Weird question about mana flood and mana screw
Commander Deck Help forum
Posted on April 1, 2016, 12:15 a.m. by MagicalHacker
What would you consider to be the best indication of being mana screwed or flooded?
For example, I could say being mana flooded is having two lands in hand after playing my land for my turn 7 and being mana screwed is missing my turn 5 land drop or earlier.
Raging_Squiggle says... #3
Being mana screwed means either you're only on 2 or 3 lands when it's turn 6 or 7, or you are completely missing one or more colors in your deck and now you have dead cards in your hand that you can't cast.
Being mana flooded means when it's usually after turn 5, every second draw is a land, so you usually have at least 3 or 4 lands in your hand. What happens to me is drawing 4 or 5 lands in a row.
April 1, 2016 12:47 a.m.
asasinater13 says... #4
completely relative to the deck and situation. Mana flooded is having too many lands and not enough action, it can be anywhere in your first 5 turns and as late as just hitting a pocket of lands from turn 15 until you die on turn 20 when you just needed one more piece of gas to finish the deal.
Mana screwed is the opposite, in its truest form it's getting stuck on only what was in your opening hand (when it's an insufficient amount to last the whole game) while it can be loosely applied to just being one land off of casting your ulamog or other big flashy finisher late in the game for multiple turns (this is a very very loose example, but being stuck on 5 lands with a bunch of 6 drops is something I would still call mana screw).
April 1, 2016 3:33 a.m.
MagicalHacker says... #5
The reason I ask is because I want to use the information from a general consensus to calculate baseline deck construction guidelines based on statistical probabilities rather than icky anecdotal data. (37 lands/rocks with 10 draw cards has worked out best for me, but most people think that it's dangerously low, so it's time for math to solve the case.)
I have all the probabilities set up already, I just want to know what constraints I want to set up.
Maybe I can say mana screw is not drawing a fourth land by turn 4 or not drawing a fifth land by turn 5 after keeping three lands in a seven card opening hand and mana flood is only drawing two nonlands or less by turn 4 or three nonlands by turn 5 after keeping 5 lands in a 7 card opening hand.
Or is that still too specific to a decks strategy?
April 1, 2016 6:38 a.m.
I think the best way to describe mana screw/flood is when your plays start to become limited due to mana. If you're mana screwed, you can't cast spells/activate abilities at a reasonable pace due to not enough lands/wrong colors. If you're flooded, it means you are unable to keep up with your opponents' plays because you are drawing limited amounts of non-mana cards. In both cases, you're behind in tempo due to mana problems.
So to answer your question on building the deck, you want to decide which points your deck starts to lose tempo due to too much or too little tempo. Control decks are more often to get mana screwed than flooded because of their card advantage (Damnation or Sphinx's Revelation, for example). Aggro decks are more often to get mana flooded because they need fewer resources to operate (Umezawa's Jitte, Stoneforge Mystic).
I'd focus less on exact numbers and more on what plays you make each turn. Certain plays on specific turns will give you a better idea of when you're having mana problems. Tooth and Nail entwined on turn 5, for example, means you want 9 mana plus whatever you need to execute any combos. Thus, you know you're mana screwed if a hand doesn't set you up for 9 mana on turn 5. You know you're flooded if you have far more than 9 mana on turn 5, but no Tooth and Nail.
April 1, 2016 7:42 a.m.
nobu_the_bard says... #7
It might be worth taking deck's mana curve into account if you are thinking of writing an article or a rule of thumb or something.
For example, my Mayael the Anima deck: Mayael, Friend of Monsters EDH. 6 cards cost 5 mana, 11 cards cost 6 mana, 8 cards cost 7 mana- that is 25%+ of the deck right there not playable with less than 5 mana, Mayael herself aside. I need that mana as fast as possible and if I have less than 6 by turn 7 I am mana screwed enough to not play much of the deck (without taking colors into consideration- many of the cards require two or three specific colors to cast or activate). This deck basically can't get mana flooded.
All of my decks are mana-hungry, but my Brimaz, King of Oreskos deck, Brimaz, Feline Weaponsmith EDH, can run lean. It typically wants to have at least 5 mana (enough to play an equipment and equip it in one turn) but this isn't really necessary, particularly if the opponents are playing slowly. About half the deck is playable on 4 mana; Brimaz can be attacking on turn 4 if I have 3 mana by turn 3, and I will likely mulligan until I have that in my opening hand if possible. The deck gets mana flooded easily though; if I have more than 6 mana by turn 7, I am not making enough plays to maintain aggression.
April 1, 2016 9:58 a.m.
I think of Mana Screwed and Mana flooded as being unable to cast a relevant spell for three consecutive turns or more. In EDH, you can typically politick the table to buy yourself another couple of turns, so you might want to push that up to 4 for commander. The terms just say which problem you've wound up falling on.
Personally, I add "string of bad draws" to the list, where you're still drawing a good mix of lands and spells, but none of the spells are relevant. This one kinda bleeds into bad deck design, but even the best commander decks will have all three problems to one extent or another. Even 60 card decks will occasionally have them.
