Card/Deck Fast mana rocks

[OCPunisher]

Hello friends,

I'm wondering where to draw the line at "fast" mana rocks. I know that Sol Ring and Mana Crypt are usually reserved for powered cubes, but what about cards like Mana Vault and Grim Monolith?

Backstory: I'm trying to promote Wildfire.dec as well as the Tinker and Welder archetypes. Unfortunately, these decks need a lot of mana rocks to operate, and a lot of my colored mana rocks are being sniped by other drafters for fixing purposes, which makes it that much harder to assemble these kinds of decks.

 

[Chris Taylor]

The faster mana rocks will be sniped harder I'm afraid. If you think felwar stone makes a control deck good, grim monolith makes it better. Why t3 wrath when you can just skip straight to the lategame with t3 grave titan?

For the wildfire archetype, what I've done is limit which rocks show up, and how good they are.
Azorious Signet --> Talisman of Progress for example.

As for your control players picking them up, there's a certain quality of mana rock which control does find a bit off putting, usually ones that tap for colorless. That can help alleviate the problem, but you will need to add a certain threshold (which I have no hard numbers on )

 

[FlowerSunRain]

The most important thing to consider when you run a card is what it does. Grim Monolith puts out 6 drops on turn 3. Do you want that in your cube? If you don't, leave it out.

I never ran the really fast mana cards, but recently I decided to cut ALL the artifact based mana from my cube. Sure, this meant I had to cut out fun cards like Wildfire and Tinker because they kind of sucked now, but it was worth it because it made many other even more fun cards much more viable as decks had to actually play through the lower end of the curve rather then skipping it. I'm not saying you or anyone else should eliminate every mind stone and Pristine Talisman from your cube, but I think you need to accept that colorless mana acceleration has a very profound effect on an environment that crosses into multiple decktypes and unless you are willing to aggressively curtail the power level of the 6-7 man creatures and other control cards those Grim Monoliths are going to be doing nasty things.

 

[Eric Chan]

I think FSR is right on the money. Of all the things that colourless fast mana does for a cube, enabling Wildfire decks is pretty far down on that list. It's much more likely that midrange and control decks will snap them up as fast as they can to power out some unfair spells well ahead of schedule. You have to decide if you're comfortable with that kind of environment before you begin to assess the viability of the Wildfire archetype.

 

[OCPunisher]

That's an interesting perspective on this. I already run Grim Monolith, as well as other colorless rocks like Thran Dynamo, and I haven't really noticed them in a lot of control decks. I'm also concerned that if I don't support combo-ish things like Wildfire, Tinker, and Welder, then my cube is going to devolve into a bland aggro v control war every time.

Maybe the answer is to run less color-fixing rocks instead and more colorless rocks that aren't as "fast". I can see how Grim Monolith and Mana Vault might be a little too fast...what about Basalt Monolith? Or am I better off running other Mind Stone-effects like Pristine Talisman? Or am I just overly paranoid about supporting artifact combos?

 

[Chris Taylor]

I'm always wary of anything that produces 2+ mana for less than 3.


And coalition relic. That thing is super good

 

[FlowerSunRain]

I'm also concerned that if I don't support combo-ish things like Wildfire, Tinker, and Welder, then my cube is going to devolve into a bland aggro v control war every time.
. . .

Or am I just overly paranoid about supporting artifact combos?

I think you are. You should support artifact combo because you like it, because it it makes the draft experience more interesting and because it is a fun deck to play with and against. You shouldn't run it because you think not running it will make your cube "a bland aggro v control war" because this is assuredly not the case (and even if it were, there are many other ways to address this issue). Looking at your list, it seems clear that the artifact mana will push haymaker ramp/control. The question, then is this:

Do you mind?

 

[Chris Taylor]

It makes smash to smithereens a strong card

 

[OCPunisher]

That is a good question. I'm honestly not sure how to answer it.
- On the one hand, if these cards start becoming staples of the control decks, then it probably isn't a good idea to run them. Control decks (albeit the multi-colored ones) usually end up winning the majority of our drafts, and they don't need any more help.
- On the other hand, if these cards start to bring more of a combo-ish element to the draft, where every so often one person can assemble enough pieces together to make a victory, then I would be OK with that.

