Mana Confluence

[TheWhiteDragon]

Well, if you want to kill fetch prices, printing a card that stops you from paying life helps with that, too.  Can you imagine how fun humans become with this:

Lil' Stinker W
1/1
Opponents cannot pay life to pay for spells or abilities.

Thought of this possible printing.  Just creamed jeans.

No fetches, no fow, no necro/bargain, no grisel, no phyrexian mana...lots of routes cut off.

[brianpk80]

Well, if you want to kill fetch prices, printing a card that stops you from paying life helps with that, too.  Can you imagine how fun humans become with this:

Lil' Stinker W
1/1
Opponents cannot pay life to pay for spells or abilities.

Thought of this possible printing.  Just creamed jeans.

No fetches, no fow, no necro/bargain, no grisel, no phyrexian mana...lots of routes cut off.

It's a very elegant design with lots of relevant Vintage interactions.  The fact that they haven't regularly been printing cool cards like that since 2012 has been a constant source of frustration. 

[MaximumCDawg]

Well, remember that they did print this sorta in Angel of Jubilation.  It just costs too much for Vintage.

[Eastman]

Maybe this will reign in the cost of Fetchlands, perhaps?  One way of dodging wasteland is fetching basics, but the other way is having every land you play tap for any color you want.

Yes this seems like a response to the cost of mana bases in modern and legacy.  Making 5c mana bases better will make it a more compelling option for lots of decks and give budget mana bases a chance.

[fsecco]

Well, if you want to kill fetch prices, printing a card that stops you from paying life helps with that, too.  Can you imagine how fun humans become with this:

Lil' Stinker W
1/1
Opponents cannot pay life to pay for spells or abilities.

W is too powerful for that effect. Angel of Jubilation is more on par with the power of the effect. Even if it costed 1W it would be too good. Specially if it says "opponents" and not "players"

[vaughnbros]

Maybe this will reign in the cost of Fetchlands, perhaps?  One way of dodging wasteland is fetching basics, but the other way is having every land you play tap for any color you want.

Yes this seems like a response to the cost of mana bases in modern and legacy.  Making 5c mana bases better will make it a more compelling option for lots of decks and give budget mana bases a chance.

This only helps budget mana bases assuming this card stays at a reasonable price, which I highly doubt.

[MaximumCDawg]

This only helps budget mana bases assuming this card stays at a reasonable price, which I highly doubt.

Its all relative.  Duals are pushing 200 a pop, fetches are close to 100. 

[fsecco]

This only helps budget mana bases assuming this card stays at a reasonable price, which I highly doubt.

Its all relative.  Duals are pushing 200 a pop, fetches are close to 100.  

If this card would help decks that use duals, people would already be using City of Brass, which they aren't. Those that don't have duals hunt with shocks. You could even argue that having 1 dual of each and completing the set with shocks could be a good "budget" manabase for Vintage. Fetches, on the other hand... Mirage fetches?

So, Mana Confluence isn't going in any deck with duals where City wasn't already going. This either substitutes City or comes along it for 5-color manabases that don't use duals.

[hashswag]

This only helps budget mana bases assuming this card stays at a reasonable price, which I highly doubt.

Its all relative.  Duals are pushing 200 a pop, fetches are close to 100. 

If this card would help decks that use duals, people would already be using City of Brass, which they aren't. Those that don't have duals hunt with shocks. You could even argue that having 1 dual of each and completing the set with shocks could be a good "budget" manabase for Vintage. Fetches, on the other hand... Mirage fetches?

So, Mana Confluence isn't going in any deck with duals where City wasn't already going. This either substitutes City or comes along it for 5-color manabases that don't use duals.

Before, there weren't quite enough good rainbow lands to not require duals anymore (Forbidden Orchard isn't wanted in a lot of decks), so running 4x City of Brass left you in the awkward position where you're only playing 4-5 duals or 2-3 fetches + 2-3 duals to supplement them. Now there's a critical mass, so you can dispense with fetches and duals altogether.

[vaughnbros]

This only helps budget mana bases assuming this card stays at a reasonable price, which I highly doubt.

Its all relative.  Duals are pushing 200 a pop, fetches are close to 100. 

If this card would help decks that use duals, people would already be using City of Brass, which they aren't. Those that don't have duals hunt with shocks. You could even argue that having 1 dual of each and completing the set with shocks could be a good "budget" manabase for Vintage. Fetches, on the other hand... Mirage fetches?

So, Mana Confluence isn't going in any deck with duals where City wasn't already going. This either substitutes City or comes along it for 5-color manabases that don't use duals.

