Tolarian Tutor: Building Better Limited Mana Bases in Draft and Sealed for Magic: The Gathering

Tolarian Tutor: Role Assessment – Are you offense or defense in your games of Magic: The Gathering? Find out here: https://youtu.be/2bMHoVaSBQA

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You’ve finally built your deck after drafting three packs, crafting a cohesive and powerful combination of creatures and non-creature spells that will hopefully help you take down your pod during FNM. But no Magic player can exist on spells alone – you’re going to need to add lands to make a playable deck, but how many and what should you choose?

This is the question we’re looking to answer in today’s Tolarian Tutor. When constructing your deck from either a Sealed pool or a draft, there are many different elements you’ll need to balance to become victorious. We’ll cover all of these in today’s session, including balancing multiple colors in a deck, good mana sources, how our mana curve affects our mana sources, what to do when splashing a color, and reexamining the color ratio theory we introduced in our Mana Curving and Land Base lesson.

We’re not beginners anymore, but we’re not at the Pro Tour yet! This is for people who already play at Friday Night Magic but want to improve and get better. This is for intermediates, and this is Tolarian Tutor!

First, we need to talk about balance. Building a deck is like putting together a recipe for cooking, part inspiration and part science. You’ll need to compare and evaluate different ingredients, like spices, sugar and salt in order to create a delicious dish. In Magic, you’ll be balancing spells and lands when making your deck to create a cohesive, game winning whole.

This is particularly crucial in a Limited environment, where you’ll usually be playing a 40 card deck. With fewer cards, every card you draw will be crucial in making sure your strategy comes through. Though most Limited decks run 15 – 18 lands, we’ll be going over some of the broader elements you’ll need to keep in mind before focusing on specific recommendations.

The different elements we’ll need to balance when considering our mana base are:

Spells: Mana Curve, and Colors: How Many Are We Playing? Where Are They On Our Mana Curve?

These parts need to come together harmoniously in your game plan. As we’ve been reiterating time and again, you always need to know what your deck is trying to do and how it’s going to win to be an effective Magic player.

Music Courtesy Of:
“Vintage Education” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
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