Adding ManaPool

I’m glad that MTG Forge now has a mana pool because I accidentally left it out. I know what your thinking, how could a guy forget one of the most important parts of Magic. OK, I still forgot it. Also from time to time I forget what are the 5 magic colors in Magic as well as the names of all 5 basic lands. Yes I remember them, but you wouldn’t believe the number of times that I need to know Plains, Mountain, Island, Forest, Swamp while programming MTG Forge. Even then I almost forgot Swamp.

Let me go back to the beginning. The truth is that MTG Forge had around 50 cards and was not released on the Internet. I was just adding good cards from the 9th Edition when I saw Early Harvest. I thought it would be cool so I easily coded it. The card untaps all of your land so it was very straightforward to program.

Then I put together a small test deck to make sure it worked. After I played Early Harvest reality hit me, THERE WAS NO MANAPOOL. Granted if you had 6 Forests, you could tap 3 to play a card and then the tap the other 3 to play Early Harvest but without a mana pool the card is severely crippled.

So from then on MTG Forge officially didn’t have a mana pool and I didn’t care. Which meant that my program couldn’t support Dark Ritual, Sol Ring, Seething Song or Magic’s most expensive card: Black Lotus. I shrugged a little and told myself that I could at it later if I really had to.

The truth is I didn’t write any of the mana pool code, it was all done by the nice guys on the forums: dennis, rob, and others. By the way I didn’t make a big deal about it but MTG Forge also supports protection, exalted, and shroud. Dennis had to update ALL of the targeting code, which was an enormous task. I didn’t think MTG Forge would ever have protection and shroud because it was such a difficult task.

p.s. Yes I created this card with the program Magic Set Editor.