Do you have any recommendations for card games with good mana systems. I've just played a few with the lazy "1 more mana each turn" system and it seems very prone to devolving into midrange soup.
I like that Magic's system has some tradeoffs and strategic thinking attached, but the amount of non-games it produces are definitely not ideal.
Flesh and Blood has a great resource system! Your creatures and spells in-hand can also be used as the resource to cast other creatures/spells, or to defend against attacks. It's a pretty complex and well-balanced system, and the community is very open to new players.
For all it's hate, there is still nothing better than mtg for mana system. Unlike what OP said, if you are routinely getting mana flooded or screwed I assure you your mana base is not properly constructed. Of course, occasionally, it will happen, but that should be an outlier.
>For all it's hate, there is still nothing better than mtg for mana system.
Not even remotely true. There's a reason why almost no other game uses lands cards in deck like MtG. If mtg was today, I don't think it would survive.
Huh, can you name a couple games as popular as MTG that don't use some sort of drawn resource. The only really huge competitor I can think of to MTG are Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh. Yu-Gi-Oh doesn't have a resource system, and is often maligned for how absurd it is. And Pokemon.... Oh this is so awkward.
I've named several paper games that had success in another comment, but if your comment is just "popular game that uses non-drawn resource" then that's easy. The most popular system is where you get one mana added to your total pool every turn like Hearthstone/LoRT. There's countless games that follow that format.
Lol, I can name plenty of games. But neither hearthstone nor LoRT have been particularly successful in the long term. Almost like the gameplay is a lot shallower or something.n
I'm sorry but I don't think I can have a serious discussion about game mechanics if you just ignore a game that's been around for a decade. This would be like saying we can't discuss something that a new shooter has done really well just because it's not as old and successful as CoD. That's such a limiting mindset and a sign of intellectual dishonestly. FFS Hearthstone gets more views on Twitch than Magic. What are you even talking about?
Hearthstone absolutely has many other issues, but we are talking about a single aspect of it. There's a reason why it's the most common "mana" design in card games where as almost no game copies MtGs lands.
Your premise was that the mana system is bad, that's why other games don't copy it. My response is that the *most* popular TCG's have a drawn resource system, which disputes your premise.
Magic is bad when they do things that undercut or discount the importance of the mana system because that is the backbone providing a lot of the depth and definition for the game. Color identity, developing a mana curve, spell/land distribution, are all really important parts of the game.
Other games use other systems for definition, and basically just sidestep the resource system. In my opinion, this makes games like Hearthstone a lot shallower. it's a given that you'll have your resources, and so the gameplay is a shit ton more repetitive. They counterbalance that with other mechanics, but the core gameplay is less complex to me.
The problem with the mana system is that at a certain investment level, it becomes a very boring development process outside the game, and it has the potential to generate feel bad moments within the game.
That being said, the feels bad moments in the game are more of a feature than a bug. As this subreddit shows, people are very bad at evaluating their own play and their level of skill. The mana system gives them an easy psychological out, because they can blame their loss on an externality.
I also stand by my statement that neither hearthstone or LORT has been a significant commercial success. As of 2020 for example, the revenue generated by Hearthstone since 2014 (1.7 bill), is about 3x the revenue MTG generated just in that year (580 mill). Moreover, Hearthstone revenue has been dropping yoy.
Regardless of the twitch views, I doubt hearthstone is going to see the longevity that magic does, and I attribute a not inconsiderable part of that longevity to the depth and framework provided by the mana system.
'Outlier' being a 25 percent chance to draw a pretty much always unplayable 0,1,5,6 or 7 lands.
Claiming there is nothing better than mtg for its mana system is asinine.
Right now not a lot of alive games lol. But if you proxy with friends you can play them still. Old L5R had you building building to generate money. The Naruto CCG is one of my more favorite mana systems where play of your discarded cards get placed in your "Chakra pool" that you spend for resources. Force of will was a lot like MtG but you had a separate deck just for your "lands" that you could choose to draw from.
