Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1010: Mana Value

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

In this podcast, I talk about how this concept came about and how we design for it.

I'm playing on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about mana value. Exciting. Okay, so first, for those that might not know off the top of their head what a mana value is, let me explain. Okay, so let's say you have a grizzly bear. A grizzly bear costs one generic mana and one green mana for a 2-2 creature. The mana cost of the creature is one generic and one green mana for a 2-2 creature. The mana cost of the creature is one generic and one green. The mana value is two. So what mana value means is you count up all the mana in it, the amount of mana, and it's a number equal to the amount of mana you have to spend for it. But converting everything

to a singular number. So if a spell costs three and a blue, that's a mana value of four. If it costs four red red, that's a mana value of six. It's just the number of mana you have to pay. So mana value as a concept actually goes back to the very beginning of the game. There were three cards in Alpha, Animate Artifact, Spellblast, and Sacrifice, that made use of the concept of mana value. Now, it wasn't called mana value at the time. In Alpha, they just called it casting cost. But it's a little bit confusing, since casting cost kind of meant two different things.

What we now refer to as mana cost, and what we refer to as mana value. So, it became clear pretty early on that casting cost, it was ambiguous what we meant. So then we started calling it total casting cost, which wasn't much clear. In fact, I would say it wasn't super clear at all. Then came 6th edition. So 6th edition invented the term mana cost instead of casting cost. And then instead of total, it was converted. So it was mana cost and converted mana cost.

Converted being the word. I guess converted was slightly better than total. But it was never... People always got confused by converted mana cost. The CMC, if you will. And it was never... We knew the term wasn't great. So we spent many years trying to find a better term for converted mana costs. We eventually settled in 8th edition,

or not 9th, in Strixhaven. In Strixhaven, we eventually settled on mana value. And the idea is mana cost is the actual cost to cast a spell. So for Grizzly Bears, you know, one generic one green, and mana value is the total add up amount of it too. Okay, why is mana value important? Why do we care?

Why is it a thing? And the reason is, one of the things you want to do when making a trading card game is you want to make a lot of cards and you need to slice up what you're looking at and there's a lot of cards, and you need to slice up what you're looking at. And there's a bunch of ways to do that. You can look at different card types.

You can look at different colors. Sometimes you can look at different subtypes. You can also look at different supertypes. But none of those really does a good job of differentiating power level. That if I talk about a red creature, well, I could have a weak red creature or a powerful red creature. If I talk about an enchantment, I could have a weak enchantment or a powerful enchantment. The game really wants some way to say, I need to differentiate between how strong a power is. And I think the cleanest way to do that was to look at the mana value of a spell.

And the reason is, you know, a one mana value spell has a certain band of power that it is. You know, no matter what, if I have a one mana value spell, and there's a few exceptions I'll get to in a second, pretty much you know how much, how powerful that, you know, roughly that one mana is.

And in fact, when we make magic, a lot of what we do is we think a lot about mana value. Like, for example, let's say I'm making a creature. And I know the mana value I want. I know that I want it to be, you know, three mana value. And I know the color it mana value. And I know the color it's in. And I know the abilities that are on it. With those things, play design can spit out a power and a toughness. That if it's this color with these abilities, with this, you know, mana value. Now, whether or not there's one color pip or two color pips, you know, there's some nuance of

there's a difference between four and a green and three green green. You get a little more value for three green green. But, with a little bit of flexibility for colored mana, and once again, at low rarities, we don't do a lot of double color mana.

I'll get into that, I guess, as we talk mana value. Anyway, the reason it started, the reason it exists, like if you look at the three spells that Richard made in Alpha, animate artifact is kind of like, well, you put it, it's an enchant artifact. And the bigger the artifact you put it on, it turns into a creature, the bigger it is because it becomes, its power toughness is equal to its mana value. So the larger thing I'm putting it on, the more expensive thing I'm putting it on,

the more powerful it is. Spellblast is I'm spending X mana to counter a spell of mana value X. So the more mana I spend, the more things I can counter. The more expensive things, the more powerful things I can counter. And sacrifice lets you sacrifice a creature

