What's going on with mana?!

[Cooliwhip]

Mana builds are VERY hard to do because they require access to specific rare items (good luck getting them on the run when you also have the other items you need, lolsob). But I was giving it a go, and hooked up the cotton (takes energy from you, gives 3 mana per energy to the system) to my limited early system which included the engine wand (takes 1 mana from your system each round and does 3 damage to all). I know the engine wand only goes 1ce a turn, but once I hooked up the cotton, it went 0 times a turn, in spite of having WAAAAYYYY too much mana. So I lost the fight, because that was my only real damage. Ha Ha Ha Fun. I have no idea why the cotton broke the engine wand.

The engine was working before the cotton, I didn't move anything when I hooked the cotton up, just added it adjacent to the wand, since the wand was connected. Every turn my mana stone was 3/3. Nothing else takes mana from the system.