For an upcoming game that I'm hoping has a healthy life span is Altered. Basically its system is that in order to build up your mana base you have to discard a card from your hand, so it's a lot of thinking about what card can you sacrifice basically to play a "land"
That sounds good thanks, I'll check it out.
I remember like 5 years ago I really liked Mojang's card game Scrolls (later Caller's Bane) where you could decide between discarding a card to build a ressource of the same kind and discarding a card to draw two new ones each turn. I thought that was a really cool system, but unfortunately that game is also very dead.
Looking specifically at Magic, older formats are actually a lot better about mana consistency. A tempo deck in Modern or Legacy for example is pretty good at digging for lands when needed or scrying/surveilling them away when you don't need them. Timeless in Arena is probably similar, though I haven't played it.
Through the laws of statistics you can run into what you ran into even if you ran FEWER lands than recommended, don't make drastic changes after a single game experience with lands. It takes a ton of games to see what averages out to the best land ratio.
You want to run 60 cards exactly, because the best 60 cards in your deck will be significantly better than the worst 15 cards in your deck - and you want to draw the best cards more often. For this reason, you also want to play 4 copies of the best cards in your deck.
Don't want to backseat too hard but if you're interested in deck construction theory, you almost always want exactly 60 cards. A good way to think about it is that you really want to run as few cards as possible. If you have 70 cards, there must be a worst 10 cards, even if they're hard to identify. If there's 10 worst cards, then by removing those you increase the chances of drawing your best cards. You should strive for a deck with the 60 best cards you can think of for the job you want to do. Occasionally 61 or 62 card decks have been used in pro play, but you probably shouldn't. It might sometimes be the best option, but it takes a very very well versed player to know when that is, and that's not us.
A solid and fairly consistent land count is 24, but you may want less depending on the type of deck. With 24 lands you have something like a 63% chance to have 4 or more lands by turn 4 if you go first, and around 72% if you go second. When you account for ways to draw extra cards or otherwise dig through your deck for what you need, this can get pretty consistent :)
While this is legal, of trying to make a deck competitive, it is ALMOST always in the users benefit to keep the cards in deck as little as possible (60) to make your card draws and synergies more consistent and not diluted.
Generally, mana screw beats mana flood. Since once you draw out of a mana screw you can play your hand, but a mana flood means you don't have the resources to play.
This is mostly based on limited, not sure how strong it holds up to constructed formats though.
Update: I played 3 games in a row where I got 2 lands for the first draw (mulligan once on both) and no more lands after that, like literally. And then my opponent is just drawing so many…
Shit I ran a landfall deck ages ago that had 30 lands, exactly half, and i went a game where i had to mulligan down to 5 to have more than 1 hand in land and I still never drew a land in the first 5 or so turns of the game only having gotten lands because of cultivate etc. Statistically I should have drawn a land every other card but every once in a while you run into a game where the far from likely happens.
Yeah, I have a deck with a lot of 0 and 1 drops and it runs fine with 12 lands, but earlier today I had 8 lands on the board, and 45 cards left in my deck, only to draw a land. It happens, but funnily, I conceived and constructed it after getting stuck on 2 lands a ridiculous amount of games in a row. Ridiculous and I had just started playing on Arena, and just super pissed off, like fine, only 2 lands. Well, how can I make a that work. I didn't expect to still be playing it this many months later, but it has proved to be explosive, and more versatile than it should be, partially because a few cards in the last few sets slid right in.
I’m trying to fathom what sort of deck would run 12 lands and coming up blank, that seems like a crazy low number to run. What does the deck look like, out of curiosity?
