Fellow Riptidians, I want to talk about mana sweet spots.
This is pretty relevant when crafting an environment, and I think you're doing good with what you learned from limited, since cube decks usually also have a deck size of 40 and therefore a similar land:spell ratio.
I just wanted to ask how your personal experiences are and how you put that experience into your cubes?
For example, there are some rules of thumb, like having a land:spell ratio of 17:23 will often be a good point to start, shifting slightly if you're drafting either a very aggressive deck or a grindy top-heavy deck. With this 17:23 ratio, hitting 5 lands often is the maximum for non-durdly decks, and it's not too likely to have it on t5, so everything costing 5 and more usually doesn't follow the same rules as everything else that's below, especially for more aggressive decks.
Let me explain with an example:
Clarion Spirit is a 2drop with a reasonable body and a good ability you have to do some work for, you could follow it up with 1drop/2drop also creating a spirit token, or just a three drop like
Hissing Iguanar, then following up with two 2drops also creating a spirit token or a four drop like
Sling-Gang Lieutenant. So far, I'd say the cards are on par powerlevelwise, for what they do for their respective cost. Now, especially for an aggressive deck, dropping something that's 5 mana should actually be worth having 5 lands on the table, so I'd easily go up in powerlevel with the next card:
Angel of Invention. Comparing the Lieutenant to the Angel, you're getting a lot more for 1 more mana. Maybe comparing it to
Visionary Augmenter makes it even clearer: the same statline and fabricate 2, but for 1 more mana, you also get flying, lifelink and a
Glorious Anthem attached to the body!
While tinkering on my current version, I strictly followed the rule of a tight power band, since I wanted to craft an environment with not so clear first picks, people should be enticed to pick something they find interesting. This could end up problematic in theory, but for now, that's something I'm willing to follow and see where it gets me, since I'm sure people drafting my cube will
think that there are some clear picks for them, since they won't know the whole environment and have something to discover, so the draft dynamics will evolve draft per draft.
Now, getting to the point:
wouldn't you say it makes sense breaking this rule for cards with a higher cmc?
Angel of Invention looks
so much better than
Sling-Gang Lieutenant on paper, but my cube is going to end up faster than most limited environments, and there are going to be at least some wrath effects in it, especially full sweepers
starting with cmc 5, so I'd say there are actually reasons why Angel of Invention isn't
strictly better, or even a clearer pick than the lieutenant.
With my rule of the tight power band, I want to avoid having format-defining bombs/spoilers, since that's what actually killed limited for
a lot of people I know (one of the reasons I won't run any planeswalkers). My biggest concern with breaking this rule would be shifting the fight over bombs just to a higher cmc overall, but having it nonetheless.
it's btw not only the angel I think about (re)adding to my cube, another prominent example would be
Dream Eater, a card I really, really like, but that's also kinda strong compared to what other cards in my cube can do, but it's also six mana and, just like the angel, weak to a lot of removal, but coming with some instant value.
maybe that's something that is very clear to a lot of people here, but I actually find that to be an interesting topic, and since I want to create a
great limited experience with my cube, I also find this to be an important thing to consider.
