n00bish question

[Umbra]

I am just a vary casual player of magic, so I buy/play rarely. However while constructing my deck this question came up...How much deck space is it usual to devote to mana?

thanks for your time, now excuse me while I go burn my Obstinant Familiars...

[Omega Ridley]

Mono-color: 19-22 basic lands
Bi-color: 21-24
Tri-color: 24-26
Tetra-color: 26
Five-color: 26

That's the scale I use. When using multi-color decks, use those hybrid lands. When using a deck that has black, use the Tainted lands in Torment. If anybody disagrees(most likely) go ahead, I wouldn't mind seeing what other people are doing.

[Crimson Golem]

It depends more on if you are running aggro or control. and what the average casting cost of your spells are.

UW Control runs 25 or so land because it runs a rather high casting cost deck and 4 fetchlands. Affinity can go as low as 16 because its really cheap and runs Talismans/Moxen. Goblins go really low to becuase they are cheap and dont want to draw a lot of land becasue they need to consistantly draw creatures to put pressure on the opponent.

[Omega Ridley]

By the way, isn't the 'Mana Curve' the average of all your casting costs? We need a guide to the 'Mana Curve'...

[MillMaster]

The mana curve is mainly a statistical analysis of the ratio of spells (and their casting cost) and the number and type of lands in the deck. While I am not very good at math or statistics, its oviouse that when you analize a deck, you want to make shure that your not playing to many high casting cost spells and to little land, etc...

Basicaly if you break the spells in your deck down by casting cost, you can start to see the "curve" that the deck has. Meaning that you should see the cost of spells go up, peak at a certain point, then go down.
Say you have 4 @1cc, 8 @2cc, 14 @3cc 6 @4cc 4 @5cc. You can see the curve is peaking at three castingcost and so you should use this information to adjust the # of lands your playing. If you want to get 3 lands in play by turn 3, you need to make it statisticaly probably you will draw 3 lands in 9 cards. If your playing a type 2 white control deck, your main goal is to get 4 mana by turn 4 to play wrath if you want to live very long....

Somone with some statistical and programing skills should try to program a VisualBasic program that people could use, because there are so many other things to take into account beyond the simple description I gave, such as multiple colors, the number of colored mana symbols, lands that dont produce colored mana, zero cost or psudo-zero cost spells, etc...

[Ravens Lost Soul]

Alright now basically it all determins down to.... ok i dont wanna sound all smarts =P

ok usually i run 18 lands in all of my decks, they crap out on my at times but i have mana exceleration, be it Darksteel ingot. talasmans, cloudpousts, lanawars, wirewoodchannlers. It just all depends on my exceleration.

in one deck ive had in turn three ive had Akroma out and the dood just scooped

so it's just what your looking for but personally i never really go over the 18 unless i draft then i go 20 but after that i take em out to many >_<

[Garthan]

I run affinity and I usually keep about 18 lands in my deck. When I draft I usually go 17:23. 17 Lands and 23 spells. A fine balance, I've found.

[Felron1024]

It compleatly depends on the deck, people will tell you 24 or 28 or 17. but its different for every deck. my deck uses 26 land! people will tell you its because its 3 colours, thats not the reason. my old 3 colour deck used 15 lands, and it was 3 colours.

so there is no straight answer. if you have trouble with getting mana when you need it, add more. if you have a over abundace, use less.

(for a newbie, 22 is a good # though)