Colourless Mana, Efficiency and New Cards

Going Colourless

It is no secret that many Commander decks live and die by their colourless Mana rocks. To the surprise of nobody, Sol Ring is by far the most played card in Commander, according to EDHRec.com. Wizards itself has crowned it the poster child of the format, reprinting it as part of every single pre-constructed deck.

While many have advocated the banning of the card due to the supposed unfair advantage it provides, Sol Ring has largely become the gentlemen agreement of the format, a card that is admittedly very powerful, but which is also too strongly imbued in the very soul of Commander to be kicked out. We could draw an easy parallel with Brainstorm in Legacy: likely the strongest and definitely the most played card in the format, it glues whole decks together and it essentially shapes the entire Legacy metagame.

The accessibility of colourless Mana rocks turns them into flexible tools for every deck in need of a ramping boost. And while many Green decks may frown upon the relatively mediocre ramping of Ur Golem’s Eye, decks with limited access to Land ramping may be looking at colourless Mana ramp to pursue a high level of ramping efficiency.

For the sake of this article, we will be only looking at colourless Mana rocks. While in the previous article we focused on coloured Mana, colour fixing is now out of the equation. The goal is to get more Mana, its colour does not necessarily matter. As a result, monocoloured and two-colour decks are likely to be the most impacted by this analysis. Taking things to the extreme, you can look at my Kozilek, Butcher of Truth deck, where efficient and consistent generation of Mana is the only goal of its many Mana rocks.

Risultati immagini per kozilek butcher of truth — Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, art by Michael Komarck

Colourless Mana rock benchmarks

Just like we did in our previous article, let’s start by understanding what are the realistic efficiency levels that can be expected for colourless Mana roc generation:

Mana Crypt is the true outlier of the format, providing a two Mana output for no Mana investment, only taxing the player’s life total for an average of 1.5 life each turn; unsurprisingly, the card is considered among the most powerful Mana rocks in the format and it has been sometimes mentioned as worthy of a ban
3.0 is among the highest efficiency rates in the format, achieved only by Mana Vault and at the cost of the card not untapping on the following turn; having an untap cost greater than its Mana output, this qualifies mostly as a one-shot output during the first turns of the game
2.0 is the almost unparalleled level of efficiency provided by Sol Ring; while this sets a strong precedence for what can be done in the Commander, it really is a one-of case, as there is no other card in the format with a similar ratio and with no downside whatsoever; an hypothetical double Sol Ring, costing two mana and generating four would likely be too powerful for any Magic format we know
1.5 is the efficiency level represented by Grim Monolith, although the card suffers from the doesn’t untap clause we have already seen in Mana Vault; this time, however, the cost of untapping can be paid at any time; as a result, the card easily lends itself to Power Artifact shenanigans
1.0 is the ratio that can be achieved by Basalt Monolith, which joins the club of cards that don’t untap without a Mana investment and which, much like the aforementioned Grim Monolith, easily combos off with Power Artifact
0.75 is the efficiency rate achievable by Thran Dynamo; the card is extremely simple in its design and it provides a quite unique rate, which is found in no other colourless Mana rock in the format
0.67 is the efficiency level achieved by Worn Powerstone, at the cost of having the card entering the battlefield tapped; while this is a common downside for coloured Mana rocks, it is relatively rare among the most played colourless Mana rocks in the format
0.5 is close to the relatively fair ratio of cards like Mind Stone, Hedron Archive and Dreamstone Hedron; as mentioned in our previous article, the effect of converting the Mana rock itself into one or more cards is an additional bonus that slightly skews the efficiency rate; nevertheless, it’s interesting to note how the principle of diminishing returns results in Mind Stone being very beloved in the format, while Dreamstone Hedron sees play only in specific decks

Much like we did last time, we can place each of these cards in a scaled graph and identify the “fine” line, to the right of which we tend to only find unexciting efficiency ratios.

The graph has also been enriched with a couple areas, encompassing mentioned Mana rocks that do not autonomously untap and famously “problematic” cards – by which I only mean the trifecta of Sol Ring, Mana Crypt and Mana Vault, although I am not implying any of these are actually worthy of a ban, in my opinion.

What is missing

If we compare the above graph to what we drafted for coloured Mana rocks, we find out the efficiency ratios here are way more diverse. This is good for the purposes of our analysis, as we have way more milestones and benchmarks to play around.

First and foremost, we have a number of missing intersections that could be easily filled. Among them, the very intuitive intersection of one Mana cost and one Mana output would represent a less powerful version of Sol Ring. Having to withstand such a tough comparison, it would be safe to assume that a card like this, with no additional effect, would be more than safe in our format, albeit unexciting.

Borrowing inspiration from Mind Stone, the card could also feature a self-replacement ability, maybe with an adjusted activation cost to compensate for the cheaper casting cost. Something like the following would likely be an interesting new card for the format.

Light Ring, art from the WikiMedia Commons library

Another intersection that is largely untouched falls between the two Mana cost and two Mana output. Here the situation is a bit trickier, as Sol Ring is again a very hard benchmark to be compared to. On the other hand, Magic has established that the cost for two additional colourless Mana is between three and four generic Mana, thanks to non-problematic cards like Worn Powerstone and Hedron Archive.

As a thought experiment, I’d like to come up with something closer and more aligned to Worn Powerstone and Hedron Archive, rather than Sol Ring. This simply because coming up with a two Mana Sol Ring would just be a lazy design. Safe for the format and not as powerful as the original, but close to another ubiquitous card that most decks would be happy to play.

Let’s instead focus on how Worn Powerstone could be edited to fill the existing gap. Mixing a bit of what we saw from surrounding areas of the scaled graph, the reduced Mana cost of this new card could be easily balanced by having the Artifact being unable to untap on its own. Of course, the cost of untapping the Artifact would have to be at least equal to its Mana output, to prevent self-fuelling infinite engines.

