General Dual and Triple Lands

[Nemo]

So, I ordered up some playsets of proxy OG duals. Not counterfeits, but obvious proxies. I feel a bit annoyed about it, because I have the real cards for everything else.

The OG dual lands are just simpler than anything else. It's not too hard to process the similar but different drawbacks on Botannical Sanctum, Dreamroot Cascade, Hinterland Harbor, and Vineglimmer Snarl. But it's kind of a waste. A few copies of Tropical Island are so easy to figure out. It's a great cube solution apart from the fact that it currently costs something like $500 for a moderately played Revised copy or $220 for a 30th Anniversary proxy in 2015 frame. I am not interesting in moving up to that level of MTG spending.

If you think about it, the 30th Anniversary copies aren't even real proxies, because they're made by Hasbro. What a fail!

Related to that, has anybody considered running custom perfect triple lands instead of dual lands? That improves the chances that people get the lands they need in a draft pod, and it does it without all of the nuisance shuffling you get from fetch lands. You could even run quad lands, but then you're really pushing 5C decks.

I think my preferred solution right now would be to have some dual lands to draft in the cube, and after the draft you can trade up to X dual lands in for others in the box that match at least one of the colors. In that system, people can draft good manabases and cast their spells, it still matters which and how many dual lands you draft, you don't need any voucher cards, the system is relatively simple, and you're not favoring 4-5 color decks since the lands only produce two colors at the end of the day. Also no shuffling for lands.

A system like that works better if you can have a stack of dual lands of one type, and the ones I'd want are the OG's. There's always the option of Tangled Islet and a Sharpie, of course. Maybe upgrade that to more of a pseudo altered card by covering up "enters tapped" with paint instead of sharpie.

 

[gaytransmulldrifter]

I run proxied og duals in my cube for the exact same reason. They're just so easy for new players to immediately understand and they have simple and evocative names that communicate exactly what's going on. It's just so much easier than going okay what's this one do? Comes into play tapped if I'm wearing shoes and it's not raining outside? Oh no this is the one that taps if it IS raining.

That kind of stuff can add some texture to gameplay for really enfranchised players but for the mostly beginner play groups I run with it's just so much noise. I'm also a big fan of running a bunch of copies of the same fixing land in basically every cube I design because it makes it much easier to shortcut your thinking while you're looking through a pack or your hand.

It's fucking dumb that such a simple and essential game piece costs as much as a video game console I do not feel remotely bad about proxying then.

 

[Brad]

I don't like OG duals or triomes, personally. I like there to be a cost to your fetchable lands. Triomes are probably fine in a somewhat high power environment where coming in tapped is more significant, but the only "cost" to running a dual is picking it in the draft and having it be susceptible to a Wasteland.

I'd be significantly more comfortable with an untapped non-typed dual, but I personally like that shocks give you a bit of a decision when fetching.

 

[Rusje]

I don't like OG duals or triomes, personally. I like there to be a cost to your fetchable lands. Triomes are probably fine in a somewhat high power environment where coming in tapped is more significant, but the only "cost" to running a dual is picking it in the draft and having it be susceptible to a Wasteland.

I'd be significantly more comfortable with an untapped non-typed dual, but I personally like that shocks give you a bit of a decision when fetching.

I completely agree. I think a land that is better than a basic land should cost you something. Especially if it’s fetchable.
At the same time I like that painlands can help with your mana.

 

[Nemo]

I run proxied og duals in my cube for the exact same reason. They're just so easy for new players to immediately understand and they have simple and evocative names that communicate exactly what's going on. It's just so much easier than going okay what's this one do? Comes into play tapped if I'm wearing shoes and it's not raining outside? Oh no this is the one that taps if it IS raining.

That kind of stuff can add some texture to gameplay for really enfranchised players but for the mostly beginner play groups I run with it's just so much noise. I'm also a big fan of running a bunch of copies of the same fixing land in basically every cube I design because it makes it much easier to shortcut your thinking while you're looking through a pack or your hand.

It's fucking dumb that such a simple and essential game piece costs as much as a video game console I do not feel remotely bad about proxying then.

