#1362: Mana Curve

Mark Rosewater· Host0:00

I'm pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work. Okay, so today I'm talking about mana curves. Now, before I have done a podcast on the mana system, I've done a podcast on mana costs, I've done podcasts on mana values. Um, so one of the joys of doing a podcast for as long as I have is you get to finely slice, uh, some things. So today it's all about the mana curves. In talking about the mana curves, I will talk a little bit about all these other things, all these other mana related things. Um, but if you want more detail, I have whole podcasts on them. Um, so let's start a little bit with the mana system to get into why... what mana curves are and why they matter. Um, I guess I... Let me define mana curves real quickly before I get into that. So a mana curve has to do with, um, having a selection of mana costs that allow you to go up over time. Um, so wh- what does that mean? So when Richard first created the game of Magic, um, there was a core problem to solve, which was he was making a trading card game, uh, and he had what we call the queen problem, which is if you were picking your pieces in chess, why wouldn't you just play with 15 queens and a king? You need a king 'cause that's the win condition. Why wouldn't you just play with 15 queens? Why play with a pawn? Why play with... Like, why play with a knight? Why play with any other pieces? Why... I mean,