AJ Sacher
1/21/2010
Theory time again. I know I promised a sweet article about Bog Tatters, but that will have to wait. Also, I know some people were expecting a tournament report (I scooped the finals of a PTQ to a very good match-up. I was playing Thopter Sword) but I am not going to write one and I am not going to write a tournament report. People may say they want a tournament report, but if I had written it, I know that everyone would just say I was a jerk and narcissistic because every round was essentially “he played badly and I won” when in reality that is just me telling it like it is.

Anyhow, not-so-recently, I wrote about a way of viewing the game that is pretty cool
if
I
do
say
so
my
self.

It was called The Theory of Stock Mana, and you can read about it here and here. If you want to hear Narcissism, then listen up: I believe that SM and EC should be in your Magic strategy vocabulary right next to CA and FT (fundamental turn. I guess people don't really abbreviate that one). That's quite a statement.

Recently, none other than Michael J Flores talked about what he calls “The Unifying Theory of Magic” on his podcast at Top8Magic.com. Turns out, he could have been reading straight from my articles the way he described his revelation; it was identical to stock mana.

Now, I'm not claiming he plagiarized me (though I'm not claiming he didn't), but one of the most credited Magic theorists and writers came up with the same thing as I did. If nothing else, that lends the concept a lot of credence, not only in terms of accuracy, but in terms of importance. Flores calls it “the 'rebounds' of Magic” as it is the underlying statistic that is actually the most important in the game. A basket scored in basketball is worth 2 or 3 points, but a Rebound denies the other team 2 or 3 points and gives you a chance to score. That means it is at least as valuable as a shot made, with a high percentage chance of being better. You can look at team Rebounds at the end of a game and determine the winner with a very high frequency rate of success. That is how Flores described it. That is how I see stock mana.

The theory, in short, is that whoever “spends”* the most mana over the course of a game has a significant advantage over an opponent. An important corollary is that mana not spent is mana wasted. You don't get to spend the mana you left open on turn 2 to play a 5 drop on turn 3, just like you don't get to bat the guy home you stranded on second last inning. That's how important it is.

*I put “spends” in quotes because you can also gain stock mana by denying your opponent the chance to spend mana and by using your mana to do something that is worth way more than the mana you put in. That is why, when I created the theory, I called it “stock mana” and not “spent mana”.

Now that the background is done, we can talk about getting into some more complex scenarios and break them down in terms of stock mana, and view some of the applications that you can use to improve your game. The theory is amazing not only because of its unique ability to define the game or simplistic quantifiability, but because it gives perfect applications to combo, control, aggro, and limited.

First is Effective Costs. An EC of a card is what you get out of said card. My first examples were that Tarmogoyf “should” cost about 3.5 and that Cruel Ultimatum “should” cost around either 2WUUUBBBBBRR or 11WUUBBBBR. That is, if all cards were totally fair and there was no deviation on baseline costs, but that wouldn't be a very fun game, now would it? I am going to examine how those values are determined.


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Magic design has its own rules about what is fair and what isn't. Through countless hours of playtesting and discussing, cards have been printed the way they are for a reason. We can get our baselines for what something costs from the patterns that the designers have incidentally assigned us by looking at what certain effects cost. These values can change constantly, but there is always a reason and a pattern. You just have to be looking for it.

The EC of cards is simply putting an effect of a card up to a mental chart of baselines like a litmus test. The results can then be used to answer questions like “Why is Tarmogoyf better than Grizzly Bear if they cost the same?” According to stock mana, they are worth the same unless you apply EC to them.

Now here is where it gets tricky. A vanilla 2/2 can cost 2B or 1G, and for a slight drawback of Legendary, all the way as low as W. Flores chooses to count it as costing W in his podcast, but I think that cornering ourselves into having to make judgment calls on what “Legendary” on a one drop is worth in terms of actual, physical mana is a bad idea. Instead, I prefer to assign things simple values according to what it costs in reality using most common occurrences. There are a billion vanilla 2/2 for 2s, only one vanilla 2/2 for 1. By using stand-by costs and keeping things simple, we can apply EC to a lot of cards in a short amount of time. Plus, if you assign a 2/2 as W, then you skew your EC results for limited play (Grizzly Bears are a lot more realistic for limited than Isamarus). I mention this concept a little later, so keep it in mind.

So let's go over some base costs and discuss why I believe the effects in question cost this much. Remember a few things; first of all, this is a very imperfect science. You should assign your own values based one what you think each is worth and do what you think will most help you play better using the strategy. Also, be open to changing them with time, as while I do hope this article is referred back to for years and years, the values may be very off in even a few short months.

A vanilla 2/2 effectively costs 1G. We're starting it off simple.

Adding a cantrip to essentially any effect costs 2. This can be seen from Counterspell to Dismiss, Twiddle to Twitch, Unsummon to Repulse, Trained Armodon to Kavu Climber, Raise Dead to Recover, Healing Salve to Reviving Dose, etc. The cost can be seen everywhere and has become a generally accepted rule.

Kill something dead costs 1B. It can cost B with some restrictions, it can cost 1BB and do some damage, it can cost W with some funky drawback. I put this example in for a reason; with generic effects like this, it is ok to go from what you know. Estimate based on past experience and what is general accepted as “playable”.

A 1/1 flier costs one colored mana. I put this distinction in here because we will be talking about colors soon enough, though probably not until next week.

3 damage costs R. I put this one in here to exemplify the ever-changing nature of these baselines. This was 2 for quite a while, but Lightning Helix opened the Floodgates for Lightning Bolt's triumphant return, and the baseline shifted.

