Omniscience mana drain: bug or intended? [INTENDED]

Mainloop25

Say you have some cards with mana charged and you put Omniscience on the board. You cast 4 cards or it is otherwise destroyed. Whatever cards had mana previous to casting Omniscience are now drained to zero. 

Is this intended? If so, there should be text added to reflect this. Actually, that is probably preferable to give the card some semblance of balance. Otherwise, maybe there is a way to store "mana memory" so that you don't lose the mana you had stored on your unplayed cards before casting Omniscience? 

blacklotus

It is not a bug. Read the Omniscience text:

Each card in your hand costs ZERO mana to cast.

In other words, all the cards in your hand after Omniscience enters the board has a mana cost of zero. A zero mana cost card can store zero mana.

Omniscience is working correctly as per its card text. 

Mainloop25

 A zero mana cost card can store zero mana.

This took a long time for me to understand. 

I think what was confusing me for a while is that the card is missing some text that it isn't supposed to have, and I looked at the card as if it had it. Had it said, "While this support is in play," then I would have an argument, but since it doesn't, I'm glad you cleared it up. 

Mainloop25

Update: Curiously, today I noticed that I had two Unlicensed Disintegrations that were being charged by Baral at the bottom of my hand. I casted Omniscience, and the next batch of cards in my hand. Omniscience was destroyed, yet those Unlicensed Disintegrations had the amount of mana they had before Omniscience was casted. So I'm not sure what is going on there exactly. But maybe there is some coding with Baral that overwrites Omniscience, or the game is indeed keeping track of the mana on your cards before and after Omniscience drops your mana cost of cards to zero.

blacklotus

@mainloop if i understand it right, the game does track the states of the cards through various interactions. 
when Omniscience is present on the board, your cards in hand get their mana costs changed to zero. When Omniscience is destroyed, those affected cards get their original mana costs n original mana charges restored. 

Enygma6

This same effect can be seen with Hollow One.
Mana on the card before the cost is reduced will stay with the card.  Any further mana gained will not be added to the card beyond the new casting cost.  If the card is restored to it's original casting cost, the previous mana (or what remains of it) will be visible on the card.  
In the case of Hollow One, the cost being reduced by cycling other cards, the stored mana will be retained.  Once the casting cost for the Hollow One is reduced below the stored mana amount, the excess mana still on the card can be used to cycle other cards until it runs out.  However if you disable the Hollow One and do not cast it, the next turn it will return to full cost, and any remaining stored mana will once more be visible on the card.

bk1234

As PP said, this is intended. When Omniscience is on the board, all cards are reduced to 0 -- when it is exhausted, if there are cards that previously had manna in them, they are restored to their cost and any mana that existed remains. 

[MOD MIC ON] Updated title of post to indicate card is working as intended. 

Mainloop25

Every so often it doesn't quite work that way and mana is drained from the card. I wish I could give you specific instances, but there have been times where I "lost" mana i had on a card I didn't cast. I'll have to pay attention next time to see if there is something I'm missing.