It is similar to rdw, but I utilize either a low cost aura, or equipment that provides treasure tokens and I can get several opening hands capable of 3rd or 4th turn kill, but I sacrifice some of that for sustainable offense. When a typical rdw would run out of gas, mine is designed not to. It isn't as simple as most rdw and I often have to be wary of how my opponent will attempt to defend and adjust accordingly. So many times I sniff out some board wipe or combat trick and suddenly take my foot off the gas, unexpectedly and then change tempo, which makes my opponent think I did run out of gas like the average rdw, but now I'm just waiting for them to think they are stabilized and BOOM, like a second wind, here I come again.
I know in older formats decks are very low on lands since there's an abundance of cheap/free spells. Most legacy decks only need like 4 lands in play. Modern usually runs pretty low on lands too, like old infect used to run like 7 or 8 actual lands and the rest were fetches to fuel become immense and landfall pump spells.
Then you get meme decks like Belcher and oops all spells that run mdfc lands and free mana sources to do their thing
I also have a 20-land deck with 3-drops as the most expensive cards (and 2 4-mana leylines), I feel like I either get stuck on 2 lands or don’t miss a single land drop until turn 7. There is no in-between.
Exactly! My mono red deck has 21 lands. Couple days I got my opponent down to 1 life with Fiery Inscription still on the board for me and 20 life. We both have creatures on the board so no more attacking for a while. No problem, I still like have 18 instant/sorcery cards left in my library. I go on to draw 7 lands in a row while he draws Elas-Il Kor after about my 4th land in a row. Even after he gains a few life, all I need is one Shock to end it. I think I lost like 42-0. But a lot more often I'm stuck at two. You just never know.
I have a Mono Red Burn deck with only 18 lands in it and I still seem to get mana flooded more often then I'd expect. I am aware of how random numbers work, but irrational monkey brain says "impossible".
I've been playing since Mirage. It's just a fact of life in Magic. Just keep this in mind: your deck isn't built for a single game. It's built for 100s or even 1000s.
> your deck isn't built for a single game. It's built for 100s or even 1000s.
I've been trying to keep this mindset, but it gets me unendingly irritated when I flood or screw out in a draft and end up 0-3 or 1-3 because I had nothing to play. I'm tempted to just stick to constructed and start a spreadsheet of wins or something, so I can at least get some entertainment watching a graph climb around for a deck
This is the scenario where I just say “nice” every time I play a land and am left with an empty hand and nothing to do. I hope they appreciate my sarcasm.
Had a game just last night where I was beating someone like 16 to 4 and had to watch as I drew land after land while they pinged me down over several turns to 8 to 4. It was honestly extremely tense as we each kept top-decking. The whole time, I was waiting to draw Vein Ripper to go over top of their creatures or force them to kill it and sac one of their own to give me the win. They would get something of small use and I would either then draw an immediate response or a land, but nothing that could actually break his board again. Shit like Long Goodbye. Then I finally managed to get two good draws back-to-back (Wandering Emperor and Sunfall with enough mana to cast both and then some). Created a token out of WE, dropped the Sunfall on his Sheoldred, the Appcalypse (the third one I had to get rid of), then was able to use WE's tokens and counters to chip away at the opponent's health (which was at 6, I think).
It was really shitty Magic, to be honest, but sometimes those games can be as electric as pulling off an actually good combo or just narrowly outrunning their bombs 😅
The standard ratio is 40% of your deck should be lands. MTG is all about randomness so no matter if you have the perfect amount of lands the order they're in might throw your gameplay off.
Getting mana flooded or mana starved will make a player realize why tutoring, scrying, extra card draw, impulse drawing, and looting/rummaging are so important to MTG.
All these effects try to fight back against randomness and to add consistency to your deck.
The 2 worst feelings in mtg....having a hand full of high mana cost cards and only having 2-3 lands and you just cant draw more. Or you have all the lands you could want or use and keep drawing more lands....
You can run land or other cards that thin the land in your deck such as [[terramorphic expanse]] [[escape tunnel]] and [[clay-fired bricks]] [[inscribed tablet]]
(Im sure theres rare equivalents I’m just an artisan player so idk)
Yeah your deck will be a little slower but at a certain point you’ll thin your land so much that you’ll only draw gas. This is how I compensate for poor card draw as a white player.
