MTG Ravnica - potential issue re split mana

[dalkev]

I know the CV support guys are still battling to get Saviors and 9th up and running on Card Vault – and probably have not had chance to look too far into the future.
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I just wanted to flag a looming issue with the release of Ravnica. There will be some cards with split mana costs (literally represented by a split colour symbol) – see the preview card from Monday: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mr192
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I imagine this is going to be tricky to represent in Card Vault, and I wondered whether either the CV support team, or anybody else who uses CV with Magic The Gathering, has any views on how best to represent this.
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My initial thought was that there would have to be a set of new letter codes, other than WUBRG, to represent a split mana. I quickly realised that this would be a nightmare (there would need to be 10 new symbols for the whole of Ravnica block - to represent W/U, W/B, R/W, G/W, U/B, U/R, G/U, B/R, B/G and R/G) and make it difficult to track cards for deck building.
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Any other approach involves some compromise.
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I thought it might be worth debating this in the forum before the set is released. That way we might be able to resolve the best way forward that meets the needs of the different types of CV users, as well as being practical and implemental for Rob and the guys who support CV.

[Colen]

I'd represent those cards by giving them multiple colors - take the example card they show, which is W/G W/G. Obviously this card is useful in a White or Green setting - you'll want to see it when searching for white cards, or when searching for green cards - so it should be colored White and Green. Otherwise you have something like 25 possible combinations of mana colors, plus the original 5 and gold. And then when they introduce the 3-colored cards...

Is there a problem with this I'm not seeing, or will that approach work adequately?

[dalkev]

There are some specific fields in the MTG CV database that I am uncertain how they will be treated:
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Color: If multiple values are allowed then White, Green would work – however currently multicolour cards show Gold only in this field rather than the component colours.
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Cost: currently shows a combination of letters and numbers eg for Trained Armodon 1GG. Not sure what you would put in this field. For example WG would not be correct for the Selesnya Guildmage. Wizards are using G/W to represent the split mana in their spoiler (try the Orb of insight on the Wizards site so maybe G/W G/W is the correct value for this field.
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Cost White, Cost Blue, etc: Because of the problems with gold cards (i.e. their colours are not shown in the Color field) these group of fields are often used to filter out colour cards (e.g. Blue 1 or greater will show all cards that are blue whether they are multicolour or mono blue). Perhaps the best way of representing the cards is to show the mana as both colours.
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What this would mean is for the Selesnya Guildmage:
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Card Name: Selesnya Guildmage
Color: White, Green
Type: Creature
Cost: G/W G/W
Power: 2
Toughness: 2
Cost White: 2
Cost Green: 2
Cost (Total): 2
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