Thursday, September 18, 2014

Got Mana? PT. 1

With Khans about to overrun our standard and limited environments it’s a fine time a to take a very close look at mana. Since this set is a wedge color set we can expect to see plenty of multicolor decks in both limited and constructed formats. Casting your spells consistently in this type of environment can be a major problem. This has been on our minds here at Wizardden.com, so to alleviate a great deal of this stress lets really break down what it takes to make your mana work.

From a great deal of research, experience, and discussions with players far more experienced than myself, there are some very helpful guidelines to follow. Obviously the most important part of mana is that it pays for the colors of your cards. Almost equally important however is when exactly it pays for those cards. For example Thoughtseize, in most decks, is intended to be used on the first turn. So this requires a single untapped black source on your first turn. So to meet this goal with 90% or greater probability in a 60 card deck, 14 or more untapped black sources would be the recommendation. For similar odds in a 40 card deck 10 sources are needed. This rule follows great for all your one drop must haves; Soldier of the Pantheon, Cloudfin Raptor, Despise, Monastery Swiftspear, and Elvish Mystic.


One drops are fairly simple to work with however so lets take a look at the more mana intensive cards. Cards like Hero’s Downfall and Cryptic Command. These cards have more specific requirements making them harder to cast, but you also grant more turns to gather the needed mana before you can first cast them. This is where we start get to get into a lot of very particular scenarios, so lets simplify it all and save time with a table.











These charts are a great guideline follow. Originally put forth by the esteemed Channel Fireball and shared with the world a while back. Comparing these charts against top performing decks shows that these numbers are tried and proven. Lets really break down how to use them though.

When building in multiple colors it is important to establish when you will be needing which colors. This is often most evident in green and white decks. We can often see a heavy favor of one color in the lower mana costs and then more of a blending in the higher mana costs. This thought process is key to thriving in a multicolor block. I was recently discussing a control variant with local player and teammate Will Pickett. We were trying to decide which combination of Courser of Kruphix, Anger of the Gods, and Despise would be best. Understanding the minimum mana requirements to cast all three consistently we accepted the fact that we could only run two of the three cards.
 These type of compromises will have to be made when working with the multiple combinations available in Khans. Centralize your early, mid, and late game around certain colors and unless that early color is green you may want to focus on that early color throughout the entire deck.


Last on today's list of topics is the non-mana factors that can influence your mana. Drawing cards or tutoring cards, scrying, and spells like Elvish Mystic that later produce mana. Early mana produces can be counted as up to half a mana source on the above charts as they have their own requirements that need to be met. Scrying and drawing also helps you to acquire your mana and can each be counted as about a quarter of a source. This means that for the purposes of later turns scry lands like Temple of Silence can be counted as slightly more than a source of mana. These extra numbers can be applied to any color as they effect the deck as a whole.


This has been the first look at mana and thinking about how to work with it. Next week join us here at Wizardden.com and we will break into the specifics of Khans and showcase a few different decklists and how we balanced the mana to make them work.

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