IMO, it's a trap. If you aren't thinking of colorless cards exactly like would when splashing another color, you are tricking yourself into believing your mana base supports something it does't actually support. Assuming a couple cards with <> in the cost, you need 7+ mana sources that tap for <>. How are you planning on supporting that? Even if every fixing land in your cube taps for <>, you'd still need to run 7 of those lands in your deck just for a light splash. Scions/spawn will certainly help, but I'm just saying you are adding a 6th color to the wheel and your mana is going to be taxed more than you realize.
General Mana Base Brainstorm Thread
- Thread starter Grillo_Parlante
- Start date
IMO, it's a trap. If you aren't thinking of colorless cards exactly like would when splashing another color, you are tricking yourself into believing your mana base supports something it does't actually support. Assuming a couple cards with <> in the cost, you need 7+ mana sources that tap for <>. How are you planning on supporting that? Even if every fixing land in your cube taps for <>, you'd still need to run 7 of those lands in your deck just for a light splash. Scions/spawn will certainly help, but I'm just saying you are adding a 6th color to the wheel and your mana is going to be taxed more than you realize.
In the mtgo vintage cube, I have mana vault in my SB about 1/3 of the time. The trick is making many 3cmc cards cost (generic)(colored)(colored) and 4cmc cards cost (2 generic)(colored)(colored) while pushing a lower curve (which happens a lot in red and white aggro). There is also an argument for making to high cmc cards relatively weaker than what the average cuber is expecting (like Forgestoker Dragon or Phyrexian Colossus instead of Myr Battlesphere, Inferno Titan or Avenger of Zendikar).
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Time to make it a priority to get those painlands, instead of drafting 2 on average (the downfall of my original painland experiment) you now need at least four, which means something I haven't completly thought out yet.
Lets look at the fact (that seems to me is being ignored somewhat), that a lot of these eldrazi have <> only in ability costs, and are decent on their own. Want to splash for that Worldbreaker ability?
-Edge of autumn
-2 painlands (grillo's avg from before above)
-Kessig wolf run, tec edge
-1 waste (easy if in basics box)
That's 6 sources right there! and unless I'm just insane, it doesn't seem unreasonable to pick that up in the course of a draft. Like replace a painland with a Bauble, also manage a satyr wayfinder, etc etc.
Obviously just theory crafting into mid air, but colorless sources can appear in many forms already, without even needing additional support sometimes. Depending on format speed blah blah blah, it might be more of a trap, but not everyone plays top-end lists here.
-Edge of autumn
-2 painlands (grillo's avg from before above)
-Kessig wolf run, tec edge
-1 waste (easy if in basics box)
That's 6 sources right there! and unless I'm just insane, it doesn't seem unreasonable to pick that up in the course of a draft. Like replace a painland with a Bauble, also manage a satyr wayfinder, etc etc.
Obviously just theory crafting into mid air, but colorless sources can appear in many forms already, without even needing additional support sometimes. Depending on format speed blah blah blah, it might be more of a trap, but not everyone plays top-end lists here.
Filter lands or m10/inn duals? I don't want the fixing to be too good which means that mono-coloured decks will just never happen as instead 3-4 colour decks are custom. The rest are 20 of each fetches and shocks.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Seven? Jesus, how many colorless cards do you plan on adding? Like how many red sources do you end up running if you're splashing a
Sure this is more frustrating for junk like kozilek, but I think he's the first <><> card we've seen so far, and he costs 10, so you'll likely have the colorless available even if you only run like 3.
For the full on colorless beaters like reality smasher or thought-knot bro (see below) I'm anticipating more along the lines of 2-4 colorless sources in my 40, between wasteland/tectonic edge, utility lands, eldrazi spawn/scions, and mana rocks (Maybe it's time to switch signets out for talisman of progress or something more independent like prismatic lens if you haven't already).
