fine) if you actually have to adapt it to turn it into a Gilded Lotus. Note that it has the Reflecting Pool text, so it doesn’t exactly fix your mana; but since it can produce any type of mana (not just any color), it can produce colorless mana provided you have the source for it.

#20. Heritage Druid

A mana accelerant for elf decks? Unheard of! Heritage Druid makes good use of all those lazy non-mana-dork elves that are doing things besides tapping for mana. It’s usually seen buddied up with Nettle Sentinel and has a comparable analog in Birchlore Rangers.

#19. Joraga Treespeaker

Hey, Joraga Treespeaker, quit talking to that oak tree and help us out over here! This level-up creature has exactly one home (care to guess which?), but it’s excellent there. Maybe a little strange given that plenty of elves already tap for mana without Treespeaker’s help.

#18. Priest of Titania

Yo, I heard you like tapping your elves for mana, so we made an elf that taps for more mana while your elves are tapping for mana. I think that’s how the meme goes. Priest of Titania is another elvish tapper that produces obscene amounts of mana, but it goes in exactly elfball strategies and nowhere else. Of note, Titania’s priest also counts the elves your opponents control, so check those creature types!

#17. Armored Scrapgorger

My vote for most underrated 2-drop mana dork in Commander goes to Armored Scrapgorger. If you’re in the market for a dork on turn 2 and don’t have any specific requirements to fulfil, I suggest giving Scrappy a spin. This sort of passive graveyard hate is a sweet ability to tack onto mana fixing and ramp like this, never mind the fact that it’ll occasionally become a 3/3.

#16. Biophagus

I love me a simple card! Biophagus adds mana and puts a +1/+1 counter on the creature you used that mana to cast. Clean!

#15. Giada, Font of Hope

Go home Giada, you’re drunk. But wait, wait, wait, it actually fits the criteria. Giada, Font of Hope is in fact a mana dork, and a very powerful one at that, just for a hyper-specific deck. It’s actually borderline busted in angel decks, but wow is it weird to see a mono-white creature on this list.

#14. Wall of Roots

One of the only mana dorks that doesn’t tap to activate, Wall of Roots can play defense and add mana at the same time. It’s often seen double-dipping on Chord of Calling in Modern, and has a place in all those defender strats in Commander.

#13. Paradise Druid + Sylvan Caryatid

I respect a dork that gives you reassurances that it’ll survive long enough to actually tap for mana. Paradise Druid and Sylvan Caryatid are poised best for Constructed play, but even Commander decks are interested in 2-drop mana dorks from time to time.

#12. Gyre Sage

From this point forward we’re looking at entries that are either very cheap at mana value 1, tap for more than 1 mana at a time, or offer excellent additional utility beyond being a source of mana. Gyre Sage slots into the same types of decks as Incubation Druid – that is, +1/+1 counter decks looking for tons of mana. Gyre Sage has a higher ceiling even once it stops evolving, since additional counters continue to expand how much mana this elf druid can produce.

#11. Bloom Tender

A mana dork that scales to the number of colors you’re playing is pretty sweet, and we’ve seen Bloom Tender’s text show up again on Faeburrow Elder. 2 mana for an accelerant that taps for up to 5 mana is absurd, and it opens up easy combo lines with cards like Freed from the Real.

#10. Fanatic of Rhonas

Fanatic of Rhonas reeks of desperation. “Please, please play this mana dork in Modern, we swear it’s good enough!” This card was Pushed with a capital P, and it opens up incredibly busted lines of play on turn 3. Time will tell if that’s enough to make it actually show up in Modern, but I’m sure it’ll be eternalized in Commander.

#9. Devoted Druid

Devoted Druid breaks easier than fine china in a rage room, and it reminds me that I need to once again ask my editors when we’re writing our “Top Infinite Combos with Devoted Druid” list. Even without all the incidental combo lines, this is still a dork that can tap for 2 mana in one turn if need be.

#8. Menagerie Curator

I’m sneaking in a digital-only Alchemy card because I play with those quite often, but if you don’t respect Alchemy, feel free to ignore this slot and adjust the rest of the list accordingly. Still here? Oh good. Holy crap is Menagerie Curator broken! The card draw ability is completely independent of tapping for mana, so you can just passively draw cards for casting creatures while this sits in play. You don’t really even need to build around this good citizen, you’ll probably just naturally have solitary creature types floating around your green decks.

#7. Sanctum Weaver

There’s an unwritten Magic design philosophy that says you can push the amount of mana a cheap mana dork generates if it’s locked into a specific subset of strategies. That’s what’s going on with Sanctum Weaver, which can tap for around 10 mana at a time, but only in dedicated enchantress decks. That means it doesn’t slot in everywhere, but this enchantment creature is one of your best cards if it does make your deck.

#6. Deathrite Shaman

“The 1-mana planeswalker,” so they say. Deathrite Shaman has a pedigree in Constructed, but I rarely see it in Commander. Maybe that’s because the 2-life margins are less meaningful in 40-life multiplayer than 20-life 1v1 formats, or perhaps there are just fewer lands in graveyards to reliably make mana with it? I’m not sure the reason, but it’s still an excellent utility creature. Pro tip: Deathrite’s first ability is not a mana ability!