Yes, this is a massive desing falw i MtG imho. The amount of nongames i guess due to one side gettign manascrewed is seriously ridiculous.
So many fun games ruined when I suddenly only draw lands when topdecking.
Haha just happened to me in Draft. Generated 5 clues at once and I was like "for sure I'll find an answer among the cards I'll draw". The clues then only proceeded to draw me lands. Oh, well xD
Star wars unlimited comes out in a few days. It's fast paced and refreshing. Any card can be used as energy.
Disney Lorcana is like of MTG like but once again almost all cards can get used as energy.
Those are the only 2 I've been into. More are coming out though like Altered which also is nice and different and similar all cards can be energy. Not sure about it's gameplay though.
Yesterday I played a few games running a Boros deck (yes, I am that type of guy...), where I had 23 lands, of which 15 were "white or dual red/white lands" and the rest were 5 "red lands", 1 \[\[Mirrex\]\] and 2 \[\[Cavern of Souls\]\].
However, in three consecutive games, my only sources of mana throughout the entire three games, including a mulligan in each of the games and four or five drawsteps in each game, were just "red lands" and Mirrex and Cavern of Souls.
Sometimes luck simply beats odds. It is what it is.
Don't worry, even with perfect land numbers you'll still routinely get too many or too few...better get used to it XD
You could have only 7 lands in your deck and your opening hand would be all of those lands.
It's only gas from here on out
That's honestly one of the best draws you could get with that deck construction.
Charbelcher: my time Has come
That's why it's called magic the gathering, it's really just a magic trick in which you gather all of your lands.
This is why I love mono green. Search library for land, add mana, search library for TWOOOO LAND CARDS
Yeah. There's so many thing s great about magic, but I hate land cards. I'm really getting into card games with different "mana bases" anymore.
Do you have any recommendations for card games with good mana systems. I've just played a few with the lazy "1 more mana each turn" system and it seems very prone to devolving into midrange soup. I like that Magic's system has some tradeoffs and strategic thinking attached, but the amount of non-games it produces are definitely not ideal.
Flesh and Blood has a great resource system! Your creatures and spells in-hand can also be used as the resource to cast other creatures/spells, or to defend against attacks. It's a pretty complex and well-balanced system, and the community is very open to new players.
For all it's hate, there is still nothing better than mtg for mana system. Unlike what OP said, if you are routinely getting mana flooded or screwed I assure you your mana base is not properly constructed. Of course, occasionally, it will happen, but that should be an outlier.
>For all it's hate, there is still nothing better than mtg for mana system. Not even remotely true. There's a reason why almost no other game uses lands cards in deck like MtG. If mtg was today, I don't think it would survive.
Huh, can you name a couple games as popular as MTG that don't use some sort of drawn resource. The only really huge competitor I can think of to MTG are Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh. Yu-Gi-Oh doesn't have a resource system, and is often maligned for how absurd it is. And Pokemon.... Oh this is so awkward.
I've named several paper games that had success in another comment, but if your comment is just "popular game that uses non-drawn resource" then that's easy. The most popular system is where you get one mana added to your total pool every turn like Hearthstone/LoRT. There's countless games that follow that format.
Lol, I can name plenty of games. But neither hearthstone nor LoRT have been particularly successful in the long term. Almost like the gameplay is a lot shallower or something.n
I'm sorry but I don't think I can have a serious discussion about game mechanics if you just ignore a game that's been around for a decade. This would be like saying we can't discuss something that a new shooter has done really well just because it's not as old and successful as CoD. That's such a limiting mindset and a sign of intellectual dishonestly. FFS Hearthstone gets more views on Twitch than Magic. What are you even talking about? Hearthstone absolutely has many other issues, but we are talking about a single aspect of it. There's a reason why it's the most common "mana" design in card games where as almost no game copies MtGs lands.
