MTG Duel of the Planeswalkers 2013

[Kaden]

None of this solves the problem of having 50% of my land cards packed into the top twenty cards of the library. I play white or red mono to deal with mana starvation, but a library of cheap spells does nothing to cure me of excess mana.

To be fair, I wasn't trying to solve it. Just explaining why I think it's fine.

I've been looking through tournament winners' builds. The revolve around land-effect spells (draw or destruction), mana-producing creatures and artifacts, or generic extra card draws. That's how people used to win more than ten years ago and I think there is a lesson to be learned from that.

Most of the top level players will tell you that blue is the best color in mana for two reasons: card draw and, more importantly, card selection/filtering. When you can use cards like Ponder, Preordain, Augury Owl, Merfolk Looter, and Thought Scour to adjust your draws, it gives you a huge advantage.

Non-basic lands with spell-like effects are a pretty big deal in the game. The man-lands from Zendikar (Celestial Colonade, Raging Ravine, Creeping Tar-Pit, etc.) were huge because they act like summoning spells. The new effect lands from Innistrad (Kessig Wolf-Run, Isolated Lighthouse, Vault of the Archangel, etc.) are going to see a fair amount of play as well.

I'll be really interested to see what happens in the Standard format when Ponder, Gitaxian Probe, and Mana Leak rotate out. Red is going to end up with the best card filtering, but not the draw and blue is basically the opposite. Should be interesting.