General CBS

The nice thing of seeding is that you actually have to draft the lands, so you get not only the fighting over fixing, but also different distributions because a 4-color drafter naturally is more hungry for mana fixing than a 2-color drafter. I don't mind that :) What I like about seeding like I suggested is that you guarantee every color is evenly supported. If you see only fixing in the wrong colors, that's a good sign then that your lane isn't as open as you thought it was.

Also, I support only five of the ten color pairs, so it's actually less likely to never see a land in your colors.
How can you guarantee that every colour pair has an equal amount of lands? That is only possible if you either seed in some boosters more than 1 or the number of boosters is a multiple of the number of pairs you have.
I like the fighting over the fixing, but not all players value lands correctly.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
The downside is you need so many, because you have to cross them off. If you were going to do something like this, I think just using vouchers for sharpied common taplands in the basic land box work better.

That said, I’m a big fan of using a heavy dose of lands that slightly favor aggro decks, like fetches, shocks, and painlands, and switching to perfect and drawback-less lands doesn’t really interest me.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
To be fair, I'm fine with this.

(Granted, I'm probably the only person 'round these parts who prefers the kind of slow environment where taplands don't matter that much...)
If you are purposefully slowing down your environment and want people to have good mana, might I suggest simply adding the gainlands to your basic land box? You can even still include a modicum of better (i.e. untapped) mana fixing in your main cube.
 
If you are purposefully slowing down your environment and want people to have good mana, might I suggest simply adding the gainlands to your basic land box? You can even still include a modicum of better (i.e. untapped) mana fixing in your main
Or having both the pain lands and the gain lands/temples in the basic box. Use the lands in the cube for something spicy
 
I see serious issues giving players too much good fixing in the Basic Land Box.

Too many many-colored decks. Too few few-colored decks.

Obviously there are solutions to most problems. Also this one.
 
there are actually folks who just put ALL the fixing, meaning fetches and ABURS, in the basics box, and report that it plays quite well, but it definitely is a very different draft and build experience lol
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Yeah, the "how many lands" article linked by Chris earlier in this thread (this one) makes a great point about how you can coax players into playing fewer colors despite having insane fixing, because no matter how good your fixing is, playing more than two colors always comes at a cost.

Limit the payoffs for playing many colors. This means making sure that power outliers, especially gold ones, don’t play well alongside one another. Kolaghan's Command is generically good and playable in almost any deck, but a card like Judith, the Scourge Diva requires a more specific context to shine, one that does not lend itself to just playing good cards from all the colors together.

Buff aggressive strategies. Fast, proactive decks should be able to punish their many-colored opponents, which are inherently slower and less consistent.

Narrow the delta in power level between the best and worst cards in your cube. If some cards are much better than others, the reward for playing powerful cards from many colors may outweigh the risk of a sketchy mana base.

Provide strong motivations to play fewer colors. Powerful spells with many single-color pips and competitive archetypes that are wholly contained within one or two colors offers clear lanes for drafting successful one- and two-color decks.

Boost the power of synergy. Greedier decks tend to thrive when individual card quality outshines decks with a synergistic plan greater than the sum of its parts.

Ultimately, while the availability of fixing does have some impact on the viability of greedier decks, cutting down on fixing lands is one of the least effective ways to limit their success.
I really love this part, and it plays right into the strengths of many a Riptide cube anyway!
 
On the topic of fixing, I think the BFZ cycle of lands is severely underrated in how well they supplement an environment where you're looking to push the goals highlighted above.



In the earliest iterations of my cube the mana fixing was double shock, double fetch, and a mostly manland 5th cycle. Problems arose in that with a higher power level and modern designs giving you more bang for your buck, having great fixing usually meant that you could cover most of your weaknesses with a variety of effects and payoffs and stabilize in the mid-game. Once your mana base was established, even if you hurt yourself with a few shocks to get there, you could usually just stabilize with a few value midrange plays and get right back on track.

Once these came out in BFZ I made the swap where I could and they were EXACTLY what I was looking. I didn't want to wholly neuter players from branching out for 3+ color decks, but I didn't want it to be as easy for savvy players who learned from draft formats like KTK where prioritizing fixing meant that you could take a small hit if you could recoup that with chaining value as the game developed. These lands rewarded fewer color decks, made sequencing matter more for decks that wanted to curve out, and provided the necessary downside of entering tapped for decks that wanted to get extra greedy. I'm still running a 2nd set of shocks for enemy pairs for now, but as soon as these are officially printed I'll be completing the cycle and will consider my mana base complete for the long haul. They're that good if you still want to have a higher powered environment with fetches and like but are looking to disincentivize extremely greedy piles as a go-to option.

