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Being the old school Magic player than I am, I decided to go with my favorite card from the Dark as my introductory Vortex for this article series, Mana Vortex. This card, by itself, is not a very good one. For starters, its blue. What is it that blue need more than a fist full of cards, a Mind Over Matter sitting next to a Tolarian Academy, and 15 artifacts in play? That’s right, mana to play its chosen spells. Mana Vortex, being blue, is not a very blue friendly card.
Mana Vortex - 1UU Enchantment Rare The Dark
Kind of confusing isn’t it? This card is a good example of why the new card wording system is such a good thing. Lets take a look at the current wording of this old card.
There now. Isn’t that so much better? So I play a few Islands, cast the Vortex, then sacrifice a land? That’s not very fair! The typical blue deck is based on getting a stable mana base and controlling your opponent somehow, normally it would be with counterspells and creature bounce. Cards like this one, challenge a Blue Mage to think outside of the lines. (Or outside of the Bun if you are a Taco Bell fan ~Streetz~) It would not make sense to wait until I have seven lands in play and then cast the Vortex, in hopes that my opponent doesn’t draw any more lands (at the same time hoping that I do!). So that means that this card needs to be played early. Possibly even as early as turn three.
The next logical questions would have to be, why would anyone want to take this card out of their trade binder? Why would someone play this card? How could someone possibly play this card? The answer is a Blue Mage who can think differently, this is not exactly a card that goes into just any deck. He actually needs to look at a couple different deck types to find a reasonable use for this card. For starters, we have to totally ignore the fact that this card is only playable in Type I (Vintage) and that in that format, it doesn’t effect the Moxen and Lotus. We would need to zone in on the fact that we, the common people of the world, simply do not own them. We common people, play with our cheap Pain Lands, and don’t have Dual Lands. Having said that, let’s look at the deck types I foreshadowed about earlier. The card, Mana Vortex, is going to do single handily do what a good Land Destruction deck dreams of doing. It’s going to destroy a land, every turn, during the current players upkeep. This means that however many lands the opponent had on the turn that you played the Vortex, is how many that they will have, if they make a land drop on every turn. This also applies to you, except you sacrificed one land after resolution of the spell, meaning, you are one less than you started with. So what does Land Destruction (LD) do to kill you once you are land locked? LD Player will kill you with an efficient creature, or artifact that does consistent damage. Also, a typical LD deck will use red as its main fire power, and green as a mana fuel. It needs a way to jump start it to three mana to start the Stone Rain, Pillage, Molten Rain barrage. Coincidentally, Mana Vortex is also a three casting cost spell. LD relies on first turn Birds of Paradise, Llanowar Elves, Wild Growth, etc, to provide that additional mana it needs. The other deck type to consider, is the other Blue deck that changes the game and never looks back, Stasis. Stasis’ goal is to get the enchantment into play, as soon as possible, and then make land drops every turn in order to keep your the Stasis active and fueled. That deck performs at its peek potential when it has one or more Howling Mines in play, to ensure that you are going to make your land drops each turn, thus keeping Stasis around longer. Building the Vortex Deck... A few things we can do to our deck, in construction phase, is to fine tune it to endure what we are going to be doing to ourselves as a sad side effect of destroying our opponent. Remember, the Vortex doesn’t care whose turn it is, its going to force a land sacrifice and keep the land count to a minimum, and keep doing this until there are no lands in play, then it runs out of steam and goes away. Before adding any spells to our deck, besides the Vortex, we should increase the number of lands we are going to play. A typical control deck might run between 24-27 lands. I would recommend playing the high side of that, meaning 27-28 lands. We are after all going to kill a lot of lands with this deck. So what have we learned so far about what we are going to do? We know we need to make land drops, get a mana acceleration ramp up to three quickly, and get damage from efficient creatures or consistent damage from artifacts. While it would be nice to draw a ton of cards to make sure that we draw a land, it would not be very beneficial to us, if we: a.) also keep our opponent flush with lands and in effect keeping him in the game, or b.) simply discard those cards due to very minimal mana available to us. We need to come up with an alternate way, to ensure that we will get our lands into play, whether it be from our hands, library, or graveyard, we really should not care, so long as the Vortex stays in play, and limits our opponents mana flow. Coming from an expert LD player, I never really cared if you can cast some small creatures, you are just not going to be able to afford the higher end spells that are the game winners. How many decks, not including weenie decks, can honestly perform well with 2-3 mana the entire game? That’s exactly why LD does well in control atmospheres. Then even with Goblins and Sligh, I will eat one or two Goblins all day, and that’s not a problem. Goblins become a problem when they are too numerous for you to control.
