I miss mana burn
The Kitchen Table forum
Posted on Feb. 19, 2021, 9:31 a.m. by AjMcGamer
I know I'm probably in the minority here but as someone that drove my friends nuts with a Citadel of Pain deck, I really miss mana burn.
I felt like control decks were kept a lot more under control (see what I did there XD) when it was a thing.
Just an OG reminiscing lol, would love to hear thoughts on mana burn.
P.S for those of you that don't know what it is, you would take damage for unspent mana you had in your pool.
Grubbernaut says... #3
Depends on the format, but in general at the moment, I don't feel like control is broken, or even dominant. The pace of play is much faster than it once was.
That being said, it would be super fun in EDH to house-rule a mana burn game.
February 19, 2021 10:39 a.m.
Tyrant-Thanatos says... #4
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Reminisce on the days of mana burn
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????
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Profit
Also in my experience Citadel of Pain has only become better at messing with control without manaburn. When everyone can just freely tap out to avoid the damage, taking 2 to leave your two Island s untapped is suspicious af.
February 19, 2021 10:43 a.m.
Mana burn was kinda niche, but getting rid of damage on the stack really changed things. When you look back at certain older cards, they appear to really suck, but then when you consider damage on the stack, it makes sense why they were at that power level. For example, you could put damage on the stack and unsummon or flicker your creature so it doesn't die.
February 19, 2021 3 p.m.
On the upside, lifelink became more useful. Before the change you could die to incoming damage before defensive lifelink or lifegain could save you.
February 19, 2021 5:34 p.m.
You haven’t lived until you’ve experienced the insane glee of playing against a Channel + Fireball ABUR-type 1 combo player and cast Word of Command only to find channel in their hand!
February 19, 2021 6:29 p.m.
FormOverFunction says... #9
I absolutely love manaburn because it punishes sloppy play and overpowered cards (that generate a lot of mana). So many cards these days have VERY minor downsides and huge upsides, and manaburn would seem to curtail a fair amount of it. The removal of the rule also depleted some of the theme/lore of the idea of a mage pulling magic from the surrounding world. If you pull a ton of it and don’t send it into something it HAS to go somewhere and do SOMETHING. Sorry if this is detached and scrambled but I’m in the middle of a D&D campaign but HAD to respond because this is a huge pet peeve for me. Everyone should track how often manaburn would happen. It’s not zero. I mainboard Citadel of Pain in my torture deck as the theme is perfect. Total agreement.
February 19, 2021 10:21 p.m.
Tyrant-Thanatos says... #10
I absolutely love manaburn because it punishes sloppy play and overpowered cards (that generate a lot of mana). So many cards these days have VERY minor downsides and huge upsides, and manaburn would seem to curtail a fair amount of it.
I have to disagree with most of this, and believe that it was largely discarded due to being unintuitive. It makes rules that are already difficult to explain to new players feel even more backwards and strange. Having to explain why my Drudge Skeletons made me not take mana burn from my Cabal Coffers was just another layer that had to be added onto the already complex explanations of how land, tapping, mana, activated abilities, etc. all work. And it added little of value to the game, lore aside.
Everyone should track how often manaburn would happen. It’s not zero.
In most of the games I play these days, it's near as makes no difference zero. I mostly play EDH, so maybe that paints my perspective, but nobody taps mana and doesn't use it, unless they've been forced to by an opponent. (Hence Yurlok doing exactly that) You tap what you need to cast what you want, or if you have a big mana card like Gaea's Cradle or Cabal Coffers you spend it on X cost effects or mana dumps.
Sure it "punishes sloppy play", but to be honest, sloppy play punishes itself, there doesn't need to be an added unintuitive layer imo.
February 19, 2021 11:47 p.m. Edited.
I do too! I want for wizards to push more punishment with upside in the game... If they did so it would go such a long way toward keeping the mid game interesting. Without so many do nothing until massive blowout... Or stall into control wins. Maybe some day we will get a plane where magic has a ton of associated pain and we get a bunch of useful punishers. It would make so much sense for a post apocalypse plane
February 19, 2021 11:51 p.m.
