General Balancing gold levels in a makeshift cube

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I've been hanging around here for about half a year now or so, and while I've begun assembling a cube of my own and play with other people's cube fact still remains that I've yet to get a draft of my own together. Usually the advice here is to just take whatever crap you've got lying around and sleeving it up to the best of your abilitiesite, so that I'd what I'm going to do.

Since I started playing during Inn-Rtr I've got a bunch of gold cards lying around. Gold cards are usually best left to a somewhat low amount, but I'm feeling like the recent discussions sparked from KtK together with the fact that I own a lot (some?) gold cards makes me feel like I want to have a slightly above average amount of gold cards.

My biggest question right now is basically how to balance the lands with the gold section. I don't own enough impressive 3-color cards that I'd like to cube to really dip into that kind of tricolor cubing. My first idea was just to run the usual riptide'ish set up of fetch-fetch-abu-shock, with checks (because I like them!) and the 10 trilands. Im unsure if that's a good idea? Anyone with more experience know if what I'm trying to do has been done?

Basically I want to run more of the gold cards I have (and who doesn't!) and with that increase the number of lands I have because gold needs fixing. I'm running 360 cards, and I feel like I could probably let the artifact section make way for a slightly bigger gold / land section.

I've seen Rob Dennis's tricube and really like it so my idea is to partially steal from that without dipping to deep into the pure tri-support.

Riptide, how do you do multicolor cubes?

 

[Chris Taylor]

In terms of raw manafixing (This means dual lands, not cultivate) anywhere between 10-15% of the overall cube is perfectly fine, which (No math behind this whatsoever) is about 2 nonbasics per drafter at the low end at around 7 at the high end. As for which lands would work, it depends on the kind of 3 color decks you want to be building. If they're primarily 2 color decks splashing a 3rd, then a better option might be to add vivid lands or City of Brass like cards to fix nicely and add the 3rd color when needed. Reflecting pool doesn't really help here, as it adds the 3rd color only when you already had it.
For more evenly split 3 color decks (the 5-7-5 manabase) you'll want more manafixing in general, something more like what you describe above, with the 3 color lands.

One thing to note is that the more colors a deck is, the harder it is to have the right mana early game, which makes aggro decks either slower, or just ignoring your 3 color mantra and play mono red. There's lots of ways to incentiveise your aggro drafters to stick to their 3 color roots and still be competitive, but it's certainly something to be cognizant of when you're laying everything out.

Lastly: Don't feel the need to completely balance the gold sections for each pair/combination. If you're deciding to add Savage Knuckleblade, don't compare and ask weather he's better or worse than Maelstrom Wanderer, ask weather he's a card you'd have in there if he was the only multicolored card in the cube. Adding in lackluster cards like goblin electromancer because izzet has 2 fewer cards than everyone else does nobody any good.

 

[James Stevenson]

Re: lands: I definitely like the fetch-fetch-abu-shock I run fetch-fetch-shock-shock, but both have merit. I love tri-lands because I love multicolor stuff and I loved alara. That said, I currently don't run any. I'm considering adding just the URB, URW and UBW ones for control decks, since they would be happy with them. In my cube I love drafting 3 or 4-color aggro, but I rely on shocklands and fetchlands for that, so no need to overload on tri-lands. I run a sprinkling of other lands that I like, but they are not balanced by color and I really don't think it matters much.

Re: your dope avatar: sweet set up! Is that all for traktor/serato or there a sampler there?

 

[James Stevenson]

I guess if I sell one set of shocks and proxy some duals I would go up greatly in cash and that would be really nice.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I'm very likely to run onderzeboots "fast duals" (scars fastlands with abu types) instead of straight up abu proxies just to have a aggro-friendly mana base. I guess I can just experiment with like a 40 gold section, or even 50 if I compensate with less mana symbols in the wubrg-section, and run the regular riptide40 and see how that ends up during draft. If I feel like I absolutely need the trilands, I can run them. But it feels good to know that you can stretch riptide40 pretty far, color wise. (It's like a crazy controller-serato-vinyl set up but we were spinning just regular old wax that night )

I'm not sure how I feel about running vivids in the main list, but maybe I could try out the tris and the other 5-color fixings in a utility land draft? I'll definitely make sure to keep the gold section really ugly and wonky number-wise so long as it fits in with the rest of the cube (taking into considerations things like mono colored cards that more or less slot into certain color combinations more often than others, which is the way I know grillo balances in his Innistrad cube).