Having the card also entering the battlefield tapped, like the original Worn Powerstone, would at this point turn it into a worse Ur Golem’s Eye, potentially coming into play untapped, if paid for immediately. This because, as we have established, the untapping cost would necessarily be at least two Mana.

All thing considered, removing the enter the battlefield tapped clause would probably be relatively safe. Not only that, but it would lead to a card not unlike Basalt Monolith, which would fall right into place in an untouched slot and would likely result in a relatively clean design.

Sunscorched Jewel, art from the WikiMedia Commons library

Interestingly, we could now theorize a linear “basalt” line, encompassing Basalt Monolith, Sunscorched Jewel and all other potential combinations of equal integer values of Mana cost and Mana output. Sure, a Basalt Monolith costing one Mana, generating one Mana and untapping for one Mana would compare very unfavourably with Sol Ring. But, in the end, what doesn’t?

The complete picture

If we try and merge everything together, from the coloured Mana rocks of our previous article to the colourless staples of the format, passing through the mock cards we have theorized, we end up with a quite dense graph.

Some interesting phenomena can be noted. First and foremost, Magic has often used the enters the battlefield tapped clause to balance Mana availability at its most critical stages of the game. This tool is often used in the middle of our graph, where Artifacts cost between two and three Mana and generate between one and two. Design-wise, this is really a space worth exploring, as it may allow to print aggressively costed version of existing cards, with just the added downside of entering the battlefield tapped:

Would a four Mana Gilded Lotus entering the battlefield tapped be too good in Commander? On one side, it would lead to a turn four that has not impacted the board; on the other, that same turn would be followed by a turn five with eight available Mana, which would be quite a spectacle
What if we introduced a new Sol Ring entering the battlefield tapped? Would it lead to a too unbalanced format, with decks effectively having access to two Sol Rings?

The top-left corner of our graph is empty, but surrounded by cards. Any Magic player knows that’s where the coveted Black Lotus would fit. Or, more correctly, that’s where a persisting, non-self-sacrificing Black Lotus would fit. Needless to say, this is largely an uncharted territory that I believe Magic is not ready to explore. Thran Dynamo and Gilded Lotus have established that the cost of three immediate Mana, with no downside, is between four and five Mana, depending on the output’s colour. We could try and theorize what a realistic downside for a permanent Black Lotus would be, but even adding the dreaded “at the beginning of your next end step, you lose the game” clause would probably result in a bad Commander card and an immediately restricted Vintage card.

Moving downwards and linking back to our previous article, it is interesting to note how the Moxen available in Commander see relatively small play, despite their colourless nature. None of the legal Moxen are among the one hundred most played cards of the format, according to EDHRec.com. Between their relatively limited availability and the quite notable downsides, the legal Moxen often end up being not worth the effort.

Quite frankly, this leads me to believe that, were they legal, the original Moxen would be relatively fine in a multiplayer format like Commander. Sure, Mox Ruby would be an extremely powerful card in Commander, but would it really be too much in a format with Mana Crypt or Sol Ring? Of course, most Commander players would not be willing to spend hundreds of dollars for a Vintage staple, but what if we borrowed inspiration from the Battlebond Lands and ended up with something like this?

Essence Mox, art from the WikiMedia Commons library

Where this leads us

I hope I managed to paint a complete and orderly picture of the most notable Mana rocks in Commander, in terms of efficiency. It is my belief that designing new cards is a process that could really benefit from a complete understanding of the missing pieces we currently have in the format. Some efficiency ratios are yet to be explored and others can probably be finetuned into new designs.

This leads us to asking ourselves: how many of the Eternal staples can and should we have in our format? How can we adapt existing cards into new designs, making sure they become good, but not excessively powerful Commander cards? How do we make sure we do not warp other Eternal formats due to a lack of foresight in card design?

The Battlebond Lands have proven to be a huge success in Commander, so what more can we expect from sets focused on multiplayer action? Until then, I’ll be in the corner, hoarding Mana rocks for my Kozilek, Butcher of Truth deck.

Mana Rocks and Missing Pieces

The cost of ramping

A couple of weeks ago we estimated how Land ramping in Magic has an intrinsic average efficiency of 0,5. In other words, having one additional Mana available on the next turn usually costs two Mana during the current turn.

Our analysis was focused exclusively on Land-based ramping, which, especially in Commander, is considered among the most reliable ways to accelerate your battleplan. Lands are in fact among the most resilient permanents the game has to offer. The means to destroy them are way scarcer than, for instance, Creature removal options.

To put things into perspective: at the time of writing, Strip Mine is played in roughly 33’000 decks on EDHREC.com, while Swords to Plowshares happens to be in almost 66’000 EDHREC.com decks, despite its colour restriction of being White instead of Colourless. To be fair, it is worth mentioning that Swords to Plowshares has a far higher reprint count than Strip Mine.

That said, Green is really the only colour capable of such a redundant and consistent ramp, with most of the non-Green decks forced to rely on rocks for colourless or coloured Mana acceleration. The higher accessibility of Mana rocks is, quite intuitively, balanced by a lower level of resilience, compared to Land ramp. Although one could expect to also see a decrease in efficiency when moving from Land ramp to Mana rocks, it is interesting to note that this is not always the case.

Rampant Growth, the benchmark for Land ramping, guarantees access to an additional Mana of any colour during the following turn. An immediate comparison comes in the form of Coldsteel Heart, which provides the same level of efficiency over the same turn span. Of course, Land-related and Artifact-related synergies may lead players to pick one alternative over the other. Aside for that, the greater vulnerability of Artifacts is usually the main aspect that gets brought to the table when selecting between the two.