I think your cube was the thing that nudged me to order the proxies. I've been meaning to take a deep dive into that cube, because it seems awesome, and you're designing from a philosophical starting point that I like a lot.

 

[Chris Taylor]

So, I ordered up some playsets of proxy OG duals. Not counterfeits, but obvious proxies. I feel a bit annoyed about it, because I have the real cards for everything else.

The OG dual lands are just simpler than anything else. It's not too hard to process the similar but different drawbacks on Botannical Sanctum, Dreamroot Cascade, Hinterland Harbor, and Vineglimmer Snarl. But it's kind of a waste. A few copies of Tropical Island are so easy to figure out. It's a great cube solution apart from the fact that it currently costs something like $500 for a moderately played Revised copy or $220 for a 30th Anniversary proxy in 2015 frame. I am not interesting in moving up to that level of MTG spending.

If you think about it, the 30th Anniversary copies aren't even real proxies, because they're made by Hasbro. What a fail!

100% support, this kinda shit sucks and it's insane that one individual game piece is 500$.

Related to that, has anybody considered running custom perfect triple lands instead of dual lands? That improves the chances that people get the lands they need in a draft pod, and it does it without all of the nuisance shuffling you get from fetch lands. You could even run quad lands, but then you're really pushing 5C decks.

So, look. The reason we like fetchlands isn't actually because they enable 5c piles really well, it's because they're not dead cards.

Arid Mesa is useful to 7/10 2 color pair drafters (provided they have a fetchable land to find) and 9/10 3 color drafters
Ragurin Triome isn't, being only useful to 3/10 2 color drafters and 4/10 3 color drafters (and of course perfect for your Jeskai drafter).

Sometimes the packs just break down that even though you're snapping off every single piece of fixing to make your little RW aggro deck function, all you ever see in the packs are BG lands, and your deck is completely nonfunctional because you have to play 16 basics.
But you can play Bloodstained Mire if you find a single plateau. (edited)

For sake of comparison, a distribution of 30 fetchlands and 30 typed duals is more effective at getting those lands to people who can play them than 60 typed duals is.

If you really hate shuffling so much that you can't stand this system, you could try these:

You're just putting the time delay into the deckbuilding phase rather than gameplay, but it might work.

Now untapped triomes PLUS fetchlands is a bit much, that is probably limit testing magic's mana system.

I don't like OG duals or triomes, personally. I like there to be a cost to your fetchable lands. Triomes are probably fine in a somewhat high power environment where coming in tapped is more significant, but the only "cost" to running a dual is picking it in the draft and having it be susceptible to a Wasteland.

I'd be significantly more comfortable with an untapped non-typed dual, but I personally like that shocks give you a bit of a decision when fetching.

I completely agree. I think a land that is better than a basic land should cost you something. Especially if it’s fetchable.
At the same time I like that painlands can help with your mana.

Man nobody respects what a cost a draft pick is. You're already fighting over a limited resources with other players, why does this also have to deal like 6 to you before you can cast your spells? (And I say this as a predominantly aggro player who would win a lot more if we all took 6 damage a lot of the time).

Painlands and other manafixing lands don't "Help you cast your spells", they LET you cast your spells. If your 2 color deck has 16 basics in it, you lose to your own manabase a lot of the time. Once your deck has enough fixing to cast its spells, then we can upgrade to actually playing a game against eachother.
It's the bottom rung on maslow's hierarchy of needs.

The only difference between shocks and duals is weather we start the game at 17, or 12. Personally I prefer 17.

But on the other hand, Hurr Jackel is a decent aggro creature in the Microprose Shandalar games because a lot of your early game opponents start at 10. It's contextual, and it'll affect which cards you want.

 

[Nemo]

I'd give Chris's post multiple likes if I could.

Arid Mesa is useful to 7/10 2 color pair drafters (provided they have a fetchable land to find) and 9/10 3 color drafters

If you really hate shuffling so much that you can't stand this system, you could try these:
[green land voucher image snipped]
You're just putting the time delay into the deckbuilding phase rather than gameplay, but it might work.

