Article ChannelFireball: Utility Land Draft

[Eric Chan]

Aside from Fetches and Duals, which other lands do you guys run in your actual lists for draft? I relegated most of the fun lands to the utility draft, but I'm thinking of moving some of them to the main pool.

At this point, it's just Mutavault - which is strong enough to warrant a pick - and the Worldwake manlands. Everything else is in the utility draft. I think you could make a case for promoting a few to the main list, like Volrath's Stronghold or Shelldock Isle, as those are as strong as any spell.

 

[CML]

I would rank non-fixing lands on Cube power level as follows (at least in my Cube),

Strip Mine -- don't have for obvious reasons
Wasteland -- don't have, kinda defeats purpose of ULD in my experience
Shelldock Isle -- completely OP
Gaea's Cradle
Mishra's Factory
Mutavault
Gavony Township
Volrath's Stronghold
Vault of the Archangel
Tectonic Edge
Karakas

other stuff

 

[Onderzeeboot]

why not mix em?

Ah, aha, ahaha! http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/why-not-both-why-dont-we-have-both

 

[Jason Waddell]

Strange, Vault of the Archangel has never been that strong over here. Wonder what the differences are attributed to.

 

[spicewitch]

other stuff

On a completely unrelated note, what's the Forsythe interview you mention periodically where he bashes bad sets? Or any other standout forsythe pieces.

 

[CML]

ah shit i forget.

anyone dicking around with these kinds of lands, i kinda like them

 

[Jonas]

I really like the storage lands, and they've worked well in lower powered environs for me.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

The trilands have been more than adequate in my 3-color environment.

 

[spicewitch]

what's the Forsythe interview you mention periodically where he bashes bad sets?

ah shit i forget.

I think I finally found it, it's a slideshow presentation on a cruise ship with really bad audio. I got the gist of it. Pretty interesting. Oddly, most of the other interviews I found on CFB were short and boring.

 

[Eric Chan]

i have <bounceland of choice> in my utility draft, and it's been sweet for the slower control and ramp decks

 

[FlowerSunRain]

Trilands are ok, Vivids are better, I don't think I've ever ran out of counters when I needed one. Unless you specifically don't want to support color #4-5 I think you'd want them they just support more decks.

Bouncelands are pretty good as long as you don't run too many wasteland, sinkhole, annex etc.

I don't have the storage lands in my binder, should I?

Unrelated, but Peat Bog has always been pretty good for me, but with mono-black being pretty strong recently its getting played a lot lately. The rest of the cycle gets played once in a blue moon. I'm waiting for my chance to play a deck with Titania, Havenwood Battleground and Hickory Woodlot, should be giggles.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Bouncelands and storage lands are both pretty unsupportive of aggro decks. That might be a concern.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Bouncelands I feel makes a better ULD pick than main cube pick. Does things with landfall and retrace and stuff like that, but like onderzeebot says I think they're too slow unless you build the cube around theme.

 

[DreamPaint]

Can someone sell me on the ULD. I've known about it since the beginning but never implemented it. I guess what I want to know is if it's worth the bother. For example prolonging the draft and then all the housekeeping of having to separate ULD cards from decks before the next draft. My fear is that some of the cards just aren't even worth it. And does it spawn new archetypes? Does anyone think it would be feasible to do a Utility draft with niche sideboard cards rather than lands? Example Disenchant, Silence, other assorted nonsense. No color hosers and generally weaker cards. Thoughts?

 

[safra]

Can someone sell me on the ULD. I've known about it since the beginning but never implemented it. I guess what I want to know is if it's worth the bother. For example prolonging the draft and then all the housekeeping of having to separate ULD cards from decks before the next draft. My fear is that some of the cards just aren't even worth it. And does it spawn new archetypes? Does anyone think it would be feasible to do a Utility draft with niche sideboard cards rather than lands? Example Disenchant, Silence, other assorted nonsense. No color hosers and generally weaker cards. Thoughts?

This is a couple of questions so I hope you don't mind my attempting to parse and then answer them individually.

-Is adding the ULD worth it?
-How can I make it worth it?
-Does it lead to richer deckbuilding?
-Special draft for sideboard cards?

-I think it's absolutely worth it. There is a bit of added hassle that can be mitigated through advance planning - the original suggestion of having them spread out on a table lasted one try here, but a binder that can be passed around during deckbuilding has lower 'friction' and makes better decks.