FormOverFunction says... #12
I agree with some of your comments, Tyrant-Thanatos, but I think there are more stray Sol Ring points of mana than people realize. Even though it may only be 1 point out of forty it forces the decision of whether or not you cast the spell. It gives all of your actions more meaning, because they all have that much more cost. Regarding teaching the rules; dropping the “and you take that many points of damage” from the massive discussion about phases of the turn, priority, and emptying of the mana pool after each phase (unless otherwise affected by a card) provides limited reward...especially when compared against the accountability-free “tap Cabal Coffers to recast everything that got bounced from that Cyclonic Rift ” that might have otherwise had a significant cost, if it’s deep into the game. I think the reason I get so worked up over this is more the theme than anything. For me it just melts the RP of what you’re even doing it the game. It further reduces M:tG to its simple nuts and bolts mechanics; trying to reach that points-of-damage threshold faster than your opponent, vigilance is a mark on a card rather than a description of who or what that creature is, and don’t get me started on the spotlight-stealing planeswalkers. The loss of manaburn perfectly encapsulates the feel of the forced trade of pieces of your own creativity for WotC taking the wheel and dragging you through stories about planeswalkers that aren’t you. I know for a fact that some people benefit from this change, and I’m not prohibited from playing the way I like to (obviously). To wrap it up, though: If you can describe manaburn on a creature (that also has vigilance, an activated ability, AND flavor text) you can explain it as a general concept. It’s difficult for me to not hear complaints about manaburn as being any more than “but restrictions make my deck slower!!”
February 20, 2021 10:20 a.m.
Manaburn is from before the days of edh, but regardless of format it was just a nice way to keep people from recklessly tapping down.
February 20, 2021 10:24 a.m.
Grubbernaut says... #14
If not for lore, what does it matter if people reckless tap down, though?
I'll take the opposite position; I absolutely do not, ever, want lore to influence gameplay decisions. I'm the kind of guy that turns off battle animations in games, and prefers MtGO to MtGA because it's faster and has less animation. I like streamlined mechanics and efficiency over immersion.
February 20, 2021 10:56 a.m.
It forced people to think more about decisions. I enjoyed the extra layer of care that had to be taken. I saw games decided because a spell couldn't be cast without taking fatal burn damage.
I do feel its a mechanic you had to experience to fully appreciate... much like banding (jokes, not opening THAT can of worms). The game, probably for the better, had gotten more forgiving in general.
February 20, 2021 11:07 a.m. Edited.
Honestly, I found mana burn to be quite intuitive. If you have leftover mana, you lose life equal to that mana is a relatively simple concept. To wit, when I started playing Magic, we did not use the internet to look up rules, and instead relied on word of mouth by the person who taught us the game. Without smartphones or non-dial-up internet or reminder text to serve as a check on a long game of telephone, the rules sometimes got twisted from their pure form.
We played mana burn 100% correctly, since it was such a simple concept even multiple retellings of the rule resulted in nothing being lost in transmission.
Further, the use of a mana sink to siphon off your excess mana is rather obvious, and I can’t imagine any but the most dense of players would be confused by Drudge Skeletons or a similar anti-mana burn sink. I recall pretty much everyone I knew instinctively using their mana sinks, since it was such an intuitive way to avoid damage.
All told, I think mana burn was a fine, relatively simple mechanic that added a fun layer to the game’s decision making.
February 20, 2021 11:21 a.m.
Mcat1999 - it was whenever excess mana disappeared from your mana pool, which occurs as any phase ends, not just the ending phase. It is also loss of life, not damage.
Pretty sure your question is the only one I ever saw anyone ask about mana burn, and the above two-sentence explanation dispels any confusion.
February 20, 2021 11:39 a.m. Edited.
