“Effective mana cost” - A theory of fixing (part 2)
So, this is long overdue, but here we are.
This part is intended to be a deeper analysis of the notion described previously in this series, which is “effective mana cost”. (If you missed it, here you go.) As I have defined it, the EMC of a card is the first turn on which you can expect to play it, on average, assuming you already have it. With that said, let’s look at just what factors can affect the EMC of cards in a deck, as they are numerous, and see exactly why these factors affect the EMC.
Lands -- this one should be readily apparent. The landbase of a deck is the most obvious vehicle for playing the remainder of the cards in it, and the art of building a landbase for a multicolor deck still has yet to be perfected. That said, there are many subfactors within this (Does this land ever come in untapped? Can it produce multiple colors? Can it make more than one mana per turn? Is there a limit to the number of times it can make colored mana, a la the vivid lands? Can I cycle the land?), all of which deserve attention if this concept is to ever be mathematicized.
Non-land mana generation -- this category includes mana dorks, pseudo-dorks like Voyaging Satyr, mana-producing artifacts, planeswalkers with mana abilities or untap effects (I’m looking at you, Teferi and Xenagos), and spells such as Pyretic/Desperate/Dark Ritual, that produce mana but are not lands themselves. It should also be obvious why this category of things affects EMC--looking at Necropotence alone, it may appear that it should have an EMC of 3-ish, but with Dark Rituals in the deck, the actual EMC may teeter between 1 and 2.
Ramp -- This category includes both outright ramp spells (e.g. Cultivate/Kodama’s Reach, Explosive Vegetation, and yes, Tempt with Discovery) and ramping activated/triggered abilities (Sakura Tribe-Elder, Solemn Simulacrum), in addition to additional-land-per-turn effects (Exploration, or Burgeoning sort of). Any cards that put more lands on the field reduce EMC for the remainder of your cards. What’s scarier than a turn 8 Ugin? A turn 4 Ugin.
Draw/Scry/related -- this category includes anything that gets cards out of your library, or looks at parts of your library. Cards that let you draw or scry, or that even just look through your deck, are very important to the EMC of your cards. This also includes things like Collected Company, or such related things that look at a small subset of the library, grab a thing or two, and push the rest to the bottom. These things may not affect your EMCs positively--whiffing on a Company into six lands means it’s less likely you’ll draw your sixth land for the Advocate, for example--but they have an effect nonetheless. It is also important to realize how this category of effects interacts with library shuffling as caused by ramp, tutors, or other effects, as those change what other relevant cards you will see.
Static abilities -- this category is something of a catch-all, hitting many enchantments or creatures with static abilities that somehow fundamentally change how mana is added to your mana pool. Examples include Mana Reflection, Vorinclex, Cryptolith Rite, Crypt Ghast, or Liliana of the Dark Realms. Again, it should be clear why this affects EMC, but you can’t be too sure.
Storage -- there are many effects that store mana for later use, whether by not allowing mana to empty from your pool or by giving you mana later for earlier effects. Some examples of this include Kruphix, Omnath, or cards like Plasm Capture or Black Market.
The opponent’s deck -- this is a big one, though one that doesn’t come up too much in Standard. Say the opponent is running land destruction, or Static Orb, or Eldrazi creatures with Annihilator, or things like that. This seriously pushes your ability to cast things off course, which negatively affects your EMCs. On the other hand, say your opponent is running Path to Exile, a common scenario in Modern (if I may be allowed to understate). This can affect your EMCs positively, assuming you grab the right land. Sadly, this part of EMC must be ignored while deckbuilding, and so a true number cannot be determined for any of the cards in your deck, but working with your deck in a vacuum is close enough.
Miscellaneous -- this category catches the effects that other categories miss. Devotion, for example, plays a huge factor in EMC in a deck that runs Nykthos. Energy ties into EMC now with the release of Kaladesh, and suddenly Harnessed Lightning now affects your fixing, in case you’re playing either Aether Hub or Servant of the Conduit. Casting an Oblivion Sower on an opponent isn’t strictly ramp, but it does affect your EMCs. Cards with Convoke are complicated, because the number of creatures you control directly affects their castability.
The challenge now is to condense all of these effects and use sample decks and whatnot to try to come up with a way to mathematically analyze the effectiveness of these decks in fixing themselves. There are something like 16,000 cards in Magic: the Gathering right now, so this is no small task. At this point, it doesn’t seem like there will be a magic formula to do this for every deck--the analysis must be approached deck by deck, card by card, opening hand by opening hand, turn sequence by turn sequence.
On an unrelated note, I’m in the market for a supercomputer...