Darksteel Ingot, art by Martina Pilcerova

I would like to separate further analysis between coloured and colourless Mana rocks, as they present rather different levels of efficiency based on the desired output. Once we have identified some notable benchmarks, we can try and see if any trend or direct correlation exists.

Coloured Mana rocks benchmarks

As exemplified by the already mentioned Coldsteel Heart, the easier comparison between Land ramp and Mana rocks comes with the analysis of Artifacts providing coloured Mana. Just for the sake of clarity, here we’re grouping all Mana rocks providing Mana of one or more colours. These include both cards providing Mana of a single colour, like Fire Diamond, and cards providing Mana of any colour, like Darksteel Ingot.

We can find some examples of defined efficiency ratios among the most played cards in Commander, which will serve as benchmarks for further discussions:

0.5 is the already mentioned efficiency level set for coloured Mana on the following turn; again, Coldsteel Heart is the perfect example; as anticipated, this is aligned with the Land ramping efficiency we identified in our previous article on the topic
0.33 is close to the efficiency level set for an additional coloured Mana available on the same turn; this is not the exact efficiency level that can be achieved for this effect, as a card like Manalith sees little to no play in the format, getting instead overshadowed by equivalents that add something more to the equation; the aforementioned Darksteel Ingot includes the benefit of being indestructible, cards like Dimir Locket can turn themselves into actual card advantage, and so on
0.6 is the efficiency level that can be achieved when economies of scale kick in, as exemplified by Gilded Lotus; while this seems to be a true outlier for ramping efficiency purposes, it is worth mentioning how additional Mana in the later turns of the game tends to lose value, compared to the first, key turns; to put things in Magic terms, ramping from two to four Mana tends to be way more crucial than ramping from six to eight; for an economic explanation of this concept, I strongly suggest to check out the concept of diminishing returns

Having defined these main benchmarks for coloured Mana rocks, there is a couple of further outliers that are probably worth mentioning. Again, I’d like to frame these in the context of their Mana efficiency to understand where they fit in the economy of Commander:

0.67 is a coloured Mana efficiency that can be achieved every other turn by Coalition Relic, a card that, to this day, I have troubles understanding; its effect is quite interesting, design-wise, as it either functions as a pseudo Manalith, or it stores its Mana for a turn, doubling its output for the following; because of its unique nature, it is quite challenging to really consider it a three-Mana-for-two-Mana rock, but I thought it was worth mentioning it, at least for the sake of completeness
0.5 is a level of coloured Mana efficiency that can be achieved on the same turn by Coveted Jewel, another interesting card that is very hard to frame in terms of pure Mana efficiency; as a coloured Mana generator it is quite impressive, even when keeping in mind the concept of diminishing returns; the fact that it also draws three cards upon entering the battlefield is an incredible upside, balanced by the very critical aspect of having it losing consistency due to its unique downside
0.2 is an efficiency level that is usually deemed too low for Commander purposes, unless coupled with very strong additional effects; while Meteorite sees little to no play in the format, Pyromancer’s Goggles and Tome of the Guildpact can see play when the additional effect makes the card worthy of a slot in the deck
Moving to the opposite side, we encounter the egregious slot of the Moxen: Mox Opal, Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond; these cards balance a free one Mana output with a more or less restrictive clause, such as discarding a Land card, exiling a coloured card or needing two more Artifacts to be powered up

One side note is due, before we move forward: the Moxen indeed possess the highest efficiency ratio of all the card we mentioned so far. On the other hand, their conditional usage or downside make them harder to frame in the context of this analysis; therefore, we will elaborate on their role in Commander in subsequent articles.

The coloured Mana “fine” line

Having established average ratios, we can easily map them on a scaled graph.

First and foremost, it is interesting to note how we can identify a “fine” line, connecting two of the examples of powerful coloured Mana rocks. For the purposes of this plotting, we are excluding Coldsteel Heart from our analysis, as its enters the battlefield tapped nature skews its Mana output of a turn, compared to Darksteel Ingot and Gilded Lotus. Again, for the purposes of this analysis we will be considering Darksteel Ingot as the benchmark for three-Mana-for-one-Mana rocks, without factoring in the additional effects or abilities these cards may have.

Assuming the curve linking these two benchmarks together is indeed a straight line, we can determine its equation to be something like:

Coloured Mana output = Mana input – 2

While at first glance this looks like a solid assumption, a couple of additional conditions are to be noted:

The line is valid only for integer values of both coloured Mana output and coloured Mana input; Magic as a game only operates on integer values – aside, of course, for Just Desserts and the other Un-cards
While the line itself is not necessarily limited to specific ranges, it indeed ceases to make sense below the three Mana value of Darksteel Ingot and its equivalents; past that point we would get into a two mana investment for a zero Mana output, which would be pointless; decreasing further, we would get into negative values of Mana, which, again, do not exist in Magic

Having defined this line, we can see how most of the available coloured Mana rocks to its right can be considered somehow underwhelming, if not for their added properties. While I would never question anyone’s choice of running Pyromancer’s Goggles or Tome of the Guildpact in their Commander decks, I would expect this to be mostly due to the cards’ additional effects and not to the Mana output alone.

Missing pieces

Assuming we can use this line for predictive purposes, we can theorize mock versions of potential new cards that would be safely printable in Commander and, maybe, draw parallels with existing Magic cards from outside of the sole Mana rock environment.

Along the “fine” line we identified, we easily meet the integer values crossing of a four Mana investment for a two coloured Mana output. And that would easily translate into a card like the following.

Flower of Fecundity, art from the WikiMedia Commons library

Not only would the above mock card be in line with existing effects seeing print, but, linking back to our parallel with Land ramping, it would also echo the effect of Explosive Vegetation, a card that sees plenty of Commander play, but which has never proven to be too powerful. On top of that, we would be looking at a coloured – and arguably more powerful – version of Sisay’s Ring, which, as a card, has itself been overshadowed by Hedron Archive.