Now those are the most basic of basic examples, but it shows how easy it is. A good way to do it is imagine that someone from R+D approached you and said we are making a normal set and we have something with ____ effect. What should we make it cost to be a common? What would you say for a vanilla 3/4? What about a 1/1 Flying, haste? How about for a cantripping Shock? Use your knowledge of the game and your experience with similar effects dictate what you think cards are worth. The more experience you have in Magic (particularly Limited) the better at this you will become. Maybe sometime down the line, I will get some professional game designers who play Magic to help me compile an intricate chart for all basic effects and creature sizes. Until then, you have to practice and practice and develop a strong Intuition.

Flores gives an ingenious example of this theory in practice taken to the extreme: Dredge. Have you ever been completely run over by Dredge and wondered how it did so much without actually having to do anything? I mean, the first time you lost to the deck's god draw it just feels like whoever explained card advantage to you was a dunce. Stock mana is why.

I play an 0/2 for U in the form of Horseshoe Crab. It doesn't really have an impact on the game-state Really, I'm down a card with no mana since even though I spent one mana, I got 0's worth of effective cost since I just cast an Ornothopter. Then I play a Ideas Unbound which just gets me further in the hole, since I've cycled three cards at the cost of a card but have yet to affect the board. I dredged a lot, but I'm not getting any mana's worth of impact from all of that. I flip over a couple of Narcomeobas now, so I spent all of those cards and all of that mana for a couple of 1/1 fliers. That has to be worth at least GG if not 2UU, but still doesn't break me even for my investments. That is, until I cast Dread Return. Normally, Dread Return would cost 4 mana, but it is only as good as what it gets, and in this case, that's an Iona. Now I have cashed in my U and UU of spent mana, and my GG/2UU and 2BB of effective cost mana for 6WWW of effective cost mana, on top of which, I get 6 zombie tokens at 1G a pop.

For 3 mana and 4 cards (Crab, Ideas, two draw steps), I got 12WWWGGGGGG of stock mana on turn 3.

If I get Flamekin Zealot instead, those 2/2s are 3/3 hasters (the opponent is dead before them reverting to 2/2s matters). What are 3/3 hasters worth? My first reaction was RRR (probably Boggart Ram-Gang came to mind) but my gut said 2RR was more accurate. I polled some people to make sure and the vast majority of the responses I got were the same as mine. If you were in R+D and there was a 3/3 Haster we wanted to put in the common slot for M11, what would you suggest it be priced? Answer off.

Anyway, if your answer is also 2RR, then for 3 mana and 4 cards, I got 14RRRRRRRRRRRRRR. I don't win because my opponent took over 20 damage this turn. That's incidental! I won because I stocked 28 mana in 3 turns. They can get themselves from 5 up to 9 if they have the turn one Chrome Mox, but as adorable as that is, it ain't gonna cut it!

Now I know that last bit is controversial, but you have to understand that is the way the world works. When you buy a lottery ticket, you aren't spending a dollar for a chance to win millions. You are purchasing 95 cents for a dollar. When you die on turn 3, it's not because they drew more cards. It is because they have six times your SM.

This is what makes stock mana so revolutionary: never before could occurrences like that be accounted for so precisely. Card advantage, the old standby, would always come into situations like this and would answer the big question, “Why did they win?” and answer with a million smaller questions. “What is a free 1/1 flier worth?” and “How many cards does Dread Returning a creature get me?” or “If I'm playing from my graveyard, is Dredge 6 equate drawing 6 cards?” and of course, “what is the total value in cards of a 2/2 token? What about a 3/3 haste?”

The problem is that some of these things are sub-sections of a card's exact value, and instead of having to figure out what fraction of a card these things are through countless absurd and pointless calculations, we can just sum them up individually. You've heard a million times that Magic theory is flawed because it is based around card advantage, although it's granted that you probably heard it in different words. Many writers before me have asked the question “is a Decree of Justice token worth the same thing as half of a Call of the Herd?” or some variation on that question. Now, by assigning specific traits specific values in common terms we all understand (mana costs), we can differentiate each specific object and post them all onto a grander, yet simpler, scale.

Which brings me back to the Grizzly Bear thing. Another problem with making 2/2s cost W in your head instead of 1G is that you mess up your math for things worse than a Grizzly Bear. If 2/2 is W, then what is a 2/1? What about a 1/1? You can't say it costs the same as a bear, but there's no reason to start making things cost fractions of a mana (yet. Foreshadowing for next week...), but that problem is all easily avoided by just having Grizzly Bears be Grizzly Bears and not Isamaru.

Next week I am going to go even more in depth about some more sophisticated uses of the theory. Hopefully you will be able to join me.

-AJ Sacher

P.S. It may seem like 2RR is too high for a 3/3 haste in my Dredge example, but keep in mind that the parameters for the EC of cards is based on recurring instances of similar effects. The best way to phrase that would be to say that the values you see are going to relate more closely to limited matches that you've seen rather than constructed. This means that in constructed, since only the best of the best cards get played, everything has a pretty strong intrinsic value. 2RR for a 3/3 haste seems a lot less generous when you realize that it is against pretty much all cards that are performing well above their printed costs such as Tarmogoyf and Wild Nacatl. The only way you can determine relative value is to figure out the values of the cards in other decks in the format with the same costs attached. This is also cute because it explains why Legacy is more powerful than Extended is more powerful than Standard is more powerful than Limited. We all knew it was true, and we know intrinsically why it happens that way (card pool size), but now we have terms for explaining how the phenomon occurs. Card Advantage would just want to say that the option of draw spells is better, but really it is because the stock mana effective costs are higher.

P.P.S You may read the Dredge example and ask yourself how you are going to beat that sort of production, to which the answer is quite obviously “hate”. So what does hate mean in terms of SM? We'll examine that much more next week, as well.