EDH Mana Source Calculator - EPIC EDH
EDH Mana Source Calculator

EDH Mana Source Calculator


playgroup.gg banner

How to Apply This to Your Deck

This tool gives you an idea about how consistent your EDH land base is and it gives you insight to make further tweaks to optimize consistency. A simpler way of putting it: when you use this tool you will much less likely get color screwed i.e. not having the right mana colors when you need them.

  • For the required sources, it is mandatory to have that amount of colors in your deck in order to cast your spells on curve.
  • For the preference colors your need just one of those color sources of that amount in your deck.

If you want your deck to become more consistent there are three options:

  1. Up your color sources by for instance adding more triple or dual lands (see this dual land guide or this five color mana base guide).
  2. Cut cards from your deck that are very mana intensive, the column caused by will tell you which card causes the highest mana requirement.
  3. Accept that there is a bigger chance that you won’t be able to cast the spell on curve and keep it in your deck anyway.

Mana Rocks and Mana Dorks

The ‘current land sources’ in the third table are purely taken from the land base of your deck. You could add your artifact ramp and mana dorks to this. Just be careful because this can be meta dependent. A lot of removal or artifact hate in a playgroup screws up your ramp. From the original article from Frank Karsten, a guideline:

  • Mana Dorks (creatures) counts as: 1/2 colored mana source
  • Mana Rocks (artifacts) counts as: 3/4 colored mana source

Explanation

This tool calculates the minimum required color sources that you need in order to cast your spells on curve, with around 90% certainty. The lower you will go with your colored sources, the more the chance will drop that you will cast a spell on curve. The underlying model for the calculation is credited to Frank Karsten, check out his article here.

Example

As an example we take Necropotence and Toxic Deluge.

  • Toxic Deluge is
  • This means your deck needs 1 black source by turn 3 in order to potentially cast this card. According to the simulations of Frank Karsten that would mean you need to run 26 black sources in your deck.
  • Necropotence is
  • The model will see this as your deck needing 3 black sources by turn 3, which as you can imagine is hard because you need to have 3 black land drops in a row. According to the simulations of Frank Karsten you need 36 black sources to do this consistently.

If you decide to only run around 20 black mana sources, there is a very big chance that you won’t be able to cast Necropotence on curve. Now if you feel like 36 black mana sources is too much, you can either cut Necropotence from your deck or you can try to get closer to those 36 mana sources by adding more black sources to your EDH land base!