General Mana Base Brainstorm Thread

[Rasmus Källqvist]

The charm cube by Rob Dennis is where I saw it first.

Since all the land cyclers are ally colored they map 1:1 to the wedge clans. ie pale recluse fetches two of Abzans colors.

Whether you run landcyclers in tandem with fetch lands or not I think depends on what feel you want. Personally I'd run 10 since that is probably what a very generous draft would have you in ktk.

This gives you some more fixing without putting so many of them you can play a bunch of untapped fixing.

Of course this thread isn't supposed to be about morph formats but I guess it's a natural fit with both tangos and morphs looking at t3 as a critical turn.

Edit: (okok so I'll have to make a thread for this eventually but morphs are colorless so play into the devoid tribal theme of bfz!)

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

The problems I always had with the land cycling cards were:

1. They generally are attached to bad cards
2. They cycling cost is 2, which means they are a bad form of alt. fixing for aggro decks
3. Only a handful of them exisit, and of those that exisit even a smaller pool of them are not restricted to basics.

As a result, I always found them too incidental as either cards worth running, or as meta pieces, to be worth a slot.

Devoid looks cool, and I was just thinking of some of the cool ways it interacts with some of the artifacts I like to run: but especially the army in a can artifact producers I have distributed through the colored sections.

The morph overlap is also sweet: this might not be as hard a cube as it seems to make. Ramp formats naturally want to go slower, and having early game grey ogers that function as mid or late game mana sinks seems spot on. The slower format speed, combined with colorless angles, also gives aggro more space to establish a presence.

 

[blacksmithy]

We might be able to take a page out of wotc's playbook (referring to the juxtaposition of tarkir and zendikar) and tie morphs in with the new Eldrazi cards, which then leads us to look at exile, sac, and token themes as a result of having the eldrazi as a basis for those themes.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

There are a ton of cards that exile, to the point where giving food to the eldrazi should be pretty effortless. Delve and flashback spring to mind.

I think some of the most exciting inclusions to think about, however, are the wishes:

 

[James Stevenson]

Devoid looks cool, and I was just thinking of some of the cool ways it interacts with some of the artifacts I like to run: but especially the army in a can artifact producers I have distributed through the colored sections.

Give me some examples. I was just thinking how utterly boring Devoid is.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Give me some examples. I was just thinking how utterly boring Devoid is.

I just lets you lattice "colorless matters" easier throughout the cube: morph and artifacts in this instance.

Probably the best piece of which we have so far is herald of Kozilek: they just need to print more cards like that.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I just lets you lattice "colorless matters" easier throughout the cube: morph and artifacts in this instance.

Probably the best piece of which we have so far is herald of Kozilek: they just need to print more cards like that.

Yeah, Herald is an auto-include for my cube, which runs 16 gold cards per supported guild. I'm hoping for more goodies in the devoid department as well, especially in red and blue. The two monocolored devoid rares in those colors haven't been all that hot sadly.

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

If you'd still wanna use the land types of the tango lands without fetches you could add land cyclers.

I Like how I've just seen there is a little smiley face at the bottom of that tower.

 

[Ferritovore]

the more inconsistent 5-6-5 manabase, rather than the more common 2 colors and a splash (3-7-7)

What lands would you run if you wished to encourage manabases that look more like 9-8 or 9-4-4 or even 8-3-3-3?

Basically for my next cube, I want to see what happens when the spells and lands nudge my pals and I towards have a "main" color. This nudging will come in part from cards that have a heavy color commitment in the casting cost, and in part from activations that cost colored mana (such as firebreathing). I want the lands to help with this as well, if possible.

I would wager a guess that the answer to this question is some combination of checklands, filterlands, and/or powerful monocolor nonbasics, but I'm curious what you folks think and whether anyone's tried this route before and might have some advice.

editor: Custom solutions are cool too, if there's something I should know about from the Lab or MTGS.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

What lands would you run if you wished to encourage manabases that look more like 9-8 or 9-4-4 or even 8-3-3-3?

Basically for my next cube, I want to see what happens when the spells and lands nudge my pals and I towards have a "main" color. This nudging will come in part from cards that have a heavy color commitment in the casting cost, and in part from activations that cost colored mana (such as firebreathing). I want the lands to help with this as well, if possible.

I would wager a guess that the answer to this question is some combination of checklands, filterlands, and/or powerful monocolor nonbasics, but I'm curious what you folks think and whether anyone's tried this route before and might have some advice.

editor: Custom solutions are cool too, if there's something I should know about from the Lab or MTGS.

I think this card is a perfect example of what would fit your cube. You need to make a lot of customs to complete the cycle though.



This would go into a base blue deck splashing black. It always produces blue (except on the turn it is played), and can fix to the secondary color if you have a land.

Another example would be the Tainted cycle.



Again, this pushes you into main black, splash white. And again, you'ld have to make a lot of customs to complete the cycle.

Also,

Yeah, Herald is an auto-include for my cube, which runs 16 gold cards per supported guild. I'm hoping for more goodies in the devoid department as well, especially in red and blue. The two monocolored devoid rares in those colors haven't been all that hot sadly.

Well, that didn't pan out. Herald was pretty underwhelming in testing so far.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

So, with the new colorless mana sign, any thoughts on breaking out the idea of a painland mana base again? You could couple them with the scion/spawn, while pushing the colorless mana cards to the top of the power curve.

This would be an original format, obviously.

