Chris Taylor
Contributor
Lands are seriously important. Too few, and your drafters are eternally frustrated, losing to color screw draft after draft. Too many, and your drafters pick cards lazily, comfortable in the knowledge that they'll be able to cobble together a playable deck out of whatever cards they happen to pick up along the way.
For the quick and dirty, I’ve found somewhere between 10-15% of a given cube should be land based manafixing. Remember that while the full cycles (fetchlands) account for a large part of the available fixing, individual cards like city of brass and evolving wilds count as well.
Since most of our available fixing comes in the form of 10 card cycles, I’m going to showcase some of the available options here. The problem comes when you examine the amount of 10 card fixing cycles (which include the enemy color pairs, such as
or ) as opposed to the 5 card fixing cycles (only allied color pairs).
Here’s an exhaustive list:
Battlefield Forge
Boros Garrison
Boros Guildgate
Clifftop Retreat
Plateau
Rugged Prairie
Sacred Foundry
Arid Mesa
Temple of Triumph
9 different 10 card cycles, though at time of writing, the scrylands at the bottom remains incomplete until we finish Theros Block. From here, let’s look at each cycle’s individual merits with regards to aggro, control and other considerations.
These lands are frequently referred to as “The Big 30”. These are really strong lands, excellent in both control and aggro. While they are expensive, I’ll take this opportunity to remind you that this is a casual format, and you are doing a service in having a cube available for everyone to draft. Print some out, sharpie out the “enters the battlefield tapped” clause on some guildgates, do whatever you like. Don’t let money stifle your imagination in our own made up format.
These are called the filter lands, and are very strong. They can’t be used to cast 1 drops, but enter untapped, and can ease heavy color requirements significantly. There’s no other cycle which lets you do the following play sequence:
Mountain, Goblin Guide
Rugged Prairie, White Knight
The Buddy Lands are alright. Solid for a control deck because they’re painless, but less than solid for aggro because the more nonbasics you have in your deck (IE the better your manafixing is) the more often they enter the battlefield tapped. The guildgates present all the same problems as the buddy lands do, and eliminate the only possibility of being good for aggro. They are common though, so they provide essentially the only manafixing for pauper cubes.
The painlands are essentially the opposite: control decks despise them because of the high life cost to use, but aggro decks don’t mind the pain, and enjoy that they enter the battlefield untapped no matter what.
The Scrylands are new from Theros, but are an interesting new idea. Similar to the buddy lands, control decks don’t mind the downside of entering tapped as much as aggro decks do. That being said, there isn’t a deck out there that doesn’t appreciate a good scry. Aggro decks can use it to hide away excess lands, while control decks might not need a finisher now. There’s a lot of interesting gameplay here for something as innocuous as a land, and it might be enough to make up for the fact that they enter the battlefield tapped. (If you hadn’t noticed by now, this is a big deal)
The Bouncelands (You may know them as the Karoo's) are much like the the buddy lands in that their entering tapped is a problem for aggro decks. However, they do provide card advantage, which can make it worth it. Their presence in a cube can present openings for brutal land destruction plays for aggro decks, so keep that in mind.
However, this is hardly the only option:
Yeah, betcha didn't know that was a cycle did ya?
Introduced to me by Andrew Cooperfaus, the idea behind what he calls Archetype Based Fixing is to cater to the needs of each color pair, using more aggro oriented lands for more aggro oriented color pairs, and more control oriented lands for the more controlling color pairs.
For example:
Azorius Chancery (Control)
Dimir Aqueduct (Control)
Blackcleave Cliffs (Aggro)
Copperline Gorge (Aggro)
Horizon Canopy (Midrange)
Caves of Koilos (Aggro)
Woodland Cemetery (Midrange)
Hinterland Harbor (Midrange)
Izzet Boilerworks (Control)
Battlefield Forge (Aggro)
I used to run this type of configuration in my cube, and I do appreciate that it lets lesser known lands get their time in the spotlight, but it also pigeonholes which archetypes come out of those color pairs.
The reality is that not every deck is an aggro deck, and not every deck is a control deck. Sometimes you get a sweet brew going, and while battlefield forge is great normally, when your deck has 3 earthquakes in it, you’re going to want to keep your life total as high as you can, and the forge isn’t helping.
I've been trying lately to run lands which any archetype would be happy playing, to prevent this kind of feeling.
I’d like to mention a few specific cycles:
The Worldwake Manlands:
Celestial Colonnade
Creeping Tar Pit
Lavaclaw Reaches
Raging Ravine
Stirring Wildwood
I've seen a lot of people include these as multicolor cards instead of fixing lands, which I wouldn't fault you for. I've certainly noticed that Celestial Colonnade a win condition that happens to fix my mana, not the other way around.
