MaRo speaks on Eliminating Mana Burn.

[LotusHead]

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/44

He says, among other things, this:

It removed a rule that wasn't carrying its weight. When we first thought about removing mana burn, I asked my design team to play all their games without it so we could get a sense of what its removal would feel like. Note that we had altered nothing in the set related to this change. We just played the set as it was without mana burn. After a month, I asked my team to tell me their experiences. The result: not one of the five-member team in a month played a game where it came up. One of the best tests in screenwriting about the necessity of a scene is to remove it. If the story works just as well without it, it wasn't needed. We had removed mana burn from the game and we couldn't tell it was gone—not the best of defenses.

In a game that constantly changes, everything (be it a card, a mechanic or a rule) needs to defend its existence. In short, everything that can change will change. As a designer, it is my job to keep making these challenges to the status quo, because it is within them that new discoveries, and thus the future of the game, lie. Mana burn was put to the test and, quite frankly, it didn't stand up.

I am actually all for eliminating Mana Burn as it isn't NECCESSARY to the game, but I have a hard time beliving that a playtest group, in one month, never had to deal with mana burn.  This is evidence that Magic's current designs are more elegent (read: less borken) to where naturally mana burn doesn't come up.  But this I feel is only if you play with the current cards (which is obviously WOTC's bread and butter).

How often does TMD experience mana burn in standard/limited? Does it never come up? Seething Song? Combo decks? Or is MaRa saying "If it doesn't matter for Standard/Limited, it doesn't matter to all formats?"

Again, I have no problem with eliminating mana burn (although I TOTALLY get the flavor of mana burn!), I just would prefer a more honest reason for changing this part of Magic.

(still reading rest of article). Mods, feel free to move thread if another forum is more appropriate)

[maatn]

Did you by any chance mean Mana Burn instead of Mana Drain?
I was kinda lured here through the RSS-header suggesting Maro wanted to ban drain, but it looks like all he talks about is mana burn.

[LotusHead]

I did indeed mean Mana Burn

[Troy_Costisick]

They likely were limiting themselves to Standard, Extended, and Future Future league play.  I doubt they were tossing aroung Ancient Tombs, Workshops, and Mana Drains.

[Norm4eva]

Let us gather round the funeral pyre for one of Magic's most underappreciated and seldom-sung heroes, Citadel of Pain.

Srsly tho, being able to tap Ancient Tomb with slightly more impunity than before makes my little kid Angel Stompy deck pretty happy.  No more shall I risk getting jacked for 3 damages on the second turn due to a questionable draw step.  Muhaha

[Harlequin]

Citadel of pain does actually do SOMETHING.  Causually you can use it to ward of instants and abilites that cost mana and are activated at instant speed.  

It sucks but at least it still does something!

Power Surge.  I think that guy qualifies as the 'most epic fail' when it comes to the new rules.

The only card it effects are:
- the 5 lands with "(color) legendary creatures you control gain "Band's with other legendary creature"
- Halls of Mist
- Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
- And I would say Glacial Chasm, but It prevents Power Surge's damage anyway!


RIP Powersurge.  May you forever dream in a world where there is no restricted list, no 4-of contraint, 30 card deck limit, life totals start around 9-12~ish and awful red decks are based on you .... AKA Shandalar!

[Eastman]

VERY conservatively, I'd say I don't go 3 matches without taking some mana burn, and I don't go 10 tournament matches without losing a game by just 1 life.  So right there that's 1 in 30 matches with a game result changed.  That's pretty significant, and I'm being very conservative. 

[Harlequin]

Oh come on... First of all, mathematically speaking that assumes that there is no corelation between games in which you burn and games in which you lose by 1 life.  How many times have you cracked lotus to play timewalk and burned for the loss when you were at 1 life?    

