Mana Ratios: The Nonbasics

I first want to apologize for some of the formatting errors in my last article, Im still trying to figure this whole thing out and hopefully Ive worked out most of the errors for this article.

Editor's note- those were actually my fault. -KC

As I mentioned last week in Mana Ratios: The Basics, one of the ways to increase the likelihood of being able to cast your spells is to use nonbasic lands. To be more specific, Im referring to nonbasic lands that have the ability to produce more than one color of mana.

Replacing Basic Land with Nonbasic Land

At this point, Im going to assume that you have a fair enough grasp on the equation that I presented in my last weeks article. If not, this may be a good time to go back and look it over. Lets say youve got your newly built deck, youve applied the ratio equation and have your basic land counts. The next step is to replace these basic lands with nonbasic lands. For this article, we are only going to focus on one attribute of these nonbasic lands: the colors of mana the land can produce. Here are some simple tips on how to do this:

1) Nonbasic lands should only replace a basic land if at least one of the colors it can produce is the same as the basic land it is replacing. For example, if youre building a Bant deck and want to use Sejiri Refuge, it should not replace a Forest. Sure, your blue and white spells will be easier to cast, but your green spells will be more difficult to cast. If you replace a Plains with a Sejiri Refuge, however, the difficulty of casting white spells and green spells remains the same, but it will be easier to cast your blue spells. The same goes for fetch lands, such as Verdant Catacombs, since it will turn into a land that can either produce green or black mana. Finally, the only land a Lonely Sandbar should replace is an Island. Hopefully this is common sense to most of you, but it needed to be said just in case.

2) Try to replace basic lands evenly. For example, if you have a deck with 13 Mountains and 7 Swamps and you want to add 4 Dragonskull Summits, then replace 2 Mountains and 2 Swamps. If youre forced to choose to replace one more than another, such as if you only own 3 Dragonskull Summits, then replace more of whatever land has the higher count. So, since this example has more Mountains than swampss, replace 2 Mountains and 1 Swamp with 3 Dragonskull Summits.

3) If a nonbasic land produces only colorless mana, use the same method in tip #2, treating the nonbasic land as though it can produce any color of mana. This makes it so that each colors ratio is decreased by about the same amount. However, do this knowing that it will make it more difficult to cast your color-specific spells.

4) If a nonbasic land produces no mana and does not allow you to fetch for a land, then it should not be counted as a land in your calculations at all. For example, if you want to use Arena, you should count it as a spell that costs 0 mana, rather than a mana producer.

Calculating Mana Ratios with Nonbasic Lands

Alright, lets head back to the home page and pick out a Newb deck to work with. Here are the current contents of ArtyPatys Giants Ftw:

2x Zektar Shrine Expedition, 2x Fireball, 4x Ponder, 2x Pyroclasm, 3x Sleep, 4x Lightning Bolt, 3x Alphetto Alchemist, 2x Bladetusk Boar, 3x Dragon Whelp, 2x Gomazoa, 4x Jackal Familiar, 1x Siege-Gang Commander, 1x Sphinx of Jwar Isle, 4x Stone Giant, and 3x Wall of Frost

Now, lets use the progressive pattern method that we learned last week to find out the counts for each color.

Blue = 20 ||| Red = 28 ||| Total = 48

Next, we calculate the ratios:

Blue = 20/48 = 0.417 ||| Red = 28/48 = 0.583

Multiply the ratios by the number of lands that the deck is going to use (in this case, 20) to get the basic land counts:

Islands = 0.417 x 20 = 8.340 = 8 ||| Mountains = 0.583 x 20 = 11.660 = 12

Alright, now lets say that we want to add some nonbasic lands. Lets calculate in 4x Steam Vents and 3x Scalding Tarn. Both of these nonbasic lands produce or fetch for lands that produce blue or red mana, so they should replace Islands and Mountains evenly. Since were adding an odd number of nonbasics, the extra one should replace the basic land that is currently represented more, in this case, Mountains. This results in the following land counts:

3x Island, 8x Mountain, 3x Scalding Tarn, and 4x Steam Vents

We can work backwards to see the effect that adding these nonbasic lands has on the difficulty to cast spells. Before we added the nonbasic lands, we had a 13% (8/60) chance of drawing a card that resulted in blue mana being produced and a 20% (12/60) chance of drawing a card that resulted in red mana being produced. Now, with the addition of the nonbasics, we have a 17% (10/60) chance of drawing a card that results in blue mana being produced and a 25% (15/60) chance of drawing a card that results in red mana being produced. Since our percentages for both blue and red production went up, it is now easier to cast both blue and red spells.

As I said, for this article, we were only focusing on the colors the nonbasics produced in order to make it easier to cast our spells. However, there are many other factors to consider when deciding to add a nonbasic land. I mean, you can build a two colored deck that has all nonbasics where each nonbasic land produces both colors and enters the battlefield tapped, but is that really a good idea? Well look into these other factors next week.

So Long, But Not for Long

Thanks for reading! If you have a method for incorporating nonbasics that differs from mine, let me know. As always, Im willing to help anyone with any problems they are having with calculations or deck-building in general. Im also still interested in hearing recommendations on what youd like to read about. Comment with your methods, ideas, questions, and anything else below!