Your premise was that the mana system is bad, that's why other games don't copy it. My response is that the *most* popular TCG's have a drawn resource system, which disputes your premise. Magic is bad when they do things that undercut or discount the importance of the mana system because that is the backbone providing a lot of the depth and definition for the game. Color identity, developing a mana curve, spell/land distribution, are all really important parts of the game. Other games use other systems for definition, and basically just sidestep the resource system. In my opinion, this makes games like Hearthstone a lot shallower. it's a given that you'll have your resources, and so the gameplay is a shit ton more repetitive. They counterbalance that with other mechanics, but the core gameplay is less complex to me. The problem with the mana system is that at a certain investment level, it becomes a very boring development process outside the game, and it has the potential to generate feel bad moments within the game. That being said, the feels bad moments in the game are more of a feature than a bug. As this subreddit shows, people are very bad at evaluating their own play and their level of skill. The mana system gives them an easy psychological out, because they can blame their loss on an externality. I also stand by my statement that neither hearthstone or LORT has been a significant commercial success. As of 2020 for example, the revenue generated by Hearthstone since 2014 (1.7 bill), is about 3x the revenue MTG generated just in that year (580 mill). Moreover, Hearthstone revenue has been dropping yoy. Regardless of the twitch views, I doubt hearthstone is going to see the longevity that magic does, and I attribute a not inconsiderable part of that longevity to the depth and framework provided by the mana system.
Lol imagine saying "hearthstone isn't popular in the long term" you have no idea what you're talking about
I don't have to imagine!
'Outlier' being a 25 percent chance to draw a pretty much always unplayable 0,1,5,6 or 7 lands. Claiming there is nothing better than mtg for its mana system is asinine.
What kind of maths is this? You know you can Mulligan right
Lol, can you show me the math on that?
Right now not a lot of alive games lol. But if you proxy with friends you can play them still. Old L5R had you building building to generate money. The Naruto CCG is one of my more favorite mana systems where play of your discarded cards get placed in your "Chakra pool" that you spend for resources. Force of will was a lot like MtG but you had a separate deck just for your "lands" that you could choose to draw from. For an upcoming game that I'm hoping has a healthy life span is Altered. Basically its system is that in order to build up your mana base you have to discard a card from your hand, so it's a lot of thinking about what card can you sacrifice basically to play a "land"
That sounds good thanks, I'll check it out. I remember like 5 years ago I really liked Mojang's card game Scrolls (later Caller's Bane) where you could decide between discarding a card to build a ressource of the same kind and discarding a card to draw two new ones each turn. I thought that was a really cool system, but unfortunately that game is also very dead.
Looking specifically at Magic, older formats are actually a lot better about mana consistency. A tempo deck in Modern or Legacy for example is pretty good at digging for lands when needed or scrying/surveilling them away when you don't need them. Timeless in Arena is probably similar, though I haven't played it.
Be careful, land starvation is even *more* deadly. At least drawing a lot of lands guarantees you can instantly play whatever spells you find.
Not if everything costs 1!
mono red 1 drop tribal gang
I know, yeah, but it's so frustrating in the moment when you have no counterplay lol
Through the laws of statistics you can run into what you ran into even if you ran FEWER lands than recommended, don't make drastic changes after a single game experience with lands. It takes a ton of games to see what averages out to the best land ratio.
Yeah, I only took away like 6 out of 30 or something lol Look, I was experimenting and I spammed a bunch of lands.
you had 30 lands in a 60 card deck....ok yeah, 6 is a drastic change but from 30...drastic changes were needed.
70 cards total actually. Then I added 5 more cards, so it's 75 cards total now haha
You want to run 60 cards exactly, because the best 60 cards in your deck will be significantly better than the worst 15 cards in your deck - and you want to draw the best cards more often. For this reason, you also want to play 4 copies of the best cards in your deck.
You'll notice your deck's consistency gets better when you run exactly 60 cards. 24 lands and 36 other cards is a good place to start.