Jumping a little bit ahead of ourselves, we can draw some parallels between colourless and coloured Mana rocks, to frame exactly where a card like Flower of Fecundity would fit. Hedron Archive sets a very strong precedence, sanctioning how a 0.5 efficiency rate for colourless Mana is not necessarily enough to make a good Mana rock. An additional effect is demanded to make the card worth playing. In fact, players can have easy access to a 0.67 colourless Mana efficiency rate via Thran Dynamo at the four Mana cost mark.

On the other hand, we have established quite intuitively that the ability to convert a Mana rock into a new card is often used as a relevant add-up to existing and relatively underplayed cards. In other words, Manalith sees very little Commander play, while Dimir Locket is an unexciting, but relatively playable card in Blue-Black decks.

By pseudo-reverse engineering the most played Mana rocks costing three to four Mana, I would say it’s safe to assume that trading off the efficiency of Thran Dynamo for a coloured Mana output would be relatively safe in a format where Explosive Vegetation has already been established as a very safe and balanced card.

On the other hand, should we be concerned by the idea of allowing all colours to have their own untapped Explosive Vegetation, we could introduce one of the limitations we have already seen for coloured Mana rocks.

Where I think this new tapped version of the card fails is in its positioning on the scaled graph we introduced. By placing it in the four-mana-for-two-Mana intersection, we may be led to believe that another “tapped line” exists, linking together Coldsteel Heart and Flower of Fecundity. This seems to be a relatively reasonable trade-off, as it moves from the two-Mana-for-one-Mana intersection of Coldsteel Heart and builds upwards.

The coloured Mana rocks and the possible “tapped line”

By simply looking at the graph, we can theorize the following equation to be reasonable for Mana rocks in Commander:

Coloured Mana output (tapped) = 0.5 x Mana input

By plotting this straight line towards higher Mana costs, we would be tempted to guess that a linear progression is indeed to be expected. In other words, that a card like the following would be reasonable for printing and quite acceptable for Commander purposes.

Nightshade Violet, art from the WikiMedia Commons library

And before we move forward, it is obvious to see how unfavourably a card like this would compare to Gilded Lotus. Either due to the phenomenon of diminishing returns, either because the line we plotted is simply unrealistic, Nightshade Violet is a card that just compares poorly to most of the other options we have in Commander.

We could move things forward and theorize a nonlinear link between Mana input and tapped coloured Mana output. However, we seem to simply have too few points to perform a realistic plotting.

Moving forward

While the introduction of parabolas would be an excellent subject for a future article, I’d like to first focus on the missing part of all this analysis: colourless Mana rocks.

These are the joy and the bane of the format, depending on who you talk to. Sol Ring is either the most ban-worthy and the most iconic card of the format. And sometimes it’s both. Join me in the next article on Mana rocks, where we will be looking at efficiency and trends of colourless Mana.

And, finally, we will also attempt some colourless-to-coloured comparison for Mana rocks’ output.

Resource Transformation, Cyclops and Paradigm Shifts

Turning raw materials into end products

In the previous article on Resource Management, we discussed the positional value of Lands within a traditional ramp strategy and traced prices for movements between one location and another. So far, we have mostly looked at how players can increase their amounts of available Mana through the course of the game. The main principle being that it is always beneficial to ramp resources upwards, rather than implementing some form of downward spiral of available Mana.

Nevertheless, the act itself of increasing the amount of Mana at a player’s disposal does not really win games. Much like what happens in a manufacturing company, increasing stocks of raw materials is not going to automatically generate an end product. We surely have focused at length on amassing as many resources as we could, but we have not addressed how to then put them into fruition. In Magic terms, we have spent Mana only to unlock more Mana, but we still have not transformed this resource into actual game-winning components.

I’d like to frame once again the next steps around my Borborygmos Enraged Commander deck, although a number of different ramp-focused decks can help paint portions of the same picture. And by “portions” I mean that Borborygmos Enraged will be introducing some interesting twists along the way.

Setting now aside the copious amount of ramp cards included in the deck, all serving the sole purpose of getting us to the desired critical mass of available Mana, we now find ourselves wondering how to convert Mana into actual action. At first glance, we are facing three main alternatives to invest our resources:

Mana-to-Board (M2B): this is one of the most traditional ways Mana is invested in a game of Magic; resources are converted into board presence, allowing players to impact the game first-hand; a good example from the deck comes in the form of Avenger of Zendikar, actively converting Mana into power and passively increasing that same power thanks to following Land drops; the conversion rate between Mana and power is traditionally linear, with X/X creatures costing X Mana, although a plethora of external factors and effects can vastly alter this ratio
Mana-to-Damage (M2D): this is the most direct option, allowing a straight conversion of Mana into an attack aggainst opponents’ life totals; Banefire is the primary example in the deck, although Magic has a rich history of Lightning Bolt-esque effects; their scalability and costs determine their effectiveness into widely different formats, such as Standard, Legacy and Commander; moreover, the conversion rate of these effects largely varies, from the linear ratio of Mana to damage in Banefire, to true outliers like Flame Slash, which trades off flexibility for raw efficiency
Mana-to-Cards (M2C): a fairly underrepresented option in most Green decks, Mana can be directly converted into cards, re-filling players’ hands; while Harmonize is likely the most straightforward example in the deck, the recursion effects of Creeping Renaissance and Praetor’s Counsel serve the same purpose; the conversion rate again varies widely, based on cards’ colour, restrictions and scalability

Each of these transformations comes with the effect – or the by-product – of one or more cards moving between the main game areas. As the card transition in most of the provided examples is a single card, we could be tempted to consider these as a relatively fixed constant, with the obvious exception of M2C-related actions.

