Treasure tokens in Commander, on a budget
Last updated: September 21, 2026
A treasure token is an artifact you sacrifice for one mana of any colour. That is the whole card, and it is deceptively strong: treasure is ramp, colour fixing, artifact count and a sacrifice outlet's favourite food all at once. Over the last few years it has gone from a pirate gimmick to one of the most common mechanics in the game, which means there are a lot of cheap cards that make them.
Why treasure is better than it looks
Ordinary ramp gets you ahead on mana. Treasure gets you ahead on mana and fixes whatever colour you are missing and counts as an artifact for anything that cares. In a three or four colour deck it quietly solves the mana base problem that would otherwise cost you real money in lands.
The trade-off is that each one is single-use. Treasure is a burst, not an engine — unless you build around making them repeatedly.
Cheap ways to make them
The budget producers fall into three groups. Combat-triggered makers reward you for attacking. Death-triggered makers turn your creatures dying into mana, which pairs beautifully with sacrifice decks. And one-shot rituals like Unexpected Windfall or Pirate's Pillage trade a card for a burst of mana you can hold across turns — unlike a ritual, treasure does not expire at end of turn.
Dockside Extortionist is the famous one and it is not a budget card. Almost everything else that makes treasure is, and the deck works fine without it.
The payoffs
Making treasure is only half the deck. The payoffs are what turn a pile of tokens into a win.
Artifact-count cards care how many you have on board. Sacrifice outlets turn each token into value twice — once for the mana, once for the death trigger. And the big-mana finishers, the X spells and the expensive bombs, are what all that ramp is for. A deck that makes twelve treasures and has nothing to spend them on has made twelve pieces of cardboard.
See what we have in our treasure singles and artifact singles.
Colours that want it
Red makes the most treasure by a distance, black is close behind through death triggers, and blue has picked up plenty recently. Green does not need it — green already ramps with lands, which survive artifact wipes. If you are building treasure, you are most likely in red.
One thing to watch
Treasure is artifacts, and artifacts die to artifact removal. In a pod with a red deck holding Vandalblast, a board of eight treasures is a target. Spend them rather than hoarding them — the mana you used is the mana that cannot be blown up.
Browse our Commander singles, price a deck against live stock in the Deck Builder, or read best budget mana rocks for the other half of the ramp package.