That being said, this isn't a cycle where I think it's all worth including. I've had a longstanding bad relationship with lavaclaw reaches, and every time I drew the card is was horribly underwhelming. In the red/black aggro decks it's too much mana to be effective at all, and most of the red/black control builds I've seen typically hinge around mutal destruction, with cards like Wildfire, Death Cloud and the Like. It doesn't really seem to fit with what any deck wants to do. Even a ramp deck which would be able to take advantage of the firebreathing would want something that didn't die so easily.
The Vivid Lands:
Vivid Meadow
Vivid Creek
Vivid Marsh
Vivid Crag
Vivid Grove
While the ever present drawback of entering tapped rears it’s head again, some designers include these lands due to their unique ability to fix mana without easily supporting multicolor decks. As their rules text implies, these lands are perfect for casting 1-2 off color spells per game, which is at its best when you have a mostly monocolor deck with 1-2 off color cards in it, as opposed to the more traditional 50-50 color distribution. They’re also quite cheap, for those with budget concerns.
The Old Fetchlands:
Flood Plain
Bad River
Rocky Tar Pit
Mountain Valley
Grasslands
Another option for the shuffle happy, these play most similarly to the guildgates sadly. They do shuffle your deck and trigger landfall again, but they too have the enters the battlefield tapped drawback.
Though, you do get to play a card called bad river, and that’s got to be worth some bonus points in and of itself
It's hard to find lands beyond this because so few cycles extend past the allied color pairs. A Boros scars fastland (Seachrome coast) would be really well received, but the limited number of rare slots in modern set design don't allow for such things happen often.
It's for this reason that a lot of cube designers double up on some cycles (including two of each fetchland, for example) to keep the quality of their manafixing more consistent. In a 360 card cube where you only need one more cycle of 10 to have the appropriate 12ish% of manafixing it isn't so bad, but when you get to larger cube sizes like 540, or 720 cards, you start scraping the bottom of the barrel for fixing lands.
Regardless of all this, no matter which lands or how many are in your cube, it's not the end of the world. Draft formats exist where no land based manafixing exists at all, and they’re still fun. I merely want to illustrate the effects your decisions can have. If you include Scabland or Cloudcrest Lake in your cube, people will still play them. But they might not be happy, and they may not be able to do what they want. Or what you want.
For the quick and dirty, I’ve found somewhere between 10-15% of a given cube should be land based manafixing. Remember that while the full cycles (fetchlands) account for a large part of the available fixing, individual cards like city of brass and evolving wilds count as well.
Since most of our available fixing comes in the form of 10 card cycles, I’m going to showcase some of the available options here. The problem comes when you examine the amount of 10 card fixing cycles (which include the enemy color pairs, such as
or ) as opposed to the 5 card fixing cycles (only allied color pairs).Here’s an exhaustive list:
Battlefield Forge
Boros Garrison
Boros Guildgate
Clifftop Retreat
Plateau
Rugged Prairie
Sacred Foundry
Arid Mesa
Temple of Triumph
9 different 10 card cycles, though at time of writing, the scrylands at the bottom remains incomplete until we finish Theros Block. From here, let’s look at each cycle’s individual merits with regards to aggro, control and other considerations.
These lands are frequently referred to as “The Big 30”. These are really strong lands, excellent in both control and aggro. While they are expensive, I’ll take this opportunity to remind you that this is a casual format, and you are doing a service in having a cube available for everyone to draft. Print some out, sharpie out the “enters the battlefield tapped” clause on some guildgates, do whatever you like. Don’t let money stifle your imagination in our own made up format.
These are called the filter lands, and are very strong. They can’t be used to cast 1 drops, but enter untapped, and can ease heavy color requirements significantly. There’s no other cycle which lets you do the following play sequence:
Mountain, Goblin Guide
Rugged Prairie, White Knight
The Buddy Lands are alright. Solid for a control deck because they’re painless, but less than solid for aggro because the more nonbasics you have in your deck (IE the better your manafixing is) the more often they enter the battlefield tapped. The guildgates present all the same problems as the buddy lands do, and eliminate the only possibility of being good for aggro. They are common though, so they provide essentially the only manafixing for pauper cubes.
The painlands are essentially the opposite: control decks despise them because of the high life cost to use, but aggro decks don’t mind the pain, and enjoy that they enter the battlefield untapped no matter what.
