Pointed Discussion

Use this card too much and you might end up, um...

What do they call not having enough mana again?

to win the flip 99.999% of the time, call Not Edge

Krark's Thumb anyone?
It could even result in 1000 colorless mana. Or 20 for a Fireball.

why does it say "only any time you could play an instant"

@bijart_dauth: Mana abilities (abilities like tap: add one mana) can used faster than instants, they occur outside of the stack. This rule probably is so that you don't use this as a mana ability, for whatever reason.

Anyone else notice that the color wheel is out of whack in the art? Black needs to be moved to rest between blue and red.

I'm not OCD.

The reason it can only be played as an instant, is because mana abilities can't be countered. This ability, however, you can counter using Stifle and other similar effects. On the contrary, mana abilities like the one of Llanowar Elves can't be countered.

I can't believe no one has mentioned Chance Encounter! Every win is a luck counter and two more chances! Sounds like a carnie game pitch, come to think of it...

The reason it says "only as an instant" is because you can undo mana abilities if you realize you can't pay for a spell. I can declare casting Emrakul, the Eons Torn and then use mana screw's ability to generate mana if it were a mana ability. If I don't hit 15, then I can undo the abilities and try again. That would suck.

This is one of a very few number of Un cards that could work with no problems outside of a Un set.

I won a game with this tonight with Krark's Thumb and Chance Encounter. Awesome fun.

I just tested this out normally (by flipping a coin a bunch of times) and I ended up wasting the mana trying to get more, then I tried again pretending krarks thumb was in play and ended up with 9 mana before I got tired of flipping.

This card intrigued me so much that I ran the following experiement on my computer a couple of years ago:

Starting at 1 mana, you activate this as many times you can until you reach 0 mana. How long will you take?

The result was: most of the time the sequence ends shortly (there's one half of a chance it ends after the very first step), but occasionally (think a one-in-30-or-so chance) your mana pool skyrockets to hundreds before it finally comes back down to zero.

If I recall correctly, it was mathematically proven that the average number of steps this experiement will take is infinity (think arbitrarily large), although every single run ends in finitely many steps. For those interested, google search "random walk".

GrimjawxRULES
You are wrong. It's still a mana ability.

Now I'm waiting for an Un card named Mana Flood.

What are the odds of winning a coin flip times in a row? The same odds that the universe happened by accident?

You don't have to win 1,000,000 flips in a row to play Gleemax with this. You can afford to lose sometimes, as long as you earn back the lost mana and never get down to .

This card is very powerful, or would be if it were played in a real set. With the Thumb, it becomes one of the cheapest infinite-mana combos around. And I do mean infinite.

This minigame is covered by the Gambler's Ruin Theorem, which gives a very simple formula for the probability that you will eventually reach X mana given that you currently have Y. The formula is X divided by Y. This means that, starting from , you have a 1/1,000,000 chance of being able to cast Gleemax. And a very tolerable 2/15 chance of getting Emrakul out on the second turn, though with rather a lot of flips.

That's the formula for a fair coin. The Thumb essentially replaces that with an unfair coin (one which wins 75% of the time), which complicates the maths somewhat. But you stand to win far more than you lose. In fact, starting at and flipping until you run out, you have a 2 in 3 chance of playing forever, actually getting infinite mana from this. So yes, that's a 2 in 3 chance of casting Gleemax on turn three, once you get the right cards. You're welcome.

When I designed this independently, I thought it would be crazy to allow the mana it generated to be fed back into it. So, mine was a red enchantment that could produce for .

Did anyone notice that the color pie in the background is screwed up?

Combos with Look at Me, I'm R&D for infinite mana. (Changing 1 to 0 has some... unintended side effects, however.)

But - but - it only has a fifty percent chance of mana screwing you!