Season 8 Mana-Fixing

What does the mana look like in Season 8?

City of Brass illustrated by Tom Wänerstrand

With the new season, we’ve all got some fun deck ideas that we want to try out! However, it can be difficult to know how to get the mana to work in your deck to see your idea work consistently with the least hurdles. The analysis below will be helpful whether you already have a deck built and want to tune your mana or you are just getting started and want some inspiration.

The Shocks

The Shocks are typed dual lands for Azorius, Rakdos, Selesnya, Izzet, and Golgari. They enter tapped unless you choose to pay 2 life as they enter the battlefield.

Shocks perform best in decks that are mana-intense throughout all stages of the game. They enable these plays on-curve, and you don’t have to repeatedly pay life once they’re online.

Having basic land types is unique to the Shocks. As upsides, they boost the strength of the Saviors of Kamigawa “sweep” cards, they increase the potency of the Shadowmoor cycle that cares about land types, and they can be fetched with Safewright Quest.

Amassing land types can yield powerful results

The typing of the Shocks has few downsides-- besides landwalk abilities, the four type-hating cards are Flashfires, Boil, Cryoclasm, and Living Lands. Be careful with shocking carelessly, because the life can add up before you know it.

Pain Lands

Pain Lands are untapped allied duals. They can create colorless mana without issue, but tapping for color comes at the cost of your life total.

These lands shine best when a deck is color-intensive in the early game and mid game, and not as much in the late game. The idea is to eventually play painless lands and use the Pain Lands for colorless mana to stem your self-hemorrhaging.

However, intentional self-damage has some synergies with Gonti’s Machinations and Darien, King of Kjeldor. You can even manipulate your life total in response to a Hitistugu’s Second Rite pointed at you.

The “Gates”

The Gates are dual lands that always enter tapped, and they come in three different flavors. We have five true gates that follow the Return to Ravnica Shocks, the allied snow duals from Coldsnap, and two tapped duals from the Aether Revolt planeswalker decks (Dimir and Selesnya). Because these lands always enter tapped, you should not consider them as turn-one mana sources when calculating your mana-base.

Gates are typically avoided in deck construction— you should almost always run Shocks before them because the untapped option provides so much tempo. However, Dimir and Gruul have Gates without Shock equivalents. Furthermore, with Into the North fetching snow duals and Gatecreeper Vine fetching true gates, a green-based multicolor deck becomes much more consistent. Besides that, snow duals power up Skred and Scrying Sheets (as well as each card requiring snow costs).

True gates and snow duals can be fetched early on

A color-intense multicolor deck, and/or a list that wants to play a long game, may choose Gates over Pain lands, as the repeated need to tap for colors will add up over the course of the game. However, these lists will need a way to meet/break parity after falling behind with tapped lands.

The Filters

The Shadowmoor Filters only appear in the allied color pairs. They all enter untapped, tap for a colorless, and can filter one of two colors into two mana in any combination of those two colors. Because these lands require colored mana to create colored mana, you should not consider them as turn-one colored sources when calculating your curve.

Filters are almost always online in two-color decks, allowing them to easily cast ambitious-costing spells, such as Supreme Verdict and Hammer of Bogardan. With Filters, three-color shard decks (Esper, Grixis, Jund, Naya, Bant) could try to build around a dominant color that can be filtered into its two allies.

Double and triple pips become trivial in a two-colored deck

Unfortunately, multicolored decks can’t leverage the Filters as effectively if they spread themselves thin. Additionally, Filters work best when all mana is spent at the same time— it can be difficult to cast multiple spells in different phases in a turn. In the example below, the player can’t play Trained Caracal here and protect it with Counterspell on their end step.

Filters can make double-spelling over multiple phases impossible

Ritual Effects

Each color has a tapped land that produces its color normally, but can be sacrificed for two mana of that color. Other ritual cards include Blood Pet in black and Rite of Flame in red.

While I'm not looking to cover ramp in this article, these Ritual effects do have some mana-fixing elements. They are similar to the Filters in that they allow for greater double and triple pip requirements, but they also enable more explosive plays.

