CML
Contributor
wildwood is great
nobody will shed tears if you cut reaches
ravine kills people in a hurry
Article ChannelFireball: Utility Land Draft
- Thread starter Jason Waddell
- Start date
wildwood is great
nobody will shed tears if you cut reaches
ravine kills people in a hurry
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I agree wildwood is fine, but I'm not sure you need it and gavony township, and I think I'd rather township.
Maybe thats the whole point of the ULD?
Maybe thats the whole point of the ULD?
Is Treetop Village just better than Stirring Wildwood, most of the time? I know it doesn't provide the fixing, but being only 
to activate is important. I figure Treetop and Gavony Township might be enough green goodies for the utility draft.
to activate is important. I figure Treetop and Gavony Township might be enough green goodies for the utility draft.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Is Treetop Village just better than Stirring Wildwood, most of the time? I know it doesn't provide the fixing, but being only
Also trample is suprisingly annoying. Sorin, Lord of Innistrad has a bit of a problem holding off a village.
Also, fun story: I had a game a week or two ago where I died singlehandedly to a treetop village. Like 20, 17, 14, 11...0, sitting on a hand of sorcery speed answers and electrolyze
No wastelands
CML
Contributor
Is Treetop Village just better than Stirring Wildwood, most of the time? I know it doesn't provide the fixing, but being only
sure, abstractly, don't the modern lists run more villages than wildwoods, but can i interest you in a pick with fixing?
the counterargument would be that treetop is easier on da manabase to activate, something like 1wg is non-trivial if youre only splashing one of the colors. i guess that's the problem with spell lands. something like tar pit or ravine is way better than underground sea or taiga if you're those colors already, though.
i've been convinced to just throw treetop in my cube. i also like gaea's cradle in cube
That sounds awful.Also, fun story: I had a game a week or two ago where I died singlehandedly to a treetop village. Like 20, 17, 14, 11...0, sitting on a hand of sorcery speed answers and electrolyze
No wastelands
Chris Taylor
Contributor
It was at the time, but I took some time and did the math on the perfect storm that had to come together for me to have literally zero answers in blue or red, and I laughed
It's like one of those DND bad luck streaks where someone is trying to rappel down a cliff face and rolls like 6 ones back to back and ends up hanging the whole party in nooses
Chris Taylor
Contributor
In the dark, I like temples better. However, maybe with a wedge set we add some more multicolor cards, some more fixing is needed, maybe the tri lands are better for that purpose.
Bouncelands never were my favorite, and hell I run wasteland, so thats basically right out, but if you like em run em.
I just love how much play there are to temples.
Are the Vivids outside consideration?
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Seems even less non commital than the tris
So I pitched the utility draft idea to friends (finally), and there were conflicting opinions on it. The primary concern is adding time to the draft (which most feel is already too long). I really like the idea of the utility draft though because I can play many interesting lands that really are too narrow for the main cube. So I really want to sell this. An idea I'm toying with is how to make the utility draft go very quickly. And I've decided to try doing it in rounds that are easily digestible. It will be quick, should provide difficult choices, and hopefully warm guys up to the utility draft idea.
The main cube will only have double shock and double fetch lands. All other lands are in the utility draft. If we end up with clear auto picks in the utility draft (which we may), those cards will simply be removed from the cube entirely. I'm fine with that honestly as I don't want to find room for them in the main cube right now.
Here are the rules:
There will be 5 rounds. In each round, a pile of 10-20 cards will be placed face up on the table. We can go in any order but if there is contention over a card, each person will roll a D20 and the winner takes the card. During each round, you may only make a single selection. In most cases, this will be a single card but in the case of the Themed Land round it will be a batch of cards (3 cards) and that pick will use up 2 of your picks. You can only make 3 selections overall, so you cannot make a pick in every round.
Here are the rounds:
1. Fixing and Manlands - All 10 painlands and the 5 allied man lands. If you want a man land you have to pass on the pain land. You can't have both. I think this will reward those who prioritized fixing in the main draft.