and then get mana equal to the mana value of the creature. So if I just sacrifice a little thing, I'm just getting a little bit of mana. But if I sacrifice a large thing, I'm getting a whole bunch of mana. And so really what's going on there is there are cards that want to say, I want to care about this other thing I'm interacting with. And that the way I gauge that, the way I figure out, the rough version of me figuring out about how powerful it is, is its mana value. Now, there's two different things we sort of design. There's

two different ways we design mana value. One is we can care about mana value. So, for example, when I enter the battlefield, I go and get a creature of mana value 2 or less from my library. Or I reanimate a creature from my graveyard that has a certain band of mana value. So we can use it as a means to say, I want to cap kind of how powerful it is. Because if I say, go to your library and get any creature, or any green creature, I can get really big, powerful things. and get any creature, or any green creature, you know, I can get really big powerful things. But if I say,

go get mana value two or less, with a few rare exceptions we'll get to, it's mostly, you know, the power level's about the same, right? The power level definitely ends up in the same band. The other way to use mana value, which is a lot of how Alpha used it,

is kind of gauging how strong something is. So, like, if I, like, animate lot of how Alpha used it, is kind of gauging how strong something is. So, like, if I animate an artifact, a good example is, hey, the more powerful the artifact, the more expensive the artifact, the more powerful it is as a creature. You know, we have cards like, reveal the top card of your library

and do damage equal to the mana value of that card. Or, draw a card and lose life equal to the mana value of that card. Now, once again and lose life equal to the mana value of that card. Now, once again, mana value can be positive or negative. You could be rewarded for big things or not. We do use mana value sometimes in themes, stuff like the ferocious mechanic. We're like, oh, I want to have a creature of power four or greater. That's a mana value thing. Now, one of the things to note is there are other things we can care about. One of the most common things is when do you care about power versus caring about mana value?

And the answer there is when the thing you're doing, how correlative is it to power? If, for example, I'm giving plus one, plus one to a one-powered creature, well, then all one-powered creatures are treated the same. They go from one power to two power. Or if I'm making a one-powered creature unblockable, okay, I'm roughly doing the same, like, the damage I can do is roughly the same because, you know, the power is what matters with the effect.

But if I say, go into your library, and I say, get a one-powered creature, now it's not about the power level of the creature. It's not about the power of the creature. The power level can vary a grade. I can get a one-drop that is a one-powered creature. I can get an eight-drop that's a one-powered creature with a really, really powerful enter-the-battlefield effect

or ability or whatever. When we want to care about things in which we we don't know like we want to limit the power level or we want to keep it in a band that's when mana value becomes really powerful so there are places we can do stuff like refer to power you know like like i said one of the things that we need to do when making magic is we want to um we want to make sure that we give ourselves lots of tools. Man, the value is just a tool. It's just a means by which we can care about magic. And it's big enough and robust enough that, like I said, it was part of magic in the very beginning. It's still part of magic now.

Okay, so now let's get in a little bit about how it gets used when we make the set. Okay, we have what we call a mana curve. So when we make a set, the way it works is, in limited, in a set, we want to make sure in each rarity that there's a range of creatures. So a common, for example, we want some number of one drops, two drops, three drops, four drops, five drops, maybe a six drop. And the way it works is different colors

focus in different areas. For example, white and red tend to get a little more of lower drop creatures. Most colors get one one drop, but white and red tend to get two one drops. On the flip side of things, green, for example, tends to get two one drops. On the flip side of things, green, for example, tends to get the biggest creatures.

It is the most, like, if you look at green's creatures, it is the most creatures with power four, sorry, with mana value four or greater. Normally green has the biggest mana values. We tend to give blue either a wall or what we call a serpent, which usually is a big 5-5

or something that can conditionally attack. It can't always attack, but under some circumstances can attack. And then black and red can get, like green can get 7-7 or 8-8 sometimes. Sorry, we're talking mana value. Green can get mana value up to like 7, maybe 8 at common. Blue can sometimes get 6 or 7 with its serpent slash wall. And then black and red, we usually

cap out about 6 mana. There are some exceptions, depending on the stat. If there's a theme of larger creatures, like you know, rise or something, where there's a theme of larger creatures. But as a general note,

we tend to cap out red and black at about six mana. There are exceptions. And then white, usually white gets maybe a five drop. Every once in a while we'll give it a six drop. We used to not give white anything above a four drop, but that proved to be a little bit too much. So in general, different colors have different sort of slight nuances on the curve, but we do make sure, you know, every color is going to have a one drop, a two drop, a three drop, a four drop. Pretty much everyone will have a five drop.