-Either put good fixing in there to start as a stopgap (your players should happily snap this up!) or only include utility lands you think are worth it. There's a lot you can do as a Cube owner to make sorting easier - I put stickers on my ULD card sleeves (cute little gold stars on the inside front) so they can be identified easily, the earlier formatting tip of having a land binder (bonus: you can include reference instructions in the binder) is a good one, and even if your players grumble once they actually play with the decks they'll be sold, I promise.

-Absolutely it leads to better decks, and ideally can and does spawn new archetypes. Manlands are a big part of aggro decks here, certain powerful lands really do enable decks (Kessig Wolf Run, Phyrexian Tower, Nephalia Drownyard and Riptide Laboratory only scratch the surface), and adding a Nykthos is a great way to support a Devotion deck if someone ever drafts one.

-I really wouldn't do this. Adding extra draft complexity for cards nobody's even going to maindeck seems like a pretty bad solution to a problem that apparently is this dire. Maybe more maindeckable ways to interact with problem cards / card types are in order?

 

[Eric Chan]

+1 to running the utility land draft during deckbuilding. It doesn't add additional time if people just get up from their seats when it's their turn to make a pick, since everyone else is just deckbuilding, which takes a little while.

safra's example of Nephalia Drownyard is the exact one I was going to cite, as well. It's a card that's a little on the weak side to take during the actual draft portion, compared to any blue or black spell. But at the cost of just a land slot, it's a legitimate, viable win condition against forty-card decks that can break open mid-game stalls like no other card. Other marginal manlands like Faerie Conclave and Ghitu Encampment are similarly difficult to justify taking over a 'real' card, but nonetheless make great additions to any attacking deck of their colour.

I honestly expected more resistance to the idea from my playgroup than I actually got; people have been overwhelmingly in favour of utility land draft, and jokingly ask if there's a similar side draft after our actual limited drafts. These are folks who won't let me experiment with alternate, more friendly mulligan rules, but are head over heels for more sweet lands to jam into their decks.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

ULD is a godsend. It supports creative deckbuilding opportunities, it makes decks sweeter, it lets you run more awesomely narrow cards in your cube (via having de facto more picks), and if you just pass the binder around while making decks it isn't that obtrusive. If you are taking a land that someone else might want, you just ask, "Does anyone want Academy Ruins?" to the table and if someone else does the player who has the earlier pick takes it and bumps himself to the back of the draft order. Easy peasy.

 

[CML]

The ULD is great. When I discontinued it people bitched more than when I started it, so I started it up again. That's what you call a "success"

 

[Onderzeeboot]

+1. ULD even goes over very, very well with relatively inexperienced drafters. The concept is immensely intuitive too.

I kinda like the open draft, as it gives you some information on what other players are drafting, and the "curse you, I wanted that!" moments are hilarious

 

[shamizy]

Aside from Gravecrawler package, ULD was the best thing I took away from Riptide Lab. The first time anyone sees it they don't have a clue, but once you explain it, they're all pretty down for it. My drafters love the ULD. I basically lay them out right in the middle of the table while we're drafting, and we just snake draft going L-->R after a die roll until we each have 3 lands after the main draft. It's a fun minigame in between picks and packs to look over at the ULD pile and plan what you might want to pick up.

Everyone loves playing with sweet lands, and giving players access to them with a mini-draft (which is honestly the very best part of Cube) is just awesome.

One of my friends, in his 2nd draft with my cube, drafted a sweet UR deck that had a wizard subtheme and he utility drafted Riptide Lab which was just disgusting. Bouncing Sower of Temptation, Augur of Bolas, and V-Cliques are just gross. It was so awesome seeing it in action. ULD is perfect for adding just a little more complexity to the draft. I've seen Desolate Lighthouse do some work in a Worldknit deck, Gavony Township became gross in the Junk Tokens deck, and a card like Phyrexian Tower led to some fun times with Threaten effects. I can't recommend ULD enough, it's fantastic.

 

[Diakonov]

There are 15 blank cards in my 450 cube which, when drafted, allow the player to take two lands out of the utility land binder. We have found this to be slightly less of a hassle than rochestering the picks at the end, and it also resolves the issue of who gets to go first.

Does anyone think it would be feasible to do a Utility draft with niche sideboard cards rather than lands? Example Disenchant, Silence, other assorted nonsense. No color hosers and generally weaker cards. Thoughts?

I do think this is feasible, but I simply haven't had the time to try it yet. Instead of "niche sideboard cards," I would like to try cards which are normally a bit too poisonous for the regular draft, such as Hardened Scales, Squee, Goblin Nabob, etc. It shouldn't be too difficult to implement if you handle ULD the way I've described with wild card picks that let you browse the binder.

