About Mana

When playing Magic, land cards produce "mana" (spell money) that can be used to pay the casting cost of a Magic card spell.

Each card's cost is shown in the upper right corner.

For example, the symbols mean that this card costs three mana to play, one of which must be white.

Other, less common mana symbols include which can be paid with either two colorless or one blue mana, which can be paid with either one blue or one black mana, and which can be paid with either a blue mana or one life point.

The lands put into a deck must address the mana costs required to play the cards. This is where the Mana Curve comes in.

One of the easiest ways to visualize the mana curve is to sort the spell-cards in a deck by Converted Mana Cost (CMC).

CMC is simply the total mana needed without considering the color.

The CMC for would be 3.

The spell-cards from a 40-card deck tournament deck have been sorted by CMC in the image below.

Visual Mana Curve

Hover
Steps to view Mana Curve:
1) Sort the spell cards by their converted mana cost.

Calculated Mana Curve

This arrangement has the lowest casting cost cards on the left, increasing in cost to the right. The length of the column of cards gives rise to a roughly bell-shaped curve.

Mouse-over the "Hover" button to invert the cards. Then "Click" the button to view a more familiar x-y graph, with CMC on the x-axis and number of cards on the y-axis.

Visually, one can see that the curve peaks around the CMC of three. However there are more cards with a CMC higher than three than lower, so the curve peak will be shifted somewhat to the right (a little more than a CMC of 3).

By doing a little math, the peak of the curve can be calculated by multiplying the number of cards in a column by the column's CMC and adding these products together, then dividing by the number of cards:

This mana curve has a peak about half-way between CMC 3 and 4. The peak mana curve is an indication of the deck's play speed.

A low number means the deck is geared toward an early victory, whereas higher number mana curves perform better in a game with more turns.

Recently, research using software algorithms has provided mana curve data to consider when deckbuilding. The table below shows the calculated "ideal" mana curve based on the anticipated number of turns until a win condition is established.

40-card Deck		60-card Deck		Top 4 Gran Prix Decks
Turns	Curve	Turns	Curve	Type of Deck	Curve
5	2.00	4	2.17	Modern(60)	2.16
6	2.45	5	3.03	Standard(60)	2.94
7	4.11	6	3.42	Limited(40)	3.17

How Many Lands?

The Mana Curve provides a good indication of how much mana is needed in the deck. More lands are needed in a deck with an average spell cost of 4.20, than in a deck with an avarage spell cost of 2.30.

Guidelines for initial number of lands are:

• 16-18 in a 40-card deck
• 23-25 in a 60-card deck
• 37-40 in a 100 card deck

Start with an amount of mana in the suggested range, adjusted for the deck's mana curve. Start with 17 lands in a 40-card deck with an average mana curve (3.1 - 3.6). Add one more for a higher mana curve, one less for a lower curve.

This is just a starting point. The amount of lands will be futher adjusted after evaluating color requirements, and play-testing.

Do Not Exceed the minimum deck size when adding lands. If more lands are needed due to a higher mana curve, remove a spell-card to make room. Re-calculate the mana curve after removing the spell-card to see if there is a significant change. For example, removing a 10 casting cost Kozilek Butcher of Truth could put the deck into a normal curve.

What Color Land?

Now that the quantity of land cards has been determined, the next task is determining the amount of each type needed.

There are three colors in the sample deck above , , and . Three colors of mana is typical for a 40 card "Sealed Deck" build. The limited pool of cards to choose from often requires running two main colors and splashing a third.

Here, there are ten blue cards, nine green cards, and three black cards. This means the deck will require sources of these three mana colors, likely using Island, Swamp, and Forest Lands in some combination. Other sources of mana could include mana fixers and accelerators which will be discussed later.

Cards that have multiple colored mana symbols are more difficult to play because of the variety of appropriate sources that must be available.

This deck has four green cards with , and one with .

The planeswalker card, Nissa Worldwaker has CMC 5, which means that, absent any mana accelerators, it is a fifth turn play. Playing first, eleven cards will have been accessed (about a quarter of the 40-card deck) on turn five which means that there must be two green mana sources in each quarter of of the deck, or eight sources of green mana in the entire deck.

Jaces Ingenuity with is also a 5CMC card. Playing this card reliably on turn 5 would require eight blue sources in the deck.

Using only basic lands, 8 Islands, 8 forests, and 1 swamp would be added.

The blue and green spells have enough mana sources but there's only a 1 in 4 chance of having a black mana on turn four.

Four sources of are needed to have a chance to play Gravedigger on turn four.

However, reducing the number of Islands and/or Forests to make room would make it harder to cast the and spells when five mana is available.

This is where the "mana fixer" cards are important.

Mana fixers provide access to other colors of mana without using basic lands.

Mana fixers don't increase the amount of available mana, they make the available mana more efficient. Most multi-color decks need mana fixers.

Mana Fixers

Fortunately the card pool also has two Evolving Wilds.

These cards are considered "Mana Fixers" because they fetch a basic land from the deck, obtaining the specific color source needed. They also thin the deck of lands, increasing the liklihood of drawing a good spell-card.

Other mana fixers include cards like Simic Guildgate, which is like two lands in one, but only one type can be made per use. Shimmering Grotto is a mana fixer that will produce one mana of any color, for the cost of 1 mana. This type of mana fixer is very flexible, but it's inefficient because it requires two tapped resources to produce one mana.

Based on a mid-range mana curve of 3.56, the seventeen land used are:
7 Islands
7 Forests
1 Swamp
2 Evolving Wilds


Technically there are not three sources of black mana; there's one source and three ways to get it. It could be argued that a second swamp should be used because the deck would be vulnerable if the swamp was destroyed or removed by the opponent. Potentially an Island could be changed to a Swamp, but playtesting should be done first.

Activity

1) Load your chosen cards into the simulator.
2) Calculate the Mana Curve for these cards
3) Determine the number of sources needed for each color.
4) Add the appropriate land cards to the deck.