The NBA playoffs are in full swing as we approach the NBA Finals, and for the first time in my life, I’ve gotten to watch a majority of the games. If you’ve caught even one game, you know it doesn’t take long to hear coaches or commenters bring up one particularly pervasive word – efficiency. Every possession, every shot, every movement is made with the goal of maximizing efficiency, leading to a large focus on analytics, and simultaneously incentivizing players to aim for things like scoring more three-point shots and increasing the scrutiny with which individual players and team line ups are viewed. Players are graded in context of their efficiency, and while someone like former player Allen Iverson may have been lauded for their scoring ability, they could be loathed in equal part for the inefficiency in attaining those points. This level of scrutiny isn’t much different from the scrutiny we place on our card choices in deck building. Every card, every turn, every play sees most players making choices based on efficiency to one extent or another. In more traditional constructed formats such as standard or modern, this can mean using as much mana as possible on your turn or waiting till your opponent’s end step to cast instant speed spells. However, the multiplayer nature of commander offers different considerations and sometimes the most efficient choice is to cast nothing at all. When thinking about efficiency, doing nothing isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind. Typically, the discussion centers around doing as much as possible in a single turn. This is normally referred to as mana efficiency which refers to trying to utilize all your mana in a single turn to best progress your own board state. For most strategies, this involves finding the most efficient version of a spell to cast on your turn. If you’re looking for a 2/1 creature to play you can certainly choose Elite Vanguard or Savannah Lion, but cards like Dauntless Bodyguard or Dragon Hunter are strictly better and come with more upside outside of decks playing Muraganda Petroglyphs. Flash and control decks may appear to break this general rule, but even those decks are still trying to expend all their mana each turn cycle, though they tend to do this on their opponent’s turns rather than their own. In the context of commander, decks that can play at instant speed are often more efficient as they can get as much information as possible before deciding what spell to cast. Vedalken Orrery has risen to prominence as a card that allows you to play at instant speed ensuring you can obtain the most value from each card you cast. However, for decks that don’t play at instant speed or in the absence of instant speed enablers you are forced to make one of two decisions: commit resources to the board at sorcery speed or do nothing to preserve the resources in your hand. The latter option of taking a turn off is a strategy that doesn’t advance your board and is extremely inefficient. So how can you do nothing efficiently? Mana sinks are commonly thought as a great payoff for ramp strategies because they ensure you the mana you’ve sunk time and resources into creating can be utilized. However, due to the nature of commander, games tend to go longer and players have more access to mana. Mana that, if the goal is to be efficient, needs to be spent. Mana sinks become a powerful tool in ensuring your deck is as efficient as possible by providing both an outlet for excess mana and being a flexible outlet in which to expend that mana. Having a mana sink that creates tokens, taps permanents, draws cards, or any number of other game actions gives you a powerful ability in commander — the ability to wait. So often as players, we are too overzealous in expending the resources in our hands. Magic players love to cast spells, it’s why many of us play the game. However, when you’re playing a deck where you have to value each card at a premium compared to your opponent, having a permanent on the battlefield that can mimic the effect of a spell repeatedly is extremely valuable. It’s well known that one of white’s weaknesses is its lack of card advantage. There are many ways to counteract this deficiency, but of utmost importance is ensuring you get the most out of each card you cast. Playing a card for minimal effectiveness isn’t an option when you’re seeing fewer cards, in general, than the other players at the table. In a deck where cards are at a higher premium, mana sinks allow you to create a pseudo form of card advantage by giving the opportunity to advance your board state without committing resources from your hand. In white, the most common mana sinks make tokens cards like Heliod, God of the Sun; Oketra the True; Mobilization; and others make one or more tokens at the cost of mana. These permanents tend to avoid the most common board wipes and allow you to rebuild quickly following those wrath effects. They also synergize with cards like Mentor of the Meek to create a card draw engine of their own and the best ones like Dawn of Hope can be a mana sink and a card draw engine in one. When picking mana sinks to add to your deck it is important to consider what benefit they provide. Filling a deck with too many mana sinks will likely hurt your efficiency. Having several mana sinks on the battlefield will create a bottleneck on mana that can result in one or more of your mana sinks going unused for several turns. To avoid that, some of the best mana sinks also provide a sort of static effect. As described above, Dawn of Hope is both a card advantage engine and a mana sink. Heliod God of the Sun can be a resilient threat, trigger constellation repeatedly, and also provides vigilance, an underrated key word, to all your creatures. While mana sinks are a creative way to maintain efficiency, it’s also important that they themselves are efficient. I’ve found myself playing mana sinks that just aren’t good enough for the deck I’m playing. Armistice looks like a great mana sink on the surface. It’s an effect that you always want and is good regardless of your board state. However, a 3 mana enchantment which gives you the ability to pay 5 mana to draw 1 card is a steep cost especially when a card with a much lower opportunity cost such as Arch of Orazca exists. It’s certainly not unplayable, but I’ve found the effect to be too steep a cost for even some of my most untuned decks. The key to a good mana sink is one that either comes with a low opportunity cost or offers an effect on par with other cards in your hand. Mana Sinks that appear on lands are especially good at meeting this criteria. Cards like Arch of Orazca, Castle Ardenvale, or Scrying Sheets can only be used one time each turn cycle but offer effects that you can utilize regardless of your board state and can build synergies around. As previously mentioned, Heliod and Oketra are not only well costed creatures but mana sinks in their own right. These are cards that provide relevant effects when they are not being used as mana sinks and allow you to switch gears when necessary. Above are cards that have a low opportunity cost, but other mana sinks exist that offer effects on par with or better than you can find elsewhere. Luminarch Ascension requires you to meet a specific condition, but when that condition is met it allows you to create 4/4 flying angels for two mana. You’ll be hard pressed to find a way to create creatures more efficiently. When we discuss efficiency often the conversation focuses only in utilizing the cards in our hand. However, when you’re playing a deck whose weakness is maintaining a consistent supply of cards to cast, a mana sink can offer you the flexibility needed to increase your decks overall efficiency. Though the cards themselves may be slightly less efficient from your hand, they allow you the opportunity to not only maximize the value of an individual card, but maximize your mana each turn. Being able to navigate a game of commander while maintaining a consistently high number of cards in your hand can be difficult if your color or color pair lacks card draw. Having access to mana sinks can give you the resources necessary to successfully grind out a game against your opponents. I’ll usually try and put at least 4 or 5 types of effects to add flexibility and longevity to my mono white decks in a game of commander. However, the basic premise can extend to any commander deck in a combination of colors.
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AuthorMonoWhiteBorder -- A man who loves MtG and his small dog. Archives
June 2021
Categories"MonoWhiteBorder" and corresponding content is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.
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