Agreed; I had thought of that. That's why above I suggested that one could let drafters trade in a dual land for something else that shares a color. Now the dual land is itself a voucher that can go into the deck as one of 7 of the 10 dual lands, and it's therefore useful to the same number of drafters as a fetch land.

Fetch lands are super neat, because they enable side benefits that are fun with various strategies. I enjoy that stuff, but that is not something I want to design into my cubes at this time. Fetch lands are big time key cards in some of the cubes out there, and I'm looking for something that's a dual land - no more, no less. Fetches are also more powerful purely in terms of mana fixing, and I am pretty happy with just the power level of plain dual lands. I like two color decks with a possibility for a 3rd color splash if you pick extra fixing.

Painlands and other manafixing lands don't "Help you cast your spells", they LET you cast your spells. If your 2 color deck has 16 basics in it, you lose to your own manabase a lot of the time. Once your deck has enough fixing to cast its spells, then we can upgrade to actually playing a game against eachother.
It's the bottom rung on maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Yes, a thousand times this.

 

[Velrun]

Sometimes the packs just break down that even though you're snapping off every single piece of fixing to make your little RW aggro deck function, all you ever see in the packs are BG lands, and your deck is completely nonfunctional because you have to play 16 basics.
But you can play verdant catacombs if you find a single plateau.

What? Verdant doesn’t even fetch Plateau or any of the Basics you run in red white.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Ah crap good catch.
Editing to say Bloodstained Mire

 

[Brad]

What? Verdant doesn’t even fetch Plateau or any of the Basics you run in red white.

I actually think that running Verdant Catacombs and Plateau is a great strategy if you're my opponent.

 

[Velrun]

Ah crap good catch.
Editing to say Bloodstained Mire

Otherwise excellent shout and write!
Actually it was so good that I thought I might have missed something..maybe..could be.

 

[Rusje]

Painlands and other manafixing lands don't "Help you cast your spells", they LET you cast your spells. If your 2 color deck has 16 basics in it, you lose to your own manabase a lot of the time.

This is blatantly untrue. Unless your cube only has coloured mana cost (and the majority costs more than 1).

https://www.channelfireball.com/art...-Update/dc23a7d2-0a16-4c0b-ad36-586fcca03ad8/

Things like fetches (e.g., evolving wilds or if one wants to avoid shuffling enters the battlefield tapped as a basic land of choice help tremendously. So doling out 4 evolving wilds or the untapped one will allow each player to play 2cc spells of each colour without issues. Multicoloured lands on the other hand are slightly better than evolving wilds since you can choose what you need every turn. However, having many multicoloured lands do lead to decks with more than two colours.
Yes, picking a fixing land is painful, but a dual is really, really strong. They allow for riskless splashing.

 

[Rusje]

But on the other hand, Hurr Jackel is a decent aggro creature in the Microprose Shandalar games because a lot of your early game opponents start at 10. It's contextual, and it'll affect which cards you want.

This is indeed true. Everything is contextual.

 

[Velrun]

In theory a Boros aggro deck can also use a Verdant Catacomb if the Boros aggro deck includes a Badlands and Scrubland. Even better if the Boros aggro also includes a Taiga and a Savannah.

This is just in theory but it’s actually true although will almost never be realistic in a draft.

 

[Chris Taylor]

This is blatantly untrue. Unless your cube only has coloured mana cost (and the majority costs more than 1).

https://www.channelfireball.com/art...-Update/dc23a7d2-0a16-4c0b-ad36-586fcca03ad8/

Things like fetches (e.g., evolving wilds or if one wants to avoid shuffling enters the battlefield tapped as a basic land of choice help tremendously. So doling out 4 evolving wilds or the untapped one will allow each player to play 2cc spells of each colour without issues. Multicoloured lands on the other hand are slightly better than evolving wilds since you can choose what you need every turn. However, having many multicoloured lands do lead to decks with more than two colours.
Yes, picking a fixing land is painful, but a dual is really, really strong. They allow for riskless splashing.