This brings me back to my original line of thought: colorless mana rocks would be more important to the combo-y decks than the control decks, and vice versa with colored mana rocks. I think I'm going to have to try this out IRL to see if it makes any difference.

 

[CML]

One gripe yet to be brought up is the extreme variance these kinds of cards bring about. Everyone knows about the busted starts in powered cube because that's all the grognards of Seattle Magic post on their newsfeeds, but equally miserable are the starts where you did nothing because you needed a mana rock, or you had one with no big spells, or you had one but were color-screwed. Those games are a big part of why I hate powered Cube.

CT, how have Talismans been for you? I think I wanna try a few, having more or less maxed out on 2-mana tap-for-1 effects

 

[Eric Chan]

I'm not sure that mana rocks that make multiple colorless mana automatically slot into combo decks over control decks. Control is just as happy to power out an early Gideon Jura, Tamiyo, the Moon Sage, or Karn Liberated as a combo deck is to do anything broken with them. In fact, I'd say it's easier for control decks to abuse these mana rocks, as they were going to run that planeswalker regardless, and now they just have a chance of cheating them out a couple turns early.

If you're worried that removing the fast artifact mana will make all of your matchups and games generic, I'd probably look to introduce combo-ish elements in a more subtle fashion into your cube. I think a common cube designer mistake is to try and port instant-win combos directly from constructed environments into cube - storm being the primary culprit - without taking into account how narrow and poison principle-y the support cards for these combos are. A better approach for integrating combo is to carefully graft it onto existing archetypes, letting the combo elements be a natural extension to those decks. Jason's Gravecrawler package is the best example of this. At its heart, it's a black aggro deck with multiple recursive elements, but it's also got a significant combo component that allows the pilot to interact with their opponent on several axes outside the combat zone. Perhaps most importantly, the deck has a lot of back-and-forth interaction to it, something that is inherently untrue for most constructed combo decks, which try as much as possible to ignore the opponent. If this all sounds like something you're interested in exploring, I think there's a lot of design space here that's still uncharted, and you might find something sweet if you poke around.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I kind of wonder if an archetype is worth supporting in a traditional cube if it requires fast mana rocks to operate. I don't think the upside is worth the cost.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I like talismans instead of signets because
A) it attaches a cost to the fixing, as opposed to otherwise painless to use signets, and
B) it doesn't let UW control decks splash...I dunno...Blightning. (This one doesn't come up often)

The only thing I don't like about them is like most lands THERES ONLY 5!!!!
So my UR wildfire deck gets izzet signet because foiling cards is cool

 

[CML]

Talisman of Pretentiousness, Artifact (2)
T: Add (1) to your mana pool.
T, say something about software design: Add (U) or (R) to your mana pool. Talisman of Pretentiousness deals one damage to you.

 

[hardb0dy]

Everyone knows about the busted starts in powered cube because that's all the grognards of Seattle Magic post on their newsfeeds, but equally miserable are the starts where you did nothing because you needed a mana rock, or you had one with no big spells, or you had one but were color-screwed. Those games are a big part of why I hate powered Cube.

Seems more like a problem associated with a poor draft or poor deck construction. All good decks should have something to do on turn-1 (Ponder, Preordain, Thoughtseize, Land Tax, Tutor, mana dork...) even if they're running fast artifact mana. If all the deck's spells require fast mana to play, well, it's not really a good deck. As far as not having a big spell, well, I'm not sure what counts as a big spell... but in our experiences even dropping something as "big" as a 3 or a 4-drop on turn-1 is already a pretty busted start. I didn't know unpowered lists were immune to color screw o_O...

 

[CML]

Eh, not many 1's in powered Cube (or Grim Monolith Cube), if it's curved like a typical limited environment you just usually won't have one in all probability.

Obviously Cubes here aren't immune from color-screw, but decks from traditional Cubes are far more likely to do nothing due to a relative lack of card filtering or fixing and a reliance on more conditional cards.