Before, there weren't quite enough good rainbow lands to not require duals anymore (Forbidden Orchard isn't wanted in a lot of decks), so running 4x City of Brass left you in the awkward position where you're only playing 4-5 duals or 2-3 fetches + 2-3 duals to supplement them. Now there's a critical mass, so you can dispense with fetches and duals altogether.

Right, but those decks will be 5 color decks the second they start to run these lands over duals.  Why would they restrict themselves to 3 colors when their lands produce 5?  The cards involved in 5 color decks typically aren't cheap.  Being a rare in the third set of a block, this card won't be cheap.  So simply put this is not helping budget decks.  This is helping 5 color decks.

[Guli]

Do you guys really think this card will sky rocket price-wise. It seems to be rather cheap to me right now. I think it will settle at the same price as the city of brass from modern masters. Or am I completely off here?

[JarofFortune]

Its from a small set, so I would expect it to be more expensive than city for the time being. The current price is probably a good settling point, but I could see this going as high as $20. City is so low in price because it has been reprinted many times. The foils of this card, however, will probably be worth at least several times as much money as the normal version, because this is an instant Eternal staple that might even see play in standard. I can only imagine how high the Korean Foils will reach.

[xouman]

This card would go higher than city of brass. Being at least as good as city, but having far less quantity, I'll be very surprised to see it at city's prices...

[vaughnbros]

Do you guys really think this card will sky rocket price-wise. It seems to be rather cheap to me right now. I think it will settle at the same price as the city of brass from modern masters. Or am I completely off here?

If we look at it now, since they are functionally similar and likely will be played along side each other the demand will likely be similar for this card as the demand for city.  However, the supply will be drastically different.  Being the third set of the block, JOU will be a lower print run than most sets, that means less copies of Mana confluence.  City of brass on the other hand was in the core set from '97 to '05 as well as being printed in arabian nights, chronicles, modern masters, and as a promo.  You are basically talking about comparing a high supply item to a low supply item with the same demand curves.

Also if we look at it historically, city wasn't always a $5 card.  It dropped to this point due to a combination of (1) massive numbers of reprintings, (2) rotating out of standard, and (3) better competition from new mana fixers.  For at least the next year and a half, Mana confluence won't have the luxury of (1) and (2) to keep its price in check.

[TheWhiteDragon]

This card is so awesome...my blood moons and magi just hit $50 each due to the 5cc deck discussions.  Yay!

[Protoaddict]

I think the fact that this card allows us to play 8 city of brass is great and all, but I am having a hard time figuring out what deck actually wants that. Most 5c deck are really just 2 or 3 color bases with a splash so having 8 cities and 4 caverns seems like overkill to me, especially if the deck isn't 100% tribal. It is also a LOT of life loss, so unless you use something to mitigate that it will probably catch up to you.

• I can't imaging dredge needing this as CoB 5-8 (it will replace city I am sure) because most dredge lists don't use a full compliment of city as it stands and want the bounce from undiscovered paradise.
• Humans probably does not need it. The fixing is not really the reason they play Cavern of souls, it's uncounterability.
• Decks that run Ponder, Brainstorm, Sylvian, Jace probably still want fetches.

So what decks want this at 8x? Is there some sorta 5CC good stuff deck that wants to play a turn one spell for W then a turn 2 for RR then a turn 3 Necropotence? Is there a tribal that truly is all over the color specturm that makes sense now that the mana base ties it together AND does not also mind the amount of life you are paying out? If this deck full of hard to cast cards does infact exist, wouldn't it be inherently weakened by it's lack of ability to use on color moxen and its lack of a need for generic mana?

I even started down the path of something like deaths shadow, but then realized that not only was the deck basically becoming monoblack anyways, if a deck wants to rapidly toss away life they would be better off running fetches and shocks than 8 cities unless the deck was literally like dual and triple color casting cost cards across the board.

[MaximumCDawg]

Cavern isn't really all that old, and while very powerful, does lock you into tribal and sucks for spells.  Having 8 Cities of Brass suggests we might have a deck that could curve out this way:

T1 - Swords to Plowshares / Pierce mana up.
T2 - Vexing Shusher / Drain Mana up.
T3 - Necropotence / Clique mana up

Now, the life loss might be too much to realistically make this work, but having access to all of these double and triple color effects from different colors in the same deck, reliably and on-curve, is something rather new to Vintage.  

I'm most interested in Mana Drain.  It was always a powerful tempo play, but now it can be played in true tempo decks who want to run non-blue creatures while being a reliable threat on turn 2.  That's really interesting.