This gets harder if there's really cheap colorless spells since you'll want access to your splash color (or lack thereof
) early, like if they made a goblin guide clone that cost <> for some reason, but most of the cards I've seen so far and the general direction of the format thusfar don't suggust these.If the card you're adding is one of the more flexible cards:
(That last one is a
2/1 flying flash. <>: exile the top card of your opponent's library. If it's a land, you can return it to its owner's hand. Hardly necessary for it to be worth it)The requirements go down even more. You'll be leaning even more towards the lower end of how many colorless sources you need, since the card still has value if you need wasteland for something else.
Like, lets be honest here. We're not adding 40 of these, I'm not even sure there's going to be enough full on must be colorless cards in this set for you to if you wanted to.
If there's like 10-15 floating around an enviornment, and they're not all clustered in the same archetype (like for some reason ALL the good <> cards are white weenie exclusive cards for some reason), you could add wastes to the basic land box with no ULD at all and they probably wouldn't get picked all that often.
My numbers are based on this analysis:
http://www.channelfireball.com/arti...do-you-need-to-consistently-cast-your-spells/
If you want a 90% chance of casting a spell with "C" cost by T4, you need 7 mana sources. 6 sources for T5 or later.
Anyone running 3 mountains to cast bonfire are ending up with that card dead in their hands probably 30-40% of the time. And the same will be true for colorless cards. Maybe everyone is cool with that, but I'm of the opinion that mana is and has been a problem for a long time in virtually every cube, and ya'll have become desensitized to it in much the same way Grave Titan seems like a perfectly acceptable thing to be getting for 4BB.
http://www.channelfireball.com/arti...do-you-need-to-consistently-cast-your-spells/
If you want a 90% chance of casting a spell with "C" cost by T4, you need 7 mana sources. 6 sources for T5 or later.
Anyone running 3 mountains to cast bonfire are ending up with that card dead in their hands probably 30-40% of the time. And the same will be true for colorless cards. Maybe everyone is cool with that, but I'm of the opinion that mana is and has been a problem for a long time in virtually every cube, and ya'll have become desensitized to it in much the same way Grave Titan seems like a perfectly acceptable thing to be getting for 4BB.
this is a heck of a lot of assumptions?
for real though, like, 3 sources is usually plenty for a lategame splash; if you're running 7 sources because you expect it to be the best four-drop in your opener and want to cast it on curve then it's not really a splash anymore right? and if it's a 3C eldrazi then maybe you played a mana rock on turn 2 anyway? idk i just think you're wrong here
(idk if the mana problem - curious btw! - is actually exacerbated because colourless mana already exists in Magic and in our cubes.)
Chris Taylor
Contributor
30-40% seems totally fine for Eldrazi Displacer, where activating it isn't always necessary/what you should be doing anyways.
As for the <> spells, A) I feel like 90% chance is a lot to ask for everything. to cast grizzly bears 90% of the time on T2 you need 9 green sources, and 14 to cast elvish warrior, yet we still run CC cards. Hell a lot of people (myself included) run cryptic command and boros reckoner, and those are insane numbers
(From the article, 15 blue sources for t4 cryptic, 16 "boros" sources for T3 boros reckoner. Hope you like cutting mutavault and all your utility lands!)I'm interested to see how the chances fall given a typical manabase, and how this compares to C3, CC2, and CCC1 cards as well. I know you still want 7 splash sources to hit the 90% C3 card on T5, but clearly the chances aren't identical, you've seen another card. If the differences between casting Flametounge Kavu in your 8 mountain deck and your 4 mountain deck by turn 5 are like 80% for some reason, maybe I'll be sold on all splashing being useless, but I feel like that's not the case.
Footnote: Bonfire is a bad example of a card to splash because if you can't cast it precisely when you draw it, it's drasticaly worse and often useless (you even get fucked if the mountain is in your hand the turn you want to miracle it, for eg). I'm going to amend it to say Banefire instead. Same principal, better example.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Also all of this debate would be so much easier if there existed "Land - Island Wastes" dual lands, but no, wotc hates good mana. In the format that is ALREADY RUINED BY GOOD MANA BECAUSE YOU DUMPED IT IN ALL AT ONCE
I never fucking forgive them for all the unfinished 5 card fixing cycles that are incomplete because it's too much work to fit the other 5 in anywhere
I never fucking forgive them for all the unfinished 5 card fixing cycles that are incomplete because it's too much work to fit the other 5 in anywhere
The math is what it is. If you have a third color splash for a spell and you don't have 7 mana sources, you are not casting it reliably (defined as 90% of the time). Again, maybe that's OK for your groups though.
