Card costs, Land mana calculation and CMC
TappedOut forum
Posted on Oct. 1, 2020, 2:57 a.m. by ARK607
Hello,
can someone explain why TappedOut does not count Panoramas like Bant Panorama as a source for , or ? I have not tried it yet (have been using deckstats.net mostly, came here to compare functionality) but does this happen will all Fetch lands? In my opinion they should not be completely ignored because it will mess with the Card costs vs. Land mana calculation.
My other question is about split cards like Dusk / Dawn. TappedOut calculates its CMC as 9, whereas in my opinion it should be 4 or 4.5 (4 for Dusk + 5 for Dawn / 2). It messes a bit with the average CMC, doesn't it?
Maybe I'm missing something here as I am new to the site, so I would appreciate it if someone would explain it to me.
Cheers
Thanks for your reply. I understand your point about Fetch lands and you are right - they don't really produce mana themselves. But they are valid candidates for non-basic land slots in a multi-colored deck. Maybe I should have provided a bit more background information: I am currently optimizing the mana base for a Bant Commander deck and I am struggling a bit with the ratio of the basic lands that I have in there. How many basic lands that tap for , or should I put in? In order to find out I was trying to calculate the mana I get from other sources (non-basic lands). So I was asking myself if I should count Bant Panorama as a land that produces or , or or both. I wanted to be as precise as possible and got stuck there. So, how would you approach this problem?
Thanks for your comment on split cards, I was not aware of that specific ruling; I would've been under the impression that I would be allowed to cast Destined in the above mentioned example. However, for the sake of deck building it maybe still makes sense to count both parts of such cards seperately, no?
October 1, 2020 3:46 a.m. Edited.
If you're cracking any sort of fetchland to get a basic (barring a few special ones), it's important to remember thath the fetchland is only going to get one land. So it turns into something that could tap for white OR green OR blue, but not all three (fetches that get duals are better for this reason).
The things I would be paying attention to are hard costs (i.e. things that have double or triple of one mana colour) in them and then using that to dictate how many lands that tap for multiple colours you will need.
For split cards, the casting cost of Dusk is 4, however the overall cost of the card is 9. This is an important distiction. there was a Modern (I think) deck that used Brain in a Jar to abuse split cards so that you could pick the one with the cheaper mana cost but cast the one with the more expensive cost under the old rulings. So the rulings were changes which effectively killed the deck, but makes split cards less ambigous.
October 1, 2020 4 a.m.
Thanks, your advice on looking at double or more colored mana costs was helpful: I was now able to come up with a ratio of basic lands that I am happy with!
October 1, 2020 4:22 a.m.
There is a way to manually set the cmc of any card in a deck for the site's card and deck analytics. I can't remember or find it right now though, maybe someone else does?
October 1, 2020 9:31 a.m.
1x Llanowar Elves *CMC:20*
it's all there in the formatting tips :P
October 1, 2020 9:42 a.m.
SynergyBuild says... #8
Daaaaaang that's an expensive Llanowar Elves @enpc
enpc says... #2
For the first point, Bant Panorama shouldn't be counted as a green source because it can't tap for green. While the implication is that it can fetch a Forest which can tap for green, the panorama itself can't produce that mana. There are lots of things shutting down deck searching and you might just not have any Forests in your deck. It makes no sense for it to count as a green source.
As for the split cost of a card, Dusk / Dawn displays as 9 becuase it costs 9. That's a WotC ruling, not T/O's decision on how to display the card.
From Dusk / Dawn's rulings on gatherer:
"While not on the stack, the characteristics of a split card are the combination of its two halves. For example, Destined / Lead is a green and black card, it is both an instant card and a sorcery card, and its converted mana cost is 6. This means that if an effect allows you to cast a card with converted mana cost 2 from your hand, you can’t cast Destined. This is a change from the previous rules for split cards."
October 1, 2020 3:20 a.m.