The Wayfarer’s Bauble might be an option for us, due to the fact that it can get that second island into play for us for sure, albeit that it is one turn slow, it will make for a four land turn three. Keep in mind that people don’t play more lands in their deck than they need normally, so loosing your first two-three lands are heartbreakers. Those are your free lands from your opening hand! With our deck strategy, we should not even fear the Vortex running out of steam, because we should be able to recover from zero lands much quicker then the other guy. Another good option for us is Rampant Growth. Its starting to get hard to rule out playing Green as a secondary color. After a further look into Green, it becomes almost a dead lock as a color needed for this deck. Green provides us with the next thing that we need, and that is mana acceleration, in the form of Birds, Elves, and other suppliers of mana-lovely-ness. Lets take a look at what quality Mana Acceleration Green provides us:
Having said all of that, I think we should make the choice
to be one group of mana producers (and late blockers) and one to two groups of
‘Put Land Into Hand/Play.’ I think the obvious choice of mana producer is the
Birds of Paradise. Not only are they good against Shivan Dragon… once, but they
will also produce that much needed second blue mana for the second turn Mana
Vortex. While I like the Elvish Pioneer, he is a one and done creature. He will
provide the needed blue mana , but I think we have better options. I think we
should look at the Skyshroud Ranger family as one group. In the other grouping,
I think (as a personal preference) that Rites of Spring would be the right
choice. My reasoning would be that it simply out powers the other cards at doing
what they need to do, get the basic lands out of your deck. The only side effect
is that you need to discard cards to give the Rites it’s power. This is not a
problem for this deck; the top priority is clearing the way to get the Vortex
into play, and keep it humming along. Lastly, I believe that not playing the
Crucible of Worlds in this deck would be foolhardy. It simply becomes a lock
card with Mana Vortex, by becoming infinite fuel for the Vortex. Now how do we stay alive long enough to see if our deck will be successful at its job? We need to be able to protect ourselves from the initial charge of a small creature deck. By default, we should not have trouble with big creatures. Those players will be struggling with us to keep up with their mana supply. We need to protect our heads from numerous small Goblins. Dealing with numerous small Goblins...
I propose one of my all-time favorite cards. Propaganda. Propaganda is a
great stall tactic, and for the most part, can single handily stop the flood of
little red men into our watery-forest. Propaganda requires our opponent to pay 2
in order to attack, per critter. Goblin Piledriver stops being so darn effective
when he is only attacking for 1 damage. So what happens when they do pay to get
the one creature into our area? We have to do something about it then.
After looking at the cards above, Propaganda is far and away the answer. I have a liking for Boomerang. Not only will it return that pesky creature, but you can also bounce a land. While this doesn’t seem at first like a good idea, it does do exactly what the Vortex would be doing, removing a land from play, and lowering their maximum land count by one. I also like the quick speed of Unsummon. While costing only U to play, it will remove a problem child for two turns (including summoning sickness next round). I do not however, think that the Fog effects help us enough to try and force it into the deck. If my mental count is accurate, we are nearing the 60 card count already, and we still have three more areas to visit!
Deck outlook thus far: Lands Finding Vortex.
Being limited on the amount of mana we can pay per turn, we are a little limited also on the card drawers available to us. Below I have listed a few decent options we have while only 2-3 mana available per turn to invest in card drawing.
Sylvan Library has always been a favorite of mine. I have nearly killed myself with this card so many times, but the strength of giving green a way to draw cards, and manipulate its next few draws is just too much to pass by. The other card drawing engines seem to require too much mana for us to be able to use them. The other way to get the cards we need is to go Tutoring for them. We will have access to practically all colors with our deck, I’ll get to that in a moment, so we can be free to look to the other card colors to help us desperately get the cards we need.
