General Too Many Lands

[Kirblinx]

I think my low-power list based loosely on INN is still on CT somewhere. Just search by user and you'll find my cubes, I have the same name over there as here. Having Wilds does favor slow decks, but turn 2 Aggro is a very real thing that wins games as long as you don't give control crazy tools to go along with their favorable mana. In the stupid power cube I made using Wilds, aggro was almost completely replaced by combo, but in the INN cube Aggro is a pretty successful deck type.

Aw man, I loved this cube when I gave it a couple of spins. It did get me to think a lot about land bases and budget cubes. I found your thread here, if people are still keen to check it out.

I vividly remember building a sick Worm Harvest deck from that cube, and lo and behold, it was still there. Check out this sweet little beauty:

The Wildest Worm Harvest from CubeTutor.com

So the real question to you Mad Prophet is:
Does this configuation of fixing appease to your interests?
All of these lands are capable of going in any deck and you will only really pick them up when you need them.
Would you prefer a mix of Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving wilds, and if so, what split? I would personally do a 10:30 split myself..

 

[blacksmithy]

Ooh hoo hoo that deck is DANK. I think you got the two biggest bombs in the cube there. I guess I never trained my bots to draft that one.

 

[Mad Prophet]

So the real question to you Mad Prophet is:
Does this configuation of fixing appease to your interests?
All of these lands are capable of going in any deck and you will only really pick them up when you need them.

I approve.40 Evolving wilds sure brings me back to my early cubing days...​

Wilds is pretty slow though. I would probably cut 20-25 of them and add something like 5-10 Tendo Ice Bridge.​

 

[Jason Waddell]

So the real question to you Mad Prophet is:
Does this configuation of fixing appease to your interests?
All of these lands are capable of going in any deck and you will only really pick them up when you need them.
Would you prefer a mix of Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving wilds, and if so, what split? I would personally do a 10:30 split myself..

Is this contagious?

 

[Jason Waddell]

I approve.40 Evolving wilds sure brings me back to my early cubing days...​

Wilds is pretty slow though. I would probably cut 20-25 of them and add something like 5-10 Tendo Ice Bridge.​

Do you like my favorite land?

 

[Mad Prophet]

Do you like my favorite land?

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I've honestly never played with it, but I like it a lot in theory. It bears some resemblence to my favorite land:​

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I could see running the mine over mana confluence if I wanted to push the fixing more towards combo and aggro decks.​

 

[Jason Waddell]

Yeah, but Gemstone Mine goes to the graveyard eventually, which helps solve the problem of "too many lands".

 

[Mad Prophet]

Do you mock me, sir?​

Too many in the draft!​

 

[Chriskool]

The true 5-color fixers have their own downside: when properly supporting *A* splash, a deck can almost surely support *ALL* splashes.

splish splash, games takin' a bath, long on playing the best spells, yeah, synergy can go down the drain.

 

[blacksmithy]

The true 5-color fixers have their own downside: when properly supporting *A* splash, a deck can almost surely support *ALL* splashes.

splish splash, games takin' a bath, long on playing the best spells, yeah, synergy can go down the drain.

This is something I like about the Wilds method: you can easily throw in a singleton Lightning Bolt and Doom Blade for your UW Control Deck, but if you try to go ham with 5C Superfriends you find yourself staring at a hand full of amazing spells as your life total reaches 0. There's plenty of room for some splashy fun in the mana pool, but that idiot who cannonballs off the diving board every time gets the whistle blown on him. Because, after all, you're getting all your colors from basics!

 

[sigh]

I also like the Wilds manabase for this reason. I think the difference comes when the manabase is higher power, and focused on Confluence, Gemstone Mine, Ice Bridge, and so on. Find some incidental lifegain, or another solid way of combating aggro, and you're basically Scott free.

Something from the Jason and James podcast (very good, btw) that I liked was when they touched on lands in the sideboard, and their personal experience was that maybe 10% of lands end up not utilized. If it's this low, and I'm inclined to agree that it is, there really isn't much room for improvement, right? Maybe not as much as one would think at first blush. I really need to get another IRL draft under my belt to test this, but this premise might be a little weaker than it'd seem at first. Basically, because the cards are narrower, they are more likely to end up in the hands of those who need them, so relatively few are dead picks.