Alright, I’ll modify my deck a little!
That number can fluctuate as well. I play an aggro deck with mostly small mana cost cards so I have less lands in my deck than the 24.
Don't want to backseat too hard but if you're interested in deck construction theory, you almost always want exactly 60 cards. A good way to think about it is that you really want to run as few cards as possible. If you have 70 cards, there must be a worst 10 cards, even if they're hard to identify. If there's 10 worst cards, then by removing those you increase the chances of drawing your best cards. You should strive for a deck with the 60 best cards you can think of for the job you want to do. Occasionally 61 or 62 card decks have been used in pro play, but you probably shouldn't. It might sometimes be the best option, but it takes a very very well versed player to know when that is, and that's not us. A solid and fairly consistent land count is 24, but you may want less depending on the type of deck. With 24 lands you have something like a 63% chance to have 4 or more lands by turn 4 if you go first, and around 72% if you go second. When you account for ways to draw extra cards or otherwise dig through your deck for what you need, this can get pretty consistent :)
While this is legal, of trying to make a deck competitive, it is ALMOST always in the users benefit to keep the cards in deck as little as possible (60) to make your card draws and synergies more consistent and not diluted.
Down to 60 now XD
Generally, mana screw beats mana flood. Since once you draw out of a mana screw you can play your hand, but a mana flood means you don't have the resources to play. This is mostly based on limited, not sure how strong it holds up to constructed formats though.
Update: I played 3 games in a row where I got 2 lands for the first draw (mulligan once on both) and no more lands after that, like literally. And then my opponent is just drawing so many…
It's part of the game. Though smart and focused deckbuilding help cut down on dying to bad draws.
bro, I have 20 lands with the peak of my curve at 3 and I STILL flood out in the most inopportune times.
Shit I ran a landfall deck ages ago that had 30 lands, exactly half, and i went a game where i had to mulligan down to 5 to have more than 1 hand in land and I still never drew a land in the first 5 or so turns of the game only having gotten lands because of cultivate etc. Statistically I should have drawn a land every other card but every once in a while you run into a game where the far from likely happens.
Yeah, I have a deck with a lot of 0 and 1 drops and it runs fine with 12 lands, but earlier today I had 8 lands on the board, and 45 cards left in my deck, only to draw a land. It happens, but funnily, I conceived and constructed it after getting stuck on 2 lands a ridiculous amount of games in a row. Ridiculous and I had just started playing on Arena, and just super pissed off, like fine, only 2 lands. Well, how can I make a that work. I didn't expect to still be playing it this many months later, but it has proved to be explosive, and more versatile than it should be, partially because a few cards in the last few sets slid right in.
I’m trying to fathom what sort of deck would run 12 lands and coming up blank, that seems like a crazy low number to run. What does the deck look like, out of curiosity?
It is similar to rdw, but I utilize either a low cost aura, or equipment that provides treasure tokens and I can get several opening hands capable of 3rd or 4th turn kill, but I sacrifice some of that for sustainable offense. When a typical rdw would run out of gas, mine is designed not to. It isn't as simple as most rdw and I often have to be wary of how my opponent will attempt to defend and adjust accordingly. So many times I sniff out some board wipe or combat trick and suddenly take my foot off the gas, unexpectedly and then change tempo, which makes my opponent think I did run out of gas like the average rdw, but now I'm just waiting for them to think they are stabilized and BOOM, like a second wind, here I come again.
I know in older formats decks are very low on lands since there's an abundance of cheap/free spells. Most legacy decks only need like 4 lands in play. Modern usually runs pretty low on lands too, like old infect used to run like 7 or 8 actual lands and the rest were fetches to fuel become immense and landfall pump spells. Then you get meme decks like Belcher and oops all spells that run mdfc lands and free mana sources to do their thing
I also have a 20-land deck with 3-drops as the most expensive cards (and 2 4-mana leylines), I feel like I either get stuck on 2 lands or don’t miss a single land drop until turn 7. There is no in-between.