The unfortunate part of low mana available, and needing an enchantment or artifact, is that, again, we are limited to our selection, and don’t forget that most tutors are restricted cards. However, the Transmute ability on newer cards gives us a break! We can change these cards into the powerful cards that we need! Drift of Phantasms has a big butt, and flies, so can be a good blocker, I suggest we use a handful of copies of him, and looking at Perplex, that just may be the perfect card for us. We are playing a control deck, and this card could offer us the needed counter to put us over the hump. Lets add a few and see what this deck is starting to look like. Lands Spells:
While looking at the above list, you may have noticed the pattern I
discovered in my research. This deck will have high speed potential, but it also
has a good amount of discard outlets, or engines. By taking a few ideas from the
U/G Madness deck (Cheap Advertisement; The subject of an upcoming article), we
have found the teeth of our deck. Show me the Lands!
There you have it. The completed list of viable non-basic lands for this deck. Most of the non-basic lands that might have been usable, had awful drawbacks that make them not usable, such as returning a land or sacrificing a land in order for this land to come into play. That does not increase our land count, and does not give us an advantage. I mentioned earlier that we would have access to all colors, and now you can probably see what I meant by that. Between the Birds of Paradise, City of Brass and Gemstone Mine, we can get our hands on any color our collective hearts desire. So, before we make any cuts, lets take a good look at the deck we have
been fattening out: 80 cards! We are right on schedule… what? You don’t want to play with 80 card decks? All right then, let’s get to cutting! Natural Selection... With Waterfront Bouncer, Rites of Spring, and Wild Mongrel, we have enough discard for the Madness effect, but I don’t think we could afford the Arrogant Wurm if we do not have one of the above cards (-2 Arrogant Wurm, 78). I think that the Basking Rootwalla is going to be a tough kill during a battle of 3 mana decks, So we should consider keeping him around. Wild Mongrel is a good creature, but I think we can trim a copy or two of him, since we need to keep the core cards and creatures are just in the way for right now (-2 Wild Mongrel, 76). While I like Boomerang for the spot removal, and stall tactic, something has got to give. It does not help us to get rid of non-attacking creatures, which will just be recast again, and the Waterfront Bouncer will just have to pick up its slack. (-4 Boomerang, 72).
Strategy: Having played this card back in the day, keeping in mind that the Mana Vortex is so unique in its ability, I have the experience of knowing how the typical person will react and play their game once the Vortex becomes active. The average person would think its best to destroy the enchantment. However, if they are not able to do so, the next best option, or so they think, is to not play more lands, and simply let the Vortex run out of steam. By the time they realize that you are not going to play by those rules, they are screwed. They simply can not get lands into play. They can not recover, so the Vortex, if manned properly, is a one card lock. Its going to keep them at a constant land number, and if they miss a land drop, they now are stuck at the new land count. Once they are at zero lands, they can play a land, get the one mana from it, but then they sacrifice it during their next upkeep, rendering them the same situation they were in the last turn. Most likely, the player will learn his lesson from that point forward, and it will be a different match up each time. It’s important to mention that the Mana Vortex should be your number one priority. You have to get it into play and keep it there. If you wait too long, they will be able to get their fourth or fifth lands into play, and then can keep themselves afloat long enough to work through your defenses. This deck rates as a 3 star deck on my PITFBAF (Punched In The Face By A Friend) rating scale.
Thank you for taking time to read my article. Tune in next
time, when I will focus on the next Vortex card on my list and hammer out a new
deck for you to try with your friends. You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here. Most Popular
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Its
a rare card that comes into play and changes the game state dramatically.
Meaning that a game will have its normal flow; creatures being cast, combat
taking place, sorceries flare brightly in the sky, and enchantments buzz into
being. However, when one of these cards are cast, suddenly the game darts into a
different direction. The game slows down, all normal strategies are tossed out
the window, and its time to just get the ‘W’ at any cost and not fool around
with this game much longer. A few examples of this, other than Mana Vortex,
might be Bazaar of Wonders, Winter Orb/Rising Waters, Opposition, Platinum
Angel, and the Granddaddy of them all, Stasis (notice if you will that all of
these cards are blue or playable with blue mana, go Red Mage). 
