Article ChannelFireball: Utility Land Draft

CML

CML

Contributor
I dunno, the basic Mountain is tried-and-true. http://magiccards.info/query?q=t:land+o:{R}&v=card&s=cname is there a card in there that's as exciting as the listed 36?

The best explanations I can come up with for cutting all the red ones:

Peaks and Spires are nice, but they're burn cards, and the red decks in Cube are more like Standard red decks where it's curve-out aggro, where drawing one or not being able to play your 3-drop on t3 is gonna cost you a lot more damage than you'd gain from +2/+0 or disabling a blocker.
Ghitu Encampment has the same issue, a 2/1 first strike is pretty underpowered there too.
Hellion Crucible might be worth trying, but its power level is low, and it's hard to imagine any 3+-color deck wanting it.
Kher Keep is pretty good, I might try it again. I'm not sure I have much to do with the tokens compared to a Waddell joint, though.

Rest of the post:

It's not so much that I need to hand-feed my playgroup (though you're right I'm at least a smidgen hypocritical about it, per my post you quoted) but that it's kinda silly to encourage them to pick funsies lands that end up making their deck worse. Something for everyone, then!

The handful of new players (to the Cube or MTG itself) always get bummed out when they realize they didn't pick enough fixing in the draft, so this helps a little.

I'm thinking I'm gonna switch out the remaining 3 M10 lands for more 'color-appropriate' fixing like Horizon Canopy, River of Tears, Grove of the Burnwillows.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
my god i forgot it existed. i think it was in the affinity deck that was playing against caleb's "tentacle rape"?

let us add it at once
 
CML

CML

Contributor
with the devotion theme?! gods yes. put it in immediately

moreover i think this card is fucking cool, anyone ever give it a whirl?

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Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
CML said:
with the devotion theme?! gods yes. put it in immediately

moreover i think this card is fucking cool, anyone ever give it a whirl?

117.jpg
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You guys have a long way to go before you convince me to go Devotion with my cube. But the opportunity cost is so low that I don't mind tossing monocolor decks a bone in the land draft.

Exotic Orchard is cool but I never really want it in my mainboard. It always seems appealing until you think about running it in your deck over a basic.
 
James Stevenson

James Stevenson

Steamflogger Boss
Staff member
Yeah I run it. I generally play it in control if I get it, since my control decks usually end up being like 4 colors.
edit: Can't remember if it's actually good. Probably not. Felwar Stone, on the other hand, is sweet.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
"It always seems appealing until you think about running it in your deck over a basic."

this is the fundamental difficulty of utility land draft, given that we're playing games of reasonable length with 40-card decks that fetch. also, how you can convince people to run the likes of Hellion Crucible over Mountain when you have the set of Wastelands continues to befuddle me. i'm not saying it doesn't work, i am saying that i don't know how!
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

New poster to Riptide. Lot's of really cool ideas over here.

I'm really interested in introducing this concept to my players. After some experience with it, have you guys refined your lists any (what works, what doesn't work)? Also, is everyone doing the 4 Wasteland thing in their main cube lists? I like the idea of trying to balance the excessive access to non-basic lands by making Wasteland type effects more available (it kills two birds with one stone too as some cards like Maze of Ith are stupidly good because they are so hard to deal with).

Has anyone considered letting everyone run one copy of wasteland by default (taking it out of the draft - everyone just gets a single copy like basic lands)? That might be extreme, but I personally don't want guys running 15 non-basic lands or loading up on color fixing so they can run 5colorgoodstuff.dec. I think color selections should matter and I want there to be consequences for getting greedy with your mana base and real incentive to running dual and even mono colored decks (I think devotion is awesome and I'll try to support it as much as I can).
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
While I don't utility draft, everyone getting a wasteland seems a little lukewarm. It's not even a land every deck wants, given color requirements or control decks sometimes not caring.
I doubt people will hate it (Assuming they're on board with wasteland in the first place, I know people who aren't) though
 
FlowerSunRain

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
ahadabans said:
Also, is everyone doing the 4 Wasteland thing in their main cube lists?
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The Cubes here are very varied. Multiple gravecrawlers is reasonably popular and present in quite a few lists, but even that isn't universal. As far as I can remember, only Jason is using multiple Wastelands.

On the land draft, I've actually moved ALL the lands into a separate draft which is done after all of the rest of the draft. Like the utility land draft, my land draft it not randomized. I have found this arrangement preferable for a few reasons.

1) I run drafts where the entire cube goes not get drafted (4 players with 360, though now I just do 480 and use Westchester Draft). The lamest thing in the world is when I'm entrenched in a color combination and ALL OF THE DUALS OF THAT COMBINATION ARE IN THE UNUSED PORTION EVERY SINGLE TIME WTF HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?

2) Less maindraft picks means I can include more narrow/poisonous cards to support wierd decks that I like which would be hard to support when I need to include ~55 cards on mana and another 5-10 on utility lands.

3) Because the lands are readily available at the end of the draft, strategies that would effectively have "less picks" because they need to aggressively take fixing (multicolor aggro) don't need to be over supported to make sure they get enough cards.