#5. Arbor Elf

Ah yes, the classic “Tim established very specific criteria for the list and then adds a card that doesn’t technically fit that criteria.” I think we can all agree Arbor Elf gets a pass. It doesn’t tap for mana itself, but it functionally increases the amount of mana you have access to, sometimes in a way that’s better than a traditional mana dork since you can untap a forest enchanted by something like Utopia Sprawl.

#4. The 1-Mana Elf Brigade

Am I missing any? These are the dorkiest dorks that ever dorked, and likely the reason this type of creature got the nickname, since they’re all pitiful in combat. There’s also an interesting conversation surrounding them: If you’re playing a ramp deck, what’s the most powerful card in your deck, Llanowar Elves or Craterhoof Behemoth? The turn-1 mana dork’s hardly ever the card that delivers the finishing blow, but it’s often the card secretly responsible for winning the game. In particular, Llanowar Elves is a common reprint and included in Foundations, highlighting how core these dorks are to Magic.

#3. The Hierarchs

Honored Hierarch wishes I was talking about them right now. No, this spot goes to Noble Hierarch and Ignoble Hierarch, the mirrored pair of exalted dorks. You can make a case for one being better than the other based on the 3-color decks they go in, but realistically, they’re both great in their own respective shards.

#2. Birds of Paradise

Birds of Paradise is the OG, and still holds up to this day. BOP is exactly what you want in a first-turn mana dork, and it has earned the number of Bolts sent its way. 

#1. Delighted Halfling 

Move over BOP, we’ve got a new shirriff in town. Delighted Halfling gives a Middle-earth middle finger to counterspells, stapling a Cavern of Souls effect to your mana dork. It’s a super frustrating design, only tolerable because its mana-making ability only applies to legendary spells.

Best Mana Dork Payoffs

Generating extra mana from mana dorks is a reward in itself, but there are still plenty of strategies and effects that pay you off even further beyond just basic mana acceleration.

Mana dorks pair well with untap effects. Well, maybe not Wall of Roots, but you take my point. A Seedborn Muse gives you another crack at your dorks on everyone’s turns, and an effect like Benefactor's Draught or Dramatic Reversal can become something of a ritual when they’re untapping enough mana sources.

You can also go to Combo City with mana dorks that tap for large chunks of mana all at once. Staff of Domination, Freed from the Real, and Pemmin's Aura are popular combo pieces with dorks like Gyre Sage and Bloom Tender. Once you’ve hit a certain threshold on the mana they produce, the amount of mana you make outpaces the mana needed to untap those creatures, and you basically end up on an infinite pile of mana.

Raggadragga, Goreguts Boss and Tyvar the Bellicose are examples of commanders that specifically reward playing creatures with mana abilities, which isn’t a card type that gets specific rewards like this very often.

Also note that most mana dorks have an activated ability (cards like Magus of the Vineyard do not). These usually fit the context of cards that specifically call out activated abilities, like The Enigma Jewel and Zirda, the Dawnwaker, though there’s some disconnect between most of the payoffs being non-green and most of the dorks being mono-green.

Where Does “Bolt the Bird” Come From and Why Can’t I Keep My Mana Dork?

“Bolt the Bird” is a famous line used by Magic players to refer to situations where you’re presented with the option to kill an opponent’s mana dork, or do something else with your mana. The classic example is an opponent casting a turn-1 Birds of Paradise, and you having a turn-1 Lightning Bolt. Do you Bolt the Bird, or develop your own gameplan instead?

While there are strategic implications for why you may or may not want to Bolt the Bird, the phrase is usually meant as a tongue-in-cheek way of saying the right decision is almost always to kill an opponent’s mana dork when given the chance, at least in the first turn or two of a game. If you do Bolt the Bird, the game continues with both players at mana parity. If you don’t, you might develop your gameplan a little bit, but now your opponent’s ahead on mana, and probably presenting increasingly difficult problems to deal with, which you could’ve avoided by cutting them off that early mana accelerant. 

BOP/Lightning Bolt is an obvious classic, but you can apply this situation against just about any early-game mana source. Vandalblast the Sol Ring is probably correct more often than not in Commander, and a present-day Modern example involves turn-1 Delighted Halflings versus an opposing Fatal Push. “Push the Halfling” doesn’t have quite the same ring, so players stick to the classic “Bolt the Bird” adage, which honestly, is usually very good advice.

Wrap Up

Ignoble Hierarch | Illustration by Mark Zug

Thanks for taking the time to nerd out about some dorks with me. Maybe next time we’ll get to geek out with some birds or something (the ones that weren’t Bolted, at least). The mana dork is a pivotal card type in Magic, one we saw in Alpha and one we can expect in pretty much every Magic set moving forward. They just happen to look a little more like Fanatic of Rhonas these days.

Now I need two things from you. First off, how does my definition of a mana dork hold up for you? Should I be including the 3+ mana value creatures, or do you agree the “dork” nickname usually refers to the smallball creatures? Second, did I miss any all-timer mana dorks? Let me know in the comments below or over in the Draftsim Discord or on Draftsim's Twitter/X.

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