I think it's a pretty interesting question whether I want 3 color decks as the mainstay or just as something people can draft if they want to. I know a lot of you moving into a tricolor style cube have played a more straight forward cube for like years, so I feel more humble just focusing on a nice and fun to play wubrg format with a little more gold just because I happen to have drafted those kind of formats.

 

[James Stevenson]

but we were spinning just regular old wax that night

Man, I'm jealous. I've got a couple of turntables and a bunch of instrumental hiphop and random stuff, but I don't have a group of dancy/DJy people to invite round. Still fun to mix though, for sure. I need a job, DJing vinyl is like the most expensive hobby since... crash landing planes and going awol to Sweden.

I'm about to add Vivid Crag as my only vivid land, just for the incredible Ion Storm!

 

[Eric Chan]

A bunch of ideas, in no particular order:

• 60 lands in 360, or 16.7%, feels like a lot. I think you want maybe five cycles of duals or trilands, and then another couple rainbow lands or such, for a total of 50-55.
• For a heavier gold cube, I think you want to slow the pace of the games down a bit, and give people time to assemble their colours and their fixing, so that games aren't primarily decided by colour screw. This probably means less of a focus on aggro one-drops in the monocolour sections, and attacking decks that aim to win on turn seven or eight, rather than five or six.
• I think you still want to keep the total number of gold cards reasonable, and not get too crazy. Something between 60 and 80 total multicolour cards in a 360 might give you that extra touch of gold cards, without going overboard.
• You can probably axe artifacts almost completely, to make room for the gold cards and the fixing. In a set where you want people assembling multiple colours of mana, there isn't much room for colourless themes, anyways, nor powerful colourless cards.

 

[CML]

at 360 i think the right amount is 20 fetches, 20 shocks, 10 duals, 5 WWK manlands, maybe a few more. hinges on if you do funsies land draft and what's in that draft (just colorless lands or horizon canopy, e.g.)

as for gold sections, make them big and imbalanced by all means

 

[James Stevenson]

5 WWK manlands

Don't just run the cycle for the sake of it, the RB just doesn't cut it. I wouldn't really miss the GW one but people play it so I'll keep it for now.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I feel like I can get away with any gold debauchery by including the trilands and wwk and whatnot in the utility land draft, and just focus on making a fun draft environment and worry about intricate detail after I've actually gotten a chance to play it.

 

[CML]

Don't just run the cycle for the sake of it, the RB just doesn't cut it. I wouldn't really miss the GW one but people play it so I'll keep it for now.

wildwood is sneaky good, reaches is pretty bad though. wouldnt mind that slot being a graven cairns

 

[James Stevenson]

wildwood is sneaky good, reaches is pretty bad though. wouldnt mind that slot being a graven cairns

I think I run the scars fastland in that slot, but I have no lingering reverence for a "slot" so I may have even just cut that.

 

[Lucre]

I kinda really hate when cubes have too much gold. I feel like decks kinda get super samey and packs dont have organizational factors like in booster draft so you can rely on a couple things to steer by, they can just feel super messed up.

 

[Dom Harvey]

I think I run the scars fastland in that slot, but I have no lingering reverence for a "slot" so I may have even just cut that.

just run another Blood Crypt maybe?

 

[James Stevenson]

just run another Blood Crypt maybe?

Good point. Now I'm questioning whether that slot even needs to be there.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I kinda really hate when cubes have too much gold. I feel like decks kinda get super samey and packs dont have organizational factors like in booster draft so you can rely on a couple things to steer by, they can just feel super messed up.