Philosophically speaking, it will effect every game from the moment it was anounced onward.  Any changes to the game will cause immessurable ripples in the water.   In a Doc. Brown time space continuum where mana burn was never removed can you even immagin how different things would be?  One tournement passes, and some games outcomes are different.  Maybe that spurs an inovation, which changes the enire metagame which leads to restrictions and bannings.  

What about the person who will eventually become the 2016 vintage champ, lets call him Billy. Billy today is thinking how to finish off the last 3 cards in his Braid of Fire Burn deck - when steps off the curb, emersed in thought, he's clipped by a Semi.  This changes the face of vintage as we know it!

[Eastman]

What about the person who will eventually become the 2016 vintage champ, lets call him Billy. Billy today is thinking how to finish off the last 3 cards in his Braid of Fire Burn deck - when steps off the curb, emersed in thought, he's clipped by a Semi.  This changes the face of vintage as we know it!

Haha very good point, we better ask MaRo what he's doing about crosswalk signage.

You're right that my math is wrong because it assumes that correlation.  But I'm just saying that, in Type 1, you mana burn ALL the time.  Mana Drain/ Mana Crypt casting Sol Ring, Mana Vault casting Tinker, and several others are incredibly common plays.  The presence of mana burn effects some of my game decisions, and it won't anymore.    I'm not upset about it or anything, I'm actually a big fan of both the rules changes and the new restricted list. 

[Diakonov]

Philosophically speaking, it will effect every game from the moment it was anounced onward.  Any changes to the game will cause immessurable ripples in the water.   In a Doc. Brown time space continuum where mana burn was never removed can you even immagin how different things would be?  One tournement passes, and some games outcomes are different.  Maybe that spurs an inovation, which changes the enire metagame which leads to restrictions and bannings.  

What about the person who will eventually become the 2016 vintage champ, lets call him Billy. Billy today is thinking how to finish off the last 3 cards in his Braid of Fire Burn deck - when steps off the curb, emersed in thought, he's clipped by a Semi.  This changes the face of vintage as we know it!

To be fair though, the face of vintage is not so volatile that dramatic changes brought about by a single person's deck ideas are a common occurrence.  I know you were just choosing a random example, but I really don't think vintage is so subject to the butterfly effect when it comes to any choices made by a single player or the outcome of particular games.  The driving forces of change and significance come mostly from new cards and rules/restriction changes.

For example, I don't think that the success of Tezz or Stax or TPS were the result of simple moments in the game.  It is players looking at the accumulation of data from thousands of games that in one way or another predetermined Tezz's success.

[Apollyon]

What about the person who will eventually become the 2016 vintage champ, lets call him Billy. Billy today is thinking how to finish off the last 3 cards in his Braid of Fire Burn deck - when steps off the curb, emersed in thought, he's clipped by a Semi.  This changes the face of vintage as we know it!

Haha very good point, we better ask MaRo what he's doing about crosswalk signage.

You're right that my math is wrong because it assumes that correlation.  But I'm just saying that, in Type 1, you mana burn ALL the time.  Mana Drain/ Mana Crypt casting Sol Ring, Mana Vault casting Tinker, and several others are incredibly common plays.  The presence of mana burn effects some of my game decisions, and it won't anymore.    I'm not upset about it or anything, I'm actually a big fan of both the rules changes and the new restricted list.  

I'd like to point out in the latter example that you are casting Tinker. If it resolves, everything else is irrelevant.

From personal experience, mana burn has been relevant maybe once or twice. And I've been playing since Ice Age. The arguments for leaving mana burn in that I've seen mostly consist of "Bad Card becomes terrible" (Power Surge, Citadel of Pain), or "Really Good Card becomes marginally better" (Mana Drain, anything that taps for more than one mana). I can't say that I'll miss it. It never really came up.

[Nauzhror]

No mana burn makes a huge difference in one of my decks. I don't use it all that often, but I have a black/white deck that centers on transcendence and forsaken wastes. I usually intentionally mana burn myself before dropping transcendence to get myself farther from 20 as a safety net just incase.