How much people notice this is probably largely meta/group dependent. Things are getting more competitive in my cube and so missing turns due to color/mana problems is no longer something acceptable. I started digging into this because I found it pretty common to have essentially dead cards in my hand - cards I wanted to cast that I couldn't because I didn't have the mana. I found that article and it made a lot of sense to me why I was seeing what I was seeing.
Games being decided because you can't reliably cast spells is the worst way to have games decided in my eyes, and this is going to be exacerbated by trying to make <> a thing. I'm not saying you guys can't figure out a solution, just know you are taking something that's already a problem and making it harder to solve (mana). And I honestly don't see the appeal at least right now as we have a tiny selection of <> matters cards anyway. In 5 years, this is probably going to be a worthwhile endeavor as we'll have a nice pool of cards to craft an environment around, but right now you guys are jumping on USB4 before there's any support for it. You know what they say about bleeding edge...
How much people notice this is probably largely meta/group dependent. Things are getting more competitive in my cube and so missing turns due to color/mana problems is no longer something acceptable. I started digging into this because I found it pretty common to have essentially dead cards in my hand - cards I wanted to cast that I couldn't because I didn't have the mana. I found that article and it made a lot of sense to me why I was seeing what I was seeing.
Games being decided because you can't reliably cast spells is the worst way to have games decided in my eyes, and this is going to be exacerbated by trying to make <> a thing. I'm not saying you guys can't figure out a solution, just know you are taking something that's already a problem and making it harder to solve (mana). And I honestly don't see the appeal at least right now as we have a tiny selection of <> matters cards anyway. In 5 years, this is probably going to be a worthwhile endeavor as we'll have a nice pool of cards to craft an environment around, but right now you guys are jumping on USB4 before there's any support for it. You know what they say about bleeding edge...
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Also, since this discussion will inevitably bring us back to exile effects for the processors:
Such a great card.
Such a great card.
let me make one key fix:
-And did you factor in the chance you actually need to be casting your one 3<> creature (even though all the eldrazi we are talking about using have normal colored costs) on turn 4? How often will you have drawn that in your first 4 turns? He doesn't touch on that at all, because he's making a ton of assumptions.
-For one thing, he seems to be aiming this more at constructed play, where you may be curving out more, and will be having 4-ofs etc. I think curve-outs are less common in draft anyway?
-These changes seem relatively painless? (no pun intended). Y'all assume just a pile of fetches and shocks are the best, but there would be little to no difference in my mind.
-Let me take the data to the grindstone: My favorite place to go, the 3-0 thread, and lets look at a deck that 3-0'ed, and look very well built. Props to shamizy's team that made this!
First:
# Green sources = 12.5
# blue sources = 9.5
# black sources = 9.5
(marked wayfinder as 0.5 for each, and the brainstorms were 0.5 each)
Some case studies:
Courser of Kruphix: need 13! Behind by 0.5 for an on curve cast.
Hero's Downfall: need 13! We are waaaay behind.
Brainstorm: need 10! no good. but wait, you never need to cast this turn 1, cause bad... so: turn 2 is the earliest. looks ok.
Skinrender: 12. Behind by a lot still.
Titania: 11. Barely makes it.
Glen Elendra Archmage: Needs 7, so this is good by 2.5.
Baleful strix: I'm supposed to have 14! lands that tap for U/B. I count..... 2 (marsh flats and watery grave). We do make the 9 of each rule, but that's thanks to our 'storms and 'finder. Taking into account that you can't cast wayfinder the turn before strix, and now you need all three colors by turn 3.... ehh.
-So my main question is, how much does this "90%" actually matter in cube? We aren't charging ahead with 1 line of play towards victory, and it's a singleton format. This stellar 3-0 deck falls behind on most of it's cards.... So I'm not sure what to take from that? If everyone's manabases are already "bad", then you are on level playing field building an also "bad" manabase cause you wanna support your blink-drazi. And this is better than a lot of the mana bases I've seen in 3-0 lists!
