Why don't Mana Drain and Workshop ever appear in the same deck?

[dskippy0]

I am wonder why there are no decks that run both. It seems like the main issue is that UU is difficult with four land slots sucked up with non-blue mana. However, there are still plenty of slots for blue sources. It seems like a mono-u aggro control deck or a red splashed for welder deck might be viable. I'm sure people have tried this. Is 4 Drain, 4 Force, 4 Workshop, 1 Academy, 7 SoLoMox just a problem of committing yourself to too many different deck elements at the price of synergy?

Thanks,
-mike

[warble]

Try it, it "would" be the strongest deck in vintage. 5cSTAX is unfortunately all we have because going mono-blue workshop just isn't as strong as incorporating only broken cards from all 5 colors.

When you think about having 2 lands with stax, you want to drop a sundering titan proactively, not pass the turn and drain reactively. The role of control slaver is to utilize drain mana, the role of workshop decks is to proactively lock the board/restrict opposing plays/drop too many fat artifacts for the opposing player to counter all of them.

EDIT: You would have to drop goblin welder if you went that route, as well as a bunch of fat artifacts effectively making the workshops useless.

EDIT2: Where did those weird ?'s come from at the end of my sentences?

[Limbo]

Although it has been tried in some decks, the problem is that workshop and mana drain usually have incompatible advantages. The biggest advantage of workshop is that it provides a huge mana-boost on turn 1 (and 2). The gameplan when playing mana drains usually is reaching double blue mana ASAP, so this means dropping two blue mana producing lands as the first two drops. These two plans exclude each other, so although it is possible to play them together, it usually isn't that effective (here, the sum of 2 advantages would actually decrease effectiveness of both).

Following the same rule, you don't see bazaars and mana drains combined in decks either, as these strategies exclude each other as well.

[Jacob Orlove]

The problem is much more fundamental. Workshop is all about putting permanents into play. That's all it can do, so you have to be proactive about it. Mana Drain, however, can only be used reactively. Workshop says "play me in a deck that taps out every turn to cast threats/lock components" while Mana Drain says "play me in a deck that holds a bunch of instants in hand". If you want to run both, you pretty much have to be tapping the Workshop to cast Crucible of Worlds and other control (not aggro, not prison) artifacts, but there are precious few of those.

Edit: other people posted while I was typing, so some of this is repeated.

[rvs]

It only works if you are a canadian.

[BigMac]

I made a deck with both and the biggest problem there is indeed that they will not work together as a charm.

However there is a way to actually make it work for you. Make sure your hand does either of the 2 gameplans described in earlier answers (have an early lock piece or make sure you have UU asap) The beauty of MWS is when you allready have UU you can still play your threats every turn and protect them, as you are not using blue mana for the actual casting of the threat. On the other hand if you take a hand with MWS and a lock piece you are actually buying time to get your UU online when the lock is in threat of being removed.

The main concern is mulligan to a good hand so you can play either gameplan till you have the other gameplan in hand. It is hard and requires some testing but it can be applied. I am still not saying it to be ideal though.

[Slay]

Some variants on Tinker.dec use Mana Drain and Workshop in the same deck, because their strategy is reliant on getting a 4cc artifact into play quick and getting UU up the next turn. So both are viable in Tinker.dec.
-Slay

[Shade]

Why not use the Workshops to accelerate out a blue-mana producing artifact, such as Gilded Lotus?  Granted, it would take some major deck modification, but if you're just trying to incorporate both ideas into CS, you're going about it the wrong way.

[Slay]

That was also a strategy of Tinker.dec. You should really check out that deck, as you'd like it quite a bit.
-Slay

[Limbo]

Some variants on Tinker.dec use Mana Drain and Workshop in the same deck, because their strategy is reliant on getting a 4cc artifact into play quick and getting UU up the next turn. So both are viable in Tinker.dec.
-Slay

Yes, but in the succesful versions that blue mana was still used in an agressive (proactive) manner (transmute artifact), and not in a reactive manner as mana drain mana (the tinker decklists that won tourney's didn't even include force of will).

[BurningIce]

For a historical perspective, the original Teletubbies deck (first to use Workshop with Juggernauts and Su-Chis) ran both.  However over time, as Jacob said, people realized they don't belong together.

[Hidden-Leaf]

TnT Ran Mana Drains??? I played GOOD TnT, Ya know the kind that doesnt run cards like Mana Drain. Artifacts and Mana Drains just dont belong together. Maybe in the new sets they might make more aggro-like artifacts(how ever they managae that one) they might work, but I doubt they will ever go togethor.

[Moxlotus]

TnT Ran Mana Drains???

No, TNT was an evolution of Teletubbies.  Teletubbies ran Copy Artifacts and FoFx4 too.