Raise your hands if you’ve ever played someone else's deck list. You know, the ones you copied from the Net. Don’t be bashful. We’ve all done it.

Now, how many of you have "tweaked" the list and called it your own. Once again, a large majority of you have done this. "Since I replaced card A with card B it’s totally my design now." You might say. "But I also switched from 4 of Card X to just 3 and added the singleton bomb of Card Z."

At this point you probably think that I’m going to lecture you about giving credit to those that deserve it but you’re wrong. I think "net-decking" is just fine. In fact I would encourage it for many players. I do feel that net-decking stifles the variety of decks you will see at a PTQ but I think the pluses outweigh the minuses.

So why did I ask who had "tweaked" a deck? The answer lies in the next question.

How many of you adjusted the mana base when you changed the cards? Sure if you were copying some Mono-colored list it was no big deal. Most of today’s "strong" decks have a multicolored base and switching a card or two can throw off the mana base significantly. The only way to change a card and not affect the mana is to switch two cards that have the same color and same converted mana cost. But how often does that happen?

Right now as you read this players are trying to fit Zendikar cards into the slots left empty from Lorwyn/Shadowmoor's recent departure. But how many of those players are also counting their mana options?

Today I would like to run you through some math that I do as I finalize my decklist. The task is daunting for some and I’ll admit that I don’t do it with every change that I make (even though I should). Still Mana math should be done at every vital juncture in your deck. For me that means a big tournament is coming up but for you that could just be some other player challenged you for a game tomorrow.

I’ve wanted to write this type of piece for a while. Mostly because I am a Math teacher. My problem was finding a good example deck to use. I searched and searched but never really found one that I liked as an example. I felt that the best multicolored sources out there were already over familiar to my potential readers and I didn’t want to beat an already dead horse. Now with the Zendikar spoilers I’ve decided to make my own deck. This deck is NOT meant to be played. It is only for illustration purposes.

Basically I’m going to start by picking nine Zendikar cards as 4-ofs that help make my example work. These cards will have been officially spoiled for about a week so if you need their full text/art just hit this link.

So I started with:

• Vampire Nighthawk - 1BB – No mana based abilities. It’s important to note in your mana considerations if a card may require extra mana later. Especially if it’s colored.
• Goblin Runemaster – 2R- Plus a R kicker costs to destroy a nonbasic.
• Eternity Vessel – 6 - No extra cost but with Landfall mechanic we want to drop lands frequently.
• Predatory Urge – 3G - Only needs a creature to target.
• Roil Elemental – 3UUU – Another Landfaller
• Goblin Guide – R
• Warren Instigator – RR
• Gatekeeper of Malakir – BB- Plus a kicker of B to get rid of an opponent’s creature.
• Scythe Tiger – G – The land sac should be considered an extra cost as well.

As you can see I used 4 of the 5 colors (only skipping white.) For some of the points of this lesson I needed to leave out one piece of the color-pie. I hope I didn’t upset the White mages out there.

Let’s begin with the basics... and by that I mean Basic Lands. If we put 4 copies of each card in our deck that will leave us with 24 slots for land. With only basics we need to balance our choices accordingly. Obviously we won’t include any Plains, but how many of the other 4 should we use? For that decision we will be using Proportions.

First we’ll look at our Forest count. Currently in our deck we have 8 Forest symbols out of 52 total symbols in the casting costs of the spells in the deck. Four from the Scythe Tiger and four from Predatory Urge. From this we can make a fraction 8/52 which reduces to 2/13. Then set that equal to a fraction that represents the number of Forest cards over the total land cards. So now we have the following equation. 2/13 = f/24 where f is the number of Forests. Cross multiply to get 13f =48 and then divide to end up with f = 3.69. Now we can’t have .69 of a card be Forest (I’m sure they’ll make that card someday) so we’ll have to round but we will do that later.

Our Mountain count goes through a similar number crunching. 16/52 or 4/13. 4/13 = m/24. 13m = 96. Finally yielding an m = 7.38

For Swamps we go the same as above. s = 7.38

And in Islands we have 12/52 which is 3/13 = i/24. Yielding i = 5.54

If we went to straight classic rounding we would use 4 Forest, 7 Mountains, 7 Swamps, and 6 Islands. Hopefully you can notice that this is terribly askew of what we need. The fact that we have more Islands than Forest in a deck with only 1 Blue mana card in it speaks volumes. So let's adjust our numbers.