And then six drop and up varies a little bit from color to color. But the idea there is we want you, when you're playing limited, to have a smooth experience that I'm able to play things such that when I build my deck, I can have something to do every turn. Now, we do care about

mana value for constructed, but we think about it a little bit differently. When you're thinking about for constructed, you think about the deck things are being played in. So let's say, for example,

we're making a set, and we know there exists an existing deck that players are playing. One of the things we might do if we're adding things for that deck, we look at that deck and say, where is the manned value the weakest? You know what? There's not a really good three drop for that deck. Oh, okay. We're trying to make a new card. Let's make the three drop. So when we're looking at manned value for Constructed, we definitely think about where do things go in the larger context. Limited is about that set, obviously. The other thing that'll happen is we tend to slot them out. And what I mean by that is, you know, white's going to have two one drops and three two drops and two three drops and one or two four drops. Like It's going to be slotted out.

There's a little bit of flexibility. It's not like an exact way to always have this number of this thing, but there's defaults that we go by. And I did an article, two articles actually, on mana skeletons, on design skeletons. And the design skeletons,

especially my most up-to-date article, actually shows mana values and sort of, and some of them are like this range of mana value, but they're different slots. And what happens is, let's say we make a brand new card. So we'll have a hole. So we'll say, oh, the hole we're missing is a four drop. But let's say the thing we need to make for whatever reason

ends up best being made as a three drop. You know, there are mechanics, like Fabricate's a good example of a mechanic where... So Fabricate was from Kaladesh. It enters the battlefield with some number of either plus one, plus one counters or one, one, I think, servos. They were creature tokens. Artifact tokens. Artifact creature tokens. And the idea is trying to get the right balance where you have the right abilities

on the creature that the choice of whether to get plus one, plus one, or one, one tokens, like it's, you know, counters or tokens is an interesting choice. But what happens is some things, like we have to cost things in full amounts of mana. We can't cost, other than some weird

unstuff, we can't do half mana or stuff like that. So, sometimes when you're trying to cost something, certain cards you can find the right mana value at a certain mana value but not another. So let's say we have a hole that's for a four mana value card. But the best design of the card we're making is three mana value. What we will do is we'll put it in that slot and then turn one of the three mana value cards into a four mana value card. Sometimes we have to do more than a one-way shift, maybe three cards or something. Certain designs are much more flexible

in how you change things around. Other designs are a little bit more locked in. Like sometimes you make a design and the power toughness are really key to how it works. Other times it's like, oh, give me a two, two, or three, three. We can swap things around to make it either. It just is, you know, what does it cost? But so

manna value is, like I said, it's an important tool to describe certain things. It's an important tool to sort of balance and make stuff so there's, you know, debts are smooth. But manna value has a few

issues. The biggest issue with manna value is, while on the surface it's a very simple concept. Like when I say to you, I explained to you the mana value of a grizzly bear. Okay, that's easy to grok. Okay, mana value one and a green, you know, mana, I'm sorry, mana cost one and a green. Mana value is two. But it gets a little bit more complicated. So let me, let me start talking about some of the complications.

Okay, so for example, let's say you have a card that has no mana value. You know, we've made suspend, for example, cards that you could only suspend them. You couldn't cast them. And there's been a few. We don't make a lot of no mana value. But eventually, I mean, from time to time, we make cards that don't have a mana value. How do you deal with those? What is the...