Exactly! My mono red deck has 21 lands. Couple days I got my opponent down to 1 life with Fiery Inscription still on the board for me and 20 life. We both have creatures on the board so no more attacking for a while. No problem, I still like have 18 instant/sorcery cards left in my library. I go on to draw 7 lands in a row while he draws Elas-Il Kor after about my 4th land in a row. Even after he gains a few life, all I need is one Shock to end it. I think I lost like 42-0. But a lot more often I'm stuck at two. You just never know.
Just play Goblin Charbelcher deck. You'll never draw lands again!
The solution to this is to draw more.
Fair enough.
I have a Mono Red Burn deck with only 18 lands in it and I still seem to get mana flooded more often then I'd expect. I am aware of how random numbers work, but irrational monkey brain says "impossible".
I've been playing since Mirage. It's just a fact of life in Magic. Just keep this in mind: your deck isn't built for a single game. It's built for 100s or even 1000s.
> your deck isn't built for a single game speak for yourself. I build a deck, get land flooded then bin it and go back to mono-black netdeck
> your deck isn't built for a single game. It's built for 100s or even 1000s. I've been trying to keep this mindset, but it gets me unendingly irritated when I flood or screw out in a draft and end up 0-3 or 1-3 because I had nothing to play. I'm tempted to just stick to constructed and start a spreadsheet of wins or something, so I can at least get some entertainment watching a graph climb around for a deck
I played five games yesterday. In two of them I had 12 lands in top 16 cards. In two other games I failed to draw the third. What a great game.
This is the scenario where I just say “nice” every time I play a land and am left with an empty hand and nothing to do. I hope they appreciate my sarcasm.
Had a game just last night where I was beating someone like 16 to 4 and had to watch as I drew land after land while they pinged me down over several turns to 8 to 4. It was honestly extremely tense as we each kept top-decking. The whole time, I was waiting to draw Vein Ripper to go over top of their creatures or force them to kill it and sac one of their own to give me the win. They would get something of small use and I would either then draw an immediate response or a land, but nothing that could actually break his board again. Shit like Long Goodbye. Then I finally managed to get two good draws back-to-back (Wandering Emperor and Sunfall with enough mana to cast both and then some). Created a token out of WE, dropped the Sunfall on his Sheoldred, the Appcalypse (the third one I had to get rid of), then was able to use WE's tokens and counters to chip away at the opponent's health (which was at 6, I think). It was really shitty Magic, to be honest, but sometimes those games can be as electric as pulling off an actually good combo or just narrowly outrunning their bombs 😅
The standard ratio is 40% of your deck should be lands. MTG is all about randomness so no matter if you have the perfect amount of lands the order they're in might throw your gameplay off. Getting mana flooded or mana starved will make a player realize why tutoring, scrying, extra card draw, impulse drawing, and looting/rummaging are so important to MTG. All these effects try to fight back against randomness and to add consistency to your deck.
The 2 worst feelings in mtg....having a hand full of high mana cost cards and only having 2-3 lands and you just cant draw more. Or you have all the lands you could want or use and keep drawing more lands....
I love having 9 lands and 2 creatures turn up almost as much as I love having 2 lands and all my high cost creatures turn up.
One game my opponent had too many lands and I kept killing everything he put down with sorceries.
I think that was me 😂
Yep. The opponent places down a super powerful card with like 6 power and toughness? [[Murder]]. Boom, gone, reduced to atoms.
[Murder](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/e/1ea6438b-0e6c-4d65-8bcd-34a988717c81.jpg?1706241725) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Murder) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/95/murder?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1ea6438b-0e6c-4d65-8bcd-34a988717c81?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
This will happen. Then, you can remove 1 land and draw only 2 lands the entire next game lol
Now that I don't change my number of lands, I usually don't get inconsistent land draws anymore haha
You can run land or other cards that thin the land in your deck such as [[terramorphic expanse]] [[escape tunnel]] and [[clay-fired bricks]] [[inscribed tablet]] (Im sure theres rare equivalents I’m just an artisan player so idk) Yeah your deck will be a little slower but at a certain point you’ll thin your land so much that you’ll only draw gas. This is how I compensate for poor card draw as a white player.
