Card/Deck Low Power Card Spotlight
- Thread starter Grillo_Parlante
- Start date
Maybe with artifact lands.
@Nanonox I'm not sure why you'd want to punish a bounce land. It's not like it's super powerful without being checked by your format.
Warped Devotion looks fun and could probably be cool in a UB deck of some sort, too. Monster Recoil.
It’s not so much that I want to punish the bounceland, but more exploring options of the format. Like a UB tempo/enchantment/resource denial strategy with Annex and Hopeless Nightmare for example. The 2 cantrips were supposed to be power outliers to draw people in.
Last edited:
Ok. I can see that. Looking at what's out there. I'd say those two ain't it, but Warped Devotion fits into the described deck.
Annex a bounce is also BRUTAL.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I think making bouncelands the feature of your format means you want to stay away as far as possible from any kind of mana denial strategy as possible. Getting Stone Rained isn’t a particularly fun experience when they’re hitting your mana fixing regardless, now imagine every Stone Rain gets to target an additional land for free. That’s basically what allowing mana denial in a bounceland format boils down to.
Is there a difference between the Wildfire and Spreading Seas?
Chris Taylor
Contributor
If you have another bounceland, you can undo their spreading seas by bouncing your bounceland.
And spending a LOT of time
For sure. And you color screw them. What I was asking is that if Wildfire is "strong, but not back-breaking", then Seas is too right?
Maybe it comes down to how punishing that tempo hit is compared to the threats available in the cube. If that turn seals your doom, the threats are too powerful for what I have in mind.
Spreading Seas also messes with their colors.
To be clear, I am not part of the contingent that thinks that Spreading Seas or Lithoform Blight are inappropriate in a bounceland format. Sure, it feels kinda bad when your bounceland gets Seas'd, but it also feels kinda bad when villain makes you discard/uses removal/counters a spell/etc, and it's not like you'd remove all interaction because of that.
You are spot on. Thing is, the threats need to be seriously low power to void the set back of losing a bouncer. Seas is stronger due to colour screwing and weaker since it can be mitigated by bouncing the seased one. But the threats have to be really, really low powered to give the time to do just that. And in my experience, one aggro creature and then bouncing the bouncer 2 times is even in low powered almost game over.
I think everything is fair game. Thing is, in a bounce format some cards get much stronger. Like land destruction. That has nothing to do with other feels bads. In normal magic land destruction decks can feel bad, but in a bounceformat land destruction is much stronger. It is possible to have land destruction in a bounce format, but it is really strong and hard to balance. There is a reason most cubes do not have sinkhole/strip mine. (One can rightfully disagree about that, but still.)
Chris Taylor
Contributor
All I meant by linking cleansing wildfire is to say spreading seas a bounceland isn't "cantrip sinkhole", it's cleansing wildfire 
Look, I would be of the opinion that you shouldn't put in tools to fuck with people's bouncelands the same way I don't think you should put in tools to fuck with people's regular fixing lands. I think magic is at its best when both people can cast their spells.
If you think wasteland is fun, more power to you. If you think wasteland is necessary, might the problem be with what needs to be held back by wasteland?
I've built up my cube as such, and can easily see someone coming to the opposite conclusions
Look, I would be of the opinion that you shouldn't put in tools to fuck with people's bouncelands the same way I don't think you should put in tools to fuck with people's regular fixing lands. I think magic is at its best when both people can cast their spells.
If you think wasteland is fun, more power to you. If you think wasteland is necessary, might the problem be with what needs to be held back by wasteland?
I've built up my cube as such, and can easily see someone coming to the opposite conclusions
I for one like wasteland. I like counterplay, if you want to brake the basic rule, e.g., being greedy and play non-basic lands to be able to play more colours/utility lands then there should be a risk to it. That risk is getting wastelanded. In my book there is no free lunch. Is wasteland necessary? No, but neither are non-basic lands.All I meant by linking cleansing wildfire is to say spreading seas a bounceland isn't "cantrip sinkhole", it's cleansing wildfire
Look, I would be of the opinion that you shouldn't put in tools to fuck with people's bouncelands the same way I don't think you should put in tools to fuck with people's regular fixing lands. I think magic is at its best when both people can cast their spells.
If you think wasteland is fun, more power to you. If you think wasteland is necessary, might the problem be with what needs to be held back by wasteland?
I've built up my cube as such, and can easily see someone coming to the opposite conclusions
Resource denial is a valid strategy, and can be fun to play around. If it trumps overly greedy decks, then the problem may not lie with the denial, but more with the payoff of the greedy decks.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Yeah and I think we've talked about this before: you see people playing extra colors as greed and something to be punished, and I see it as a failure for a desirable two color deck to arise.
