General Basic land box

B

blacksmithy

If you could (and you can!) replace each of your basic lands with utility lands, what would your BLB contain?

Example: I am strongly considering running a BLB of custom cycling lands a la the following:
16C078C1-1F69-49D9-BEC0-1C40E59FEC4A.jpeg

What about you? Go crazy!
 
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sigh

sigh

I run the cycling lands that custom is based on alongside my basic lands. Has worked well for years.

A land I'm tempted to try in the BLB is shimmering grotto. It would potentially act as a safety valve for a drafter that missed out on a couple key pieces of fixing while still offering some real costs to utilize it in play (so drafters don't just jam multiples into every deck)
 
landofMordor

landofMordor

Administrator
I’m considering unlimited amounts of KHM fetchable snow duals alongside basics. Etb tapped is a real cost in my format, but would be gentler for players who cared about basic land types (eg Kird Ape)

another option would be as many underworld cookbooks as my players want so that I can sufficiently support asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

Specifically utility lands? Hmm...



The play patterns in this cube would be very interesting — games would be very slow, and you'd have a very strong incentive to run a 1-2 color deck.



This would also be pretty neat — each individual land would be slower, but you can burn lands for extra mana. If you wait for your mana normally, you're dropping 4-drops on turn 5... or T3 if you don't care about having lands afterwards.



Because some days I choose violence.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Brad said:
I like this. My question would be: How many of each are in the basic box? At what point is that thing bloated beyond belief?
Click to expand...
I would guess you don't need tooooo many of each, since there are only so many ETB tapped lands decks in certain formats are willing to run. And the heavy-fixing cubes need fewer basics in general. I don't know what Parker's land storage situation is but I doubt space for basics is too much of an issue.
 
sigh

sigh

I would guess 3 each? One deck is probably not taking more than one of any particular "guild" and I doubt more than 3 decks will be trying to grab from the exact same "guild" in any one draft. It would depend a bit on format speed; including them would get slightly more attractive to decks the slower a format is.

I also really like the idea btw. Fits into existing fetchland manabases without outcompeting the better duals that are actually in the draft.
 
landofMordor

landofMordor

Administrator
Yeah I'd probably run 5ish of each land in the BLB, just to be safe. It's not uncommon for decks in my format to run 3-5 basics each, but there might also be a need to play a tapland to turn on multiple off-color fetches or something, so certain duals might get splashed. I don't think it's correct to choose to play a tapland in my format unless you get really big gains for it.
 
japahn

japahn

@ravnic is such a purist. I am adventurous and I'd be ok with:



I do think there is lots of design space in expanding basic "land" boxes, but the more complicated your decisions are after the draft, the more like building (the mana base of?) a constructed deck the experience is. I like that draft decisions are bite-sized, and complicating the last step is not something I'm usually looking for in the interest of accessibility for my cube.

That said, maybe putting fixing in the draft is kind of extra steps already, and it would be fine to give everyone X fetches and Y shocks of their choice and reduce booster sizes to, say, 3x12. It's just logistically and economically (playing on paper) much easier to have a single or a copies of nonbasics, and there is something to be said for doing things the usual way, which players are comfortable with.
 
B

blacksmithy

consider the following 2 scenarios for a 288 size cube designed for 6 players.
assume all else stays the same about the environment.
which scenario would you rather have as a DRAFTER and why?
A: 30 fetches, 30 duals in main cube.
B: 20 fetches, 40 duals in main cube. 20 Evolving Wilds in BLB. of the 40 duals, 20 can be fetched by Wilds (still tapped though).
 
Velrun

Velrun

A

But I would certainly not mind playing with option B a few times. It sounds awesome but in the long run I enjoy simplicity. I do think you should change B to "infinite Evolving Wilds instead of 20. In theory at least.
 
B

blacksmithy

Velrun said:
A

But I would certainly not mind playing with option B a few times. It sounds awesome but in the long run I enjoy simplicity. I do think you should change B to "infinite Evolving Wilds instead of 20. In theory at least.
Click to expand...
you actually make a good point here- instead of having “20 wilds in the box” it would probably be better for the players to just give everyone 3-4 wilds at the start of the draft so they’re right there in front of them in hand, and they don’t have to decide anything related to them in the abstract. less uncertainty
 
Velrun

Velrun

Another option is to add +1 card to the booster pack count by adding an Evolving Wilds to each pack. Or two or three. In this way they will not get evenly distributed but will instead be fought over.

For starters I would do the other thing (give out 2 to everyone) and ask the players which they prefer during the first testing tournament. But don't ask them right away. Let them go through at least 50 % of the tournament before asking for feedback. Cause we need them educated on the topic before we let them give feedback.
 
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