Pointed Discussion

Imagine this in Elves.

I'll wait.

Done? good.

HOLY CRAP!!! Any deck that can get away with not tapping lands (Elves, Myrs, etc) is gonna LOVE this!

I am so happy I can build a standard deck around this card.

SO HAPPY.

This one is exciting.

I'm happy they kept the Kamahl flavor text.

Already there, Deco_y.

Arbor elf is strictly better than llanowar elves, eh? This will shut them up.

I've been wanting this card reprinted since i started tinkering with my myr...
:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

catch someone off guard, kill their planeswalker.

Would love to play this with Personal Sanctuary. My tapping lands, no damage to me; your tapping lands, bad news for you.

Ange-Gardien has the master plan. I've always wanted to put togethr an effective Red-White deck. It's pretty much the only off-color combination I haven't been able to work very well. This combo might be the answer.

If we're doing a deck with Personal Sanctuary already, add Vengeful Archon to the list.
End of opponent's turn, tap out for X and repoint the X damage at your opponent's face. (Just make sure you're clear on your intention to tap out and float mana first, and then activate the Archon.)

Elf, Myr or the new Manaliths... Anything that produces mana in other ways than lands NEEDS to have one of these! 4.5/5

If you ever drop this in multiplayer, it's basically a big sign saying "Hey everyone, please kill me!" Other than that, pretty decent card. 3.5/5

Can someone answer this question? I had 1 life left and Timely Reinforcements in my hand. Can i tap 3 for Timely reinforcements and gain 6 life and still survive? Also, there is Venser's Emblem out.

No tworainclouds, you die right after taping the lands for mana before your Timely Reinforcement spell can resolve.

I remember when I was young and a complete noob to Magic (around edition 4 or 5). I had managed to get a cheap playset of those and was playing them in a deck of elves. The plan was pretty much to get all my mana from the elves I was playing while the others suffered from the cursed Manabarbs.
We were playing in large free for alls so as soon as I played this card everyone would try to bring me down, it was hilarious! XD

Anyway there are a few ways to correctly play manabarbs and your opponent will pretty much always suffer some damage simply by casting a spell to remove it (if he can...)

Option 1: Play it in a deck that has other sources of mana than lands

Option 2: Play it in a deck that can prevent the damage dealt by Manabarbs. Personal Sanctuary is the most obvious one for M12. There is also Hedron-Field Purist and other cards that you can find in discussions of earlier versions of this card (like Sphere of Law or Urza's Armor).

Option 3: Sideboard it in a red agro deck in matchups against control decks (or any slow deck). Agro vs Control: the epic duel. Will Agro be able to kill Control before runing out of gas? Or will Control manage to stabilize his life total, lockdown the board and win over the long run? Well Manabarbs is there to shake up the balance of this battle. When you have brought your opponent to a significantly lower amount of lives than you, play Manabarbs. It works perfectly if you have a stronger board position than he does, it can still work if the board has just been cleared by mass removal, but it is risky if your opponent has already a stronger board than you have. Manabarb is there to finish the job when you ran out of gas, your opponent has 6 lives or less and you are still above 15. Why did I pick 6 lives? because that's what a lifelink Wurmcoil Engine or a Titan costs! ;p

5 stars for the good memories. I prefer the original art though!

Synergy with Spellshock

Diab0l0 is completely right; perhaps the best use for Manabarbs is to sideboard it into aggro (or possibly burn) against slower decks, particularly control. Since you've sideboarded and your opponent knows you're going aggro, they'll probably switch out those Oblivion Rings for Day of Judgment (or other universal hate for creature hate). Say you deal 12 damage before the turn four board wipe (actually that's pretty low), and you follow up with your own turn four Manabarbs. Now your opponent can activate seven mana for the remainder of the game. Plus, your life should be really high, and your cards don't cost much mana anyways, so if you lose, it won't be because of Manabarbs damage. It's hard to get that assurance from any other aggro (particularly red aggro) card.

Timely Reinforcements will hurt - a lot. But that's more a measure of Timely Reinforcements being great than Manabarbs being weak. Also keep in mind that unless your opponent has a non-land-mana engine OR instant-speed enchantment removal AND has a really strong knowledge of Magic™ mechanics, they'll never be able to get a straight 1-for-1. Sure, you traded me 1-for-1 with your Oblivion Ring on my Manabarbs, but you also bolted yourself in the process.

I guess Personal Sanctuary is a pretty hard counter to Manabarbs, but let's face it: your opponent just wasted one to four slots on an pretty much worthless card.


As an aside, on the question of "can you play Timely Reinforcements at three life without dying," note that if it were an instant instead of a sorcery, you could do it no problem. Tap the three mana wait for the three damage from tapping the lands to go on the stack, then in response to the last one to go on the stack, play the instant. So if your opponent were at two and you were at one, you could still Shock them and win.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerewoooooooooooooooolves. :)

This is the very definition of:

"Setting your ARZZ on fire"

Norn's Annex

Red aggro sideboard looks like the best home for this card. Let's say your four-drop is Hero of Oxid Ridge in game one, you could expect your opponent would board out spot-removal in favor of (insert red/aggro hate card here), leaving your red enchantment (who plays those anyway?) free to wreak havoc as you swap it in for Hero. Don't try this against Soul Sisters unless you want to waste all your burn spells on Leonin Relic-Warder.

With Innistrad out, i put this with my werewolves. That'll prevent them from casting 2 spells in a turn (especially when against a non-aggro). This keeps my werewolves transformed, and the opponent dead (most of the time).

@tworainclouds.