I totally agree. Rather a too small than to large a gold section. I'm currently at 50 in my "just throw it together and play you idiot" stage but finding 2 more cards to run in each of the WUBRGs should be super easy so that I cut down to 40 til I have more quality cards to run in the WUBRG.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Good point. Now I'm questioning whether that slot even needs to be there.

Well I don't see why RB needs less fixing than anyone else, but yeah

I run the manlands as mulicolor cards. Animating them is the big deal, nobody plays tar pit as dimir guildgate

I totally agree. Rather a too small than to large a gold section. I'm currently at 50 in my "just throw it together and play you idiot" stage but finding 2 more cards to run in each of the WUBRGs should be super easy so that I cut down to 40 til I have more quality cards to run in the WUBRG.

BWAHAHAHAHAH
I have 23 multicolor cards total, 1 each for simic/boros/Izzet

At one point I kinda just looked at all my multicolored cards and went "Would I run this if it were colorless?" and then cut like 60 cards

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Well, I'm down to 30 now! I just figured that what the fuck some of these gold cards are as mediocre as the monocolored options so lets run the mediocre option that at least makes for the better environment (hint: its not the one gold ones).

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I run 108 gold cards, and haven't regretted it yet!

Then again, my cube is kinda an odd duck when it comes to gold cards. It runs dedicated mana fixing for only five guilds, plus the corresponding five wedges/shards (i.e. each one that consists of two supported guilds), 55 lands in total. The wedge/shard theme is its identity, so I could never cut all of the gold cards. I also deliberately cut monocolored cards that I deemed too strong, to encourage going multicolor.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I like that, but its a conscious decision then. With additional gold cards you get ramifications right, and if you don't adjust to its going to be noticeable. I do like that approach though totally, like I've drafted Rob Dennis cube a lot like I mentioned in the opening post and its way fun. But do you feel like skewing the mana base for the supported tri- and pair-combinations work good then? Like I could see how it makes it manageable to get all the manabase into the usual ~50.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

But do you feel like skewing the mana base for the supported tri- and pair-combinations work good then? Like I could see how it makes it manageable to get all the manabase into the usual ~50.

It works much better than my previous experiment of using an only slightly skewed normal mana base (i.e. a bit more 3-color fixing than normal). Thing is, including a Hallowed Fountain when you don't support Azorius presents you with two problems. 1. It makes it harder for your drafters to read which guilds are supported from just looking at a pack. 2. Only one of the five supported shards/wedges (i.e. 1-2 players) is interested in that land, rather than two of the five (i.e. 2-4 players).

 

[CML]

I run 108 gold cards, and haven't regretted it yet!

Then again, my cube is kinda an odd duck when it comes to gold cards. It runs dedicated mana fixing for only five guilds, plus the corresponding five wedges/shards (i.e. each one that consists of two supported guilds), 55 lands in total. The wedge/shard theme is its identity, so I could never cut all of the gold cards. I also deliberately cut monocolored cards that I deemed too strong, to encourage going multicolor.

Anyone remember how like when I put my Cube together in 2013 it had more gold than a good episode of Entourage?

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Probably you?

 

[James Stevenson]

Anyone remember how like when I put my Cube together in 2013 it had more gold than a good episode of Entourage?

You've always been a shining paragon of ripping the shit of anything you can; looking at your cube list is a nice reminder that we're all human.

 

[CML]

You've always been a shining paragon of ripping the shit of anything you can; looking at your cube list is a nice reminder that we're all human.

gotta be able to take it when you dish it out!

anyway it's an honor to be in this forum's orbit. i still think cube theory is as underdeveloped as MTG theory in general (likely due to lack of economic incentive on both sides -- not enough money for players; too much for WotC) but it's nice to be on the front lines because the alternative would be to play the Legacy cube on Modo and try endlessly, futilely, to convince myself I was having a good time and i should really trust the designers.