April 1, 2016 10:08 a.m.
This is a good question. I feel like it is more of a spectrum than a strict "yes or no".
Incidentally, I used to have regular problems with this until I changed my shuffling technique. Before this change, I would characterize my level of screwedness with the number and size of mana clumps found within my deck so that it was a descriptor of the entire deck distribution and not just the particular cards that I had drawn.
Often clumping leads to both problems, sometimes in the same match or even game.
Another different problem I have had is color screw - but that is a budgetary / deck construction issue.
I guess I find myself responding to " string of bad luck" arguments, preferring to think about underlying issues or more easily identifiable patterns.
April 1, 2016 10:31 a.m. Edited.
MagicalHacker says... #10
Okay, yes, it's better to take the specifics of the deck into consideration for its manabase, but is it really that extreme to ask for a baseline ratio that is supported by statistical evidence?
I guess my final question is this:
Are there any better criteria for statistically defining mana screw as missing your fourth or fifth land drop and for statistically defining mana flood as having two lands in hand after playing your fourth or fifth land drop? (I am simplifying the deck construction as either land or nonland, so that CMC, color, and other attributes are not being taken into consideration, since all of them relate to attributes outside the scope of these calculations.)
April 1, 2016 12:40 p.m.
asasinater13 says... #11
if you're looking for EDH I generally want no less than 35 lands with at least three to five rocks/ramp at 3 or less mana (preferably 2 or less) like signets, mind stone, sol ring, etc. That gets to around 40 cards dedicated to mana (depending on my deck build I run more, for example I have an ezuri deck that draws a lot of cards through the late game so I dedicated morespots to getting ezuri out a turn earlier on the knowledge that I'll draw past excessive mana rocks in the late game. There are also builds that can use excessive card draw to run less mana production because they don't need it until later rather than first 3 turns of the game, and can rely on getting to their card draw to get to the extra mana). basically it's way too subjective to have a perfect rule on it, but when specifying having X number of mana sources counting lands, I wouldn't count things like Gilded Lotus or Caged Sun in the same group as lands because they aren't helpful until you're already at large amounts of mana. I feel like the cost of a mana rock is an important distinction to make when counting it in place of a land.
April 1, 2016 1:21 p.m.
nobu_the_bard says... #12
He's trying to define mana screw/flood to calculate ideal land counts.
Going to have to say, because it's variable what a deck's target mana "sweet spot" is, to create a general rule that'd be useful for analysis, I'd look at what the target number of lands is by some specific turn. Perhaps turn 5 for EDH. I think competitive decks typically are at full steam by then- you'd want to check with someone with more experience playing competitively.
This should give an idea of what would be considered too low or high, since competitive decks are under pressure to make plays at a certain rate, so there's likely less variation than just looking at random decks. You could set a threshold like, if a competitive deck with a curve that peaks at 5 cannot make plays on turn 5, it is mana screwed. If the same deck has no cards with the peak CMC to play but it has enough lands by turn 5, it is mana flooded. (I picked arbitrary numbers out of a hat as an example.)
By "peak CMC" I mean, if the mana curve looks like a bell curve for a given deck, looking at what it peaks at. Its kind of a rough definition and won't apply everywhere. I am just brainstorming here. Another term or value might make more sense.
I don't think a universal rule applies well but you could make a reasonable estimate and add corollaries like "if the deck's CMC curve peaks below X, the ideal number of lands by turn 5 decreases by 1" or something. The X would be whatever seems like a decent value to make your calculation by.
April 1, 2016 1:33 p.m. Edited.
I am actually reading this book called "the end of average" in my spare moments lol!
The whole premise is that a single statistical average is often not helpful for understanding many situations or characterizing groups of people. This is especially true of diverse groups or whenever we attempt to apply information about an average over a group to an individual within that group.
As a Statistics person reading this book, I feel that the usefulness of the average varies by situation. Sometimes other Statistics or methods are more helpful. There tends to be a great deal of increased uncertainty whenever information about a group gets applied to an individual.
It seems like we all know and experience this thing called 'Mana uncooperativeness" but characterizing it in a useful way probably would require a more subtle method than the strict average number of land drops drawn because of the variability in decks.
I am imagining something like a measure of deviation from a theoretical expected distribution. This could be based on draws or the overall deck. Some decks may experience loss of function with only very little difference from what is expected while others might be more resilient. There may be subtle differences between the state of being screwed and the level of inconsistency.
April 1, 2016 2:10 p.m.
nobu_the_bard says... #14
"There may be subtle differences between the state of being screwed and the level of inconsistency."
I wish I had conversations where statements like this made sense in context more often.
michael921 says... #2
I think that the definition of mana screw or flood depends on the deck that you are playing and in what format. Modern goblins can play with only a total of three mana, while many commander decks don't mind having like 10 land plus mana stones.
That being said, my opinion is that it counts as being mana flooded or screwed when it actively hampers the deck's ability to function.
April 1, 2016 12:34 a.m.