(Hypnotic Grifter | Art by Josu Hernaiz)

Let that sink in

There’s a saying in Magic: The Gathering that the person who spends the most mana usually wins the game. There are a couple of ways to interpret this adage.

The first is evident if one player ramps consistently, putting the most lands into play, which they can then use to cast huge spells, haymakers and finishers. This is something you’ll witness often in decks including green. The second interpretation is that our mana is valuable, and we should be using it wisely. We shouldn’t ideally be letting mana empty from our pool unspent. This, more deliberate use of mana is a lesson we’ve to learn and we can learn this through having mana sinks in our decks.

Mana sinks can come in many forms, and I’m going to share with you some options for that spare mana you’ll inevitably have. Follow these tips and hopefully, you’ll be able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. This article is going to be a multi-part one because there’s just too much nuance to delve into in one piece without making your head spin and your mind go. So join me in this Preview Review, where we’re going to look at mana sinks. How to use them, when to use them and which ones to use. You might be surprised what your favorite color can do.

White

First, we’re looking at white. As you’re probably aware, white usually has the hardest time generating card advantage in Commander. White isn’t lacking options for us to dump our mana though, so let's consider our options.

White allows you to use your mana to control the graveyard, ensuring your opponents' creatures rest in peace. Lion Sash and its less popular cousin, Apostle of Purifying Light will deal with the most problematic permanent you believe could come back to bite you. Graveyard decks are often prepared against one-off graveyard hate. Golgari decks often pack a Veil of Summer to get around a Go Blank for example, but it’s far harder for them to deal with a little bit of targeted exile here or there.

Preview Review is all about putting sleeper hits on your radar and Apostle of Purifying Light is definitely one of them. While it costs more to activate than Lion Sash, it comes with protection from the color you’re most trying to interact with. Letting it be persistent pressure on your opponent’s graveyard. It’s also worth noting, for the Quintorius, Field Historian players, that Apostle of Purifying Light and cards like it can just as easily turn your cards into spirits and they can turn your opponents into feel bads!

The first of multiple in the Class Enchantment subtype is Paladin Class. Now these cards from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms are absolute slam dunks when it comes to mana sinks. Cleric Class does tie into specific strategies, like in Heliod, Sun-Crowned. However, Paladin Class may be one of the easiest to utilize. It taxes your opponents, making their spells cost one more generic mana. This can either act as Ward 1 for your creatures or it can make the blue player play off tempo. If they’d usually be casting spells in your end step, they may have to cast their spells in the preceding player's turn, which gives you helpful information. Aside from that, providing all your creatures with +1/+1 can be a helpful way to break through your opponent's defenses. If you can get this class all the way to its final level, you’ll find that even the weakest token creature becomes devastating as part of a decisive combat step.

Surprising no one, white is also great at making tokens with your spare mana. While you might think there’s nothing spectacular about using three or four mana to make random 1/1s, using spare mana to make a blocker at the last moment or a spare body in response to an edict can save your most precious creature in a pinch. Try Prava of the Steel Legion for tokens that can also function as reasonable attackers on your turn or Mobilization for a cheaper rate with vigilant bodies. Castle Ardenvale is what you’ll find in most decks with its frequent printing in preconstructed commander decks, and I’d recommend including that in your white deck too. But this is Preview Review, so we like to give you alternatives to cards you might already own.

Blue

Now blue is known for its overwhelming access to card draw. But we’re going to take this one in a little bit of a different direction and show you just what else you can do with your mana in blue. Now, I could just talk about Floodhound, for being a very good boy, but blue is great at drawing cards! What else can we do with our mana?

We’re going to look at Maeve, Insidious Singer, but before we do, a note on removal in commander. Every deck brings removal to the table. We should want to remove our opponents' game pieces, and we should expect them to want to remove ours. You see a threat your opponent has played that could threaten to deal a lot of damage and your instinct is to remove it. What if you didn’t have to? Maeve brings instant speed goad to the table. This is one of the most valuable abilities I will mention in this article series. Rather than killing your opponent’s Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon, simply ensure it never hits you, knocking out each of your opponents instead paying three mana each time and wasting no cards while putting off a threat for multiple combat steps. By the time it comes around to you and the remaining opponent, your hand will be full of answers to take apart your opponent's board state. Maeve also helps you draw into these answers if you haven’t found that valuable removal spell you’ve been digging for. Maeve is a valuable commander in her own right but in mono blue decks, she subverts the board state and draws you cards, all with mana you were going to let empty from your pool.

If you were looking for additional ways to manipulate combat, you can run Cephalid Retainer in your decks. This card is considerably older than Maeve, the ability costs one less (although it can’t target fliers and frankly, I’d take the Siren over the Cephalid if I had the choice) and you’ve got the option of interacting with tap abilities on your opponents' battlefield. Cephalid Retainer is great for redundancy. If you know you have a deck that’s not going to get a lot of creatures out on the field, then you may wish to run multiple of these tap-down or goad effects. It’s times like this when Cephalid Retainer becomes all the more appetizing. Redundancy in decks is never a bad thing in a 100-card singleton format like Commander. If you run both, you’re twice as likely to draw a card you need to interact with your opponents creatures, and if you’re on the backfoot I’m sure you’ll take every chance you can get.

We’re going to go to class for this next lesson, specifically Artificer Class. This is a card that at first glance you might mistake for a card to include in a deck that cares about artifacts. So let’s evaluate this card on its floor. You’re not in an artifact deck, you run only Sol Ring, Sol Ringg is not in your hand or in play when you play Artificer Class.

• You play Artificer Class, and your Sol Ring is now free.
• You level up Artificer Class, you put your Sol Ring into your hand and play it for free.
• You level up Artificer Class, at the beginning our your end step and for each subsequent end step, you make another Sol Ring.

This is because Artificer Class acts as cost reduction, replaces itself and then provides a benefit each turn until removed. All welcome abilities in blue. The card gets better of course with the more artifacts you play, but for this lesson, you can see how well it shines in isolation.

Finally, I’d like to look at Hypnotic Grifter, from Streets of New Capenna. While there are plenty of options to draw cards in blue, I see this one as slightly unique due to the connive mechanic. connive isn’t card advantage, because you don’t end up with any more cards in hand. Instead connive is card selection, allowing you to draw and discard. This keeps what you want, and gets rid of what you don’t. Depending on what you put in your graveyard you end up affecting the board by placing a +1/+1 counter on Hypnotic Grifter making it a better attacker or blocker. If you’re really lucky you can take advantage of this discard and put some powerful flashback cards in your graveyard like Echo of Eons, or simply a Wonder to make your Hypnotic Grifter an even more competent attacker.

On your end step

You’d be surprised what mana sinks are available in each color, and are available to each color in the form of colorless cards. We’re going to cover all that and more in the next part of this article. For now, however, which mana sinks do you utilize in your decks? Which have you found the most valuable in a pinch? What’s that card you wish everyone else knew about? Let us know in the comments below. You can catch up with me over on Twitter to chat cards!

So long as your rate limit hasn’t been exceeded, but I promise you I’m worth one of your 600 tweets a day.

See you in the next one!

Joshua Clough

Joshua is a Medical Researcher from the UK. He's played Magic since Dragons of Tarkir and loves all things Commander, the more colours the better! When not playing Commander, he can be found insisting Jund is still a viable deck in Modern and painting tiny plastic miniatures on Twitter @PrinceofBielTan