These cards work best in linear Combo decks and decks that want to tempo out a game-winning threat as early as possible. Because you are paying a hefty cost of losing your land or a card in hand, you will want your payoff to close out the game or else you’ll be significantly down on resources. With this risk in mind, be careful.

“Any Color”

Color-fixing spells aren’t exclusive to green

Producing “any color” is almost exclusively reserved for Green, but there are some exceptions. Celestial Dawn acts like a white Prismatic Omen, but you need to be mindful of color hate against it. Deathrite Shaman acts like a black Birds of Paradise, though it’s going to be pretty difficult to exile land cards without dedicated mill, such as Codex Shredder or Grisly Salvage. Manamorphose is a one-shot ability in red, but at least it replaces itself.

These artifacts enable exceptional mana flexibility

Colorless options have increased fixing potential since they don’t require a specific color to be cast. Coldsteel Heart’s flexibility and Chromatic Lantern’s static are ideal, while Mox Diamond and Elsewhere Flask can enable some explosive lines.

Rainbow Lands

Perfect mana comes at a deck-building cost

The Rainbow lands each produce mana of any color, but in slightly different ways.

Transguild Promenade may only fit in slow multicolor piles that contain board wipes to recoup the intense tempo loss that comes with playing the land-- quite niche.

Spire of Industry only wants to go in a dedicated artifacts list. If a deck wants to consistently tap the Spire of Industry for color on turn 2, it will need to play around 13 artifact cards with mana value 1 or less. (For turn 3, that goes to 12 artifact cards with mana value 2 or less). Be mindful that artifact removal may leave you color screwed if you are relying on the land too much.

Reflecting Pool combos well with the other Rainbow lands, as it can then tap for any color. It also automatically enables any Filters it is paired with. The card tries to shore up the lackluster fixing for Boros / Orzhov / Simic, but still doesn’t act fully as a dual— it only helps for the sake of casting double-pipped cards and multi-spelling cards of the same color. The card likely fits best in a 2-or-3-color strategy that wants to fulfill intense pip requirements. Since it cannot tap for any mana on its own, don’t count it as a turn one mana-source, and be careful against land-destruction strategies that remove the sources it wants to reflect.

City of Brass is the Rainbow land for those most interested in tempo. It will work best in aggro decks and combo lists that don’t want to miss a beat and are looking to end the game quickly. Midrange decks might want some number of them over the Filters to double-spell across phases. Control decks with three or more colors may use it as a tempo bridge to the late game. Similar to Reflecting Pool, it is going to find a home in the enemy color pairs that have little access to anything else, but the allied pairs should always run their four Pain Lands before this card. Be careful that you don’t get locked out of City of Brass in the later stages of the game when your life total is too low.

The Keyrunes

Keyrunes are three-mana artifacts that can tap for either color of the RTR guild pairs. You can spend one of each of their respective colors to turn it into a creature until end of turn. Since Chromatic Lantern highly contests the “Manalith” slot, these mana rocks would fit best in 2-to-3-color strategies that may need some time to develop, but are eventually looking to turn the corner once the game is in their control.

Conclusion

Because of all of the allied-color fixing available, 3-color shards are going to feel very comfortable with their mana. Reflecting Pool and City of Brass are going to have to carry Boros, Orzhov and Simic, the three pairs that may struggle with pip-intensity since there aren’t any dedicated duals for their colors. Multicolor (4-or-more-color) strategies will be possible, but they’ll require either an early tempo sacrifice with tap lands, and/or a painful mana base, and/or will need to abuse Prismatic Omen and Chromatic Lantern.

Despite all of the fixing available, don’t just throw all nonbasics possible in. They each have their downsides, and Aggro and Ponza will look to exploit them. Experiment to find the best spread for your specific deck. Don’t forget to check out the Channel Fireball articles linked below for additional reading. Now that you have a sturdy mana-base, your deck can fire on all cylinders!

Additional Reading

The math behind your distribution of mana sources can be found here.
The math behind your number of mana sources can be found here.