Ive been playing magic for year but recently ive been playing a lot of Magic online currently on MTGO and Cockatrice due to lockdowns and LGS being closed etc. Ive just accepted mana issues as part of the game typically but playing so many games in such a short space of time has just made me question the efficacy of the mixed deck design.
Everyone knows mana flood and mana screw happen but with all the deck building considerations in the world sometimes the gods of magic just want to bend you over.
Obviously as with anything of this sort the larger average looks fine but given the larger average is made up of individual games its a pretty limited way to look at it. Play 1000 games and take an average of the number of lands to spells compared with the distribution you would expect from your deck and i would put money on it landing somewhere close to ideal but that doesnt take into account how a run of bad luck can obliterate your chance in a tournament or in an individual game. Ive played a lot of card games over the years and Magic and Pokemon(although in different fashion) are the only ones ive played which feature a resource card/system built in to the main decks.
I dont find it fun to win because of mana issues on my opponants side and losing to such things never feels good. I just cant figure out what exactly the lands/spells mixed deck deck design brings to the table that a split deck design wouldnt? At the same time i cant think of any issues caused by moving to a split deck design.
There are quite a few extremely blatant problems with the split deck idea you proposed. The easy one is that every single card that interacts with the library becomes void, because now you have two libraries. That means every draw, mill, exile, and search becomes completely void. Along with that ramp will become a fundamental part of the game because the only mana advantage possible is through ramp of a separate library rather than manipulating a mixed through scry effects. Green would become the most played color solely for the ramp options, or blue if you can target the second library with conventional draw. Resource management is a fundamental part of what makes Magic function, you’re either obtain more resource than your opponent, drain the resources from your opponent, or manipulate resources. By giving a split mana deck it becomes near impossible in practice to balance out resource management, solely for the fact that the aspect of resource gain is equalized, therefore the optimal strategy is increasing gain by ramp or other means.
Yes, I hate getting mana screwed or swamped, but with mulligans you’re probably going to see maybe one out of thirty games where you’re truly screwed or swamped.
Ultimately, my option is that a split deck is a very VERY poor idea.
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Everyone knows mana flood and mana screw happen but with all the deck building considerations in the world sometimes the gods of magic just want to bend you over.
Obviously as with anything of this sort the larger average looks fine but given the larger average is made up of individual games its a pretty limited way to look at it. Play 1000 games and take an average of the number of lands to spells compared with the distribution you would expect from your deck and i would put money on it landing somewhere close to ideal but that doesnt take into account how a run of bad luck can obliterate your chance in a tournament or in an individual game. Ive played a lot of card games over the years and Magic and Pokemon(although in different fashion) are the only ones ive played which feature a resource card/system built in to the main decks.
I dont find it fun to win because of mana issues on my opponants side and losing to such things never feels good. I just cant figure out what exactly the lands/spells mixed deck deck design brings to the table that a split deck design wouldnt? At the same time i cant think of any issues caused by moving to a split deck design.
Yes, I hate getting mana screwed or swamped, but with mulligans you’re probably going to see maybe one out of thirty games where you’re truly screwed or swamped.
Ultimately, my option is that a split deck is a very VERY poor idea.