Yes! Good link, Frank Karsten is the foundational text of all this math we're talking about
Anyone who hasn't read this, I know it's very statisticy (tm), but there's a wealth of good information here, both for magic more broadly and for limited (read: cube) more specifically

Here's the chart we care about (barring commander cube shenanigans):
The green highlighted squares are what is "consistent" (89% + turn count, so 90% for 1 drops, 91% for 2 drops, 92% for 3 drops, etc).
This is what we want to hit for the deck to function.

Open this in a new tab if you need to.
The assumptions here are 40 card decks, 17 lands, and specifically that you have already drawn the total amount of lands that you need to cast a given spell. As he puts it: "if you've drawn 1 island and 1 plains by turn 4 and failed to cast Wrath of God on curve, the problem isn't that you didn't draw the right lands, it's that you didn't draw enough lands."

As well, taplands are assumed to have been played on earlier turns UNLESS you're looking to cast a 1 drop, and assumes your deck has "a reasonable amount of taplands", as stated here:

I'd recommend playing no more than three tap-lands in 60-card aggro decks with one-drops and no more than nine tap-lands in 60-card midrange/control decks that lack one-drops.

Now we aren't playing 60 card magic, but 3/60 = 2/40 pretty easily, and 9/60 = 6/40 pretty easily as well. Beyond this you start running to issues.

So, putting all this together, if your deck has Savannah Lions and Jackel Pup in it, you need 9 red sources and 9 white sources, and taplands don't help. You need to build your deck in such a way that it's slanted to one of those colors, and cut the early drops from the other.
You'll need to play 9 mountains/2 evolving wilds/6 plains in order to cast these cards on curve.

What this means is you need to cut all your white 1 and 2 drops from this deck, because with this manabase, you aren't hitting the 9 white sources to cast them on time. Your deck can reasonably cast something that costs , but it can't play flickerwisp (that's 12 white sources), for eg. (Notably you are fine at 7/8/2 if there are zero 1 drops in your deck, but what on earth is going on there)
Even up at the 4 drop slot, where you've had a while to draw cards, you're totally fine playing a card like faith's fetters at , but for hero of bladehold is still below our threshold.

For an even split where you can play cards of each color, you need (in the format of Mountain/Plains/Plateau)

8/8/1 for 1 drops of both colors to be castable (You can't do this with taplands, see above example)
8/8/1 for 1C 2 drops to be castable
3/3/11 for both WW and RR cards to be castable. This is hilarious and should not be attempted 11 dual lands, my god.
3/8/6 is for WW and 1R, which is still extremely taxing. Do you even have 6 RW duals in your cube?
8/9/0 is fine if ALL your 3 drops cost 2C
5/5/7 Lets you cast 1RR and 1WW cards in the same deck consistently. SEVEN! This is huge.
5/9/3 looks to be the minimum if you have 1WW and 2R cards you need to cast.

The reason I'm looking at an aggro deck is because it has the most stringent requirements. If you can confidently say this decks mana works, then your control players are going to be fine, your midrange decks are going to be fine.

So for Franks minimum deck requirements, you probably want 3 dual lands, zero CC spells, and as few 1CC spells as you can manage. AT A MINIMUM.
As a player, trying to be successful in draft, 4 dual lands is gonna be better than 3.

Taking a look at LPR's article, How many lands should you put in your cube: If each player needs 4 lands for their deck to function, assuming ~75% maindeck rate on fixing, you need 53 fixing lands @360. If you assume 67%, you need 60/360. If you assume the RW player ALWAYS gets the plateau, then you need 40/360. Extrapolate out to your own cube size if necessary, and have a hard look at your list

So Franks minimum specs, 4 lands per player, you still want somewhere between 15-20% fixing of the overall cube.

Fetchlands are amazing partially because they drive up this maindeck percentage: blood crypt is not helpful to the RW drafter, but bloodstained mire can be.

TL: DR Add more lands, and add better lands! It's HARD out there for a magic player, basics do not and have never cut it.