2. Mono colored Utility lands - Stuff like Shelldock, Treetop, Volrath's, etc. There are clearly better (main cube worthy) options here, but if a card turns into an auto-pick, I'll just remove it and move on as stated above. I fully expect that to happen with Volrath's and maybe Kor Haven, but if it does I will decide at that time if those cards are worth a spell slot in the main cube. Otherwise, they are getting removed.
3. Guild Utility lands - Lands which require two colors to get an effect (Gavony Township, Alchemist's Refuge, etc.). None of these cards will tap for colored mana (so that means Horizon Canopy has no home right now - oh well).
4. Colorless Lands - This includes universal fixing (City, Gemstone, Terramorphic) as well as the more unique colorless cards (Cathedral of War, High Market, Port, etc.). This also has high power stuff (Mutavault) which I hope is balanced a bit by forcing you to choose that versus fixing versus some of the other cool colorless options.
5. Themed Lands - Right now this is just the artifact package (Citadel, Seat and Vault) and the Locus land package (triple cloudpost and double glimmer post). I might throw an Urza package in there (2 of each maybe?), but for right now it's just the first two. Selecting one of these packages is 2 picks and nets you the pile (either Artifact or Locus).
If you end up with a free pick at the end, you may take a Tectonic Edge if you desire. I want a land destruction option available to anyone who wants it. Tech Edge is not a great card but is serviceable in this role and I think perfectly fine for everyone to have access to.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
EDIT: I think it might make sense to roll the themed lands into the Guild Utility for two reasons. One, you can only run so many lands that tap for colorless, and two, there really aren't a lot of good guild utility lands (I can't even find one good one for every color ombination). So that would be 4 rounds instead of 5, which will will save time and it happens to match the number of packs we generally draft (4 x 11 instead of 3 x 15).
The main cube will only have double shock and double fetch lands. All other lands are in the utility draft. If we end up with clear auto picks in the utility draft (which we may), those cards will simply be removed from the cube entirely. I'm fine with that honestly as I don't want to find room for them in the main cube right now.
Here are the rules:
There will be 5 rounds. In each round, a pile of 10-20 cards will be placed face up on the table. We can go in any order but if there is contention over a card, each person will roll a D20 and the winner takes the card. During each round, you may only make a single selection. In most cases, this will be a single card but in the case of the Themed Land round it will be a batch of cards (3 cards) and that pick will use up 2 of your picks. You can only make 3 selections overall, so you cannot make a pick in every round.
Here are the rounds:
1. Fixing and Manlands - All 10 painlands and the 5 allied man lands. If you want a man land you have to pass on the pain land. You can't have both. I think this will reward those who prioritized fixing in the main draft.
2. Mono colored Utility lands - Stuff like Shelldock, Treetop, Volrath's, etc. There are clearly better (main cube worthy) options here, but if a card turns into an auto-pick, I'll just remove it and move on as stated above. I fully expect that to happen with Volrath's and maybe Kor Haven, but if it does I will decide at that time if those cards are worth a spell slot in the main cube. Otherwise, they are getting removed.
3. Guild Utility lands - Lands which require two colors to get an effect (Gavony Township, Alchemist's Refuge, etc.). None of these cards will tap for colored mana (so that means Horizon Canopy has no home right now - oh well).
4. Colorless Lands - This includes universal fixing (City, Gemstone, Terramorphic) as well as the more unique colorless cards (Cathedral of War, High Market, Port, etc.). This also has high power stuff (Mutavault) which I hope is balanced a bit by forcing you to choose that versus fixing versus some of the other cool colorless options.
5. Themed Lands - Right now this is just the artifact package (Citadel, Seat and Vault) and the Locus land package (triple cloudpost and double glimmer post). I might throw an Urza package in there (2 of each maybe?), but for right now it's just the first two. Selecting one of these packages is 2 picks and nets you the pile (either Artifact or Locus).
