Mana dorks

While one-mana dorks usually just tap for mana, two-mana dorks can do anything mana dorks provide pressure to win the game with infinite mana! One-drops tend to just offer you one extra mana and very little else - but if you jump up to the two-drop slot, all of a sudden you're getting mana dorks with significant upside, mana dorks.

The inclusion of mana dorks in Magic: the Gathering decks has been a game-shaping dynamic ceded in the original MTG sets and that's where today's history lesson begins. Mana dork is commonplace MTG slang for a creature with a low converted mana cost typically a one or two-drop that produces mana to help a deck cast its spells more efficiently. The role of these creatures within a strategy is to help smooth out draws and cast the other spells in the deck more efficiently, on time and on curve. Essentially, mana dorks are an extension of a deck's mana base but always in the form of creatures. It's also significant to note that because mana dorks are always creatures, they die to the various creature removal spells that people tend to play and so the key dynamic is that they create significant tactical advantages in terms of accelerating, ramping and fixing your mana, but always contingent on upon the mana dork surviving a full turn cycle to be able to use its activated ability to produce mana.

Mana dorks

Your Magic: The Gathering decks need mana. It doesn't matter what style of deck it is, what colours, or how fast it is, if you don't have the mana to play the spells, it's as good as dead in the water. While some colours, like green, are brilliant at ramping out lands, every colour can benefit from mana rocks and mana dorks. Mana rituals may be a little bit more limited, but the effect is still the same: with just a few choice spells, you can have access to more mana than you thought possible, and hopefully outpace your opponents. Here is everything you need to know about mana rocks, mana dorks, and mana rituals in MTG. Updated May 2, Mana is essential for any MTG deck, and one of the quickest, most efficient ways to gain it is by playing mana rocks, mana dorks, and mana rituals. This guide has been updated with more information about the three. Mana dorks are usually one or two drops that have the ability to produce mana. These all have the ability to tap and add one green mana to your mana pool. These mana dorks all have very low power and toughness, and will act more as an extra land over something to use in combat - unless you are incredibly desperate. Of course, green is not the only colour to have mana dorks, but it is the most common. Other colours that have mana dorks will often have some drawbacks to them. For example, the blue creature Apprentice Wizard will give you three colourless mana if you tap it, but you will also need to pay one blue mana first.

The same can be said for Joraga Treespeaker, mana dorks. Burnished Hart is excellent, especially in multicolor decks. Scuttlemutt replaces Alloy Myr as the premier artifact mana dork.

Deathrite Shaman Illustration by Steve Argyle. Mana dorks are a usually cheap creature that does nothing but generate mana and accelerate you. For the purposes of this article, I'm going to cast a wide net and include any utility creature that adds mana, filters mana, or searches up lands. Mana dorks may not seem that powerful at first. But any experienced player will tell you that getting early mana acceleration like that can slingshot you ahead in the game, allowing you to deploy cards your opponent can't handle. Acceleration is always powerful in Magic, especially when you can get it on turn 1 or 2, which is where most mana dorks land in mana value.

Deathrite Shaman Illustration by Steve Argyle. Mana dorks are a usually cheap creature that does nothing but generate mana and accelerate you. For the purposes of this article, I'm going to cast a wide net and include any utility creature that adds mana, filters mana, or searches up lands. Mana dorks may not seem that powerful at first. But any experienced player will tell you that getting early mana acceleration like that can slingshot you ahead in the game, allowing you to deploy cards your opponent can't handle. Acceleration is always powerful in Magic, especially when you can get it on turn 1 or 2, which is where most mana dorks land in mana value. That or the mana can only be used on specific things. Sunseed Nurturer generously adds one colorless mana to your mana pool. This card would only ever be used to keep up something like a Mystic Remora and is basically useless at all other points in time.

Mana dorks

Your Magic: The Gathering decks need mana. It doesn't matter what style of deck it is, what colours, or how fast it is, if you don't have the mana to play the spells, it's as good as dead in the water. While some colours, like green, are brilliant at ramping out lands, every colour can benefit from mana rocks and mana dorks. Mana rituals may be a little bit more limited, but the effect is still the same: with just a few choice spells, you can have access to more mana than you thought possible, and hopefully outpace your opponents.

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Burnished Hart is excellent, especially in multicolor decks. Costing nothing to cast, you can sacrifice it whenever you want, and you will get three mana of any one colour you want added to your mana pool. Things start to get a little crazier with Orcish Lumberjack. In the same way that Priest of Titania was intended as a card to play on the second turn to ramp into a big turn three, so was Metalworker designed to provide the same utility in an artifact deck. While it can be Bolted on-curve, it does a lot more in play than a Bird ever could when it isn't immediately neutralized. It has to sacrofise itself as an activation cost. I like Caryatid a lot in decks where it's going to function as a combo piece because it protects itself with its own ability. Do you agree with my rankings, or did I miss something you find to be incredible? After reading today's article, anytime you see a new "mana dork" on a spoiler you'll be able to identify what sets it apart from other game-shaping mana dorks and better understand what types of decks would benefit most from using a new variant instead of, or in addition to, similar cards that have came before. Solemn Simulacrum. The card pretty much did it all when it was printed in Champions of Kamigawa and to me represents an anti-mana dork because while it is similar in function to other mana dorks in the sense that it ramps and fixes mana, we'd typically put STE into exactly the opposite type of decks where mana dorks tend to provide synergistic upside.

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Dockside Extortionist breaks virtually every single rule of what is safe or consistently applied to mana dorks. This is just a solid card with huge potential upside and a guaranteed source of mana if things are going south and your rocks are being blown up. Notably, both of these cards are red and not green which introduces effective mana dorks into a color that has traditionally not received them at such a powerful or flexible clip. Jake Henderson August 10, am. It doesn't represent chip damage, but it does offer the capability to ramp from two to four on turn three. So, as we can see from the examples, some mana dorks actually have the potential to function as mana engines depending upon whether their production is capped or uncapped. Sylvan Caryatid. Even in Standard, there were ways around the cap. Collecting 0 0. Crypt Ghast is a super mana dork that does far more than just tap for mana. Next up is Selvala, Explorer Returned , which marks a big jump in both power and interaction from Gyre Engineer. One thing I've learned from writing Magic content over the years is that contexts always change and become more complicated as the card pool grows each year. First, it is "uncapped" and the amount of mana it can make depends upon context.