Most card games use some kind of resources that you need to be able to play your cards. In this case like in most of the games it's mana. One thing is crucially different though. Both you and your opponent play on every turn of the game, the only difference is who is on the attack (sometimes). Because of this, the usual concept of using your mana as efficiently as possible isn't really the most important thing to do but instead, you should be able to recognize when to use your mana and how much you need to preserve to be able to react to your opponent's plays.
Filling Up The Reserves
This concept also expands into the next turn because of the fact that you are able to store up to 3 points of mana also called "spell mana" that can be used, well as the name suggests, only for spells. Any extra mana (more than 3) that you didn't use will be wasted so there is a bit of efficiency that you will want to look for. There are other questions you need to think about when going about preserving mana, "How much mana do you want/need to preserve?", "Is it a good time to preserve mana?", and "Why do I need or don't need to preserve mana?". We will try and answer these now.
Planning Ahead
One of the easier examples to understand that basically screams that you should be filling up your spell mana storage is having in hand your win condition. In this case, this is Fiora that you need to protect until she kills 4 enemies and you win the game. If your starting hand looks something like this you want to start saving immediately for two reasons. Firstly, you want to have 3 spell mana so that when you play Fiora you can protect her from dying and secondly Stand Alone requires you to have only 1 unit on the board this gets fulfilled as well which gives you a scary-looking Fiora on turn 3. Something like this just wouldn't be possible if you played units on turn 1 and 2. This is all great and can give you big advantages if you do it correctly but of course, there are some exceptions that you should aware of.
If you are playing versus decks that are aggressive and play a lot of cheap units and deal a lot of damage fast, saving mana won't be of much help if you lost the game. The best indicators that your opponent might be playing all-in attack-type of decks are their choice of champions and those are mostly Jinx, Draven, Zed, Teemo, Lucian. Sometimes if you see only one of those champions you should look at their regions and the most aggressive ones are Noxus, P&Z, followed by a bit less aggressive Ionia and Demacia.
Tempo Surprises
For the most part, mana is preserved for the above reason, to try and protect you important units from the moment you are able to play them. Another use case is a tempo swing potential. Some spells can also summon units but they are technically spells and they can you the stored mana. Because of that, you are able to use them to acquire some lost tempo from earlier turns or to surprise your opponent with a big army before they are able to summon enough units to block. Also, you are able to play these "ahead of time", for example, if you passed the first two turns, on turn 3 you can cast Unlicensed Innovation even though it summons a unit and costs 6 mana.
As I said, there are expectations to situations that you might consider not to preserve mana, like versus aggressive decks. But there is also an exception for this exception and it involves storing your mana for board clears. This is best explained with The Ruination. In some cases, you might consider storing 3 mana on an earlier turn, for this example on turn 5, and even though you might suffer more health loss on your Nexus, you will be able to play The Ruination on turn 6 to reset the board. Now, this isn't effective on its own and it is all about timing it right but it gives you a lot of cards advantage, so you will have an easier time defending yourself before you eventually stabilize and turn the game around.
Low Mana Vulnerability
We talked a lot about storing spell mana. But what about the current position you are in? This is also a really important moment to manage your mana as you might be falling in a trap that I call, Low Mana Vulnerability. The situation that I refer to with this is when one player has full or almost full mana while the other player used all or almost all of it. When this happens, the player with the mana left has almost like a free time to do what they want without worrying that their opponent might interfere with their plans. This is extremely important when you are defending because if it happens to you, your opponent will have an easy time taking advantage of it and maybe even winning the game because of it. Remember always to think about cards your opponent has to play to screw you and how much mana do you need to counter that and keep at least that amount of mana reserved before they complete their attack phase.
High Mana Intimidation
Now let's take a look at a totally opposite situation. You are on the attack this turn and you spent almost all of your mana but your opponent is just passing the turn with 10 mana and waiting for your move. Do you feel intimidated? The answer is probably yes. Are you going to just attack all-in? The answer is probably no. This is a tactic that you can use to defend yourself more effectively than just matching your opponent's moves right after them. You need to use this carefully and be mindful of how your opponent might perceive this. Only use this when you have a situation where your regions have access to cards that can totally screw your opponent if they decide to attack and that might be enough even if you don't have them in your hand. In the end, if your opponent doesn't attack and decides to pass a turn, you will waste all of that mana but still, you bought yourself a turn and now you have the initiative and maybe that can be worth more than that 10 mana wasted the turn before.
Faking Your Intention
This mana system gives a lot of opportunity for mind games. Here is an example of something that I do quite often and it can be really effective. Let's say your opponent has a big lead on the board at the start of your turn and you have The Ruination in your hand. By playing it you would kill a lot of their units but they will have this whole turn to rebuild their board and possibly you won't be able to do anything about it. You could pass the turn but then your opponent can make an assumption that you have board clear in your hand and decide instead of overextending to pass the turn as well and then you are in big trouble. This is something I use in these situations. Just play a cheap unit. Yes, that can be good enough sometimes. Now it's your opponent's turn and they won't be 100% sure what your plan is but they might be playing a unit of their own and spend some mana. If you play The Ruination now, yes you destroyed your unit but now your opponent has less mana to rebuild their board and it will be easier to handle them on the next turn.
This tactic has a lot of limitations and is hard to pull off versus good players but it is interesting how you can use cheap units in the late-game to get a lot of value out of them by helping you create a false impression of what you are trying to do in certain situations. It works best with Shadow Isles because this region has the most removal options but this idea can be applied in all sorts of situations. Combined well with High Mana Intimidation can really screw with your opponent's mental game and give you an edge even if you don't have all the right cards at the right time.
Conclusion
There are a lot more ways to use your mana than it looks on the surface. It involves a lot of mind games and you should be able to play with your opponent's mental game as much as you need to plan your turns in advance. Storing mana can be useful but only if you do it in the right situations. Just having mana can make you seem threatening as much as not having mana can make you vulnerable. This is something you should master if you want to make it to the higher ranks, having meta decks isn't going to help you much without this skill.
Alright, that's it for today's write up. I hope you find this helpful. If you have any more questions regarding how to use your mana more effectively please leave a comment below.
Thank you for reading!
,z3ll