-We also run a lot of card advantage generation in our average cubes. 5 brainstorms? 3 brainstorms? Oath of Nissa? Ponder? Scry effects?
-In general, just taking a source at face value can be detrimental. I could tear into some other 3-0 decks, and find discrepancies like this, in cube formats that are very very competitive.
Takeaways: This is obviously a YMMV topic. Competition level, color density, complexity level, power level. These can all play a part. I guess it doesn't sound like the best of ideas for ahadabans cube and group. But for another cube out there, the "downside" just might not be there. Painlands might be the correct power level for lands already for their environment. There might be more than one 4 drop in your deck, most of which have colors, mitigating the need to cast on t4.
EDIT: My personal stance: for all of you out there in the void, who are loving that Worldbreaker (and haven't made an account yet to say how much you like it), don't sweat the one <> symbol too much. I think your drafters will be A-OK. I'll be doing just that.
-And did you factor in the chance you actually need to be casting your one 3<> creature (even though all the eldrazi we are talking about using have normal colored costs) on turn 4? How often will you have drawn that in your first 4 turns? He doesn't touch on that at all, because he's making a ton of assumptions.
-For one thing, he seems to be aiming this more at constructed play, where you may be curving out more, and will be having 4-ofs etc. I think curve-outs are less common in draft anyway?
-These changes seem relatively painless? (no pun intended). Y'all assume just a pile of fetches and shocks are the best, but there would be little to no difference in my mind.
-Let me take the data to the grindstone: My favorite place to go, the 3-0 thread, and lets look at a deck that 3-0'ed, and look very well built. Props to shamizy's team that made this!
Sultai
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First:
# Green sources = 12.5
# blue sources = 9.5
# black sources = 9.5
(marked wayfinder as 0.5 for each, and the brainstorms were 0.5 each)
Some case studies:
Courser of Kruphix: need 13! Behind by 0.5 for an on curve cast.
Hero's Downfall: need 13! We are waaaay behind.
Brainstorm: need 10! no good. but wait, you never need to cast this turn 1, cause bad... so: turn 2 is the earliest. looks ok.
Skinrender: 12. Behind by a lot still.
Titania: 11. Barely makes it.
Glen Elendra Archmage: Needs 7, so this is good by 2.5.
Baleful strix: I'm supposed to have 14! lands that tap for U/B. I count..... 2 (marsh flats and watery grave). We do make the 9 of each rule, but that's thanks to our 'storms and 'finder. Taking into account that you can't cast wayfinder the turn before strix, and now you need all three colors by turn 3.... ehh.
-So my main question is, how much does this "90%" actually matter in cube? We aren't charging ahead with 1 line of play towards victory, and it's a singleton format. This stellar 3-0 deck falls behind on most of it's cards.... So I'm not sure what to take from that? If everyone's manabases are already "bad", then you are on level playing field building an also "bad" manabase cause you wanna support your blink-drazi. And this is better than a lot of the mana bases I've seen in 3-0 lists!
-We also run a lot of card advantage generation in our average cubes. 5 brainstorms? 3 brainstorms? Oath of Nissa? Ponder? Scry effects?
-In general, just taking a source at face value can be detrimental. I could tear into some other 3-0 decks, and find discrepancies like this, in cube formats that are very very competitive.
Takeaways: This is obviously a YMMV topic. Competition level, color density, complexity level, power level. These can all play a part. I guess it doesn't sound like the best of ideas for ahadabans cube and group. But for another cube out there, the "downside" just might not be there. Painlands might be the correct power level for lands already for their environment. There might be more than one 4 drop in your deck, most of which have colors, mitigating the need to cast on t4.
EDIT: My personal stance: for all of you out there in the void, who are loving that Worldbreaker (and haven't made an account yet to say how much you like it), don't sweat the one <> symbol too much. I think your drafters will be A-OK. I'll be doing just that.
