A Different Approach to Lands

Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

Hello, ladies and gentlemen.

Our cube has emulation of Modern atmosphere as its main idea; non-basic lands and interaction with them are essential parts of the format. However, in a typical cube draft you’re able to get about 3 to 5 of them, and the rest will be basics.

Earlier, when we were pre-constructing some 3-colour decks out of cards from our cube to test it, the impression was unanimous: having a lot of non-basics in a deck is a real plus to “authenticity” of the environment.

At first, we decided to try Utility Land Draft, but we managed to find like 24 nice cards for it, and the rest just seem to be not needed.

So, what if we change the orthodox cube rules a little? The idea is to, first, set a limit: a deck should have, for instance, at least 4 basics in it. Then, if a player ends up with AT LEAST 3 fixing lands, he’ll get to choose up to three copies of those lands + some utility lands after draft (these lands are not drafted as usual; they just lay in a separate pile and wait for players to take them when the draft is finished).

For example, if a person picked up Stomping Ground, Sacred Foundry, Horizon Canopy, and a Bloodstained Mire, he will be able to take 3 Stomping Grounds, 3 Foundries, 3 Canopies and 3 Mires or, say, 3 Grounds, 3 Foundries, 3 Canopies, and 2 Mires and 1 Ghost Quarter (or just take an additional basic instead of that Mire). As an alternative, utility lands can be drafted separately, but additional fixing is not cancelled anyway.

Why 3?

a) this is the average number of lands we finish our draft with; 4 lands per player is what is considered to be the perfect result, but it's a spherical horse in vacuum; someone will get 5, and the other will pick only 3;

b) it seems to be enough to support both 2- and 3-colour decks;

Thus, even though we give players insanely good manabases, they will still have to compete for it.

Numbers can be changed, now the main thing is the idea itself. What are your thoughts on it? If something is unclear, ask me, and I’ll try to explain it better, ‘cause, I think, this text looks VERY messy :)
 
GalacticTraveler12

GalacticTraveler12

It seems like that would place too much weight on specific fixing lands. If you get the shockland for your primary color pair, you would be at a huge advantage over someone who did not, as having 1-2 fetches that can find your shock should be trivial, paying massive consistency benefits. In this environment, I would nearly always first-pick a shock that corresponds to my main colors
 
Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

GalacticTraveler12 said:
It seems like that would place too much weight on specific fixing lands. If you get the shockland for your primary color pair, you would be at a huge advantage over someone who did not, as having 1-2 fetches that can find your shock should be trivial, paying massive consistency benefits. In this environment, I would nearly always first-pick a shock that corresponds to my main colors
Click to expand...

What if we give people copies of less powerful fixing lands, and instead of providing them with 3 additional shocks (if they have picked one), we let them take some less powerful fixing (say, filter lands)?
In this case it would look like that: that player would be able to take up to 3 copies of Canopy and Mire, and instead of Stomping Grounds and Sacred Foundries he would be able to get some Fire-Lit Thicket s and Rugged Prairies. Though, the assortment of lands is much more wide than just filters, so, maybe, we could also bring in some Shadow (Show) Lands from SOI or Tango lands. The main thing is they should not be as powerful as shock lands.
 
Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

I've just realized there's one more problem: check lands (Clifftop Retreat etc.) won't be as relevant: there'll be less basics. One possible way to solve it is replace checks with fetches (run 20, likewise is Jason's cube), but then what? People will be able to get up to 8 fetches. Another direction is to make shock lands available at least in some amount even if a person doesn't manage to get one in the draft.

EDIT: After doing some maths, I came up to a solution: give 3 scars (Razorverge Thicket etc.), 3 fetches and 3 utility lands everyone who has 3+ fixing lands after draft. He or she may choose any amounts of the lands given (take 3 of both scars and fetches, put them together with the lands he drafted and forget about utilities, or take less fixing lands and toss in more utilities - whatever you choose). Thus, taking maximum values, we’ll get: 3 lands drafted + 3 scars + 3 fetches + 3 utility lands + at least 4 basics = 16-land manabase, which is an average one in our cube. For those, who’re gonna play 17 lands, we’ll prepare a single filter land for each color pair (in our environment, a deck with such a big mana-base is usually a slower one, so, most likely it won’t mind taking a filter.
 
GalacticTraveler12

GalacticTraveler12

Karn Cuberated said:
EDIT: After doing some maths, I came up to a solution: give 3 scars (Razorverge Thicket etc.), 3 fetches and 3 utility lands everyone who has 3+ fixing lands after draft.
Click to expand...

That sounds pretty interesting, and would be a good way not to tie too much value to individual draft picks. Giving people a bunch of fetches is still likely to raise the value of any given shock somewhat, but it should still be fairly balanced. With some experimentation, that could be really cool!

P.S. Just make sure everyone understands which lands they'll be getting after the draft; that might be confusing the first few times.
 
Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

GalacticTraveler12 said:
That sounds pretty interesting, and would be a good way not to tie too much value to individual draft picks. Giving people a bunch of fetches is still likely to raise the value of any given shock somewhat, but it should still be fairly balanced. With some experimentation, that could be really cool!

P.S. Just make sure everyone understands which lands they'll be getting after the draft; that might be confusing the first few times.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your feedback!
We shall try out this idea and post a report about how good it will appear in practice.
 
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