All I Care About Is Mana And The City That It’s From

I talked at length about Jeremy Neeman list immediately after his GP win, and while I don’t think this deck is particularly well positioned right now thanks to Mirran Crusader and Dungrove Elder, I do think it exemplifies deckbuilding with mana usage in mind. Having both Dissipate and Mana Leak makes the instant speed of Think Twice and Forbidden Alchemy actually relevant; with the primarily sorcery-speed Solar Flare decks, you’re generally deciding whether you’re interacting with your opponent by the time you pass the turn. Even ignoring the lack of Mana Leak in Medina’s Solar Flare deck, this list has substantially more ways to interact with the opponent in the early turns, starting with Wring Flesh on the first turn.

Cheap spells are very important when you’re trying to optimize a deck’s mana usage. While it’s all well and good to imagine yourself curving out perfectly every game, that’s simply not how things play out in the real world. If your deck can only interact with your opponent by playing spells that cost sizable portions of your resources, you’re going to quickly fall behind an opponent who is able to play multiple spells in a turn.

One-mana spells are especially important because they’re the best at filling in the gaps on your “off turns.” The jump from one to two mana is the biggest incremental increase in cost in all of Magic, save the obvious jump from zero to one. What this means is that the number of opportunities you’ll have to play a one-mana spell alongside another spell in the same turn are dramatically higher than the opportunities to play a two-cost spell. This has become even truer in the era of Snapcaster Mage—the jump from one to two means the jump from three to four when you want to flash that spell back with Mr. Chan, which is another huge increase in opportunity cost.

Look at that Solar Flare list again. How many things can it do with four mana? Five mana? Doom Blade is the only card that gives it the ability to interact for two mana or less, so there’s literally no combination of plays it can make that don’t involve that card until it gets to six mana. At that point, it can play an Oblivion Ring and a Timely Reinforcements, or a Timely and a Liliana, or a Doom Blade and a Day of Judgment—though I can’t say I recommend that last one very often.

Now look at Neeman’s deck. It can start playing multiple spells at three mana, assuming one of them is a Wring Flesh. At four mana, it can potentially play both Mana Leak and Doom Blade or Geth’s Verdict, or Wring Flesh and Dissipate, or Wring Flesh and Snapcaster it back. At five mana, the options start to explode. As anyone who has played against this incarnation of U/B can likely tell you, if you don’t have a solid board presence by the time your opponent gets to five or six mana, you’re likely in some serious trouble because that’s about when they can start dealing with all of your threats while digging for more answers all the while.

Why is all of this important? Let’s go all the way back to the intro—without the mana to play them, all the cards in the world are useless. A deck with better optimized mana usage can play cards more efficiently, and thus extra cards are literally more valuable to them. The Solar Flare list can Think Twice and Forbidden Alchemy all it wants, but if it ends up with a grip full of three- and four-casting-cost sorceries, it still doesn’t have many options. It will eventually choke on mana and die.

Let’s look at an example of a deck truly optimized for mana usage:

Caw-Blade

Brian Kibler

Test deck on 11-13-2011

Standard

Creatures (8)

• 2 Emeria Angel
• 4 Squadron Hawk
• 2 Consecrated Sphinx

Planeswalkers (4)

• 1 Jace Beleren
• 3 Gideon Jura

Lands (26)

• 3 Plains
• 4 Island
• 3 Glacial Fortress
• 1 Arid Mesa
• 1 Scalding Tarn
• 4 Celestial Colonnade
• 4 Tectonic Edge
• 4 Seachrome Coast
• 2 Inkmoth Nexus

Spells (22)

• 3 Mana Leak
• 2 Day of Judgment
• 3 Into the Roil
• 3 Spell Pierce
• 4 Preordain
• 2 Sword of Feast and Famine
• 3 Dismember
• 2 Timely Reinforcements

Sideboard

• 4 Flashfreeze
• 1 Jace Beleren
• 1 Day of Judgment
• 2 Ratchet Bomb
• 3 Mental Misstep
• 2 Azure Mage
• 2 Timely Reinforcements

Ah, Caw-Blade. Perhaps the most dominant Standard deck of all time, Caw-Blade evolved into a picture of efficiency during its reign. Spell Pierce and Dismember provide one-mana interaction, while Preordain adds selection for the same low price. Into the Roil and Mana Leak are catchall answers at two, alongside Squadron Hawk, which doubles as threat and defense all in one. Hawk itself was a huge element of Caw-Blade’s drive toward mana efficiency, since the deck wanted cards that it could play alongside Hawk in the early turns, ultimately driving the costs in the deck lower and lower. I wrote an entire article expounding upon how Caw-Blade’s success was rooted in its profitable mana exchanges, and these are all rooted in the deck’s efficient instants.

It’s worth noting the Azure Mages in this deck’s sideboard. Azure Mage is the sort of card that fits into Caw-Blade perfectly because it’s a deck that can threaten any number of plays with open mana and can also make excellent use of extra cards because of its tremendous mana efficiency. Compare this to, say, Solar Flare, where I’ve seen quite a few Azure Mages showing up as a sideboard card. Not only is Solar Flare poorly set up to make use of the damage Azure Mage can deal early, but it is also not very well equipped to take advantage of the ability to keep mana open on the opponent’s turn or even the extra cards it draws. Don’t get me wrong—Azure Mage is a great card, but it needs the right supporting cast of mana efficient instants in order to truly shine.

I actually had a similar realization recently about Consecrated Sphinx. Consecrated Sphinx always seems like a tremendous game-ending bomb that guarantees victory when you untap with it, but that, too, is a matter of context. I was working on a RUG Ramp deck for Standard—pretty much R/G Ramp with Mana Leak and Consecrated Sphinx. The idea was that I’d accelerate into some Titan or Sphinx and just ride it to victory, with Mana Leak and Arc Trail to disrupt my opponents along the way.

RUG

Brian Kibler

Test deck on 11-13-2011

Standard

Creatures (17)

• 2 Llanowar Elves
• 3 Solemn Simulacrum
• 4 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 2 Inferno Titan
• 1 Primeval Titan
• 1 Thrun, the Last Troll
• 2 Consecrated Sphinx
• 1 Daybreak Ranger

Planeswalkers (4)

• 2 Garruk, Primal Hunter
• 2 Garruk Relentless

Lands (25)

• 7 Forest
• 1 Mountain
• 5 Island
• 4 Rootbound Crag
• 4 Copperline Gorge
• 4 Hinterland Harbor

Spells (14)

• 4 Mana Leak
• 4 Rampant Growth
• 4 Arc Trail
• 2 Green Sun's Zenith

I have to tell you—it was an incredibly bizarre experience to repeatedly play Consecrated Sphinx and untap with it and still lose. Unlike Caw-Blade or U/B, which would play Sphinx and draw a fistful of counters or removal every turn, I’d play my Sphinx and draw ramp cards or Titans. Not only was my deck full of a ton of mana sources so I could ramp to Sphinx or said Titans, but all of my business spells were so expensive that I couldn’t cast more than one of them a turn. The best I could hope for would be to draw something like a Titan and a Mana Leak, but more often I’d draw a pair of Titans, and they’d rot in my hand. I was drawing extra cards, but those cards had no value because I couldn’t play them all.

I finally de-sleeved this deck yesterday. Fifteen years later and I apparently still hadn’t learned my lesson from Sligh. Hopefully now you’re at least one step closer.

Until next time,

bmk