Weather or not you think nonbasic lands are necessary will play a big part in weather or not you think you should be able to destroy them
We have had this discussion indeed before. There you made the wrong statement, as you do again, that non-basics are necessary for two colour decks. They are not needed, check the math. And yes of course, all duals is better than 8-8 basics. But with these 8-8 basics you could have most (yeah not CC, but those are hard with a lot of duals anyhow), two colour decks without issues. I do like two colour decks, but duals or Yavimaya hollow do not deserve a free pass in my book.
I like this take and wouldn't include Wasteland in a bounceland format for that reason. But I do like keeping players on their toes. It adds a bit of spice and fear to the mix. Do you play your bounceland on turn 2 and risk the Spreading Seas? Or do you hold it and hope they need to smooth their draws?
From all of the comments here I can see that the strategy might be too brutal, because of expectations that come from a bounceland format. That's why I asked, I know my tastes and they clearly aren't universal
Thanks everyone for the input!I think Cleansing Wildfire, etc, could be alright in a format with a lot of utility lands. Some counterplay to lands with non-mana effects, like man lands, or lands that cheat mana, like Ancient Tomb or Cradle, seems fair.
Hell, Cleansing a dual or triome is probably reasonable, but likely underwhelming for the player casting it.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I don’t get why you (again) insist on calling Chris’s statement wrong. You clearly have very different ideas on an ideal mana base (from at least Chris and me). We’re all intimately familiar with the math, we just prefer more nonbasics, because whether or not they are strictly necessary to cast your spells on time, they sure make it easier to do so. I don’t want to punish the “greed”, if you can even call prioritizing mana fixing to be able to cast your spells that. It’s not like picking up those lands is without a cost during the draft, after all, because you’re almost always picking those over a spell with actual impact on the board. You can use the math to support both opinions, because we set different thresholds for what we consider ideal. And that’s okay, no one is wrong here, it’s a matter of taste.
That said, I echo Chris’s sentiment that Magic is most fun when both people get together to cast their spells. Yes, discard and counter spells also prevent people from doing that, but crucially those (typically) target only one spell, and even if it’s your most important one, you can still topdeck something spicy after those spells. Land destruction messes with the very core of Magic. For me, there’s really nothing quite as frustrating as the realization that you are not going to cast an entire color worth of spells this game, because your opponent destroyed your one black mana source. If you don’t want your players to have that feeling, don’t include land destruction spells in a bounceland format, imo. If you know your group consists of a bunch of Rusjes, who won’t get salty about their mana base getting set back to the Stone Age, and being unable to cast their spells as a result, go for it.
? Because he states fixing is necessarily for two colour decks, which I state is not (but they are great to have).
One can make this argument for any pick, in extremum you could say this for creatures. I think interaction is great.
When did I argue for this? I warned for land destruction in a bounceland format, since it is likely backbreaking. But you are right, cater to the playgroup.
Let's look at the math for 2 examples:
C which has with 8 sources 86.5% and with 9 it becomes 90.4%. So the probability of failure to cast this C card goes from 13.5 to 9.6. Note that when one has in both colours one drops, then one can often cast the other colour.
2cc has 78.2% which increases to 85.6%.
These numbers are with certain assumptions one is that you have drawn enough lands to begin with and another one of them is that you have that card you want to play in your hand. If a deck of 40 only has 2 2cc, then the probability of having one in the first ten cards is 44%.
So for simplicity if we look at the C example then one has to play a whopping 25 games to have one failure more than when one has one dual.
The power of cards depends on the other cards available. So duals/utility lands get weaker when wasteland is around. Is that bad? This answer could allow for utility lands that left unchecked are too strong.
You're forgetting that if I play a deck with mainly 1c (or c) cards, I often want to pay 2cc on turn 4 to double-spell. I think a good mana base intends to make double spelling possible as well as make individual cards be castable. If you add these 1c spells to the mix, the probability to draw them is far greater than 44% and therefor the "failure rate" is greater than the 1/25 you claim.
Better fixing doesn't result in greedier 4-5 color decks. The speed and cube's power band do. Otherwise, constructed magic would fully consist of 4-5 color decks, but in the current modern meta (which doesn't have wasteland as punishment) decks have an avarage of 2.5 colors. If you want to punish nonbasic manabases, speed is often the answer.
Didn’t know this card existed, but it’s such a great glue card. The lifelink makes it an interesting creature to suits/pants up or use as a lifegain enabler if that’s your thing.
You can discard/mill/sacrifice it for value and then get rewarded with artifact and counter synergies. It’s even a relatively popular tribe!
The big down side is the double-sided token which isn’t very elegant, but it’s also pretty simple to grok. I am trying to build a lower powered cube, has anyone played this?
I haven't actually played it but I run it in my cube for all the reasons you mention. The environment runs a hefty helping of equipment, plenty of self-mill and self-sacrifice, plus artifavt synergies and token payoffs. So he's relevant to a lot of decks (in theory).