The Scrylands are new from Theros, but are an interesting new idea. Similar to the buddy lands, control decks don’t mind the downside of entering tapped as much as aggro decks do. That being said, there isn’t a deck out there that doesn’t appreciate a good scry. Aggro decks can use it to hide away excess lands, while control decks might not need a finisher now. There’s a lot of interesting gameplay here for something as innocuous as a land, and it might be enough to make up for the fact that they enter the battlefield tapped. (If you hadn’t noticed by now, this is a big deal)
The Bouncelands (You may know them as the Karoo's) are much like the the buddy lands in that their entering tapped is a problem for aggro decks. However, they do provide card advantage, which can make it worth it. Their presence in a cube can present openings for brutal land destruction plays for aggro decks, so keep that in mind.
However, this is hardly the only option:
Yeah, betcha didn't know that was a cycle did ya?
Introduced to me by Andrew Cooperfaus, the idea behind what he calls Archetype Based Fixing is to cater to the needs of each color pair, using more aggro oriented lands for more aggro oriented color pairs, and more control oriented lands for the more controlling color pairs.
For example:
Azorius Chancery (Control)
Dimir Aqueduct (Control)
Blackcleave Cliffs (Aggro)
Copperline Gorge (Aggro)
Horizon Canopy (Midrange)
Caves of Koilos (Aggro)
Woodland Cemetery (Midrange)
Hinterland Harbor (Midrange)
Izzet Boilerworks (Control)
Battlefield Forge (Aggro)
I used to run this type of configuration in my cube, and I do appreciate that it lets lesser known lands get their time in the spotlight, but it also pigeonholes which archetypes come out of those color pairs.
The reality is that not every
deck is an aggro deck, and not every deck is a control deck. Sometimes you get a sweet brew going, and while battlefield forge is great normally, when your deck has 3 earthquakes in it, you’re going to want to keep your life total as high as you can, and the forge isn’t helping.I've been trying lately to run lands which any archetype would be happy playing, to prevent this kind of feeling.
I’d like to mention a few specific cycles:
The Worldwake Manlands:
Celestial Colonnade
Creeping Tar Pit
Lavaclaw Reaches
Raging Ravine
Stirring Wildwood
I've seen a lot of people include these as multicolor cards instead of fixing lands, which I wouldn't fault you for. I've certainly noticed that Celestial Colonnade a win condition that happens to fix my mana, not the other way around.
That being said, this isn't a cycle where I think it's all worth including. I've had a longstanding bad relationship with lavaclaw reaches, and every time I drew the card is was horribly underwhelming. In the red/black aggro decks it's too much mana to be effective at all, and most of the red/black control builds I've seen typically hinge around mutal destruction, with cards like Wildfire, Death Cloud and the Like. It doesn't really seem to fit with what any deck wants to do. Even a ramp deck which would be able to take advantage of the firebreathing would want something that didn't die so easily.
The Vivid Lands:
Vivid Meadow
Vivid Creek
Vivid Marsh
Vivid Crag
Vivid Grove
While the ever present drawback of entering tapped rears it’s head again, some designers include these lands due to their unique ability to fix mana without easily supporting multicolor decks. As their rules text implies, these lands are perfect for casting 1-2 off color spells per game, which is at its best when you have a mostly monocolor deck with 1-2 off color cards in it, as opposed to the more traditional 50-50 color distribution. They’re also quite cheap, for those with budget concerns.
The Old Fetchlands:
Flood Plain
Bad River
Rocky Tar Pit
Mountain Valley
Grasslands
Another option for the shuffle happy, these play most similarly to the guildgates sadly. They do shuffle your deck and trigger landfall again, but they too have the enters the battlefield tapped drawback.
Though, you do get to play a card called bad river, and that’s got to be worth some bonus points in and of itself
It's hard to find lands beyond this because so few cycles extend past the allied color pairs. A Boros scars fastland (Seachrome coast) would be really well received, but the limited number of rare slots in modern set design don't allow for such things happen often.
It's for this reason that a lot of cube designers double up on some cycles (including two of each fetchland, for example) to keep the quality of their manafixing more consistent. In a 360 card cube where you only need one more cycle of 10 to have the appropriate 12ish% of manafixing it isn't so bad, but when you get to larger cube sizes like 540, or 720 cards, you start scraping the bottom of the barrel for fixing lands.
Regardless of all this, no matter which lands or how many are in your cube, it's not the end of the world. Draft formats exist where no land based manafixing exists at all, and they’re still fun. I merely want to illustrate the effects your decisions can have. If you include Scabland or Cloudcrest Lake in your cube, people will still play them. But they might not be happy, and they may not be able to do what they want. Or what you want.