 

[ahadabans]

There are 15 blank cards in my 450 cube which, when drafted, allow the player to take two lands out of the utility land binder. We have found this to be slightly less of a hassle than rochestering the picks at the end, and it also resolves the issue of who gets to go first.

I really like this idea and I'm thinking of doing something similar for fetch and shock lands as well. Really all lands would work this way… here's my idea.

Right now, I'm working on a massive overhaul to my list. It won't be ready for some time simply because I can't buy all the cards I need until summer. But the idea is that it will be modular (another idea I got from another thread). My group never has 8 people and that always hurts my drafts no matter how I structure them. So with modules, I can craft the card pool to match the number of drafters. Right now, I have plans for 5 modules each containing 80 cards. To each module, I will add 10 generic nonbasic land cards (making 90 cards total). For every two drafters (or fraction thereof), you add one module (with 4 players, you'd use two modules). The idea behind each module is that the cards are all supporting just a couple themes. So in theory they work very well together and should make for synergistic interactions. This will enable me to support more narrow themes and not water them down by only drafting half the cards for those themes. Reanimator for example is in the graveyard module. Either it's entirely part of the draft or it is completely excluded depending on which modules we end up playing with.

So the 10 generic nonbasics will look like this:
3 of them will be "Fetch Land" - You may select any fetch land of your choice
3 will be "Shock Land" - You may select any shock land of your choice
4 will be "Utility Land". For the Utility lands, I may separate them into Tier A, Tier B and Packages. So Tier A stuff are really strong cards like additional fixing (pain/bounce/vivid land), man lands, and good stuff like Shelldock and Stronghold. You can exchange a utility land card for only one card in Tier A. Tier B is two choices. These are your more narrow choices. And then the artifact and Lotus land packages for now I think will just cost one utility land card.

I will have two full sets of Fetch and Shock lands, so if you highly pick the fetch land cards, you can make a super solid mana base (I may not make both sets available though unless there are more than 4 drafters - still undecided here). You will also have a choice to make. Do you cash in your fetch/shock lands early and lock yourself into colors? Or do you wait and risk others scooping up the lands you want? Seems like it will be a fun mini-game.

I won't be testing this anytime soon, and it may change before I do. But that's the premise. Input is welcome. Nothing is set in stone here.

 

[spicewitch]

People already highly value nonbasic lands in a draft.

A wildcard land will be valued even more highly.

Taking two or three wildcards will be a requirement for any competitive deck, and possibly more important than in-color bombs.

Some of the strength of the ULD is it lets you splash a little excitement in *after* already making the tough picks.

 

[ahadabans]

People already highly value nonbasic lands in a draft.

A wildcard land will be valued even more highly.

Taking two or three wildcards will be a requirement for any competitive deck, and possibly more important than in-color bombs.

Some of the strength of the ULD is it lets you splash a little excitement in *after* already making the tough picks.

I think that will still apply here. I'm going to print some custom cards. The Fetch/Shock wildcards are going to go really fast. They already do (without being wildcards), but to some extent the ones that show up drive color choices (my experience anyway). With them now being wildcard, you can let other cards drive your color selections and use these wildcards to craft a solid mana base. So I think the dynamic will be more interesting this way and it should help with color screw if nothing else.

The utility land wildcards won't go early. They will be lower picks once you've taken the cards in the pack you care about. And you can trade them in at the end of the draft once you know what your deck is doing and how the more narrow nonbasics might help you. Certain strategies may bump a utility land wildcard higher in the selection order (artifact strategies for example probably really want the artifact lands). But for the most part, I think they will be taken fairly late which is perfectly fine.

What I like about this idea is that it will give you more options. The main appeal of the utility draft is that you can run very narrow cards and not take up slots in the draft. And that is where the wildcard land I think really captures this idea without requiring a whole separate draft after the regular draft (something my group is simply not a fan of). The wildcard on fetches and shocks is experimental and may end up being too heavy handed. But it's in response to some complaints that guys feel it is very hard to get a good mana base at times. Sometimes the lands you want simply never show up in packs. It has to do with the fact that we never have 8 drafters, but it's a problem in my group I have not found a solution for. With this new wildcard idea, if you prioritize, you are almost guaranteed to get the mana base you want. Something I think should will help make games play better.

It could backfire too and make 5 color goodstuff.dec really easy to assemble. If that is the case, I'll go back to running fetches/shocks in the main draft as normal. But I want to experiment with alternative ideas for a bit and see what happens.

 

[Dom Harvey]

underrated post