On the other hand, mapping each movement alongside its Mana investment can help putting things into perspective, despite being a quite challenging effort. The following graph maps both flows of Mana in solid colours and by-product flows of cards via transparent pointers. As anticipated, it is easy to see how the transparent arrows mimic some of the main movements paths we discussed as part of our previous discussion on Resource Management.

Mana consumption clusters and related card transitions

Putting it all together, it’s notable how, in the specific context of a dedicated ramp strategy, Mana eventually becomes both the key resource the deck aims at amassing, as well as the main fuel to guarantee the gameplan can be steadily carried out. Practically, the play pattern takes the form of a self-fueling engine.

Before we move forward, it’s interesting to briefly digress on how Magic as a game lends itself to creating a very rich environment of cross-contaminating effects. More specifically, the three main conversion options from the above map can largely affect each other, chaining together engines, loops and combos. And, quite often, this is where Commander really allows players to go all-in with their more synergistic builds.

Converting products

First things first, not all Magic decks include all possible forms of product conversion and cross-contamination. Many decks tend to primarily focus on just one or two options, aiming for consistency, more than untamed flexibility. I’d like again to go in the details on where Borborygmos Enraged places itself among the main cross-contamination options and how its ramp strategy pays off. But first, let’s see what the main product-to-product conversions are traditionally available as part of Magic’s environment.

To the surprise of nobody, the most obvious conversion of products comes in the form of permanents on the board dealing damage. This is how the majority of gameplay actions in Magic take place and it is likely the most intuitive product-to-product conversion. On the other side of the equation, cards like Precinct Captain and Blaze Commando guarantee the opposite conversion can also be covered, generating board presence when damage is dealt.

While this can be an effective back-and-forth loop of Creatures dealing damage, which in turn generates more Creatures, it is not necessarily what ramp decks usually look for. While certainly a concept worth exploring inside dedicated strategies, let’s turn our attention to the other conversion options, which Green-based strategies can easily look at for inspiration.

A value-oriented board presence can generate a significant card advantage, which than can be then re-converted into a continuously increasing board presence. Think of the value engine that is Beast Whisperer, which, in the right Creature-based deck, essentially becomes a self-fuelling machine. And for an example of tournament-winning Card-to-Board converter, look no further than Zombie Infestation.

Finally, back-and-forth conversion of Mana and cards is easily achievable, and sometimes abused as part of game-winning combos. Think Curiosity and its colour shifted counterpart Keen Sense, converting damage into cards. Pair any of these up with Arc Mage, converting cards into damage, and you set yourself for a nice value engine. Of course, you can also just bypass Arc Mage‘s discard option and go straight for the infamous Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind and Curiosity combo, for an immediate Damage-to-Card-to-Damage loop.

The unexpected payoff

Now that we have framed the main product-to-product conversion alternatives existing in Magic, let’s take a step forward and see what can be enabled by a ramp strategy that, up to this point, has mostly proven effective in moving Lands around. As anticipated, instead of focusing on classic M2B ramp payoffs, I’d like to specifically use Borborygmos Enraged to frame our next steps. The card, in the end, is the primary reason why I wanted to dive into this Resource Management analysis.

First things first, Borborygmos Enraged is obviously great at transforming cards from the player’s hand into direct damage, along the Card-to-Damage transformation line from the previous graph. On top of this ability, the already mentioned Keen Sense pairs amazingly with Borborygmos Enraged, generating a Damage-to-Card-to-Damage loop not unlike Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind’s engine, provided the damage is dealt to players and not to Creatures.

However, Borborygmos Enraged incorporates a card type restriction that specifically demands the discarding of a Land card to activate its effect, while Keen Sense only guarantees that a random card is drawn. The problem of this unreliable engine can be tackled from two perspectives:

Circumventing Keen Sense’s uncontrolled card draw: this is likely the easiest – and, arguably, most boring – solution, as Abundance is able to bridge the exact gap between Borborygmos Enraged and Keen Sense, effectively generating a three card combo that is likely to end the game on the spot
Resuming our Resource Management analysis to understand how, Keen Sense or not, Lands can be moved once again, although this time shifting gears to pursue a different priority, other than pure ramping

Risultati immagini per rethink mtg — Rethink, art by Matt Cavotta

The paradigm shift

In the previous article on Resource Management, we focused on analysing the main flows of Lands as part of a ramp strategy and tried to understand the average levels of efficiency that could be targeted for each of the main flows. Once Borborygmos Enraged hits the battlefield, however, the priorities completely shift and the player’s hand suddenly becomes the position of higher value for available Land cards. If up to this point the goal has been to move Lands toward the battlefield, moving them back to the player’s hand becomes now the most crucial action, allowing us to revisit previous paths with a new perspective, as well as to explore new options. In other words, this is when the paradigm of traditional ramp breaks.

If up to this point the goal has been to move Lands toward the battlefield, moving them back to the player’s hand becomes now the most crucial action, allowing us to revisit previous paths with a new perspective, as well as to explore new options. And this is why I wanted to use Borborygmos Enraged as a reference point throughout this analysis. Its ability is pretty unique in the context of a ramp deck, as it completely subverts expectations of a traditional ramp-enabled payoff. And by doing so, it shines a light on a number of additional ways a player can manage resources.

Library-to-Hand (L2H) and Graveyard-to-Hand (G2H) have proven to be among the most densely populated paths in the whole strategy, in terms of card availability in a Green-based colour identity. Aside for direct ramp (L2B), tutoring and regrowing Land cards are already among the easiest actions the deck can perform. These paths have been discussed at length in our previous article and they continue to prove effective in supporting Borborygmos Enraged once it hits the battlefield.

The additional path than can be explored, in complete countertrend to the developing stages of the game, is Battlefield-to-Hand (B2H). This action invalidates a lot of the build-up performed up to this point, essentially destroying the long-terms benefits of ramping in favour of one-shot damage.