I'm sorry. We make cards that don't have a mana cost. What is their mana value? Now, there are three areas we have to care about. We look on the battlefield what the mana value is, we look on the stack what the mana value is, and we look in every other zone what the mana value is. Those three can be different. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes they don't. No mana cost, for example, they overlap. No mana cost is a

mana value of zero on the battlefield, on the stack, in all other zones. So for example, if I say go to your library and get a card with a mana value of zero, I am allowed to go get a land. I'm allowed to go get a card that can't be cost, because lands have no mana, have no mana cost. But if I say, if I'm looking for something with a mana cost of zero, I can't do that. A real classic example is there's a card in Unhinge called Richard Garfield, PhD,

that lets you cast a card as any other card that shares its mana cost. And people all the time are like, oh, can I play my island as a black lotus? And the answer is no, because it's comparing mana cost. And people all the time are like, oh, can I play my island as a black lotus? And the answer is no, because it's comparing mana cost, not mana values. Yes, the land has a mana value of zero, but it doesn't have a mana cost of zero. And so there is a difference between mana cost of zero and mana value of zero. Okay, next up, what if you're using an alternate cost or an additional cost? So an additional cost is like kicker.

If I pay extra mana, it does something. An alternative cost would be sometimes you can pay a cost instead of paying that cost. In those cases, on the battlefield, the mana value of the card is the original unmodified mana cost. So, for example, there's a card called Kabu Titan. So it costs one and a green for a 2-2, since I'm in Grizzly Bears today. But if I spend three green greens, so if I spend an extra two and a green,

it becomes a 5-5 trampling creature. It enters the battlefield with three plus one plus one counters and gains trample. The mana value of Kabu Titan on the battlefield is still two because it doesn't look at The mana value of Kabu Titan on the battlefield is still 2, because it doesn't look at what extra you spent on it. It just looks at the actual cost in the upper right-hand corner.

On the stack, it's also the original unmodified mana cost. When you look at mana value, it doesn't look at the additional cost. And then in other zones, you can't have paid that. So it's just what the cost is. Okay, how about X? So X on the battlefield counts as zero. So if I have a Hydra, let's say X in a green,

and I get X plus one plus one counters, the mana value of the card on the battlefield for X in a green is one because plus one counters. The mana value of the card on the battlefield for X and a green is one because X is zero. On the stack, it's whatever X is spent. It's the full mana spent.

So if I spend four mana, so four and a green to make a four, four creature, Hydra, the mana value on the stack is four, is five, sorry, because you made it green,

is five, but the mana value on the battlefield and in other zones four, it's five, sorry, I couldn't get the green. It's five, but the mana value on the battlefield and in other zones is sorry, the mana value in other zones x counts as zero, so it just would

be a one. So I talked earlier about how when we search the library for costs with a mana value one, that you know it's a bounded thing. Like, oh, all cards that cost one mana are roughly the same amount of power that you know it's a bounded thing like oh all cards that cost one one mana uh are roughly the same amount of power well it's true that all cards that cost one mana um but not all cards with a mana value one are necessarily and x spells are a good example that if i can go in my deck and get let's say a creature with a mana value of one i can go get um was it

ivy elemental i can go get the X and green spell because that has a mana value of one, even though I can cast it as something bigger. So this is a good example where there's, even though we like using mana value because it locks things, there are some exceptions to that. Okay, next is a split card.

So a split card introduced in Invasion are you have two cards on a card and they're instance or sorcery. It's usually the same. And then you can cast either side. And there's a variant with fuse where you can cast both sides. Let's talk about the not fuse part first. So if I cast,

let's say the card is one in a green or three in a red. It doesn't matter on the battlefield. They're instants of sorcery so it can't be on the battlefield. When I cast it, if I just cast one side of it, the mana value on the stack is that side. If I spend one on the green,

it's a mana value of two. If I spend three on the red, it's a mana value of four. If I fuse it and I cast both, it's combined. It's a mana value of six. Now, in all other zones, it's mana value is both sides added together.

So if I reveal the top card of my library and do damage to you equal to the mana cost of the card, its mana value in my library is the combined mana value of both the individual cards. Same for graveyard, for hand. Adventure card. So adventure cards are introduced in Throne of Eldraine.

In Eldraine, they're always a creature. Usually they're a permanent of some kind and then you have a spell that's normally an instant or sorcery and you cast

the instant or sorcery and then it gets exiled and then you can cast the permanent from exile okay an adventure card the primary thing what's a creature

in Throne of Eldraine is the main cost so when it's on the battlefield the mana value matches the primary card so like in Throne of Eldraine whatever the creature the mana value matches the primary card. So, Leganthorn, Eldraine, whatever the creature's mana value, that's what it costs. When you cast it,

it cares about what you've cast. If you cast the instant or sorcery, the adventure, then that's the mana value of the adventure. If you cast the creature or the permanent, then it's the mana value of the permanent on the stack. And then in all other zones, it's whatever the creature is. It doesn't look at the adventure. It's only what the primary card is, the creature, whatever the permanent is.

