I think that mana is so important that this will be the second article I’ve written focused solely on this topic. The first was installment five of my Building Your First Five series of articles. I know that talking about mana and land isn’t a sexy topic, but it needs to be addressed.
Since this column is designed to talk with casual players, I am going to focus on mana with you folks. There are basically two different types of Magic players — those who have money or desire to acquire a nice sized collection, and those that are missing either the money or the desire. Let’s address a section to each of you.
Those With a Nice Sized Collection
Your needs focus around getting some of the best mana fixers in the game: dual lands. The new duals are great, and the old duals are fantabulous. They are a bit pricey, but over time, you should be able to get them slowly and surely. They are very important for fleshing out your deck and getting things to work.
The next thing you absolutely need to focus on is Birds of Paradise. Many of you will already have your full set of Birds. Some of you will have multiple playsets. For those who do not, follow this advice: Get them now, before they go out of print and the price jumps. This is the best time to get Birds, and you’ve already shown a dedication to a nice sized collection, so what are you waiting for?
I know that you have all sorts of Lairs, fetchlands, painlands, tapduals, and more. However, you really need the best lands out there to shore up your mana base. Want proof? I’ll give it to you:
This is a deck from one of my Daily Deck-a-thons called Equinaut. I am giving it to you without any mana producing cards at all. I want you to look at the deck, then choose mana from your own personal collection to round it out.
4 Equilibrium
4 Fleetfoot Panther
2 Mystic Snake
4 Meddling Mage
1 Sunscape Battlemage
1 Thornscape Battlemage
4 Absorb
4 Counterspell
2 Eladamri’s Call
2 Dismantling Blow
4 Fact or Fiction
You’ll note the presence of a nice sized Blue contingent (Fact or Fiction, Counterspell, Absorb, Equilibrium, Mystic Snake.) You should have a lot of lands that tap for Blue, as a result. There’s also a lot of Green and White in there as well. How can you flesh out this deck? Remember to use cards from your collection to flesh out this deck. The article will wait. I’ll add all sorts of white space in order to help facilitate your mana examination.
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Did you come up with a mana base? Excellent. There are three ways. To flesh out this deck, so take a look at these three ways and find out which one most closely resembles your own attempt.
Here’s the best way of fleshing out this deck, regardless of money:
Ideal Mana Base:
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Tundra
4 Savannah
4 Tropical Island
4 Windswept Heath
4 Island
2 Forest
2 Plains
This is a great mana base with a lot of color and the ability to play a Birds early, then a Counterspell early. If you don’t have the old duals, the Ravnica block duals will slide it without you missing much of a beat. This is an ideal mana base.
Now, let’s take a look at a compromise mana base, the sort where you have a nice collection, but are missing some of these top end mana producers:
Adequate Mana Base:
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Cities of Brass
4 Yavimaya Coast
4 Brushland
7 Islands
4 Forests
1 Plains
This is almost identical to the original mana base included in the article. It still has some expensive cards, but it’s obviously a lot worse than the previous set. You can still play it with, it just will deal a lot of damage to you.
Now, let’s say that you don’t have a great collection. What mana base would you build then?
Woeful Mana Base:
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Treva’s Ruins
4 Coastal Tower
4 Elfhame Palace
6 Island
4 Forest
2 Plains
This mana base is going to get you killed because it’s too slow. Key lands either come into play tapped or return a land to your hand. There’s too much tempo loss here. The Elders are fine cards, but they don’t have any synergy with the rest of the deck, they are just the best choice of the remaining available options. This mana base is just bad.
This is why you want to invest in the high end cards. It makes fun, multi-color decks (like this one) feasible. Without them, you either have to sacrifice life with pain lands, sacrifice tempo with these slow lands, or sacrifice consistency and run all basic lands. All are sacrifices that can cause you to lose games.
Which one most closely resembled your own choice and collection? Even if you are at the adequate mana base level, you can see the obvious benefits of an upgrade.
Other Cards:
Besides dual lands and Birds, there are a few other cards that you’ll want to obtain for your collection. There are some great, albeit pricey, ways of fixing your mana base.
Mox Diamond is my personal favorite. It fixes your mana by tapping for any color you need with no disadvantage attached and can be played on the first turn. Its presence can really help stave off mana problems in the early game, although it will cause you the loss of a land later in the game — much like a fetchland does, although this comes at the cost of two cards from your hand, instead of one. Still, it is one of the best mana smoothers in the game.
Colorless mana can be achieved cheaply with Sol Ring, Grim Monolith and Mana Vault. These cards don’t go in every deck, but when you need a bump up the mana curve quickly, they can really assist. From Wildfire decks to big creature strategies, these can really work well.
Similar to Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox can also really bump your mana up. It does not cause a loss of tempo like Mox Diamond by losing an extra land, but it still costs an extra card, and it can’t tap for any color of mana, so its use it multicolor decks diminishes as you increase the number of colors present. It remains a great mana accelerator for one or two colors decks.
The Other Side: Those Without the Large Collection
Now, let’s suppose that you come from the other side of the tracks. Instead of having a nice sized collection, you have fewer cards and fewer choices. What can you do?
First thing you need to do is realize that, in order to have effective decks, you’ll be playing a lot of Green or mono colored decks. Green has a lot of cheap ways of smoothing out your mana problems for very little impact on your pocketbook.
