SCD: Mana Flare

[brattin]

Mana Flare

I was trying to design a landstill deck this morning, and I kept
wanting to put in more high cost cards (elspeth, humility, jace, fact
or fiction, wrath...) and it occurred to me that playing mana flare
might possibly be worthwhile. Pretty much every legacy deck is
expecting to play a one drop turn one, a two drop turn two, &c, and
might not be able to use the mana from mana flare very efficiently. In
most cases, the worst thing a turn 3 mana flare is going to do is
cause your opponent to overextend, and then turn 4 you can drop
humility+elspeth, or wrath + standstill, leaving counterspell mana up.

Of course, Mana Flare is probably not going to be good against, say,
storm combo or eldrazi decks, and if you drop it turn three against
decks with pridemage it probably won't end up benefitting you much
either.

Also, it probably sucks in multiples.

So what do you guys think about playing it as a one-of in landstill, with ETutors to get it? If it doesn't get destroyed, it seems powerful, and if it does, at the worst it's getting rid of some artifact/enchantment removal, and in the best case you just tricked your opponent into overextending into a wrath or something.

Thoughts?

Could it be good in a different deck, if not landstill?

[SuperProxy]

well you have misstep on turn 1
spell snare turn 2
counterspell turn 3
jace turn 4 i dont think you need flare because your slowing the pace of the game to your liking anyways as a landstill player may it be wastelanding their lands and countering their early threats

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I would think that a card like Mirari's Wake would be better, if you really had to ramp your mana, as it's non-symmetrical and has super-synergy with Decree of Justice.

[Koby]

If you're going to be casting Mana Flare on turn 3 - why limit yourself to control cards on turn 4 when you have a possible 8 mana. You should be casting a spell that wins you the game RIGHT NOW. Like Time Spiral and other combo enablers.

The card fits really neatly into High Tide shells too, and gives you Red for Elemental Blasts to fight the blue metagame.

[Malchar]

I kind of like this idea. Not sure if it would be best in a landstill deck though. Theoretically you could make a deck where you just cast huge stuff and the opponent is unable to take advantage of the big mana. It wouldn't necessarily help storm that much because they use rituals and artifact mana. However, tapping out turn 3 against a storm deck is still somewhat bad.
There's also heartbeat of spring.

[brattin]

I remembered heartbeat when IBA reminded me of wake. I think wake costs too much. By the time any of these control decks has five mana, they're probably already in control. With turn three mana flare, unless it gets answered AND you get wastelanded you're likely to have four mana on turn four, which is cool.

Anyway, right now I'm toying with a one-of heartbeat in an UBg intuition landstill deck. I always want to be casting intuition for loam/volraths/witness, which is almost always wrong because I never have enough mana to capitalize on it...but if I had heartbeat out, then I would. And I'm pretty sure that'd be savage.

[dahcmai]

The last time I played Mana Flare was in a Digger/Browse deck. The problem even then and even moreso now is if someone decides you don't need to have that card, you are left with high casting cost cards in your hand or worse yet, they can use it better than you can. Spiral Tide players would love to see something like that played against them, for example.

The card does technically nothing on it's own, is card disadvantage, and helps out the opponent first (since you cast it and lost out on 4 mana right there). That just says recipe for disaster right there.

You really, really have to be able to take advantage of it right then and there or it's not worth it.

[rufus]

You really, really have to be able to take advantage of it right then and there or it's not worth it.

Not to mention that, in the right deck, High Tide, Bubbling Muck and some exotic stuff like Squandered Resources can give you similar returns at a lower cost.

[Clark Kant]

Red has so much freaking mana accleration. (Wasn't there a cheap card that generated red mana as a cumilitive upkeep as well).

What legacy needs is a solid red control deck to take advantage of all this mana.

[Malchar]

Red has so much freaking mana accleration. (Wasn't there a cheap card that generated red mana as a cumilitive upkeep as well).

What legacy needs is a solid red control deck to take advantage of all this mana.

There were glimmers of this in a standard deck from timespiral called big red which featured red akroma among other things.

Although mana flare does strictly give you card disadvantage, if you design your deck to take advantage of the extra mana, you will gain an advantage overall. a typical legacy deck cannot correctly use up all the extra mana, so the opponent won't be able to capitalize. however, if you go up against spiral tide, then you're in trouble. considering that there's only one deck that wrecks you, it seems like a smart gamble to take. besides, storm decks are rather easy to hate on with sideboard tech.

[Mr. Safety]

Red has so much freaking mana accleration. (Wasn't there a cheap card that generated red mana as a cumilitive upkeep as well).

What legacy needs is a solid red control deck to take advantage of all this mana.

Braid of Fire, just for reference. With the loss of mana-burn, I'm surprised this card hasn't fueled some bad-ass combo decks already.

(DISCLAIMER: sorry I de-railed your thread slightly with the following paragraph, but I think Lotus Cobra is excellent mana acceleration and could fit your application nicely)

I think a card that is really powerful for mana accleration is Lotus Cobra. I'm playtesting the Loam engine with cycle lands and Lotus Cobra is just about PERFECT for this setup. Your Wastelands net you ANY COLOR MANA when you play them while also dinging your opponent's lands off the table. The Loam engine gets your cycle lands back, and cycle lands don't hurt when you can play them and get mana via Cobra. Your fetchlands become absolutely AMAZING with Cobra, allowing you to fetch basics and still pull off difficult mana-requirements. Not to mention Cobra hits for 2...

I'm fairly excited about what Lotus Cobra can do for legacy right now.