Lyoncet already basically answered it but I'll try to explain it specifically for your situation. In your case, you wouldn't be able to because Timely Reinforcements is a Socery, which means it can only be played on an empty stack. Let's use Whitesun's Passage, instead, as an example of how to survive. If you are at one life, this is what you'd want to do. Tap one land to put the mana in your pool. Manabarbs damage will go on the stack. In response tap another land for mana, so manabarbs damage goes on the stack. Now, in response to the manabarbs damage on the stack, you can cast the instant speed Whitesun's Passage with the mana that is floating in your pool.. Once that happens, your Venser Emblem will go on the stack. Here is how the stack looks now:

Venser's Emblem: Exile target permant (for casting a spell, in this case, it was whitesun's passage.)
Whitesun's Passage: Gain 5 Life
Manabarbs: Deals 1 damage to you for tapping land for mana
Manabarbs: Deals 1 damage for you for tapping land for mana

So in this case, you'd exile a permanent (probably manabarbs). Then you'd gain 5 life, putting you at 6 life. Then Manabarbs will deal 1 damage to you for the second land that tapped, then 1 damage for the first land that you tapped. Timely reinforcements wouldn't help because of the nature of the stack. You wouldn't be able to cast it until after manabarbs did the damage to you.

I'm 99% sure that this is how that situation will go. If someone with better rules knowledge reads this and knows i'm wrong, please let me know, and correct me.

@SarpNasty

The main thing being, you have to add the mana to your mana pool before you can cast any spells and the tapping of the mana to add it is done before you can even cast a spell. Once the mana enters your mana pool, you take the damage as it has been tapped for mana. I believe you are unable to spend the mana as a response because that requires the mana to have already been in your pool. This is how it was basically explained to me and why damage prevention spells using the stack don't work.

As for ruining peoples day, this also prevents a great deal of infinite combos from working effectively due to the amount of mana being tapped to do so. In your face, Palinchron.

Excelent side-board card in standard. When played by a fast goblin/burn deck, your opponent will think twice about well,Thinking Twice. Also shuts down Wolf Run, and any of the Zeniths.

@Ukkmaster

Each land does separate damage per copy of manabarbs (Tap land, take one damage) So each packet of damage goes on the stack. Basically, it goes: Tap lap: Take 1 damage, gain 1 mana. And since gaining 1 mana is on the top of the stack, it resolves first followed by the damage. That's the normal chain of events. Whitesun's Passage makes for an excellent example. Tap a land: take 1 damage, add 1 mana, Tap a plains: take 1 damage, add 1 mana, play whitesun's passage. The stack looks like this:

take 1 damage, take 1 damage (simultaneously), Whitesun's Passage, add 1 mana, add 1 mana.

This resolves in reverse order, adding the mana being on the top and the Whitesun's Passage being played in between the mana and the damage since Manabarbs uses triggered effects. Meaning you net a gain of 3 life. I hope this answers some people's questions.

EDIT: Tapping for mana doesn't use the stack, so it happens before anything ever resolves. You could cast Whitesun's passage before the damage resolves, but only because it's an instant. if it's anything else then it doesn't work.

Yay! A card that breathes life into Power Surge!

This + Ghostly Prison = Stall the game for 1,000 years.

When I first started playing, I got a jank red deck from a friend. And while the deck was pretty bad, it won more games than it should have been able to due to this card alone. Moral of the story; This card has serious potential, and it's quite effective, as well as efficient in the proper type of deck.

Also, test it out with Ankh of Mishra if you don't like your friends enjoying the game. Maybe some land removal too, like Boomerang, ect.

Gisela, Blade of Goldnight, for ...

Whenever you tap a land for mana, Manabarbs deals no damage to you.

Whenever opponent taps a land for mana, Manabarbs deals 2 damage to him/her.

Yes, please.

This card wins. The key is making your deck cost efficient and fast and your opponent(s) doesn't see it coming until it's to late. I get the biggest kick out of using this in two-headed multiplayer online. So many people think their 6+ drops are the key to winning. Vexing devil, Shrine of Burning Rage, and Thunderous Wrath are this card's best friends. IMO screw the dmg prevention and just go kamikaze! (if you expect your game to go on for longer than turn 6 you might consider pairing this with rites of flourishing)

I love this card. It makes for some really crazy games with multiple players or EDH. Here's an idea that developed once my friends and I saw Worldfire. Run you can pull this off for serious laughs.

1) Play Manabarbs.
2) Cast Oblivion Ring.
3) Cast Worldfire.

This drops every player to 1 Life, and exiles their entire hand, field, and graveyard, and with Oblivion Ring leaving the battlefield, each player now has 1 Life with a Manabarbs active on the field!

This is in my gisela, Blade of Goldnight EDH deck! Amazing!

This card is VERY USABLE in a RDW/Aggro Deck..

Burn them with spells (Bolt, Incinerate, everything you've got) early then play this card at turn 4.

Even if you cast Burn spells at turn 4 onwards, say Lightning Bolt or Lava Spike, your opponent would still be at the DANGER ZONE (1dmg from Manabarbs to you, 3dmg from Bolt to opponent) because of the Burn spells you've played earlier..

Good overall but not good if you're playing against an AGGRO/RDW too.. it happened to me.. (anyway, it's always sweet to lose because of SUICIDE.. that's just me.. hahaha) :D

how about Pariah and Paladin en-Vec? Manabarbs does the damage so its red?

@tommy9898, its actually not. llanowar elves is better in the off chance of having no lands in play

Mox Diamond XD

@Saoshyant_4329: and run Memnites, of course.

The mana barbs/worldfire combo would actually just be a strategy. The first person to draw lifegain, burn or any other direct damage and gets the mana to use it would win the game.