News

As you might have noticed, every once and a while when you play Magic: the Gathering, you will draw a few too many or too few lands. This is not much of a problem, so it is often overlooked. So, let's all just hold hands and sing together about love. If you haven't noticed I'm being sarcastic. No matter what you do, you or your opponent will get mana screwed and you will find one of you playing a nice game of Solitaire. I'm not sure how the scandal has survived for so long, and it should drive you crazy. It drove me crazy a long time ago. Think I am just bitter and should learn to shuffle better? Not going to work.

In five draft tournaments on Magic Online I got mana screwed nearly every game and lost against the first opponent of each with the exception of one... in which my opponent got mana screwed instead of me (who just happened to be one of the best Magic players online.) I played 40 card decks containing at least 16 lands, and usually even more mana sources making my deck nearly half mana-producers. That made me draw all land about half the games and no land the other half. I even tried playing a mono-green deck in one of the draft tournaments to no avail. And I don't refuse to take mulligans. In general I am willing to mulligan. Unfortunately in a fair game that one or two cards lost usually will cost you the game.

Obviously skill has a lot to do with the game. Out of 3 games against one player chances are that one of the three games will be pretty fair. Unfortunately I have found myself severely mana screwed on an average of 1/3 games. That isn't something you can mulligan away, because chances are you will just never draw another land again, or you will just keep drawing lands forever after your opening draw.

I would also like to mention the fact that when playing with real cards giving and avoiding mana-screw is much easier. Between matches if you make sure your lands aren't clumped together you probably will draw around the right amount of lands. That is, unless the opponent only cuts the top card of the deck, or shuffles your deck. I don't know why, but whenever someone cuts a deck like that (or shuffles your deck) it almost always gives me the worst possible hands. The way people shuffle cards is not really random, and certain ways of shuffling and cutting decks will always have advantages.

What really pisses me off is Wizard's smart-alickey attitude about the whole mana-screw problem. Mark Rosewater asked for our ideas on making the game better and said something stupid like, Oh yeah, don't even bother telling us about fixing the mana-screw problem. Don't like getting mana screwed? Too bad. Land's are what makes the game great! It's lands that gives us five colors to choose from, my friend. That's every color of the rainbow. Well guess what? You're not helping. The fact that the game has a huge mana-screw problem isn't merely due to the fact that the game uses lands. It's also a problem because Wizards does absolutely nothing about it. Given all the play testing and creative minds they have to work with you'd think that a simple solution would be inevitable. Here are three simple suggestions that could save the game:

• 1.) Draw 2 cards per turn.
• 2.) One conditionless mulligan.
• 3.) More cards made to help with the situation.

I. Draw 2 cards per turn. I learned the game using the alternate rule that allowed everyone to draw an additional card every turn. Back then mana-screw was almost a non-existent problem. This has the wonderful effect of making 1-mana cost creatures much better. Generally they aren't worth using, but this might help change people's minds. Unfortunately Wizards has noticed this problem, so many one-mana cost creatures are finally worth using and might even be too powerful if this rule is used. Drawing 2 cards per turn might give ravager affinity decks too strong of an advantage. But that can be a temporary problem easily fixed once Mirrodin is rotated out of type 2. Either way, I have a feeling this would be the perfect solution to mana-screw problems in draft tournaments.

II. One conditionless mulligan. One conditionless mulligan. I never liked the paris mulligan. After you draw your second hand of a mere 6 cards the odds you will need to mulligan again is around 40 to 50%. Your draw will most likely be pretty bad the second time around. Can you win after doing one or two Paris mulligans? Sure, but not in any fair game I have played. Any good player will be such a powerful threat that one card lost from a Paris mulligan will guarantee you lose unless that player gets at least slightly mana screwed. So, I am basically suggesting that one mulligan should be allowed for any reason and no fewer cards would be drawn. Even if only one mulligan is allowed this is a heck of a lot more reasonable than the Paris mulligan. I have no idea why a conditionless mulligan was never taken seriously. Whenever I play casual games I let my opponent take a few conditionless mulligans and I have never regretted it. When the opponent does NOT take the mulligan he or she almost always should concede after the first few rounds due to an incredibly terrible draw.

III. More cards made to help with the situation. More cards made to help with the situation. I admit that some cards do help deal with mana screw. Unfortunately those cards are almost always bad enough to make you lose for using them (Serum Powder). But I do feel that there are many good cards that can help you avoid getting mana screwed. Unfortunately Wizards has never taken their successful solutions seriously and they are usually seen to quickly rotate out of type 2 never to be seen again. Examples of this include cycling, landcycling, and alternate casting costs. There are two categories of abilities that are my greatest hope of avoiding mana screw: Alternate use and alternate casting cost.

Alternate casting cost. This is the most interesting solution to the problem. Cards with an alternate casting cost are great at helping players who don't draw enough lands, but they don't help players who draw all lands. Good examples of cards with alternate casting costs are Force of Will and Basking Rootwalla. Mercadian Masques had quite a few fairly good cards with alternate casting costs, unfortunately this trend was always short-lived and would never touch the core set. The best thing about alternate casting costs are the limitless creative possibilities. Wizards has mostly used fairly obvious alternate casting costs, but eventually they might make some more interesting ones.

Alternate Use. Stalking Stones, cycling, landcycling, and morph are all examples of alternate use abilities.

Mana lands that also have non-mana abilities, such as Mishra's Factory and Stalking Stones is the most neglected and untapped solution to the mana screw problem. Lands can be used to replace about any card in Magic with the added effect of giving you mana before you can cast it. What was Wizards thinking when they made Island Fish Jasconius? Talk about a perfect card idea put to waste. It's an Island and a Fish. So, why not make a walking island monster instead of a rare people would have to throw away? (Look to the right to see what the card should have been in the first place.)

Landcycling was one of the best ideas Wizards ever came up with, but since mana screw was never really a problem, Wizards decidedto give very few cards this ability.

Of course an obvious flaw of landcycling is that it always requires mana to landcycle a card. Other than that it is the perfect ability, because it helps thin your deck of lands and the card doesn't have to be landcycled if you already drew too many lands.

The original kind of cycling also has a lot of untapped potential. Why not give lands cycling abilities? There can be a land that can be used as a lightning bolt if you cycle it. Of course lands could also have abilities that merely require you to discard them from your hand as well.

Morph was fun. The only problem is that there was only one good creature with morph. At best, morph resembled Echo and required you to pay for a creature a couple times to give it a slightly reduced mana cost. Morphing a creature could help mana troubles by allowing you to play an overcosted creature as a overcosted colorless Pearled Unicorn instead. Of course, you'd have to draw at least three lands to even make use of that. A much better use of Morph would have been to give lands morph. Then if you keep drawing lands, you could at least give them a small use.

I actually suspect that Morph was Wizard's greatest disaster, because it helped Wizards avoid the Holy Grail of all abilities that would solve the mana screw problem—mana-morph. The ability to play cards face down as colorless lands would definitely help. Now that cards are already played face down as morph creatures, we probably won't see mana-morph for at least another 10 years.

The time to revolutionize Magic has come. Don't take no for an answer. Hassle Wizards until they give us a solution to the Mana Screw Problem. Write letters and emails. Tell them about this article and use logicical arguments and/or rhetoric. We shall prevail.