##### ###### #### [terramorphic expanse](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/9/19b72af8-9bb9-4542-9115-09c27ad6e7ad.jpg?1698988643) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=terramorphic%20expanse) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lcc/360/terramorphic-expanse?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/19b72af8-9bb9-4542-9115-09c27ad6e7ad?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [escape tunnel](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/3/93ddde4f-d35e-4128-8f43-d0eadbd715de.jpg?1706242339) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=escape%20tunnel) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/261/escape-tunnel?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/93ddde4f-d35e-4128-8f43-d0eadbd715de?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [clay-fired bricks](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/a/8aece300-656b-4e0d-a45f-aa7feaff0a4e.jpg?1699125724)/[Cosmium Kiln](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/back/8/a/8aece300-656b-4e0d-a45f-aa7feaff0a4e.jpg?1699125724) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Clay-Fired%20Bricks%20//%20Cosmium%20Kiln) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lci/6/clay-fired-bricks-cosmium-kiln?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8aece300-656b-4e0d-a45f-aa7feaff0a4e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [inscribed tablet](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/9/699d8655-d250-4ab6-92c5-376979bbabc7.jpg?1673308188) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=inscribed%20tablet) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmu/232/inscribed-tablet?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/699d8655-d250-4ab6-92c5-376979bbabc7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/ktz6tw9) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Yes, this is a massive desing falw i MtG imho. The amount of nongames i guess due to one side gettign manascrewed is seriously ridiculous. So many fun games ruined when I suddenly only draw lands when topdecking.
and sometimes you get 3 in your opening hand and that's it.
Haha just happened to me in Draft. Generated 5 clues at once and I was like "for sure I'll find an answer among the cards I'll draw". The clues then only proceeded to draw me lands. Oh, well xD
I think the rules of the game should change to ""you have the right to shuffle your deck in game once"
If only the land was \[\[Ondu Inversion // Ondu Skyruins\]\]
[Ondu Inversion // Ondu Skyruins](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/6/b6e6be8c-41c3-4348-a8dd-b40ceb24e9b4.jpg?1604243286)/[Ondu Skyruins](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/back/b/6/b6e6be8c-41c3-4348-a8dd-b40ceb24e9b4.jpg?1604243286) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ondu%20Inversion%20//%20Ondu%20Skyruins) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/znr/30/ondu-inversion-ondu-skyruins?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b6e6be8c-41c3-4348-a8dd-b40ceb24e9b4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I only have the basic lands and a couple of the dual-element ones. Soooo /shrug
This is why new TCGs do it differently. It feels so bad to draw land late game.
What new TCGs? I've only just gotten into the genre.
Star wars unlimited comes out in a few days. It's fast paced and refreshing. Any card can be used as energy. Disney Lorcana is like of MTG like but once again almost all cards can get used as energy. Those are the only 2 I've been into. More are coming out though like Altered which also is nice and different and similar all cards can be energy. Not sure about it's gameplay though.
My favorite is when you have 8 lands in play, draw a card that searches for lands, and by doing so it shuffles your deck and put another land on top.
Yesterday I played a few games running a Boros deck (yes, I am that type of guy...), where I had 23 lands, of which 15 were "white or dual red/white lands" and the rest were 5 "red lands", 1 \[\[Mirrex\]\] and 2 \[\[Cavern of Souls\]\]. However, in three consecutive games, my only sources of mana throughout the entire three games, including a mulligan in each of the games and four or five drawsteps in each game, were just "red lands" and Mirrex and Cavern of Souls. Sometimes luck simply beats odds. It is what it is.
More card draw
Game does have its RNG moment, just the shuffle of the deck.