Mina and Denn, Wildborn is an excellent B2H engine, but the real star, here, is Storm Cauldron, providing a free way to reclaim any number of Lands from the board to the player’s hand. With a steady supply of Lands returning to the player’s hand, a Storm Cauldron played at the right time can really win the game on the spot.

Moving back to the play areas map, Borborygmos Enraged helps us tracing the yet unexplored Hand-to-Graveyard (H2G) path. Interestingly, this is the least value-adding path in the entire deck, as it comes with the complete exhaustion of a resource in the name of direct damage. From a Resource Management perspective, this is particularly critical, because the discarded Land is both a card escaping the player’s hand and a Land not hitting the battlefield, where its value up to this point would have been the greatest possible.

In other words, after an entire battleplan crafted around ramping as much as possible, the decks completely course corrects the approach, taking back all resources deployed up to that point and shifting gear into a completely different behaviour.

Main Land movements enabled by and supporting Borborygmos’ ability

This is where direct contingency cards like Life from the Loam and Groundskeeper become even more valuable, as they cheat on this resource exhaustion, buying back Lands after their use, opening back the G2H pathway we already discussed in our previous article. Life from the Loam especially gives its best when paired up with one or more cycling Lands like Tranquil Thicket, when its dredging capabilities and the Land’s cycling effect turn the two cards into a three-Mana six-damage engine.

A slightly more indirect way, again, passes through the battlefield, with G2B movements enabled by Crucible of Worlds and Ramunap Excavator.

Putting it all together

Merging all the perspectives we have analysed so far, it’s interesting to see how much all the main play patterns of the deck revolve around movement and transformations of resources. While fairly intuitive for a Magic player, the level of complexity involved is actually quite significant, with a number of moving parts and transformative resources that get manipulated, exhausted and recovered.

Even if we just ignore all the possible movements that exist in Magic and focus solely on what the deck primarily tries to do, we end up with a selection of different components that, from a strategic perspective, can be grouped into two main game moments and related play pattern:

Setup and development: the initial turns of the game are fully dedicated to ramping and amassing as many Land as possible on the board; this is achieved either via direct Library-to-Battlefield (L2B) ramping and Library-to-Hand (L2H) tutoring, coupled up with the opening of additional Land drops (H2B)
Operating speed: the later turns of the game, especially once Borborygmos Enraged is out on the board, are focused on setting up a continuous Hand-to-Graveyard-to-Hand loop with most of the available Lands, eventually passing through the board, recovering resources from the battlefield or, at worst, tutoring additional Lands from the library

As it’s to be expected, the merging point of all paths, transformations and paradigms discussed so far is quite dense.

Main Land movement during setup (green) and operating speed (red)

Interestingly, traditional ramp strategies in Commander tend to primarily focus on the setup and development part of the equation, amassing large amounts of Mana to then assemble their payoffs with game-breaking permanents hitting the board. As far as I am aware, Borborygmos is one of the only Legendary Creatures that so drastically lends themselves to a complete paradigm shift, actively working against its setup strategy to benefit from a self-destructive payoff.

The parallel to Resource Management within companies is also very peculiar: while resources are largely manipulated and transformed as part of a company’s production process, the primary goal is always sustainability. Companies, in the end, harness the power of innovation when they manage to transform their breakthroughs into sustainable practices.

Sustainability, however, is not necessarily the primary goal of this deck. Although a traditional ramp strategy is always pursuable, via Avenger of Zendikar-esque cards, the main target is to actually consume a critical mass of resources developed up to that point, converting them into direct damage, which itself possesses no board presence value.

Closing thoughts

Of all the Commander decks I have had a chance to play, Borborygmos Enraged is probably among my favourites. Not because the deck is extremely powerful – truth been told, it’s a good deck, but it’s nowhere near competitive Commander good. The main appeal of the deck is its extreme focus on managing resources through a fairly complex lifecycle, most notably playing towards a goal in its setup stage and then completely shifting into a different play pattern. Understanding when to shift from one phase to the other is truly what makes games interesting.

What fascinated me in this analysis of Resource Management and transformation is that Magic has clearly finetuned an implicit set of costs for each of these effects. And although the level of efficiency that can be achieved is largely set, a lot of in-game variety comes from how effectively each of these transformations is organized within a larger strategy. When each of this movement is executed is truly what makes the difference between winning and losing a game.

I must confess I have lost multiple games because I was a bit too trigger-happy with Storm Cauldron, dropping it too early and failing at maintaining a consistent board presence. The rule of thumb I have adopted over time is to shift into operative speed only when a reliable recurring engine has been setup. And even then, it’s always a roll of the dice, considering how much your opponents can interact with any predetermined battleplan.

In the end, as most Commander players know, each game is different and assessing threats and opportunity is always the real challenge. On the other hand, framing play patterns and in-game decisions with a deep awareness of the principles behind them can really make you feel accomplished as a Resource Manager.

Resource Management, Efficiency and Land Ramp

What is Resource Management?

As the name suggests, Resource Management is a broad term used to group together all aspects of the process of planning, organizing, scheduling, developing, allocating and monitoring of resources within a company or project, with the goal of maximizing the resulting efficiency. The easiest way to define efficiency, in this context, is as the ratio between the acquired benefits and the necessary costs to achieve them.

Put it simply, Resource Management as a discipline aims at getting as close as possible to the point where the trade-off between benefits, costs, time and organizational effort is the most advantageous. To ensure this goal is constantly in focus and all means of improvement are explored, a lot of best practices have been issued over time and as part of dedicated summits, ranging from simple organizational hints to all-encompassing guidelines.

What iscrucial behind this concept is that Resource Management is in and on itself aprocess. Resource Management is not simply a one-shot analysis that isperformed to cut costs, but a continuous activity that literally fuels the entire company or project.