 

[Mad Prophet]

Something from the Jason and James podcast (very good, btw) that I liked was when they touched on lands in the sideboard, and their personal experience was that maybe 10% of lands end up not utilized. If it's this low, and I'm inclined to agree that it is, there really isn't much room for improvement, right? Maybe not as much as one would think at first blush.

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Ooh, we have so far to go. ​

For the majority of players at the table, Steam Vents is worse than a basic land. However for the one UR player, it's so critical as to be windmill slammed over any almost any other card. I find this dynamic undesirable. The occasional autopick is fine, but when my players slam a card onto the table, I want them to be thinking "My deck is so fucking sweet now!", not "Thank Avacyn, I get to play magic now!".​

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Maybe I'm just tilting at windmills here, butwhen I open spells that I love, I feel excited, and when I open lands that I need, i feel a weight lifted off my shoulders.​

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I want to find a manabase for cube that doesn't feel like a burden to bear.​

 

[safra]

I think many of us are running cubes where 3-colour decks are more common than you estimate. A Steam Vents is, given equivalent distribution of colours and everyone going 2c+splash or 3c, relevant to 3.2 out of 8 players (4 x 0.8). That's not particularly narrow, I think.

 

[sigh]

I think many of us are running cubes where 3-colour decks are more common than you estimate. A Steam Vents is, given equivalent distribution of colours and everyone going 2c+splash or 3c, relevant to 3.2 out of 8 players (4 x 0.8). That's not particularly narrow, I think.

A great point. An interesting corollary is that formats like this don't magically stop wanting decks like this if fixing gets worse, especially if it happens suddenly. People will still try and build theor 2C+/3C decks, they just will miserably fail either during drafting or gameplay.

People would probably adapt over time, but more out of necessity than from any sudden desire to play narrower decks.

Basically the format has to be redesigned right along with the manabase, or else they'll horrifically mismatch. Mana bases aren't built in isolation of the rest of the cards in the cube, they mean something to each other.

 

[Mad Prophet]

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It appears I may have been wrong...​

In the interest of intellectual honesty,I hereby retract my suggestion that fetches and shocks be eschewed in favor of more spells and Mana Confluences.​

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Though it pains me to say, I am a Civilized Scholar and the results of my experiments support a Waddellean outlook.​

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But there is still work to do. ​

We are beset by http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/94637]darkness[/url]​

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Welcome back Mad Prophet

 

[Mondschwein]

Don't know how I got here (by search obv)
but I wanted to revisit the idea of EWilds as fixing lands

Since my new cube is going to be low powered, and I really want to encourage 2c decks, often with a splash, and sometimes 3c, this seems to be like the perfect idea. I bought a lot for testing, including
- pain lands like Shivan Reef
- MDFC duals like Barkchannel Pathway
- ravnica bouncelands like Gruul Turf

but I really like the idea of every single dual being a dual for every deck (EWilds). since this is no help for aggro, I also like the idea of adding some Tendo Ice Bridges or Aether Hubs, even Gemstone Mine looks tempting since those value midrange decks playing 3+ colours don't want to many of them (I don't really want them to come together, though).

I also heavily dislike the idea of a colour (green obv) getting ramp and fixing. I dislike ramp in general, and fixing should be accessible to everyone, so I also thought about adding some colourless fixers:



There are also Armillary Sphere and Wild-Field Scarecrow, but they look a bit over the top.
One-shot fixers like Chromatic Star and Terrarion also exist but I want some more ways for permanent fixing.

Ash Barrens, Fabled Passage and Prismatic Vista could also be alternatives for EWilds/TExpanses, with the Vista being able to be a good fix for aggro as well, but I fear it being too good overall.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I miss Mad Prophet. Can we summon him?

 

[TrainmasterGT]

I miss Mad Prophet. Can we summon him?

I wish! But I can do an impression of him?