I've been thinking about ULD and I'm having some concerns with power level. Maybe it's because my cube has become weaker.
So, the argument for keeping lands in the main cube is that players should prioritize them higher than their objective power level because they don't actually take a real slot in the deck and instead replace a basic land. Essentially, if you're drafting cards that you're not convinced you'll be running, the nonbasic is often the superior pick.*
There are quite a few cards in my ULD that I could imagine picking somewhere in the middle of the pack. This is potentially troublesome, because why are we spending all this time carefully drafting the second half of a pack when afterward we will be rochestering cards--often from a randomly determined order--that would otherwise have been medium level picks, relatively speaking?
For reference, I'm thinking of cards like Faerie Conclave. Most blue decks would be happy to draft and play that over blue-card-pick #32, whatever it may be.
Does anyone else think this is an issue? If so, which ULD lands should be brought back in to the main cube? Edit: Perhaps a more direct question would be better. What are the 10 highest nonbasic picks in my utility binder?
*You could also blame this on pack size. In regular limited there are a lot of chaff picks that you can disregard immediately and narrowing down to 23 isn't usually so difficult, but conversely in cube it's almost always a grueling process. I think an interesting statistic would be how often pick #x actually ends up in a player's deck. I often feel like 45 picks is way unnecessary.
So, the argument for keeping lands in the main cube is that players should prioritize them higher than their objective power level because they don't actually take a real slot in the deck and instead replace a basic land. Essentially, if you're drafting cards that you're not convinced you'll be running, the nonbasic is often the superior pick.*
There are quite a few cards in my ULD that I could imagine picking somewhere in the middle of the pack. This is potentially troublesome, because why are we spending all this time carefully drafting the second half of a pack when afterward we will be rochestering cards--often from a randomly determined order--that would otherwise have been medium level picks, relatively speaking?
For reference, I'm thinking of cards like Faerie Conclave. Most blue decks would be happy to draft and play that over blue-card-pick #32, whatever it may be.
Does anyone else think this is an issue? If so, which ULD lands should be brought back in to the main cube? Edit: Perhaps a more direct question would be better. What are the 10 highest nonbasic picks in my utility binder?
*You could also blame this on pack size. In regular limited there are a lot of chaff picks that you can disregard immediately and narrowing down to 23 isn't usually so difficult, but conversely in cube it's almost always a grueling process. I think an interesting statistic would be how often pick #x actually ends up in a player's deck. I often feel like 45 picks is way unnecessary.