 

[Chris Taylor]

This is blatantly untrue. Unless your cube only has coloured mana cost (and the majority costs more than 1).

https://www.channelfireball.com/art...-Update/dc23a7d2-0a16-4c0b-ad36-586fcca03ad8/

Things like fetches (e.g., evolving wilds or if one wants to avoid shuffling enters the battlefield tapped as a basic land of choice help tremendously. So doling out 4 evolving wilds or the untapped one will allow each player to play 2cc spells of each colour without issues. Multicoloured lands on the other hand are slightly better than evolving wilds since you can choose what you need every turn. However, having many multicoloured lands do lead to decks with more than two colours.
Yes, picking a fixing land is painful, but a dual is really, really strong. They allow for riskless splashing.

I'm gonna put this in a separate post because I wanted to section it off from the Frank Karsten thing: Why is splashing considered a downside to you?
Like if my RW drafter has an otherwise fine deck, but they get to put dark confident in it, that's cool, right? That's a good thing?

It introduces a huge variety in what kinds of decks can appear, and looking at all the mana math above, it's a steep cost even if you're running fetches and duals. Even splashing black for an easy card like Bob, 9 sources is a BIG ask to be able to consistently cast the guy, so ideally you'd want something you'd be happier casting later, but that's 6 picks (1 for bob, 5 for the expanded manabase to support the man, if we're assuming you are just gonna get the 4 you need to play RW already) you had to spend on increasing your card quality.

Is splashing this card worth that cost? Like Bob's good and all, but it is possible you'd just be better off playing straight RW. What level of power level among your main colors did you give up in order to make this Bob happen?

It's hard to say, and these questions are what make magic interesting.

Honestly I think if splashing a card does increase the card quality of your deck to a problematic degree (Say, splashing Ancestral Recall for eg) that's probably the card's fault, not the mana's fault.

If you end up with "The nightmare scenario" where all your drafters are playing 5 color midrange soup and the only thing that mattered in the draft was what was the highest power level card at the time, why weren't there better things to do?

What was there that they were ignoring and picking thragtusk instead, and why not just cut thragtusk if this keeps happening?

 

[Rusje]

So Franks minimum specs, 4 lands per player, you still want somewhere between 15-20% fixing of the overall cube.

Fetchlands are amazing partially because they drive up this maindeck percentage: blood crypt is not helpful to the RW drafter, but bloodstained mire can be.

TL: DR Add more lands, and add better lands! It's HARD out there for a magic player, basics do not and have never cut it

This is only if you desire that one should be able to cast 1WW and 2R on turn three to be reliable.

So for Franks minimum deck requirements, you probably want 3 dual lands, zero CC spells, and as few 1CC spells as you can manage.

If you do not have 1cc, we end up with 2WW and 2RR which leads to 10ish of each colour. This can easily be achieved by giving each player 3 or 4 wilds variants. Thing is, most likely you can get away with much, much less duals since most cards you are not that colour intense.

Franks minimum, if one has one drops in both colours is 1, but zero is not that bad if you look at the numbers.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Painlands and other manafixing lands don't "Help you cast your spells", they LET you cast your spells. If your 2 color deck has 16 basics in it, you lose to your own manabase a lot of the time. Once your deck has enough fixing to cast its spells, then we can upgrade to actually playing a game against eachother.
It's the bottom rung on maslow's hierarchy of needs.

I agree with you on the importance of manafixing, but distinguishing between "help you cast your spells" and "let you cast your spells" feels a bit like a tomayto, tomato situation. The answer to "what happens when you don't draw the right colors" is "you can't cast your spells" either way.

This is blatantly untrue. Unless your cube only has coloured mana cost (and the majority costs more than 1).

https://www.channelfireball.com/art...-Update/dc23a7d2-0a16-4c0b-ad36-586fcca03ad8/

If we assume that a two color deck, let's pick an Azorius deck for ease of talking, features at least some cards that cost and . According to the article, such a deck ideally would run 9 white mana sources and 9 blue mana sources to reliably run out those two drops on curve. So yeah, that looks pretty reasonable for a basics only two color deck. In fact, looking at the table (see below), we can see that a 9/8 split (assuming 17 lands) gives a 93.0%/89.9% chance to cast those two drops on curve. Pretty neat! It also makes sense, since we get by just fine in most retail limited games (be it draft or sealed deck). Sure, you'll experience the occasional color screw, but they're fairly rare unless you are unlucky.