Okay, prototypes. Prototypes showed up in the Brothers' War. So prototypes have a generic cost in the upper right hand corner. And then there's a lower cost, usually with colored mana. Normally, the prototype cost is cheaper than the normal cost. So whichever version you cast on the battlefield, it's whichever version you cast. So if you cast the more expensive generic version, the card is colorless and it has the mana value that's more expensive. If you cast the lower value, it's the color that you spent to cast it and it has the lower mana value. On the stack, it's whichever version you cast. And in any other zone, it is the primary card. And what that means is the large generic cost. Everywhere else, it's just that. Okay, now we get into DFC. So first are modal double-faced cards. These are

cards in which you can cast either side. And they often have different costs. So on a modal double-faced card, the battlefield just looks at whatever side is face-up. So whatever side is face-up, that is what the band value is. On the stack, it's whatever you're casting it at. So you look at what you're casting.

Whatever it is that you're casting, that's the band value. And then in any other zone, it is the front card. Every modal double-faced card has a front and a back. There's little symbols. And it's the front version of the card in any other zone.

So when we're designing modal double-faced cards, we have to think about what do we want the face-up one to be. It matters because that's the mana value in other zones. So TDFCs, transforming double-faced cards, you can only cast from the front side, and then they can transition to the back side. The back side has no mana value. I'm sorry, has no mana, I keep mixing these up, has no mana cost. The mana value of the back side is whatever the mana value of the front

side is. So whether or not it's on the battlefield or somehow on the stack, I don't know how you get the back on the stack, but I think there's ways to do that. It is always what the front, and in any other zone as well, it's always what the front is. It used to be that the back had a mana value of zero, and there was some means by which that got abused, so they closed that loophole, and now the front has the

mana value of the back. I think people assumed that to be true, and it wasn't true for a while, and it just caused, it wasn't really intuitive, so we changed that. Next, a Melded Permanent. Okay, so a Melded Permanent can only be on the battlefield. You can't have a Melded Permanent on the stack or in other zones.

So the way that works is you just combine, it's sort of like a transforming double-faced card and a split card put together. You just combine the mana value of a Melded card is the mana value of both of the mana costs from the flip side combined. Like I said, it's sort of how split cards add them together and transform double-faced cards, look at the back, look at the front face. So same thing for meld.

Next, a token. So if a token is a copy, then it copies the mana value and has the mana value of whatever the thing it's copying. If it's not, then it's a mana value of zero. And there's definitely some means... I know there's some ways to construct to take advantage of that. That if your partner has a lot of counters up, there's some cards that can very cheaply get rid of things with mana value zero, which can get rid of tokens, for example. We do make cards from time to time that grow over time, like you put counters on them, and then they affect things of that mana value, and so it takes time to build up. And the idea is, if I want to kill something with a mana

value of four, it'll take me four turns to build up to it. But because tokens are mana value zero, you literally get rid of them right away with no waiting, and that's definitely mattered in a bunch of things. Finally, face-down cards. So things like Morph or Manifest, where you have a card that's face-down. So face-down cards on the battlefield have a converted mana cost of zero. And when you cast them, because they're sort of face-down on the stack,

they have a converted mana cost of zero. It's not applicable in other zones. Okay, the reason I bring all this up is man and value, like I said, it's one of those things that the basic concept is not complicated, but it can get very complicated as you start making things. And for example, we made split cards, like, you know, there's a lot of concern of, will people understand split cards? Will they get that I can cast either one? And what we found is, no, the frame did a really good job of communicating, oh, it's one of these two cards, play as one of these two cards. But what the mana value was, was something that was definitely trickier. And so, well, mana value is a very useful