Now I look into what a card does. If it has a mana cost in the rules text, I add half a point for each card to our base number. So for example our Swamp count of 7 goes up to 9 because of the Gatekeeper’s kicker cost (4 cards with 1 Black mana divided by 2). I also add for any one or two drops that involve the color since we want to see that land in our hand along with those early plays. So Mountains start at 7, go to 9 for Runemaster, go to 11 for Goblin Guide and then 15 for the Instigator (4 cards times 2 mana divided by 2). The Scythe Tiger is a new wrinkle for me so I’m going to treat it like a 1 Green kicker. That would mean pushing Forests up to 6 for Tigers 1 drop and 8 for the sacrifice cost. Islands remain the same.

Now we have 9 Swamp, 15 Mountain, 8 Forest, and 6 Islands for a total of 48 (conveniently) lands. We only have 24 slots we’ll half these. If we didn’t have the convenient 48 we would have run proportions again to determine how to properly decrease our lands. On the half Swamp and half Mountain I’ll side with the Mountain since it has a one drop and Black does not. So that is 4 Swamp, 8 Mountain, 4 Forest and 3 Island.

From there we can start to look at non-Basics. There are a multitude of nonbasics that yield multiple colors. I’ll use a few examples to illustrate how our numbers change.

Let’s look at adding just 1 copy of Savage Lands. A land that creates extra colors means we have to change our starting base number. While we still only have 24 land slot available we can now produce 26 types of mana if we had each land in play. 23 from basics and 3 from our solitary Savage Land. That changes our variable side of our earlier proportion. From 2/13 = f/24 to 2/13 = f/26. When you solve f = 4 now which is basically the same except that Savage Lands now counts as a one of the f’s. Meaning we would look to use 3 Forest and 1 Savage land to accommodate our Green needs. The Savage Lands would also count towards the Swamps and Mountains.

If you’re considering adding “gold” land to your deck the process is similar. By the way a “gold” land is a land like City of Brass that can any color to your mana pool. So starting with all basics and one full playset (4 cards) of City of Brass to put in. Now our Swamp count has changed to 4/13 = s/36. Solving out to s = 11.08. How did I come up with 36? The first 20 comes from the 20 basic lands and the Cities yield the remaining 16 (4 instances of the card multiplied by the 4 colors I'll need in the deck). The City of Brass only counts for 4 since we will only call for 4 colors in our deck. So if you really think about if we changed our blue Roil Elemental for any other Red, Green, or Black card Savage Lands would be as powerful as City of Brass in terms of Mana fixing. Of course the 1 point of damage vs. entering the battlefield tapped is a whole other debate as to which is better.

For limited play these considerations are all you really need, just remember to set two proportions. One on just the numbers and a second factoring in speed of play and extra costs. However many lands that go beyond basics and Wizards has designed some real doozies. Here is brief description of how I look at some of the current standar cards.

Vivid lands - I count these the same as a ‘gold’ land. Even though they are only gold while they have counters.

Reflecting Pool – I try to make the Pool the last land change that I may make since it’s goldeness only comes after other lands are producing normals. If my base number (24 for just basics) is at least 42 I count Reflecting Pool as a full gold otherwise I short it one mana or two if it’s extremely low base number. If I used Pools in my example above instead of City of Brass I would have a base of 28 to 32 depending on if I shorted it by 1 or 2 mana.

Terramorphic Expanse – I start by counting the different basics that I may have. In our example it’s four. But since I can only get one color and then the fixing is gone I cut that number in half for potential mana. Meaning that 4 Terramorphics and the rest basic would lead to 2/13 = f/28. 28 as a base comes from 20 basic plus 4 times 2 from the Terras.

The new enemy fetch lands from Zendikar – Even if you play both colors I only count these as 1 in the base but I do count them as both types of lands. So if you use 4 Misty Rainforest in with the basics at the beginning of the article we stay at 24 for a base but our 4 Forest and 3 Islands could become 2 Forest, 1 Island, and 4 Misty Rainforest.

I am sure there are numerous other scenario’s possible and I would love to cover them all but you can see the bell is about to ring. I would love to expand more on this if you would like. Or if there is a subject you would like to hear about please leave a comment below. But most of all please comment. I love hearing from the fans as well as from the critics.

There’s the bell. Class dismissed. No homework today.