Mcat1999 - That's part of the reason it was removed--one could easily play around it by being careful in their mana generation. However, there are plenty of times where that mana burn would be an opportunity cost. Running Tron Lands and going to go a point of mana over for the spell you want to cast? That's one life there. Tapping your lands in response to War's Toll or Mana Short ? Suddenly that decision has consequences. Running Braid of Fire so you can shoot off powerful instants? That card becomes a liability rather quickly.
Mana burn was easy to avoid, but it was something you still needed to take into account often enough that I think it was beneficial to the game. It rewarded preplanning and punished cavalier play, all while providing a penalty that was not so great that the opportunity cost of taking damage was prohibitive if a greedy play was necessary.
February 20, 2021 12:07 p.m.
FormOverFunction says... #19
I’ve already said more than enough on this topic but I wanted to respond directly to Grubbernaut: I totally sympathize with your position. I’m the same way with games generally. I love numbers and technicalities and the mechanics of all games. Keeping that point in mind: manaburn adds to the cost/benefit analysis of those aspects of the game. The balancing effects of manaburn enhance the game in a logical and stable way... it just also has the added benefit of making it easier to pretend that I’m a wizard making sweet sweet wizard moves ;p If they were to make a rule about having to wear a Jayce hat if you’ve got blue in your deck FeR teH L0rE then I’d be right there beside you.
February 20, 2021 2:17 p.m.
It went alongside the idea that magic comes at a cost, & pain for power is a little more universal than black only, thematically I think it was cool. Though Mana Burn did add some cognitive load to the game. That being said, in EDH it is easy to build a low cognitive load deck if you prefer that.
February 20, 2021 2:47 p.m.
Tyrant-Thanatos says... #21
I think there are more stray Sol Ring points of mana than people realize. Even though it may only be 1 point out of forty it forces the decision of whether or not you cast the spell. It gives all of your actions more meaning, because they all have that much more cost.
With how many talismans, painlands, and Ancient Tomb s I see? I don't see this changing anything.
I can’t imagine any but the most dense of players would be confused by Drudge Skeletons
Then I think you drastically underestimate the denseness of human beings. WotC's own excuse for their phasing out of regenerate was that it was too confusing/unintuitive. I guarantee you that everyone I played this game with when I started would have told you that you can't do this because regenerating a creature taps and it you can't tap a tapped creature so you can't regenerate it again. They'd be wrong, of course, but that doesn't change the fact that they'd have made the claim, and only back down when provided with proof, if you're lucky.
February 20, 2021 10:13 p.m.
FormOverFunction says... #22
Tyrant-Thanatos I totally get where you’re coming from, and one of my new COVID-dreams/wishes (of which there are many, these days) is that someday we end up at the same table for a good game of EDH... so that we could have something more positive to look back on other than an argument about Manaburn.
February 22, 2021 7:09 p.m.
I don't understand why it's such a polarizing topic either. Mana Burn did nothing to negatively impact the pace of gameplay. I will agree it may not have added anything to it mechanically either.
But it did represent part of fantasy storytelling with many cases in literature supporting it.
There's even a creature in the MtG universe that is a consequence of mana burn: The Fallen.
February 22, 2021 8:37 p.m.
I do miss Mana Burn. Having lost games to Upwelling being disenchanted after losing my mana sink( Killer Bees I think it was).
Made this To Mana or not to Mana while reminiscing a while back. Didn't have the token spawning in my original Citadel of Pain deck, but ran Sphere of Law to offset damage instead.
Making people burn using things like Upwelling and other mana storers was fun. Watching the expectation of a big turn go to I just burnt for half my life... fun times.
Never found the mechanic of it hard to understand or teach. Have had a few games using it recently just to introduce some of my play group to the idea of how we played in "retro" days.
Icbrgr says... #2
Mana burn was before my time of actually playing this game... I would be interested in playing a game of standard/pioneer/modern with the mana burn rule in effect to see how it would affect play though.
February 19, 2021 10 a.m.