tool, and it's something that we make a lot of use out of. The reason I sort of walked through the rules is I don't think the average person knows how mana value works in all these different cases. And prototype is a good example. So when we made prototype, originally it kept the mana value of the main card. Because in a vacuum, that's kind of how we normally do things. But what we found was that was abusive. The reason why reason why well there's things that care about mana value and you could get a mana value out that's much higher than normal and so it was just doing it was doing some things that were problematic and what we decided was okay well because we're making it because we're crafting it it's a new mechanic we could adjust it to make it work the way we need it to work. But it's a good example where man-in-value is a concept

that we have to keep in mind. Like I said, it's a valuable tool. It is something we do a lot with InDesign, but there's some tricky parts to it. And that's why, the reason I wanted to go through the rules was, I think before you get to the rules, it seems like, man, there's very low cost to saying mana value on things. Now, another thing that we used to do for a long time, back in the days of being converted mana cost, was we used to be very careful about not putting

that term at common. I think we've softened a little bit on that, partly because the term mana value, believe it or not, has been a little bit easier for people to understand than convert to man-to-value. Oh, let me explain something that's really interesting. I'm a language person. So there's this concept in words where, I don't know what it's called, but the idea is that the word sounds like what you think it is. And the idea is if a word sounds like what

you think it is, when you learn what it is, it's stickier, right? If I have a word, I go, that kind of sounds like that thing. It means that I'm more likely to learn once what it is and just the name will cement with me because the word in a vacuum sounds like what the definition sounds like. And, for example, when you're making words, when you're designing words, and a lot of people don't think, most people don't make words, but one of the things you want to do

is make a word that evokes the thing that you're trying to get. So we do make words. We make keywords, for example. And, you know, there. So we do make words. We make keywords, for example. And, you know, there are three different types of words. There's words that are what I'll call intuitive words. Flying is a great example where the mere act of the word self-educates because the word flying comes with baggage that help you understand, you know, flying has a meaning.

And when I learn the mechanics that flying is, the knowledge of flying helps me. I refer to that as piggybacking. When you take knowledge of an existing thing to do it. The second thing is what I'll call sort of sticky names, which is, they're not self-explanatory. Vigilance would be a good example of this, where in a vacuum, you have no, there's no way in the world you're going to see vigilance and have any idea what it means. But once you learn what it means, it does have, like, you can connect to it and go, oh, I see it. And you can come up with a definition in your head that makes it make sense, right? And so the third category are words in which they're not, I'll call it non-sticky, that the word doesn't really match up with what the concept is.

And what we found is converted mana cost was that third category. People just, it was non-sticky. We would explain what it means, people go, I, and they just wouldn't remember. Mana value seems to be in the second category, where it's not that you're going to get it without learning it, but once you learn it, it's stickier. And so we found found that man-in-value, people are doing a better job of sort of connecting to it.

Why? I don't know. It's an interesting question. I mean, the word part of me has a lot of reasons, but this is not a word podcast, I guess. But anyway, because it seems that man-in-value has been a little bit stickier than converted man-in-cost, we have eased up a little bit on using mana value at common, where we

were skittish about using converted mana cost. We still want to be careful. It is definitely a concept that has more weight to it that's a little bit more complicated than you might think at first. It's the kind of thing that once you learn, you really might think, oh, it's so simple. But as I explained with my rules today

it's not as simple as you think but anyway the reason I wanted to hit manly value today is I realized that it was a tool that we use that in a thousand podcasts I hadn't I mean, it's come up in context, obviously but I hadn't talked about specifically

that concept, and so I'm trying as much as possible. I'm combing through magic, combing through all my design to figure out more things to talk about. So today, we're just diving deep on an interesting aspect of the game that I think, obviously, you understand because it's part of the game, but maybe you don't

really think how deep of how we think about it, or the complexity in it, or why we use it, and that was the point of today's podcast. So I hope you guys enjoyed it. But anyway, I'm now at work. So we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. End of my podcast.

It's the end of my drive to work. The funny thing is when I mess up the beginning, I can just redo it. And when I mess up the end, like, I did 30 minutes. I liked it. So that's why I mess up the ends. I mess up beginnings as much as I mess up ends. Maybe more.

But you guys never hear it. So maybe one day I'll release a tape of just nothing but me messing up beginnings. Anyway, guys, it is the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.