As I help people with building their decks - both on this site and in my local card shop, I try to come up with common principles that will help more people than just the one who's deck I'm working on. The idea of managing resources came to mind recently.

 

Resources are very important. Successful businesses learn how to manage their resources wisely: Money, time, personnel, assets, etc. Personally, we all have to manage our resources as well. There's only so much money, so much time, and so many abilities we have to work with. Magic players have resources to manage as well.

 

Mana = Money

 

The first and most important resource is mana, which is comparable to money in real life. Just like we've all had those times in life where there's not enough money to do what we want, we've all had those games where we get stuck on 1 or 2 lands and can't do much of anything because there's not enough resources.

 

On the other end of the spectrum, we've all had those games where we have mana coming out the wazoo and nothing to spend it on. This situation is probably less familiar when related to money, but wiser financial people than me will tell you to invest your extra money so it's not just sitting there. Money sitting in a shoebox under our bed benefits us nothing. A savings account at least yields some interest. When we have mana that just sits there with nothing to spend it on, it's also not benefiting us. If we only had SOMETHING useful to spend it on, it would be better.

 

So, how do we budget our mana to make sure we spend it in the wisest ways? First off, we need to look at our mana curve. A mana curve, if you are unfamiliar, is a picture of how many spells we have at each converted mana cost. If everything in our deck costs 1, we'd burn through our cards in a hurry and run out of steam very quickly. If everything in our deck costs 7, we'd be overrun before we could ever play anything. It's important to build your deck with spells at varying mana costs so there is a chance to use our mana every turn. In other words, make a plan when building your deck. On turn one, I want to play this card or that card. On turn two, I should be able to play one of these three cards. On turn three, I should be able to play this one or that one, and so forth. 

 

Let me make a basic example of this using some recent cards. In a mono-white deck, you want a couple creatures you could play on turn 1 - perhaps 4 Favored Hoplites and 4 Hopeful Eidolons. That gives you 8 chances to play something with your first turn Plains. For your two mana cards, you might play 4 Akroan Skyguard, 4 Phalanx Leader, and 4 Hero of Iroas. You now have 12 cards you could play on turn 2. At three mana, you would pick out two or three cards and have multiple copies of each. Once you get to 4 mana and up, you would want to thin down the number of cards at each cost, because you're going to have fewer opportunities to play them. 

 

Once you get a reasonable mana curve, you want to decide how many mana sources you need in your deck. Lands, of course, are the main source, but you also want to consider other sources such as creatures or artifacts that produce mana. If you have a lot of those, you can probably get away with a couple fewer lands. Either way, most 60 card decks need at least 22 mana sources, and possibly as many as 27-28, depending on the concentration of expensive cards in your deck. 

 

There's another situation that comes up often: What do you do when your game is drawing out long? Do you have something to spend mana on when you draw your 10th land? Most of the time, you're not going to want to put something in your deck that requires 10 mana to use, but there are many options to make sure you get the most out of your late game mana. To name a few:

 

- X spells. Crater's Claws and Mistcutter Hyrdra are current Standard examples of spells that are useful whether you have a few mana or a lot and can help fill gaps in your mana curve or be a definitive finishing move in a long game.

 

- Non-tapping activated abilities. If a card just has a colon and no tap symbol on it's activated ability, you can use it once or ten times - if you have the mana. These abilities are useful investments for when games go long.

 

- Draw spells. You may not have anything to spend 10 mana on, but if you spend three to play Divination, you still have 7 mana to spend on two less expensive spells that you may draw. Without 

 

The bottom line is that you want to find the balance of having just enough mana to cast what you need without having mana just sit there untapped every turn. Sometimes, leaving mana untapped to bluff a spell you might have in your hand can be useful, but people learn this trick really quickly when you use it too often. If you come to your untap step regularly with multiple lands untapped, you are not making the most of your resource of mana.

 

Life = Time

 

The second most valuable resource you have is your life total. Newer players often have a hard time understanding this. If that's you, answer this: Which is better? Winning a game 20-0 or 1-0? Answer? Neither. They're both wins. One of the first combo decks ever made in the history of Magic involved paying 19 life with Channel to pump mana into a Fireball for 20 points of damage. If someone didn't see the benefit of using life as a resource, they never would have discovered it.

 

Have you ever heard the expression, "time is money"? While it's not completely true, there is a reason employers pay employees for their time. It's a limited resource. It's the reason I pay someone to do an oil change on my car. I could do it myself, and have on a few occasions, but I know a professional can do it much more quickly. I've decided that the time it takes me to do it is more valuable than the little bit of money I have to pay someone to do it for me. That way, I have more time remaining for other things I want or need to do. 

 

This is why the Ravnica block "shock lands" and the Khans "fetch lands" are so popular. Using those involves trading a little bit of life to save you the time (turns) of finding the appropriate land. A popular card in modern right now is Birthing Pod. It is cast with 3 colorless mana and your choice of 2 life or 1 green mana. If you have the chance to play it on turn 3 using two life, you are one step ahead of your opponent who waits one more turn to play it without paying 2 life. In that one turn, there's a good chance you can hurt your opponent for more than 2 life, putting you ahead of the game.

 

Of course, it's very easy to take this too far. A deck with all shock lands and fetch lands, with Thoughtsieze and Phyrexian mana is going to put your life total too low, too fast - just like money. I could pay someone to clean my house, mow my lawn, deliver me food...but I would be out of money very quickly. I have to find the balance of what I want to pay for with money and what I want to pay for with my time by doing it myself. 

 

Another way to use your life as a resource is in combat. Don't be afraid to let a creature or two come through unblocked. If your 2/2 creature is key to your game plan, using it to block a 3/3 attacker just to save the three life is probably not a good plan. 

 

There's no bonus prize for how many life points you have remaining at the end of a game. If you can spend your life points to give you an advantage on the board, it's usually a good thing. 

 

Cards = Abilities

 

Have you ever met someone who was so talented it made you sick? Why can't I have some of those abilities? The last two weeks drafting Khans at FNM, I played against a guy I normally beat, but both weeks he thoroughly trounced me. Why? Every time I looked up, he had more cards in hand than I did, and he always seemed to have more permanents than I did. If I didn't know this guy to be honest, I might have thought he was cheating! The truth was that he had a lot of ways to gain card advantage. This is a bigger topic than I have space to fully explore right now, but he had lots of ways to either draw more cards than me or get rid of multiples of my cards while only spending one of his. I felt like I was watching a multi-talented athlete dominate in several sports at once. He could do just about anything he wanted.

 

If we can put cards in our decks that help us gain card advantage like this guy did, we have more abilities than our opponent. Against the opponent I mentioned in the last paragraph, he played Bitter Revelation on one turn, gaining him 2 cards at the cost of 1. The next turn, he played Death Frenzy against me and was able to knock out three of my creatures for the cost of only 1 card of his. In essence, he gained 3 cards over me back on my heels. 

 

This, too, has a point of diminishing return. To use an absurd example, you could build a deck with nothing but lands and card draw. You would have card advantage over your opponent, but never be able to use it. It's like the person who spends all their life going to college, but never uses any of the knowledge they gained. But, if you can build your deck with a good balance of card draw and other ways to gain card advantage over your opponent, you will have more resources to work with and most likely be in the driver's seat.

 

Conclusion

 

I've only scratched the surface on this topic, but I hope it makes you think as you build decks. Just like we all plan (to some degree) how to use our time, money, and talents, we should be aware of how we're using our mana, life, and cards when playing Magic. Planning on how you can squeeze as much value out of every turn will take you one step closer towards being a master deckbuilder.

 

-mattedesa