Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Loan (Patreon)

Published:
2026-04-12 08:01:51
Imported:
2026-10
Tags:

Content

I played in my usual monthly premodern tournament tonight, and during the event I ran into a weird situation. My opponent shuffled his (or her) deck, and then made some offhand comment about he (or her) has had a lot of trouble with "mana clumping." They then proceeded to pull out a clump of lands, weave it into their deck, shuffle a couple of time, and then presented the deck to me. I was pretty flabbergasted. Not only was this clearly stacking the deck, but this was a super casual event, so there is really no reason to take things so seriously. Anyway, I tried to explain this, which didn't go over so well, and then gave the deck a few quick shuffles myself. I guess I could have made a bigger deal about it, but again, it was supposed to be casual. Anyway, my opponent drew their opening had, and they had to mulligan. They shuffled (not very well I might add), drew again, and mulliganed again. In fact, they mulliganed all the way down to 4 cards. I don't know if I believe in karma, but it definitely felt like my opponent got what they deserved!

Files

Comments

Rose

Yeah, I get quite shocked when I see mana weaving, and I tend to try to explain that it's very blatantly cheating, but often they don't get it, and someone else has to come in and explain better than I can. There's a smaller town near where my parents live, and the entire community mana weaves because they want good commander games. It's a little shocking to hear still.

Tzu-Chi Hsu

I can see it now, a Magic player nicknamed "the shuffler", who's life long quest is to teach people how to shuffle better. As for the comic, that's just evil. 😂

Morten

This is a tough concept to teach players who don't see what's wrong with it. In a casual setting (like this sounds it's supposed to be, or a commander night with friends etc), one would think that each player's interest would be to have a good game. The reasonable way of explaining this to a new player is that the deck should be random. If they mana weave to not have the deck random, that's cheating. If they shuffle sufficiently after mana weaving, they wasted time mana weaving. That said, I pile shuffle once per game, to count the amount of cards, then give the deck about 5-7 shuffles before presenting my deck to my opponent. Consider this thought experiment. How do you add your sideboard cards? All in a pile on top/bottom and then shuffle? That's not what I've typically seen in streamed events watching pros. They typically put all the sideboard cards in their deck fairly uniformly in distance to each other, and then pull out 15 cards. Would you call this "sideboard weaving" and cheating? As long as they shuffle sufficiently afterwards and present their deck, and they don't spend too much time on the mana weaving process beforehand, why does it matter?