Card Cost/Land Mana
General forum
Posted on May 1, 2023, 12:54 p.m. by Pedrodamus
Is having a balanced Card Cost/Lana Mana graph something you should be striving for or does it not really make a difference at the end of the day when really taking into account how many lands you should be running based on your mana symbols? Also, is there a good tool to use to optimize your mana symbols and how many of each color land you should be running if this graph doesn't really provide that info?
legendofa says... #2
The pie chart should be reasonably balanced, although a couple of factors can skew it one way or another. If your 1-2 mana cards are heavily dominated by one color, your lands should be weighted toward that color to ensure you can reliable use your low-cost spells when you need them. If a lot of your cards have heavy color weight, you need more lands of that color. If you have a lot of higher-quality lands like shocklands, ABUR duals, or triomes, these can help smooth out color curves and make a perfect balance less necessary.
The tool I use most for adding lands by color is a calculator. My process is a little involved, but has given me very reliable results.
Count the number of pips of your first color.
Count the total number of all colored pips.
Multiply the number of pips of your first color by the number of land slots in your deck.
Divide the number you got in step 3 by the total number of colored pips. Round up or down to the nearest whole number.
Put in that many basic lands of your first color.
Repeat for your second, third, etc. color.
To put this in algebraic form, Pc/Pt = Lc/Lt, or (Pc x Lt)/Pt = Lc, where Pc is the number of pips of a given color, Pt is the total number of colored pips, Lc is the number of land slots that provide a given color, and Lt is the total number of land slots. As an example, if I have 25 blue pips, 19 black pips, and 16 white pips, and I want to fill 24 land slots in a Modern deck, I multiply 25 (# of blue pips) by 24 (# of land slots in deck) and divide by 60 (total # of pips) to get 10 blue land slots. Repeating for black and white, this formula gives us 8 (rounded up from 7.6) black land slots and 6 (rounded down from 6.4) white land slots. I use 6 Plains, 10 Islands, and 8 Swamps as placeholders.
At this point, check for skew. To continue the example, are most of my 1-2 mana cards black, and most of my white cards higher cost? Cut a Plains and add a Swamp. Do many of my blue cards require ? Cut another Plains and add an Island. Now, we have 4 Plains, 11 Island, and 9 Swamp. This step is part observation, part feel, and part placeholders.
Once you have the color curve set, start adding nonbasic lands. If your nonbasic land provides a color, replace a basic land of that color. If it provides two or more colors, I cut whichever basic land I have the most of, then the second most, then the third most. If I want to add a playset of Raffine's Tower, I see that I now have the most Islands, followed by Swamps, then Plains. I cut two Islands and one of each of the others, leaving me with 9 Islands, 8 Swamps, and 3 Plains. If I then want to add three Watery Graves, I cut two Island and one Swamp, cutting Island first to maintain the chances of starting with black mana available on turn 1 and because more Islands are available. Fetchlands, including Evolving Wilds and similar cards, should be treated as whichever basic lands they're able to find.
Colorless utility lands need more consideration--does it needs a color to use? What colors do I need least? What colors do I need most? Let's say it's an artifact deck leaning heavily on the Alara block. I want to add two Academy Ruins. My current land base is
7x Island 3x Plains 4x Raffine's Tower 7x Swamp 3x Watery Grave
I know that I don't need Plains early in the game, that I do need Swamps early in the game, and that Academy Ruins needs to use. I cut one Plains for the first Academy Ruins and consider cutting a Swamp, but the need for early pushes me to cut an Island for the second Ruins. The land base is now
2x Academy Ruins 6x Island 2x Plains 4x Raffine's Tower 7x Swamp 3x Watery Grave
This would be a good point to pause and playtest. Make sure you hit the colors you need when you need them, you're not overloaded on a color, and everything flows smoothly. Tweak lands as needed test some more, and keep tweaking and testing until everything's locked in.
As a personal preference, I try to leave as many basic lands as needed to pay any colored cost in the deck. If I have Mechanized Production, but none of my cards need more than one black or white pip, then I will leave a minimum of two basic Islands and one each basic Plains and Swamps. Every format has some form of nonbasic land destruction (and I include Blood Moon in this), and basic lands are reliable and harder to negate or remove.
May 1, 2023 3:29 p.m.