I never considered mana burn to be an important part of Magic and I was surprised that both Mark Rosewater and Abe Sargent wrote about mana burn this week. I considered the new combat rules to be ten times more important. (In case you missed the memo, Magic will no longer have mana burn. Mana pools are emptied at the end of every step and phase.)MTG Forge has never had mana burn and I've never missed it. Sometimes I had to pay attention to mana burn when I was playing Shandalar but usually I only burned myself because of a mistaken mouse click and not a tactical error.
The only card that I like that is influenced by this change is Su-Chi. It is a 4 mana, 4/4 creature that makes 4 mana when it is destroyed. The trick is trying not to be mana burned. I thought the card was just great because it sort of gives you too much mana.
The truth is that most people won't notice that the mana burn rule has been removed. Yes the change affects a bunch of old cards, but it doesn't really affect much that has been printed within the last 5 years. Supposedly Michelangelo was asked how he carves such beautiful marble statues and he says, "The statue is there within the block of marble, I just have to remove the rest." One less rule = better Magic.
So, no more decks built around Power Surge... :P
ReplyDeleteDo they have a good reason for removing mana burn by the way? It doesn't make much sense to me.
In essence, their posts on the subject indicated that the rule was to 'difficult' for newcomers to the game to grasp.
ReplyDeleteThe loss of mana burn does kill my friend's unglued deck. he used it to give the opponent infinite mana burn.
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