However, there are two circumstances in which the basics only mana base breaks down. The first is if your format does include double pips. Even a card can be run out on curve "only" 85.6% of the time if you're running 9 Islands, and if you also want to run a card in the same deck, well, the drop is noticeable, as you're only running that out on turn four 78.2% of the time on those 8 Plains. Thinks get more dire the cheaper the card is. There's a reason I'm not a fan of CC cards (like Yarok's Fenlurker), because even on 10 lands you only run it out on turn two 71.5% of the time, and you're reducing the chance of curving out your other color significantly by cutting from 8 to 7 lands on that color.

The other use case is aggro decks. My Boros suite wants you to run out threats from turn one onwards, and while a 9/8 split still looks reasonable (at 90.4%/86.5%), the impact of not running out that one drop to apply pressure asap is huge. For this kind of deck, I would actually like way more reliability than what Frank is aiming for. This scenario, for an aggro deck, is at least as dire as a midrange deck getting color screwed out of playing their impactful four drop, so that 9/8 split really isn't going to cut it.

Of particular note is that untapped duals are a must in the case of aggro decks. Evolving Wilds aren't going to help your Boros player to topple the Sultai player before they manage to stabilize. Also, 17 lands is way too many for a deck whose curve largely caps out at MV 3. So, how many duals do we want these players to end up with? Well, if we're aiming for a robust mana base as a Boros aggro player, I would love 11+ lands of each color in a 16 land (at most) mana base, so 5 Mountains and 5 Plains, plus 6 duals would do the trick.

(Quick math interlude, you can approximate the number of duals needed in a two color deck by adding the number of desired lands of each color, and then substracting your desired total land count from that number. E.g. 11 + 11 = 22; 22 - 16 = 6; so 6 duals should do the trick for our Boros player. Calculating the number of basics required is as simple as substracting the number of duals from your desired land count for each color. E.g. 11 - 6 = 5; so 5 Mountains, 5 Plains, and 6 duals = 16 lands. Nice!)

Now, you might be content with lower numbers, but in general my advice would be to overshoot on mana fixing, because getting to cast your spells is more fun than not getting to cast your spells Besides, some things to take into account:

• Not every land in a given color combination might end up with a player in that color combination.
• Two (or even three) players might be in the same colors and fight for that mana fixing.
• In a >360 cube, not every land might be in the draft, and the distribution might end up skewed, disadvantaging players in certain color combinations.

In short, running lots of mana fixing in your cube is never a waste, unless you really, really focus on monocolor decks.

PS. I had this whole post sitting in a draft since yesterday, but forgot to hit Post reply XD There's some overlap with Chris's response as a result, including the table, sorry!

 

[Rusje]

Why is splashing considered a downside to you?

I never said it is a downside. It makes the colours less important which could be good but also bad depending on your taste.

It introduces a huge variety in what kinds of decks can appear, and looking at all the mana math above, it's a steep cost even if you're running fetches and duals. Even splashing black for an easy card like Bob, 9 sources is a BIG ask to be able to consistently cast the guy, so ideally you'd want something you'd be happier casting later, but that's 6 picks (1 for bob, 5 for the expanded manabase to support the man, if we're assuming you are just gonna get the 4 you need to play RW already) you had to spend on increasing your card quality.

So to conclude: duals and fetches are not necessary for two colour decks, but do help tremendously. Especially, or they become necessary when one wants to play 1CC or 2CC cost cards as quickly as possible.

When one has universal fetches or fetches and duals the cost of splashing is much less in picks and deck building than you think.
For simplicity, let’s look at the universal fetches example: one plays 2 colours and wants four universal fetches like

Then the cost in a RW deck to include bob is 1 swamp. You already wanted the fetches to help you with casting the 2CC on time. So the cost of picking bob is one pick. The cost of including it is 1 swamp. Your mana base becomes
6 mountain
6 plains
1 swamp
4 prisma
For a whopping 10 red or white sources and 5 black ones.
For fetches and duals it is a tad harder to achieve, and one has to maybe (depends on the situation) sacrifice another pick.