 

[Alphez]

So, with the new colorless mana sign, any thoughts on breaking out the idea of a painland mana base again? You could couple them with the scion/spawn, while pushing the colorless mana cards to the top of the power curve.

This would be an original format, obviously.

I like that.
If you sprinkle some Eldrazis in the cube, you can actually run painlands next to shocks and fetches and they would not be strictly inferior. A lovely tension, if you ask me.

 

[sigh]

So, with the new colorless mana sign, any thoughts on breaking out the idea of a painland mana base again? You could couple them with the scion/spawn, while pushing the colorless mana cards to the top of the power curve.

This would be an original format, obviously.

I'm already making this switch. I want my games to go a little bit faster, and this should help skew decks a little this way.

Two birds with one stone for me!

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Any cool archetype ideas? I need a voice of sanity before I try to make it all pingers and life gain again.

 

[ahadabans]

Not to be Debby downer, but I'm not a big fan of pushing the colorless mana idea. Primarily because we have enough trouble supporting mana bases for 5 colors, adding colorless makes it 6 colors which can only further increase color(less) screw. What's the advantage to doing this other than wanting pain lands to be colorer than they actually are and/or wanting to play with new shiny stuff from this set?

I honestly feel we'd be better off revisiting the 4 color magic idea (cutting one color of Magic and building a list based on that).

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Thats what makes it so great though, instead of having goofy cards like wastes, that only support colorless decks, you get both your colorless and colored fixing in one package, so the colored decks aren't being hurt. But you create resource competition in the mana base depending on what strategic path you go down.

Or you instead run scions/spawn or abundent growth/fertil ground depending on your decks needs.

 

[sigh]

Painlands in particular I feel are a perfectly fine include in a mana-base, regardless of colorless matters. Opinions on that obviously vary. Basically, there are ways to optimize your mana-base a little more so that colorless matters could happen relatively seamlessly. I've never been a super big fan of the kinda one-dimensional approach of "Dual Lands + fetches", so with a slightly more varied fixing base, I can enable this neato thing to happen? Seems OK by me.

This is a super YMMV topic, I can tell.

And I personally think it's important/cool to test this aspect of the game out. One way to ease in is to use only the cards that are good enough on their own.
-world breaker? good top end bomb, cube depending
-blink-drazi is a 3cc 3/3. Not bad. (obviously could be better).
-a 2/1 flying flash for 2? I'd play that, completely ignoring the other text.

Edit: also what Grillo said. And I really don't see the harm in including a wastes section in you basic land box?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

These are also good fixers that provide <> in a pinch!

 

[Chriskool]

Any cool archetype ideas? I need a voice of sanity before I try to make it all pingers and life gain again.

Keep life gain sparse; make the bleed damage impacting! ... and how weird do you want to get?


Looking at cards that require paying life, there could be an artifact ramp deck with some of the following:


I imagine that you'd want to skew the casting cost of cards to require a lot of colored mana to include powerful mana rampers (and encourage players to tap pain lands for colored mana) as well as ensuring large CMC cards, especially artifacts, can be dealt with in a fair fashion that doesn't require playing cards solely good against them. Phyrexian mana artifact creatures could aid making artifact destruction relevant.

Smokestack and/or Umbilicus effects sort of fit into the slow loss of resources theme. I also kind of like the idea of no +1/+1 counters and instead using some cards that create -1/-1 counters/proliferate to bolster the resource drain feel.

Lastly, assuming you're thinking Penny-Pincer power level (or a bit below), you could look into small, slow sources of player damage that cannot be prevented via blocking and do not affect creatures:


Lastly lastly...


Oh, you said voice of sanity

 

[Eric Chan]

For people who run utility land drafts, the Innistrad cycle (Moorland Haunt, Kessig Wolf Run, etc.) and the recent Battle for Zendikar blighted lands (Blighted Gorge et al.) already give people access to a lot of powerful colourless lands that do plenty of additional work as mana sinks. Throw in a few Tectonic Edges, Mutavaults, Mishra's Factories, Blinkmoth Nexus, and the like, and I think you're already almost all the way there towards supporting a colourless theme.

As far as full cycles of fixing lands that also provide colourless, I like the painlands the best too, though filter lands aren't too shabby.

 

[sigh]

A great way to think about it Eric! How many random <> utility lands would you be willing to run in your <Name a deck> anyway? That's how many colorless sources your deck can support right off the bat. Now adding fixing lands that can provide <>, and maybe a waste to fetch up with a wayfarer's bauble (which it can), and you've got a solid splash. Boom.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Oh, you said voice of sanity

Ah! I was wondering why you suggested Mana Vault there!

 

[whydirt]

This is getting into house rule territory, but I could see a format where both players start with a single Eldrazi Spawn (the 0/1 version) on the battlefield.

 

[sigh]

I also mentioned in the [ogw] thread that you could errata some fetch land set (I mentioned the mirage set), to be "get A, B, or <>"

 

[Eric Chan]

A great way to think about it Eric! How many random <> utility lands would you be willing to run in your <Name a deck> anyway? That's how many colorless sources your deck can support right off the bat. Now adding fixing lands that can provide <>, and maybe a waste to fetch up with a wayfarer's bauble (which it can), and you've got a solid splash. Boom.

If I end up supporting a colourless theme, I might throw Wastes into the utility pile, for interactions like that. Most times you'd rather have the upside of a real utility land, but I can see how decks that fetch up basics might want access to one or two.

I think I'm definitely upping the number of total utility picks per player, either way!