For gold cards I think you need a handful of generically good cards here and there because not all drafters will be as savvy when it comes to exploring and identifying archetypes during the draft process, but a big key is having enough of those specific signposts/payoffs that cause players to re-evaluate other options in that pair. I'm a big fan of Ob Nixilis, the Adversary because it's rather lackluster in unfocused decks, but can be a real workhorse in something like a B/R Aggro deck with aggressive creatures and recursive bodies. A card like General Kudro of Drannith synergizes great with the cheap humans in a B/W Aggro deck and can push a Champion of the Parish or Bloodsoaked Champion to that critical 3 or 4 power to really force some tough decisions.

And if we go into non-gold inclusions we get cards like Urza, Lord High Artificer and The Antiquities War that are lackluster in generic builds, but they become strong curve toppers in a U/R Artifacts shell. If I see a Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary I anticipate that aside from being the king of dorks that a G/x super-ramp deck is viable and I should be playing a lot of forests and fewer other colors. Felidar Retreat looks cute on first glance, but combine that with offerings like Kodama of the West Tree and Knight of the Reliquary and you can begin to see the shapings of a GW midrange deck with some cool interactions. Tireless Tracker needs no additional help to be an All-Star, but throw it into that mix and you can push it to Superstar status.

It's all about presenting players with that density via thoughtful card choices and allowing them to peel back the layers of individual cards and discover those interactions and synergies. In all the years I've been on these forums I'd say that that's the biggest thing in common between the designs we have around here even if they vary in terms of raw power.
 
if players in X playgroup like playing greedy piles, why not just make greedy piles the right thing to do so they can have their cake and eat it too?

They're just kind of boring after a while. There's no challenge if you can just get everything you want all the time. The novelty of it can be fun once in a while, but it's not a very engaging draft or gameplay experience. My whole thing with my cube is to make it such that decisions matter and goodstuff goes against that. So I'm fine with it once in a while if a player gets there via drafting, but I'm not cool with that being the default.
Was that per player? Or for the whole pod as a land box? Or included in the cube? Asking for a friend...

The cube. You've got to draft your fixing, only exception is the ULD that I'd run for utility lands after the main draft but there was never any explicit fixing in there.
 
So, this is going to sound like one of my normal, shitpost-y ideas, but...

I feel like everyone should take a crack at building a mono-colored cube at some point, even if it's just a quick, probably-unplayable rough sketch of an idea. Because then you, as a designer, have to deal with the issue of making it so that "just draft good stuff" isn't the dominant strategy in an environment where everyone can theoretically cast anything.
 
So, this is going to sound like one of my normal, shitpost-y ideas, but...

I feel like everyone should take a crack at building a mono-colored cube at some point, even if it's just a quick, probably-unplayable rough sketch of an idea. Because then you, as a designer, have to deal with the issue of making it so that "just draft good stuff" isn't the dominant strategy in an environment where everyone can theoretically cast anything.
It does not have to be mono-coloured. Just make each basic land produce all colours without drawback. Great idea from a design perspective.
 
It does not have to be mono-coloured. Just make each basic land produce all colours without drawback. Great idea from a design perspective.
I was actually going to suggest that... but making it mono-colored also makes it very obvious to drafters that everything is playable.

Like, you might rationally know that you can, say, always curve Counterspell into Benalish Marshal... but it's not going to be as immediate as seeing that you can always curve Counterspell into Nimble Obstructionist.

The point of the exercise is to figure out how to signal archetypes when the traditional way to do that in a Magic draft (AKA "look at the pretty colors") isn't an option.
 
I was actually going to suggest that... but making it mono-colored also makes it very obvious to drafters that everything is playable.

Like, you might rationally know that you can, say, always curve Counterspell into Benalish Marshal... but it's not going to be as immediate as seeing that you can always curve Counterspell into Nimble Obstructionist.

The point of the exercise is to figure out how to signal archetypes when the traditional way to do that in a Magic draft (AKA "look at the pretty colors") isn't an option.
Well, the problem with choosing only one colour is that one is often lacking in one or more departments (e.g. enchantment destruction for red). Both single colour cube as all colours but super lands have their own design challenges
 
Well, the problem with choosing only one colour is that one is often lacking in one or more departments (e.g. enchantment destruction for red). Both single colour cube as all colours but super lands have their own design challenges
That's the main reason I suggested it as a design experiment, and not, like, your main cube.

That said... I'm pretty sure that you could get reasonably-complete cubes with just White or Green at this point, with Blue, Black, and Red needing a bit of extra design consideration. Actually, White might give you the best results, since it has pretty much everything other than ramp and mass card draw.
 
Top