Magic, much like many other card and tabletop games, features a lot of resources to be managed. Mana is probably the first to come to mind, as it literally fuels the entirety of the game. Cards, life, sometimes Energy are further examples of resources within the game. What is interesting within Magic is that resources are continuously transformed through the course of the game. Just to provide some examples, Divination turns Mana into cards, Vesper Ghoul turns life into Mana and Necropotence turns life into cards. The conversion rate between each resource and the others have been finetuned throughout Magic’s history, removing from the picture any problematic card that could easily tilt the balance of the game. Hence why a card like Channel is banned in Legacy and Commander and restricted in Vintage.

Risultati immagini per channel mtg — Channel, art by Rebecca Guay

Transformation of resources is also a key aspect of the quantitative side of Resource Management. Time, labour and raw materials are turned into final products, money is turned into workforce, and so on. The more effective these transformations are, the closer a company or project gets to the highest possible efficiency.

However, one key difference between companies and Magic games lies in the progression of resources’ availability. Companies deals with budget that can be invested, raw materials that can be bought, workers that can be hired. The bigger the budget, the higher the resulting buying power. Magic, on the other hand, has intrinsic limitations that ensure players start each game on an equal footing and progress at the same speed. Setting aside Mulligans, players always start the game with the same life total, the same number of cards and the same predetermined progression of one additional card and one additional Mana per turn, provided Land drops are never skipped.

While resources can be increased, extinguished and transformed throughout the game, their flow, if left unaltered, is essentially straightforward. However, decks can set themselves to manipulate this predetermined progression to their benefit, managing resources to alter the course of the game.

Let’s start from the basics. Mana, its natural progression and how it is managed and transformed, especially within a deck primarily focused on Lands as a key resource for victory.

The Basic (Land) concept

Most Magic players know that using all available Mana every turn is one of the primary goals of good deckbuilding and effective playing. Mana Curves with significant holes and poor in-game management of Lands can make the difference between victory and defeat. Casting a Nessian Courser for three Mana on turn 3 is perfectly on curve. Casting it on turn 4 with a spare Mana that is left unused is, effectively, like casting the same card for four Mana. The benefit is the same, but the cost increases and, as a result, the efficiency decreases.

If, on one side, using all available Mana every turn is key, the linear progression of its availability can also be largely manipulated. A card like Rampant Growth, for instance, allows its caster to convert present resources into a future payoff. More specifically, two currently available Mana and one card are converted into an additional Mana on the next and all following turns.

Risultati immagini per rampant growth mtg — Rampant Growth, art by Tom Kyffin

The interesting aspect of this equation is that Land cards, as the primary sources of Mana in an average Magic game, are themselves cards. However, their value as resources changes based on their location. This is where we need to think a bit creatively, as companies rarely possess resources that generate different benefits based solely on their location.

Deck strategies largely vary in Magic, so, for the purposes of the following paragraph, I’d like to use my Borborygmos Enraged Commander deck as the reference point. The deck’s strategy is fairly simple:

A number of Rampant Growth effects rapidly increase Mana availability as the primary deck’s resource
To further speed up the process, a number of Exploration-esque cards allow additional Land drops, provided Lands are available in the player’s hand
Therefore, cards like Seek the Horizon help ensuring Land drops are seldom missed, adding Land cards to the player’s hand
Once a critical mass of resources is available, the deck attempts at closing the game via Avenger of Zendikar, Banefire, or Borboygmos Enraged himself
As a contingency plan, alternative win conditions are included in the list, sometimes driving inspiration from typical Legacy Lands deck: the Dark Depths and Thespian’s Stage combo is present, as well as the evil pair that is Inkmoth Nexus and Kessig Wolf-Run

These bullet points intuitively make sense to any Magic player. But the meaning behind these lies in the intrinsic and transformative values these resources possess throughout the game and, more, specifically, throughout the game’s main locations.

Lands’ positional value and cost

Excludingexile, Lands can find themselves positioned in four main locations:

The library: this is the starting location for most of the Lands in the deck; their value, in terms of generated benefit, is essentially non-existent
The hand: Lands naturally flow to the hand at each draw step; compared to the library, here their value is significantly increased, although their generated benefit is limited; sure, they are cards in hand, but they are not doing anything
The battlefield: for most of the game, the battlefield is the location where Lands generate their higher outcome; moving as many Lands as possible to the battlefield from any other area is almost always beneficial
The graveyard: much like the library, the graveyard can host Lands that generate no benefit and possess almost no value; however, their accessibility, however, is slightly increased

The four main Land areas and their intrinsic value

Quite obviously, the deck’s main strategy in terms of pure Resource Management is to increase the value and benefit generated by each Land, which, as we said, is mostly based on their positioning between the four main locations. In other words, moving Lands from one location to another, so as to increase their beneficial impact, is the primary way to alter the natural progression of a game’s main resource availability.

Provided the only criterion being an increase in generated value, the main movements can be easily mapped. What is even more interesting is that Magic has tuned its costs throughout the years, coming to a point where prices for each of these movements can easily be found within well-defined ranges:

