If most of the cards in a cube can be played at multiple points on the curve to help minimize land-related-variance, does that actually play well?
Ie. Bestow, Cycling, (Multi-)Kicker, Flashback, Madness, pitch spells, Transmute, Forecast, Dredge, Retrace, Buyback, Landfall (to a lesser extent), etc.
Also cheap spells that have lategame relevance; Ponder/Preordain/Brainstorm, removal, evasive dudes, charms, looters, Scavenge, etc. Cheap creatures with activated abilities.
Pretty much if all of your cards give you the option to do something with them when you are mana-light and can still be mana sinks when you flood, does the quality of gameplay improve? Or do the games suck because we have a bunch of inefficient spells/creatures? Density of meaningful decisions vs. having a bunch of meaningless decisions, flexibility vs. efficiency, cards that are good vs. cards that suck but have a lot of keywords, etc.
Aka how much durdling can you disguise via sheer velocity before people catch on?? What does an aggressive deck look like in this context?
Seeing as I already run an environment like this, here is what you can expect:
What most of those mechanics do is connect the early game with the late game. Players always have something to sink their mana in, which makes play sequencing (tempo) important. It makes gameplay better because players are always doing something, and it improves the late game resiliency of every deck: so instead of being stuck living off of the top of the library in the late game, an aggro deck could cycle away their
forgotten cave and hope to draw something relevant. On the other hand, if a deck is under pressure in the early game/needs to hit land drops, they can cycle away their
chartooth cougar and hope to draw something relevant for the early game.
Flashback and cycling are probably the two best generic mechanics at achieving that relationship. The others are mostly fine, but contingent on the format you are trying to build. The ones I outright don't like are landfall and forecast: one rewards players for hitting their land drops, the other is difficult to interact with. Madness is also a bit specialized, and dredge and retrace lend themselves more to a slow value driven game play--they are more like themes than supporting mechanics. Their are issues with both scavenge, monstrosity, and bestow due to their costs, but they are all great mechanics for connecting the early and late game.
In a medium or high power environment, cycling is going to be questionable due to the relative power level of the cycling cards, but if you are running at peasant or pauper level, it should be fine. Flashback fits anywhere.
Mana sinks are great, since they complicate the tempo puzzle (e.g.
darkthicket wolf). Evasive guys you want as a mechanism to break through board stalls, and to make sure that there is a continuous threat of credible pressure. That way players can't just sit back and focus on card advantage over board sequencing. If your removal is too good, your drafters will focus on that, blow up your threat cards, and it will shift the format more towards card advantage than play sequencing.
An aggressive plan is going to focus on credible early pressure (relative to the environment) that demands the opponent sequence well or lose. Those decks are also going to have greater all around resiliency, because there is a connection between their early game plan and late game plan.
