Magic: The Gathering – Mana Flow Variant
Introduction
Magic: the Gathering is an incredibly fun and engaging game. With the myriad of available cards, endless strategies and combos can be created and employed.
However, there is one core concept in MtG that can foil even the best constructed decks:
Missing the land drop.
Nothing can be more frustrating for a player to see their deck fail only because you missed a land draw for the 3rd time and simply can't do anything.
This is where the Mana Flow Variant comes into play. This variant tries to alleviate some of the randomness of drawing and playing lands and prevent boring and frustrating situations.
Naturally, this variant is not designed for those players that enjoy this part of Magic: The Gathering, but rather for those that want to play the game without being stifled by lacking the lands to do so.
Rule Changes
When playing with the Mana Flow variant, apply the following rule changes.
You can use this variant with all game formats of MtG.
Deck Construction Requirements
When playing with the Mana Flow variant, your deck must follow certain construction guidelines to be legal:
- At least 1/3 of your deck must consist of land cards.
- At least 1/3 of your deck must consist of spell cards.
- The remaining 1/3 of your deck can consist of any combination of land and spell cards.
In Numbers
So in a standard 60 card deck, at least 20 cards but be land cards and at least 20 cards must be spells.
Likewise, for a 100 card deck, at least 33 cards must be lands and at least 33 cards must be spells.
The remaining 20 (or 34) cards can be of any combination of lands and spells.
Game Setup
When starting a new game, each player may exile a certain number of basic land cards from their deck and place them face up next to their library.
For a game format with 60 card deck minimum (e.g. Constructed), you can exile up to 3 basic land cards, for a game format with 100 card deck minimum (i.e. Commander), you can exile up to 5 basic land cards.
After setting the corresponding number of lands aside, the library is shuffled and the game setup is continued as normal.
Drawing Cards
Whenever you may draw your first card on your turn, you can instead choose one of the basic land cards exiled at the beginning of the game and put it into your hand.
Land Cycling
Under this variant, each land card always has the following additional rule: Cycling
That means, you can pay any 2 mana and discard a land card from your hand to draw a card from your library.