Library-to-Board (L2B): this is quite likely the most important movement in a Land-focused strategy, to the point that its best example, Rampant Growth, has itself lent its name to all ramp-centred strategies in Magic; the price for this movement is usually two Mana, provided at least one is Green
Library-to-Hand (L2H): depending on it restrictions this effect ranges in price between one Mana in Lay of the Land and two Mana in Sylvan Scrying
Library-to-Graveyard (L2G): this movement has often very limited beneficial impact, to the point that it is either a by-product of a larger effect, as in Fork in the Road, or one of the modes of a self-fueling engine, as in Life from the Loam; as the benefit on its own is so limited, its cost is virtually less than a single Mana and, even then, a card granting just this effect would likely not be included in most decks
Graveyard-to-Hand (G2H): much like L2G, simply returning a Land from your graveyard to your hand does not make an entire card; the effect can be stapled onto a Creature, as in Cartographer, where the cost of the effect is roughly one Mana; other times, a buy two, get one free discount is applied, as in Life from the Loam‘s main effect
Hand-to-Battlefield (H2B): this effect is free for the first Land drop each turn; allowing a second iteration of this movement tends to be priced at a single Mana in Exploration, with a more or less linear progression in Azusa, Lost but Seeking, which allows two additional Land drops for two Mana – assuming the 1/2 Creature roughly
costs one Mana; interestingly, the cost of additional Land drops as a repeatable effect is close, but not exactly equal, to the cost of having them as one-time options; for reference, see Enter the Unknown, taxing a Mana for an additional Land drop, while Summer Bloom demands two Mana for three Land drops
Graveyard-to-Battlefield (G2B): interestingly enough, tracing a cost for this movement is quite hard; the effect is priced at two Mana for a single Land in Restore, at four Mana for all Lands in Splendid Reclamation, while permanent openings of this option tend to cost three Mana in Crucible of Worlds and Ramunap Excavator

The costs for Land movement between areas

Mana efficiency on a single-turn time horizon

Borrowing a bit from the Critical Path Method (CPM), it is easy to understand why direct ramp tends to be one of the most efficient paths for Mana growth, as minimal setup allows an increase with a 0.5 efficiency ratio on the following turn alone. This value is determined under the following premises:

Mana availability is only measured with a one-turn time horizon; this is a drastic simplification, as it ignores following paybacks, but we are removing from the picture one-shot effects like Dark Ritual and we are not considering odd behaviours like Teferi’s Isle phasing; this approach also ignores following turns in the calculation, as, having no fixed data on the average game duration, this immediate payback feels like a good proxy to at least wrap our heads around the real return rate
The discount rate for Mana between one turn and the next is neglectable

As anticipated, the resulting efficiency ratio of a straightforward ramp card like Rampant Growth, is equal to:

0.5 = 1 additional Mana next turn / 2 Mana spent this turn

A more complicated and slightly less efficient path revolves around L2H Land tutoring, followed by H2B additional Land drops. This generates the same result of an additional Land on the battlefield, at the cost of one additional card being played. Nevertheless, this path can still be very much worth pursuing under certain circumstances. For instance, decupling L2H from H2B ensures that each step can be executed autonomously. In Magic terms, this means that the two steps can be split across multiple turns, spending one Mana per movement, instead of two Mana on a single turn.

Moreover, the fact that effects like Exploration are permanent boosts to your available Land drop count means that the H2B movement only demands a one-time investment. This, obviously, is balanced by the fact that Exploration on its own does not guarantee that each of the additional Land drops is met, as it itself does not funnel Lands to the player’s hand. Hence, deckbuilding for Land-focused decks often demands the inclusion of Seek the Horizon effects.

Without going into the details of each possible path combination, it is interesting to see how different combinations of cards can build more or less reliable ramp engines. Interestingly, Magic can also creatively staple together multiple parallel effects, combining each effect’s individual cost. Just to name one, combine Lay of the Land and Rampant Growth and you get Cultivate.

Risultati immagini per cultivate mtg — Cultivate, art by Anthony Palumbo

Efficiency as an arbitrated parameter

Having established the cost of each movement, Magic itself serves as the arbiter to guarantee the efficiency of each effect, determined as its benefit-to-cost ratio, is maintained within safe boundaries. This is where the comparison with companies’ Resource Management efficiency breaks.

To put things into perspective, a card with a too favourable ratio would not get printed, or would immediately get banned upon realization of its raw power. Think Rampant Growth costing a single Mana, or Hour of Promise costing only two Mana.

On the other side of the spectrum, an extremely inefficient card would simply not see any play. Most Commander players would likely ignore a three Mana Lay of the Land, as the cost would be too high and the efficiency too low.

This arbitration does not exist in companies and project. While very inefficient Resource Management tends to be addressed and, hopefully, improved as fast as possible, no arbitration from above exists. Outside of the limitations of physics as we understand it, there is nothing preventing companies from constantly seeking the highest possible level of efficiency. Were a company to introduce a breakthrough in technology, improving its Resource Management to an unparalleled level of efficiency, the entire market sector would be shaken.

This, at the end, is what disruptive innovation is. History provides great examples of companies redefining the way resources are organized, transformed and, in general, managed. These breakthroughs often end up shaking the very foundations of the surrounding ecosystem. On the bright side, this is the very foundation of progress. On the other hand, the tilt in the ecosystem’s balance can drive off competitors that cannot follow the new pace.

Being a game and not a competitive market sector, Magic demands a constant balance of its many ecosystems. Innovation is continuous, with constant exploration and adjustments in its internal parameters. However, when introduced, disruptive progress caused by breakthrough innovations mostly causes negative effects.

In the face of extreme change, players may adapt to the new balance, discovering new peaks of efficiency. But, as a result, the quality of the ecosystem is negatively affected, polarizing all aspects o the ecosystems towards the newly introduced innovation. Just take Eldrazi Winter as an example: the Modern format indeed increased its internal efficiency, allowing faster Mana and more powerful plays. But the entire ecosystem was forced to adopt this change or inevitably perish.

Magic, as a competitive game, thrives in competition and not under the premises of a monopoly. As a result, Eye of Ugin was soon banned, despite having existed in the format for years. This, because only under the right circumstances it had introduced a disruptive Resource Management breakthrough.

More Resource Management fun

Having gone through basic Resource Management, efficiency and how it applies to ramp in Magic, the next step is looking at how resources are converted into an end product. More specifically, we will look at how Lands can close the circle and introduce a complete paradigm shift in the process we have analysed so far.

As you can imagine, Borborygmos will serve as the frame for a Magic-focused look into resource conversion. Stay tuned!