Magic: The Gathering - Page 403

On June 27 2013 04:02 micronesia wrote:
Question about mana:

I always hear that the magic number for number of lands is 17 (in a 40 card draft deck). Obviously, this depends on factors like how many colors you are running, how many of them are dual lands, number of non-land sources, etc.

I find when I go 2 color and use 17 lands (let's say, 1 gate) I end up with too little land one or two times per tournament minimum, and rarely end up with too much land. It seems like 17 just isn't enough, but it could just be luck of the draw on my part. In other words, my experience shows that 17 lands means I will often have too little land, and rarely have too much land. Is this different than what most people typically experience? I'm inclined to bump my 'go to' number up to 18 and see how it goes.

On June 27 2013 04:17 Judicator wrote:


Like I said, its part of the game.

I kind of figured that's where you were going with this.

17's the magic number for most decks, 15-16 for super aggressive decks or combo decks like cube storm where you have mana artifacts, 18 if you have bigdrops.dec or 5colornofixing.dec. These are just general guidelines.

I don't know what kind of decks you like to draft, you could be just taking more high drops than you really should.

On June 27 2013 05:15 Cel.erity wrote:
I think 18 lands is rarely correct. In a lot of formats, you want to be running 16, but DGR is one of the more mana-hungry formats we've had in awhile. The slower decks in this format would rather have cluestones than additional lands though, and cluestones are so easy to pick up that I wouldn't consider running 18 in most circumstances barring multiple mana sinks/lots of extort.

Mana flood is much worse than mana screw.

On June 27 2013 05:15 Cel.erity wrote:
I think 18 lands is rarely correct. In a lot of formats, you want to be running 16, but DGR is one of the more mana-hungry formats we've had in awhile. The slower decks in this format would rather have cluestones than additional lands though, and cluestones are so easy to pick up that I wouldn't consider running 18 in most circumstances barring multiple mana sinks/lots of extort. Mana flood is much worse than mana screw.

On June 28 2013 05:32 micronesia wrote:
I have a couple of questions. The first one is about when to play land:

Let's say you are going first and have several lands, as well as a 2 drop (2/2) and a 3 drop (3/3) in your hand. You play a land, then your opponent plays a land. You play a second land and a 2 drop, then your opponent plays a second land and a 2 drop. You can play the land, swing, and then put down the 3 drop. Alternately you could play the 3 drop before you swing, but that's obviously worse. However, the third option is to swing, play the land, then play the three drop. When do you play the land before swinging, and when do you play it after? I'm not sure of the pros and cons there. Obviously this is still situational and without showing each card in my hand and exactly what my opponent is showing, specific advice can't be offered. I just tried to set up a general situation to illustrate the two choices I'm stuck between. I've seen opponents do it both ways. Generally, when do you want to withhold whether or not you are going to play a third land? Here are the two sides as I see it:

Withhold the land until after the swing: He can't tell if you are mana screwed or not, so he has less information available when he decides whether or not to block.

Get the land out before the swing: You have more mana available, so there are more instants I can afford, meaning more possible tricks to use during combat. This decreases the chances of him blocking, while allowing me to block his counterattack with my 3 drop that he's not yet aware of.

My other question is just thoughts on a 6 booster sealed deck I used:


The split card near the top is alive/well.



My thoughts on the deck:

I have a fair amount of mana fixing, but going four colors (even though two of them are less represented) without multiple cards that create mana of any color is risky. Gleam of battle is probably not worth it unless I'm going pure boros and it complements my other cards well. I have two cards that utilize both of my secondary colors WU, and neither of them will suddenly end the game if I get them into play, so that's really pushing it as well. I think the gruul component of my deck is good. If I had a few more relevant green/red cards I probably would have went 2 color.

What are the biggest weaknesses of the deck I built, and how could I have utilized the remaining cards better? I found it a bit tricky (in the allotted time) to narrow down what to use. Maybe I could have gone W/B and splashed a third color for a couple of other cards.

edit: oh there is something wrong with the basic lands there... one of those forests should be a mountain

On June 28 2013 08:55 micronesia wrote:
Thanks guys for your thoughts. The one thing I still don't see is why 'hold the gates' is necessarily a bad card. If you have several gates (I had 4 this time), isn't giving your creatures vigilance plus extra toughness very useful? It's not very expensive, but as an enchantment I guess it's pretty easy to remove it.

On June 28 2013 09:48 Audemed wrote:
Essentially, it's bad because it requires 3 things to happen. Firstly, you need the enchantment itself.

Second, you need to have a gate out, which won't always happen

Third, and most importantly, you need a creature that's got a butt big enough to bother even blocking with. Most of the creatures in draft that you block with, you don't/cant attack with in any case, so the extra toughness isn't really helping much other than making your dudes a little more likely to survive some attacks.