One
option that comes to mind fairly quickly, is my boy the Hermit Druid. The only
problem with him, is that he is careless. If its not a land, he tosses it into
the graveyard. Not a good idea, unless we want recursion. He might not be the
best option. Another option is the Crucible of Worlds. We are going to have
lands in our graveyard, no question about that. The Crucible can recycle them,
and put them back to good use; being sacrificed next turn! 
While
looking at the above list of cards, I’d like to take a moment to educate the
younger player about why it might be wise to choose a card like Far Wanderings
over a known powerful card such as Llanowar Elves. The side strength of the
cards that get the lands out of your library is, that you can not draw them. It
sounds simple, but it thins your deck of the land, and makes your chance of
drawing the card you need… right NOW!, right now. It will help you refine
yourself as a player, and make it easier to talk about your personal top deck
story. Where the guy plays the biggest, nastiest creature possible, and all you
needed to do was draw that Terror, and you would live to the next turn. Well, if
you have no more lands in your deck, you can not possibly draw a plains at a
time of need.
Blue
is a master at bouncing creatures around and back to their opponents hand. This
becomes a problem for a Mage with limited resources (no pun intended). Green, on
the other hand, is the color to be for preventing combat damage on a large
scale. Let’s take a look at a list of some possible options:
Wow,
did I read that right? That problem creature just became a liability for the
opponent. Should they attack with their creature, we simply bounce it, and now
they must lose a land count in order to play it again. This becomes crazy good
in this deck. Having said that, I begin to re-think the Unsummon choice, and
start considering Waterfront Bouncer. He will not only keep a creature at bay
for a little while (albeit expensive for us to do so), but when combo’d with
Overburden, the Bouncer becomes an Enforcer. The other not-so-obvious part of
Overburden, is that in the case that we have trouble getting the Vortex into
play right away, this card will slow the land race for both of us, while we try
to establish board control via creatures. With our Rangers, we should be able to
keep a steady number of lands coming into play.
Next,
we need to be sure to get our needed cards. Whether its by means of going
and finding it, or just draw, draw, draw until we get it… we simply need
it!
Yikes!
That’s a lot of cards, and we don’t have a way to kill the opponent yet.
My personal preference is to get all of my options in front of me, then
make cuts. To save a little time, I have already selected a handful of
good creature options for us to look at:
Lastly,
we are in need of a mana producing Land supply. How many lands will we
play, what combination will we use, basic lands vs. Non-basic lands? All
of these are things we need to take a look at. By playing the Crucible of
Worlds, we will be able to recycle our crushed lands, and therefore, we
can reduce the number of overall lands in the deck. I still think we
should be on the high side, but lets lower our standard down to 26 lands.
Next, since we are going to rely on Rites of Spring to suck land from our
deck, and the fact that it only sees basic lands, we should have a fairly
high amount of each Forest and Island. I would think starting off at 8
each, 16 total would be a good start, again, we will make cuts and
customize the card total after getting our base deck completed. Next, we
can take advantage of the fact that the Crucible of Worlds and
Sakura-Tribe Scout will put any land into play. Having said that, we can
now begin to assess non-basic lands available to us.
Now
that we have the Transmute cards in the deck, we can take another look at our 3
cc spells, and narrow them a little bit. We can probably safely remove one of
both Mana Vortex, Crucible of Worlds, and Propaganda (-1 Mana Vortex, Crucible
of Worlds, -1Propaganda 69). Boy its getting tougher now. We do have a 2 cc
Transmute spell, so the 2 cc spells in the deck can also be trimmed (-1
Overburden, -1 Waterfront Bouncer, -1 Rites of Spring, 66). The other thing that
we have to keep in mind, is that we are planning to do a lot of ripping cards
out of our deck, meaning thinning of it. So the total number count will be
reduced, in theory. This does not help me any in my decision, so I will not just
arbitrarily remove some cards, well, because its my article, and I feel
confident that I can win with this deck as is right now. (-1 Vinelasher Kudzu,
-1 Basking Rootwalla, -1 Overburden, -1 Perplex, 62). After a final look at the
deck construction, I realize that all the spells casting cost is 3 or less. I am
starting to feel even more confident about the land base, so I think I can
safely reduce the count by one (-1 City of Brass). 
Mana
Vortex.