Wtwlf, is that you? Seriously, why all the condescension? I left MTGS to get away from this type of nonsense.
I hear this argument about the power level of moxen a lot. And IMO, it does not hold water (at least not to the degree people often insist). Sure, a mox is a very powerful card as it accelerates you rather unfairly. But without a critical mass of these effects (and equally busted shit to ramp into), it simply doesn't break the game. If all you have in your deck is one mox and no other fast mana or power cards, you are not suddenly going to be demolishing people. I've won plenty of games when my opponent drew his mox early. And I've lost just as many in reverse. Sol Ring and Library both laugh at your moxen (two cards I've never lost a game with when they were in my opening hand - these cards are no longer in my cube).
As far as wasteland goes, in my experience that card does more damage (in a good way - I don't think it's broken) than a mox does because of the grindy type of games my group tends to enjoy (mind you, I'm talking about my meta not yours). Wasteland is an uncounterable answer to many game breaking lands in cube (BS that my group likes to exploit - Stronghold comes to mind), . A mox gives you a head start and it's an awesome tinker target among other things, but late in the game it does a whole lot of nothing (where as wasteland is like winning the lottery a lot of times - it always has a juicy target in multi-player which my group does a lot).
I apologize for my tone. I mean not to beef with you but Moxen.
Moxen do make for a busted start with no drawback and an impoverished drafting dynamic. If I read between the lines I can interpret (however tendentiously) that your post does a good job of arguing against them:
-Moxen are less dumb than Library (yep, no beef here) -- "well,
THS limited sure sucked, but it was better than
SOM!"
-Wasteland is interactive and fits well into your Cube's ecology by acting as a counter to strong lands or greedy manabases, while everyone just wants a Mox Sapphire.
-Wasteland is a difficult card to play well, especially in mana-hungrier decks: much of the time, you gotta do some amount of hand-reading, anticipating what you're gonna draw, etc. to see if it's worth it to crack it or keep it around for a colorless. Mox Sapphire you just run out on the table.
-If RipLab cubes are lower-margin than MTGS cubes, something like a Mox, more or less strictly better than a land (same in the top-deck scenario you describe above), is going to have a huge impact on the game. It spikes your win percentage in a less direct and obvious way than something like Recurring Nightmare, and it gives a lesser spike than Library or Sol Ring, but I'd be willing to bet that it's rarely defensible (strategically) to pass a Mox in the Cubes you see here, whereas you can pass a Wasteland often. I brought up the power-level concern because I think you hugely underestimate just how much better a Mox is than a replacement Cube card, even a replacement p1p1, and that magnitude is what makes (would likely make?) the dynamic not fun, in my opinion.
In the end, some element of subjectivity and taste is unavoidable, which is the whole point of a trading card game (a point the MTGS dudes miss), and we can never know 100% about the Most Fun Possible Cube or even the effect of .25/360 Mox in a Cube environment, but based on my experiences playing with those cards and so on (experiences many on this forum haven't had) I think it's likely enough your assumptions especially re. power level are flawed to the point where your analysis of Moxen is off. The power-level -> feedback idea was also something that came up once we drafted Wadds' Cube online, got him to cut some of the less well-fitting cards real quick (that his local drafters wouldn't've objected to), and now the Cube is ("probably") "better." Though as someone who initially dismissed DRS and wrote 2,000 words glorifying Tibalt I'm aware I'm not immune from fucking up
