Understanding Colorless Mana
How Appropriate. the Great Distortion, Revealing Everything We Knew About the Mana System Was Always a Big Lie. Fortunately, the Truth That Was Hidden Was...
How appropriate. The Great Distortion, revealing everything we knew about the mana system was always a big lie. Fortunately, the truth that was hidden was merely odd, difficult to comprehend, and not actually reality shattering.
Colorless mana requirements are coming to Standard (and every other format) very soon. Kozilek is only the start of what will likely be a significant number of new cards showcasing this mechanic and as always, these cards will likely be positioned to have immediate impact in (at least) Standard, and probably more.
Even without a list of other cards to look at, there is a lot we can determine just by looking at the support for them. You are still paying a mana cost here, and as such, supporting it is going to be the key resource to manage.
Takeaway 0: Colorless is Basically a Color
I’m labeling this as zero since this was basically the talking point when everyone first saw Kozilek, the Great Distortion, but colorless mana is being used in this set as if it was a sixth color.
If you want to play a colorless spell or card with a colorless required activation, you are “splashing” colorless. If you want to play multiple cards like this, you are basically adding another color to your deck.
Count your color requirements as such. This season’s Standard decks probably aren’t the best indicators of required counts as the mana is so absurdly good, but looking back in time, you probably want 9-11 sources for a splash of a couple key effects and fifteen+ for a solid commitment.
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Takeaway 1: A “Mono-Brown” Colorless-Only deck is Unlikely
Historically, there have been a number of mono-colorless decks even without colorless mana being required to cast spells. Every single one of them was mono-colorless not because of the spells, but the lands. They are all colorless because Mishra’s Workshop or Ancient Tomb is just too good and there are enough crazy ramp lands in the older formats to support a deck like that. That is definitely not the case right now in Standard, and there would have to be a lot of crazy Colorless lands and early support spells for this deck to be functional there.
A mono-colorless deck spawned from Oath of the Gatewatch cards requires basically the same amount of support as any other mono-color deck. You start running into the classic “purple” problem here, where if you want your new sixth color to be immediately as much of a player as the others you have to push the power level crazy hard. I’ve seen multiple instances of people putting “Purple” Mana Drain into their custom card sets to make the color flashy enough. Right now, all of the formats are really high-powered, and Oath of the Gatewatch is a single small set. The amount of colorless cards that would have to be pushed to make going mono-colorless attractive on power alone is absurd and basically impossible.
Along the same lines of a mono-colorless deck being a mono-color deck, you need the same conditions that spawn normal mono-color decks. You need some big payoff card for being mono-color, a big tempo payoff for having untapped perfect mana, or you need the mana in the format to be unreliable for two-color decks. There was a perfect confluence of these things in Theros/Return to Ravnica Standard, with devotion, powerful one-drops like Thoughtseize, and lots of missing fixing prior to all ten Temples being released. Every single format is currently operating on fetch-dual mana, so your mana is great and just too good to play mono-color anything. Even mono-red aggro in Standard is splashing because it’s such a free roll, and the heavy colorless decks in Modern are splashing all five colors because Mox Opal and Glimmervoid exist. Powerful things to curve out into and big incentives are possible, but this goes back to the previous point. Doubly so when you realize the colorless incentives in Standard are mostly “colored” devoid cards like Ruination Guide and that the best colorless lands make colored mana.
It’s possible that some time in the future of Standard the mana dries up and we see mono-colorless or close to it pop up, or a single card gets printed that makes a deck in an Eternal format tighten up its mana, but odds are until more sets are printed with this mechanic, mono-colorless isn’t much more viable than it is now.
Maya is a hardware enthusiast who tests and reviews smart home devices, smartphones, wearables, and audio gear. She focuses on practical consumer value and build quality.
