Popverse's top stories

• MTG's head designer wants to change the way we talk about mana
• What Zainab Akhtar learned from taking a year away from ShortBox Comics Fair, and why she's excited for 2027's return
• One Piece Film God Valley will be the first canon film in the series history

I've got a question for you: when you're reading the mana cost for a Magic: The Gathering card aloud, how do you phrase it? According to Magic's head of Design, Mark Rosewater, you're probably saying it differently than the design team behind the cards. 

Rosewater wrote about this discrepancy between how Magic players refer to mana costs on cards versus the game's Research & Development (R&D) team on the MTG website. In case you're not familiar, during playtesting leading up to the release of Limited Edition Alpha (the game's first-ever printing of its first core set), mana costs were written with the total number of mana required followed by a colored mana symbol indicating how many of that specific colored mana were required to cast a spell. So a card that would today be written as 2 generic mana 1 black mana would be written as the number 3 followed by 1 black mana. As you might imagine, that was confusing to players. 

According to Rosewater, "Richard [Garfield] found time and time again that playtesters would read "3 mana 1 black mana" as being a four-mana spell requiring one black mana. That happened enough that he changed the system of writing mana cost to match the players' intuition." 

And while changing the system of writing mana initially helped clear things up for players, it also created a schism between how R&D refers to mana versus a large portion of players.

Rosewater continued, "But the thing that didn't happen until the game came out was the realization that players wanted to say the non-generic portion of the mana cost before the generic part. Using the [2 generic mana, 1 black mana] example, when you ask most players to say what the cost is, they will say, 'one black and two colorless.' (Technically that cost is generic, as colorless mana is a separate thing, but that's what the majority of players say.) I have spent much time trying to get players to say costs as we say them in R&D, (in the order that they're actually written on the card) to no avail."

For what it's worth, Mr. Rosewater, I always say the colorless mana number first, followed by the non-generic mana number and color. Perhaps in time more players will catch on to this. 

Whether you are a Commander player, a regular at your local game shop's FNM event, or simply love collecting Magic: The Gathering cards, you've landed in the right place. From Universes Beyond to the furthest reaches of the Magic Multiverse, we've got you covered here at Popverse. 

• Wizards of the Coast's Magic: The Gathering upcoming release schedule
• The most expensive MTG cards in the Secrets of Strixhaven set
• Magic: The Gathering and Marvel are planning "multiple sets" and Commander Decks - thanks to Thanos' Infinity Stones
• Magic: The Gathering’s Final Fantasy crossover is already the top-selling set in Wizards of the Coast’s history