Secondly, you really need to consider upgrading for better mana. Most people’s worst experiences in Magic revolve around not getting mana and their opponent steamrolling them. This is never a fun game for the person who is mana screwed. The worse your mana base, the more likely you are to suffer from the mana screw. Since this is not fun, you’ll want to avoid it, and that means getting better cards for your mana base.
Finally, you want to identify key cards that are cheap and can really help out your mana. For example, Fellwar Stone is a great card in multiplayer, because there it essentially taps for any color of mana. It’s an ideal cheap accelerant. Chromatic Sphere is fine because it replaces itself. Ditto Barbed Sextant, Astrolabe, and Terrarion.
There is a case where the money you have tied into Magic does not matter. The mono-colored deck. Suppose you built a crazy goblin deck:
4 Goblin Soothsayer
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Goblin King
2 Goblin Caves
2 Goblin Shrine
4 Goblin Balloon Brigade
4 Goblin Mutant
4 Goblin Matron
2 Goblin Recruiter
4 Goblin Bomb
Now, you wan to flesh out this deck and develop a mana base for it. One way of doing it (22 Mountain) is just as good as another way (also 22 Mountain).
This is one way you can equalize the game. However, even here, the person with a better collection can play Mishra’s Factory, Ghitu Encampment, Keldon Necropolis, Shivan Gorge, and more. Even here, there are options available to the better collection to have a mana base that better reflects the deck.
Another way to get past a poor manabase is to lean heavily into Blue and then play a lot of cheap cards that let you get more cards. Impulse, Telling Time, Brainstorm, Opt, Sleight of Hand and Portent can all help smooth out you mana by allowing you to get the cards that you need. This will allow you to lean on Blue instead of Green in multicolor decks.
Yet another option is to run with a mono-brown design. Artifacts don’t care what color of mana you use to play them. Feel free to run with a large number of artifacts, and use whatever color you want to help them out. Black gives you creature removal, discard, and tutoring for your mono-brown deck. Red gives you several synergetic cards to add like Trash for Treasure and Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer. Blue gives you card drawing, countermagic, tutoring, and other synergetic cards like March of the Machines. Green brings mana acceleration and removal of artifacts and enchantments to play. White brings removal of any type of card outside of lands and the odd synergetic card like Roar of Reclamation and Argivian Find. Find a color that you like, then play mono-brown.
You can see that there are options for perfectly fine decks without all of the fancy expensive cards. What you need to understand, though is that one of two things will happen to your game. Either your deck options will be limited or you’ll lose more games to mana screw. A player with a large mana collection can literally play any deck that she wants without regard for additional mana screw. You cannot, unless you upgrade.
Cards to Stay Away From:
There are cards that players with limited resources often play as substitutes for better cards. Sometimes these cards work, but often they are really bad. Don’t play these cards unless you have a real deckbuilding reason for doing so.
The first example of such a card is the overused Lotus Petal. Never play this card. It is not a good card. I can’t imagine a good use for Lotus Petal, outside of combo decks. Even there, I would use it very sparingly.
Mana Prism is also not a good card. Sure, it beats Celestial Prism because it can tap for a colorless and only needs one mana to tap it for any color. None of which matters, because it is a bad card. I’ve seen this card way too much online since the release of Mirage. This card is yuck.
Outside of ProsBloom decks, Natural Balance has no business ever being played. Only the most Johnny of Johnnies would find a use for this, and that’s only in extreme circumstances. Don’t get focused too much on this card. See also: Gaea’s Balance. There simply too much risk in Gaea’s Balance to ever play it. You know that some Blue player going to Mana Leak this.
Another bad card to use is Lotus Vale. Personally, I like Lotus Vale in limited circumstances that revolve around Frantic Search. Barring a combo between this card and Ley Druid or Frantic Search, you need to stay far away. The time you play this is the time that the guy across the table realizes that yes, Vindicate does target lands as well. Either that, or they’ll Worldly Tutor for Avalanche Riders and that is the end of that.
Lotus Blossom is also poor.
Tell you what, here’s a new rule for you. Resist the temptation to play with any card with Lotus in the title, except for the original and maybe Gilded Lotus. Stay far, far, far away from these cards. Don’t even think about Lotus Guardian.
Wrapping it All Up
No matter who you are, you are always benefited by having a good mana base. Players who have a nice collection could really benefit by expanding into the new dual lands and other cards like Birds of Paradise and Mox Diamond. Players with more limited resources can benefit from expanding even more, although there are more ways to expand for them based on their individual collection.
You want to expand your collection with an eye to playing an many deck types as possible, while having as reduced a chance of mana screw as possible. The only way you can do both is by getting the cards you need.
Every time I design a deck for my articles, I always stumble at the lands. Do I assume perfect lands and build the best design possible? Do I assume a very budgeted deck and build a cheap mana base? I often go for somewhere in between.
I always present decklists as ideas to spark your own building, not as holy lists that should be used in their entirety or not at all. The mana base is the most fluid part of a decklist. I suspect that nothing gets changed more from Internet list to actual deck.
When I build my decks, do you folks have an opinion as to how I should build the mana base? I’m not going to put all three options for each of my decks — that would get boring and work-intensive awfully quickly. What do you think? Post in the forums.
Remember that mana may not be the sauciest topic ever designed, but it is the most essential element to the success of your decks. I wish you continued luck in your struggle to stave off the mighty mana screw.
Until Later,
Abe Sargent