Should the Number of Mana Symbols in a Card's Casting Cost Reflect is Power?
General forum
Posted on Sept. 14, 2025, 5:30 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
I saw this post on Mark Rosewater's Tumblr page, in which Rosewater stated that the number of colored mana symbols in a card's casting cost are more about how dedicated a player should be to that color than about how powerful the card is, and I am not certain if I agree with that idea, because I feel that a greater number of mana symbols in a card's cost should make it more powerful, such as a card that costs dealing a greater amount of damage than does a card that costs .
What does everyone else say, about this? Do you believe that the number of mana symbols in the casting cost of a card should reflect that card's power? I certainly am interested to hear what you have to say, on this matter.
Mana Leak vs. Counterspell. Murder vs. Vanquish the Weak. Greenweaver Druid vs. Llanowar Tribe. There aren't a ton of cards that are directly comparable for color weight and effect, keeping rarity the same, but my general statement is that the more specific the mana cost is, the better the effect is. There's probably a handful of counterexamples, but I submit that not only should it be the case, it generally is the case.
September 14, 2025 8:29 p.m.
FormOverFunction says... #4
I feel like this is sort of a “a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B” situation. I think of card strength as being on a sliding scale, with colorless things being VERY basic and utilitarian, one-pip cards being sort of a generic colored mana spell, and then multiple-mono-colored pip cards as being stronger (like what you’re saying, DemonDragonJ). They’re stronger, though, because they’re cast at the exclusion of other colored spells, because the land requirements are tighter. A multi-colored pips spell, though, is (theoretically) better because you’re getting two distinctly color-separate effects. Lightning Helix was probably the first multicolored card I saw like that, that really struck home the idea of “oh, of course. Red for damage, white for life gain. Neat.” The upside is you get both a Lightning Bolt and a Healing Salve (sort of) in just one card… and the downside is that one Counterspell stops everything. Now that I’m typing it out, I think I’m in the camp of “more colored pips generally should mean it’s stronger” but mono colored spells seem more complicated, as if you make it TOO strong then people will revert back to all-monocolored decks, like (I can’t get back to the screen to see who I’m responding after… I’m sorry) was saying. Drain Life is the best example I can think of, where you are severely limited by color. It’s a GREAT card, and I love the theme, but I can’t remember the last time I saw someone use it. WotC has worked really hard to make everything a two or three color minimum, commander and otherwise, so I don’t expect we’ll see much of a resurgence in mono color power. Except for green. Green has always been VERY proud of itself ;p This is why we need more forest walk.
September 14, 2025 8:31 p.m.
wallisface Skimming some current tier lists, it looks like pretty much every major tournament format has at least one monocolor deck in its top four. Vintage has mono- Initiative, Legacy has mono- Mystic Forge and mono- Prison, Pauper has mono- Burn and mono- Terror, Modern has mono-(ish) Eldrazi Tron, Pioneer has mono- Aggro and mono- Midrange, and Standard has mono- Aggro. So while it's not everyone, monocolored decks aren't exactly unpopular.
September 14, 2025 8:41 p.m.
wallisface says... #6
legendofa I was not stipulating that mono-colour decks were unpopular - more just illustrating that pip-density doesn’t appear to correlate to power as seen within competitive environments. While mono-coloured decks do crop-up, I wouldn’t consider them to have a big meta-share within formats.
If pip-density did correlate directly to a card being more powerful, then I would expect to see far higher prevalence of those pip-heavy cards in most/all competitive formats.
September 14, 2025 9:02 p.m.
wallisface I think this can be resolved by looking at rarity. The most obvious examples I found were mostly common, with a couple of uncommon. At those rarities, there aren't that many different effects, and direct comparison is easy. Constructed formats tend to lean more on rares and unique uncommons, with a healthy splash of mythic rares. At these rarities, there's much more complexity, so it's harder to directly compare cards. In, for example, Modern Boros, is Seasoned Pyromancer a better card than Fable of the Mirror-Breaker Flip? Is either one better than Affinity's Pinnacle Emissary? They have different effects and fill different roles. My position is that where cards can be differentiated solely by color weight, like in my examples above, the card with more color weight creates a bigger/better effect. Genuine question, are there any cards at higher rarities that are so directly comparable? Are the any examples of competitive-tier card comparisons where lower color weight produces a more desirable effect?
September 14, 2025 9:47 p.m.
wallisface says... #8
legendofa as you mention, trying to directly compare rarer cards can be tricky due to lots of effects being unique. But also due to the natural power-creep of magic making comparing cards across years difficult/muddy.
I think people feel like they have a particular grasp on what extra pips constitute in a card, but it’s difficult to back up those feelings in a factual way that’s not going to have an equal measure of counterpoints.
My own feeling on colour-pips is not that they add any additional “power” to a card, but instead add weight to “how much in-colour does this feel”. Cards like the before-mentioned Seasoned Pyromancer doesn’t feel any better than Fable of the Mirror-Breaker Flip (Fable is the stronger card in many cases), but Pyromancer feels a lot more red in its effects.
My personal inkling is that cards with more pips in a certain colour tend to exhibit more “pure” effects true to a colour, and many of these effects may be scarcely seen in single-pip-variants. That doesn’t mean they’re stronger, just that they have a slightly different set of tools.
September 14, 2025 10:52 p.m.
wallisface That's a fair take. Pretty much on line with my thoughts on the higher rarity cards.
September 14, 2025 11:08 p.m.
hyalopterouslemur says... #10
I think what he's more saying is that R&D is using multiple pips more sparingly, and mostly in (because it's addictive) and (because of all the ramp options you have). Another set where devotion is a big deal would (temporarily) change that tho.
September 15, 2025 2:58 p.m.
From a mechanical perspective, cards with multiple coloured pips are harder to splash in a draft deck. They take more commitment to their colour in your mana base. How colour-intense a spell's cost is can be a tool to help WotC carve out draft archetypes in a set, putting pressure on certain spells so that they are less popular choices in archetypes that they aren't generally intended for. Players are still given the option of playing them as splash cards though. Players just have to be willing to gamble on if their mana base will work out for them when they have those cards in hand.
Even if WotC makes that choice for a mechanical reason it does often give give the flavour impression that certain cards are just more dedicated to the nature of their colour, which is certainly something that WotC has also done. Going back to the early days of the game, White Knight cost two white mana to emphasize that it is a white knight. It's the same with Black Knight. And since their mana requirements are pretty intense for their point in the mana curve, it was harder to play a playset of both in the same deck with the limited amount of dual lands in the game at the time. That meant that you were more likely to see the Knights facing off on opposite sides of the table instead of beside each other, fitting the intended oppositional flavour of the two cards.
All of that to say, more colour-intense mana costs have more of a role to play in card design than just to indicate a card's relative power, although it is fun when WotC does print a particular card as a strong payoff for really dedicating your deck towards a particular colour.
September 15, 2025 10:44 p.m.
hyalopterouslemur says... #12
Note that this mostly affects common and uncommon because limited.
Another thing Maro's been hinting at is more hybrid mana. A hybrid mana card can be fought over by 7 two-color combinations, rather than merely 4.
wallisface says... #2
If that were the case, then everyone would just be running mono-coloured decks, and the game would be worse for it.
September 14, 2025 8:04 p.m.