4) The land draft indirectly rewards niche strategies that require little fixing by giving them access to a ton of utility lands since they don't need manafixing. If you want to support devotion, moving manafixing out of the main draft can really, really help as you can include more cards of each color making drafting devotion heavy decks more feasible.

5) The addition of extra non-land picks gives drafters more of an opportunity to consider their sideboard when drafting as they don't need to consider lands.

While it adds extra baggage to the draft process, it has been extremely well received and is worth the effort.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Thanks FSR. Great feedback. I completely hear you on the dual land thing. My group is usually 4-5 people and it never fails that I will pick colors and never see the duals or fetches for them. It's ridiculously annoying and it happens without fail. Murphy's law I guess.

How many lands do you have in your draft pool? And do lay them all out then and draft that way? How many lands do you draft?

I'm really interested. This is good stuff. I've never been happy with how limited I am on the lands I can run or in how that plays out in the draft. I guess I want my cube to be something in between limited and constructed, at least as far as lands go.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
I'm running 4 wasteland, but that's less of a "I want this cube to look like legacy" and more "Man, tectonic edge sucks"

Thats actually why you'll find people love the dual/fetch landbase, since fetchlands have an absurdly high ratio of decks they support (Flooded Strand in Naya for eg)
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Thanks for all the ideas. One thing I need to work out is how to handle those times when we have 4 guys and we end up drafting half the cube, playing a few games and then drafting the second half of the cube. Guys like it because we get to see all the cards over the course of the evening but we never know what cards will show up in either half. I think it will work with a supplemental utility land draft, but it won't work with all the lands in that draft unless I cut the pool in half (which could also work, but doesn't solve the issue of drafting RW and not getting any duals for that combination). Hmmm... things to consider. I definitely want to test some form of this though. It's a really good idea I think.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Grid drafting is awesome with two players. I hand't seen a 4 player variant that I liked, but your version seems really cool. I might try that. Thanks.

I enjoy traditional drafting a lot because I don't like knowing what other people are picking. Part of the fun is trying to figure it out during the draft and adjusting your strategy accordingly. It's very challenging and fun. Unfortunately, traditional drafting is much better with more players (and totally breaks down with less than 4). As you mention in your article, it can be a bit weak with only 4 players too since you aren't always seeing enough of the cube (and 4 is our group's typical size). Sadly I don't know 8 people that want to play Magic though otherwise I would always just draft that way.

I really dislike Winston and Winchester drafting personally. I tried a variation of Tenchester, but it took a billion years because people spent too much time agonizing over their one pick, so I haven't done it since.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
ahadabans said:
Grid drafting is awesome with two players. I hand't seen a 4 player variant that I liked, but your version seems really cool. I might try that. Thanks.

I enjoy traditional drafting a lot because I don't like knowing what other people are picking. Part of the fun is trying to figure it out during the draft and adjusting your strategy accordingly. It's very challenging and fun. Unfortunately, traditional drafting is much better with more players (and totally breaks down with less than 4). As you mention in your article, it can be a bit weak with only 4 players too since you aren't always seeing enough of the cube (and 4 is our group's typical size). Sadly I don't know 8 people that want to play Magic though otherwise I would always just draft that way.

I really dislike Winston and Winchester drafting personally. I tried a variation of Tenchester, but it took a billion years because people spent too much time agonizing over their one pick, so I haven't done it since.
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Yeah, I've been known to say that even 6-man drafting is significantly worse than 8-man drafting. I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about 4-man drafts because I haven't done one in years. The last time we had 4 (a year ago?) we busted out Team Sealed of the Eldrazi Domain cube.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

I don't think I've ever done it with 8 players as sad as that is (and I've been playing magic for over a decade too). My group of friends is a small one. I've drafted my cube with as many as 6, and that was one of the best drafts ever. 4 man drafts are decent enough that we generally just do that, but I'm interested in finding ways to compensate for not having more people.

I originally had a smaller cube, which improved the drafting process. But it forced me to cut too many fringe cards that i wanted to play, so I went up to 410 which is about the smallest card pool I can handle. This is another reason why I'm finding a separate land draft (utility or otherwise) enticing as it would allow me to cut the cube down while keeping the fringe cards I like. I see it as win win and losing the decision making of "do I take this land for fixing or that really good spell" - I think I can live with that if it improves the quality of the decks that get drafted.

Cube to me is something in between constructed and limited anyway, so I'm not married to all the conventions of traditional limited drafting.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
One of my 4-man ideas was to do something like 6 packs, but after each pick you shuffle and randomly remove one card from the pack. Then you all draft ~45 cards while still seeing 360 cards. It's not perfect, but maybe pointing in that direction might yield results?
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Jason Waddell said:
One of my 4-man ideas was to do something like 6 packs, but after each pick you shuffle and randomly remove one card from the pack. Then you all draft ~45 cards while still seeing 360 cards. It's not perfect, but maybe pointing in that direction might yield results?
Click to expand...

We've been doing 4 packs of 11, which has worked better than 3 packs of 15 as far as deck quality. I don't like drafts dragging on forever. I mean, I enjoy them, but the other guys get burned out on the draft itself quickly. They just want to play, so I'm cautious about adding elements to it that make it go longer (more packs, etc). This is actually something working against me for the utility land draft idea. Not sure the guys really want to do it separately even if it's quick.
 
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