If you end up with a free pick at the end, you may take a Tectonic Edge if you desire. I want a land destruction option available to anyone who wants it. Tech Edge is not a great card but is serviceable in this role and I think perfectly fine for everyone to have access to.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
EDIT: I think it might make sense to roll the themed lands into the Guild Utility for two reasons. One, you can only run so many lands that tap for colorless, and two, there really aren't a lot of good guild utility lands (I can't even find one good one for every color ombination). So that would be 4 rounds instead of 5, which will will save time and it happens to match the number of packs we generally draft (4 x 11 instead of 3 x 15).
Held my first cube draft the other day (I'll put up my list here eventually) along with a Utility Land Draft. It was something new that most people at the table had never done with a cube before. They were a bit skeptical at first, but after I explained it and laid out the cards at the center of the table, they were on board with it. We rolled D20s to determine who would go first, then we just played it in a snake draft order in subsequent rounds. I laid out about 28 or so lands, we had a round of utility land drafting after each pack, and it was a pretty smooth process. Most everyone loved it afterwards and the games were definitely more interesting.
Laz
Developer
We used to have order. Now there is only chaos. Just grab whatever you want and roll off if two people want the same thing.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Maybe, but it's added complexity that isn't really needed.
It doess give me an idea though. Imagine you had a basic drafting game, and then in the "advanced" game there were also point cards. Say something with 3 points, 2 points and 1 point. Then after the draft you can redeem said points for cards from the "store". It'd probably work best in some digital product.
The process would create some valuation system where you need to be familiar with the store to know, for your deck, how much points are worth relative to your deck. Maybe there are some strategies that rely on a point-heavy build. You also could have really narrow interaction cards in the store that wouldn't be suitable for the draft. Some high end cards that cost 10 points, which do incredible things but require lots of picks to be dedicated to drafting points.
In such a world maybe you don't even have managed fixers in the regular packs. But maybe you would to keep the density of point cards down. It'd get tedious if there were 3-4 point cards per pack.
There's the potential for a lot of interesting depth there, provided the complexity is not overwhelming. I would bet that at first it'd feel like how I feel if I play warcraft 3 or league of legends, where I don't really understand how to spend my gold.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Or you could include a range of numbers which determines pick order in the after-draft shop.
I've thought about doing this before. It would be nice to somehow streamline the ULD process in a more elegant way.
If you make the picks draftable, you should be free to make them stronger than they would have been. One pick in draft could equate to doing two or three ULD picks in a row, and you could rank the pick order. (Picking more than one land at once would also serve to speed up the process a bit.) For example...
Spades = 2 picks at once
Hearts = 3 picks at once
Pick order:
Ace of spades
Deuce of spades
3 of spades
4 of hearts
5 of hearts
6 of hearts
Then, anyone who did not draft a ULD pick can take one land from what remains.
If you make the picks draftable, you should be free to make them stronger than they would have been. One pick in draft could equate to doing two or three ULD picks in a row, and you could rank the pick order. (Picking more than one land at once would also serve to speed up the process a bit.) For example...
Spades = 2 picks at once
Hearts = 3 picks at once
Pick order:
Ace of spades
Deuce of spades
3 of spades
4 of hearts
5 of hearts
6 of hearts
Then, anyone who did not draft a ULD pick can take one land from what remains.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Don't you snap pick a utility land draft if there's no ridiculous card in the pack? Can you pick more than one?
Yeah I think they'd go pretty high as picks. Perhaps treat it like Cogwork Librarian. Reveal it when you draft it, but you can swap it for a different one (6 of hearts for 4 of hearts) in addition to your normal pick from that pack. If that's too much, perhaps just reveal it and you can only draft one.
The speed factor is a big thing for us. The ULD is still worth doing as is but we all wish there was a faster way without resorting to chaos.
The speed factor is a big thing for us. The ULD is still worth doing as is but we all wish there was a faster way without resorting to chaos.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
What if you stapled this effect onto Cogwork Librarian and the other cards? Either you keep them and get utility lands, or you put him back to draft twice from a pack. The other Cogworks that are less powerful can be worth more picks or higher initiative in the utility land draft.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
This also has the added benifit of people knowing what they want from the ULD better so they might take less time doing it