 

[ravnic]

But it is not just the one pick, the cost is also to chose to get a swamp. Let's say your starting hand is that:



If you want to cast the Savannah Lions on turn 1, you have to fetch a plains here. You could instead play a mountain and cast the Goblin of course but then you have a decision to make, again, on turn 2. If you fetch a swamp now, you can cast Bob but you risk your chances of playing Vindicator or Lions anytime soon. Now, let's say you get lucky, Bob lives and draws you a plains. You can play it for perfect Mardu mana, but you still can't, on turn three, cast Vindicator+Lions. If that Vista would've been a Scrubland or even Caves of Koilos, you could. The more colors you deck has, the more problematic becomes the definite nature of basic land fetches.

 

[Rusje]

But it is not just the one pick, the cost is also to chose to get a swamp. Let's say your starting hand is that:



If you want to cast the Savannah Lions on turn 1, you have to fetch a plains here. You could instead play a mountain and cast the Goblin of course but then you have a decision to make, again, on turn 2. If you fetch a swamp now, you can cast Bob but you risk your chances of playing Vindicator or Lions anytime soon. Now, let's say you get lucky, Bob lives and draws you a plains. You can play it for perfect Mardu mana, but you still can't, on turn three, cast Vindicator+Lions. If that Vista would've been a Scrubland or even Caves of Koilos, you could. The more colors you deck has, the more problematic becomes the definite nature of basic land fetches.

True, my pick was about drafting. Choices in games are a different matter. However, look at the odds to get that hand. Furthermore, there is a high likelihood to draw a plains. I am talking about ex-ante. You are talking post.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Oooo bloomburrow mountains!

And yeah, I do think you should be able to run 1RR and 2W cards in the same deck. Are all your 3 drops splashable?

 

[Brad]

Then the cost in a RW deck to include bob is 1 swamp. You already wanted the fetches to help you with casting the 2CC on time. So the cost of picking bob is one pick. The cost of including it is 1 swamp. Your mana base becomes
6 mountain
6 plains
1 swamp
4 prisma
For a whopping 10 red or white sources and 5 black ones.
For fetches and duals it is a tad harder to achieve, and one has to maybe (depends on the situation) sacrifice another pick.

The thing to consider here is that the Primatics are pickable for every player, which is a big deal in the draft portion. It also forces you to get a basic land that can't pay your other colored costs. I think that's a pretty good trade off.

It can also get a Wastes for any Eldrazi lovers out there...

 

[Warped]

I think a lot of the color fixing debate really does come down to design preference. Tailoring your macroarchetypes' card tempos & critical "curve out" turns with the fixing you include feels like the better approach considering we're on the design side of things. You can just choose to not run so many CC cards so splashing is easier, or run them and align the fixing in the mana base accordingly. This way you can dial in how fast 3+ color greed piles become. Personally I'm in the taplands for fixing crowd. I think triomes are a bit too much. I'd love for the enemy bicycle lands to be printed.

Sharpie duals are fine, and the trade-in system is interesting. I'm curious how many slots you'd run in this case for lands since fixing could be better tuned with less picks. What did you end up going with? Did it work well?

I've been mulling over fetches for my cube lately as well. The landscape cycle from MH3 feels like the right level of fixing and tempo loss for 3+ color greed piles. 3+ color lists are helped by them but not outrageously so since they only grab basics. Aggro in my list doesn't mind it as much since it's tailored to be 1-1.5 color. They still help hit early drops, they just don't fix right away. Colorless artifact slots for aggro in my cube has a fairly dedicated section, which is how I account for easing early tempo strategies being huddled into 1-1.5 color decks. The cycling is almost flavor text, but I think there will be spots for it during gameplay. The other lands I've been heavily considering to keep greed piles in check while also facilitating aggro are the pathways. They seem just right.