[wiley]

Burning Oath gets to cut its gemstone mines.  Dredge/5c tribal gets to cut any gemstone mines it was running.  Everything else pretty much stays the same.  There were enough 5c lands that any good 5c deck that wanted them had them.  Oh, and I guess modern can cut tarnished citadel...

I seriously doubt this opens up any new decks, but it is still a welcome addition to the format.

[Protoaddict]

Cavern isn't really all that old, and while very powerful, does lock you into tribal and sucks for spells.  Having 8 Cities of Brass suggests we might have a deck that could curve out this way:

T1 - Swords to Plowshares / Pierce mana up.
T2 - Vexing Shusher / Drain Mana up.
T3 - Necropotence / Clique mana up

Now, the life loss might be too much to realistically make this work, but having access to all of these double and triple color effects from different colors in the same deck, reliably and on-curve, is something rather new to Vintage.  

I'm most interested in Mana Drain.  It was always a powerful tempo play, but now it can be played in true tempo decks who want to run non-blue creatures while being a reliable threat on turn 2.  That's really interesting.

What deck wants to play that selection of cards? Seems to be that the blue deck already do most of that  between fetches and duals, not that it wants to. Also Necropotence is substantially less attractive when you have to spend 6 life on mana on the first three turns.

I think what I am wondering more is are there cards/combinations of cards from past sets that were not viable together because of colored mana requirements that are now not only viable because of the ease of making colored mana, but also help mitigate the real downside of playing 8 Cities AND is a viable strategy in this more aggressive creature based meta?

Something with Doomsday comes to mind, other cards that fall into this that strike a nerve with me are Cruel Bargain, Patron Wizard in a 5cc wizard tribal deck, Seismic Assault, and Phyrexian Obliterator. But once again to want to do that you would also really need to open up with like a white card and then a double not black not white one for it to make it so that you needed cities in the first place.

Also having played dredge for a time, I have often found that if I have gemstone mines in the list, which isn't often, they want to be there and I would not want more cities.

[MTGFan]

I was playtesting a deck the past few days that used a proxy for Mana Confluence alongside 4 City of Brass, and let me tell you, the life loss adds up.

The only way this kind of 4 City, 4 Confluence manabase will be viable, imho, is in a combo deck.

[fsecco]

Burning Oath wants Gemstone Mines. It can't have 12 lands attacking it's life (City, Confluence, Orchard).

[MaximumCDawg]

Well, don't you drop the orchards before the mines?

[Protoaddict]

Just bear in mind that in order for a deck to even need a City it needs a land which can produce or has the potential to produce 3 or more different color mana over the course of 2 turns or more and does not need a basic land type for a gush style effect, otherwise a fetch can do it for you 99% of the time. hell most of the time if you don't require that a shock may have been better in the long run than a city

So if you are playing a deck that needs to threaten a bolt or swords turn one, and then turn 2 play A Mana drain, and then turn 3 play doomsday, then yes, maybe 8 citys work for you. But I doubt that is a situation you are going to get into all that often, viably, in this format.

[fsecco]

Well, don't you drop the orchards before the mines?

In Oath? I guess not...

EDIT: I mean, what do you mean by "drop"? Play or cut from the deck?

[diopter]

Guli's point is excellent. This may portend a new and powerful Humans build.

Following this thread: would a 12-City humans deck also want to run Dr. Shaman? It can feed off the deck's Wasteland package for additional 5c mana action, but its life gain ability isn't as helpful as it could be.

And in any case, does the Birds of Paradise tactic fit into a 5c Humans plan? What does the 5c plan even look like? Very intriguing.

[fsecco]

I would guess Prophetic Flamespeaker would have a nice role in 5c Humans. At least I would start there hehe

[Stormanimagus]

Guli's point is excellent. This may portend a new and powerful Humans build.

Following this thread: would a 12-City humans deck also want to run Dr. Shaman? It can feed off the deck's Wasteland package for additional 5c mana action, but its life gain ability isn't as helpful as it could be.

And in any case, does the Birds of Paradise tactic fit into a 5c Humans plan? What does the 5c plan even look like? Very intriguing.

If you already are running 4x Noble Hierarch and 5 Moxen + Lotus I think that is more than enough accel alongside 12 rainbow lands and 5 waste effects. I would start with that manabase and not use any Dr. Shaman in this deck as it:

a) isn't a human
b) isn't as good in a deck without fetches as you won't be able to as consistently tap it for mana on turn 2.

This isn't the home for Dr. Shaman as awesome a card as it is.

-Storm

[serracollector]

Dont forget our good friends the slivers as well. With eight cities and four cavern you can play all the double casting cost slivers reliably on turn two no matter thier double mana configuration. There are quite a few of them.