Hungry For Mana

Careful of needy creatures.

Let's say you're making a lean, mean Boros deck. When selecting creatures along your curve, you pick Figure of Destiny, Frenzied Goblin, Sunhome Guildmage, Truefire Paladin, Boros Reckoner and Brion Stoutarm to top it off. Individually, all of these are strong creatures and well worth using. However, you have a very serious problem on your hands. Why's that? In order to be fully effective, each of them needs mana invested past their original casting cost. If you're paying into your creatures, it ties up mana that could be spent on new creatures along your curve. It's up to you whether turning Figure of Destiny into a 4/4 or playing Boros Reckoner is better, and maybe you like always having options, but ideally the creatures in your hand won't be fighting for mana with the ones in play.

Really, I wouldn't run more than four mana-dependent creatures in a creature-heavy deck. Even then, it's preferable to have their abilities open as a "mana sink" rather than necessary for the card to be at all worthwhile. It's easy to look at Student of Warfare and think "gosh, a 4/4 with double strike for just one mana! What a house!" But it's not just one mana, is it? Sure, paying in installments is better than all at once, but you have to pony up 8 mana eventually to get that kind of size. Playing her turn one, then leveling twice and attacking with a 3/3 first striker is very aggressive, but are you really better off in the long term (or as long a term as a white weenie deck will be viewing) than if you had played Isamaru turn one and Accorder Paladin turn two? Not if your opponent is holding a Lightning Bolt, I'll say that much.

Likewise, try for independent creatures.  Let's say you have an elf deck. Elves, like many tribes, feature guys who power up/are powered up by the presence of other creatures of the same type. While the synergy of stacking these creatures together can quickly add up, you should try to mostly have creatures who will still be effective on their own. Jagged-Scar Archers is a powerful 3-drop, but if the board has been wiped and you topdeck it late game... well, it suddenly won't seem so impressive. A lot of very nasty 4-drops - Drove of Elves, Elvish Promenade, Heedless One, Wirewood Channeler - won't perform unless your board is already pretty stuffy. They only are any good if you're already winning or at least doing well. I wouldn't say Elvish Champion is necessarily a win-more card, even if he needs buddies to be more than a green Scathe Zombies, but try to have some guys who can dig you out of trouble.