As a follow up to show that I can consistently make this point: the Naya Bellower list just below the above one has 11 green sources that can be used to cast strangleroot geist on T2, but the math says I need 14! I'm just not sure how much that particular block of math directly applies to what we are doing.
(The eternal witness also can't come out T3, cause it needs 13. But then again, we probably don't need a T3 witness. But then again, certain assumptions made above don't take that into account either. Lets ignore voice of resurgence.)
(The eternal witness also can't come out T3, cause it needs 13. But then again, we probably don't need a T3 witness. But then again, certain assumptions made above don't take that into account either. Lets ignore voice of resurgence.)
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Part of this too is that its ok to stumble on mana as long as your deck is doing powerful enough things to make up for the lost time.
That was part of the reason why I was talking about goblin bushwhackers and other burst damage sources (as well as the general concept of turn 2 aggro) in my last article.
That was part of the reason why I was talking about goblin bushwhackers and other burst damage sources (as well as the general concept of turn 2 aggro) in my last article.
It's definitely a YMMV topic. And I agree that this comes down to the difference between limited and constructed level mana bases.
How often did that deck play courser or hero's downfall on T3? Because if they did that frequently, the player running the deck got lucky (statistically speaking). But given that those are just two cards in 40, there's a reasonable chance the play option never even came up. Singleton decks very often play completely different game to game. As I said in another thread, I've had decks that were great which I later busted out and proceeded to underperform with to the point where I did a 180 on my opinion of the deck.
There's a lot more variance in limited and that masks a lot of deck building weaknesses, including mana bases. Sometimes you have a good night and the cards are flowing and your well built deck is an unstoppable machine. Other nights you run an equally designed deck and just can't get out of 2nd gear. It happens.
Just to be clear, I don't think you can draft a mana base and get to the 90% numbers in the article. Not without half the draft pool being fixing (or holding yourself to 2 colors). It's basically impossible in 3+ color decks. So to some extent we all are simply stuck with shaky mana bases being the norm. Depending on how tight lists get and how competitive players are, this is either going to be problematic or it won't. But I'm of the opinion that cube is getting more and more competitive as designers get better at building cube lists. Even the power max crowd should be running into this problem simply because the bar at each CMC is being raised as the arms race continues set to set. In both scenarios, there is less room for missed turns and plays due to mana problems. I expect this will only get more attention as time goes on. Limited has traditionally been clunky and relatively low power, and in that situation loose mana is a lot less impactful. Cubes generally play at a much higher power level and more closely approximate constructed. And there in lies the rub.
Maybe I'm off base here, but how much more attention do we give mana bases in constructed versus limited? I feel like a lot more. And Cube is in this strange in-between place where we really should be caring a lot more about the mana than we typically do, but we can't because the draft mechanic makes it impossible to build constructed level mana bases.
How often did that deck play courser or hero's downfall on T3? Because if they did that frequently, the player running the deck got lucky (statistically speaking). But given that those are just two cards in 40, there's a reasonable chance the play option never even came up. Singleton decks very often play completely different game to game. As I said in another thread, I've had decks that were great which I later busted out and proceeded to underperform with to the point where I did a 180 on my opinion of the deck.
There's a lot more variance in limited and that masks a lot of deck building weaknesses, including mana bases. Sometimes you have a good night and the cards are flowing and your well built deck is an unstoppable machine. Other nights you run an equally designed deck and just can't get out of 2nd gear. It happens.
Just to be clear, I don't think you can draft a mana base and get to the 90% numbers in the article. Not without half the draft pool being fixing (or holding yourself to 2 colors). It's basically impossible in 3+ color decks. So to some extent we all are simply stuck with shaky mana bases being the norm. Depending on how tight lists get and how competitive players are, this is either going to be problematic or it won't. But I'm of the opinion that cube is getting more and more competitive as designers get better at building cube lists. Even the power max crowd should be running into this problem simply because the bar at each CMC is being raised as the arms race continues set to set. In both scenarios, there is less room for missed turns and plays due to mana problems. I expect this will only get more attention as time goes on. Limited has traditionally been clunky and relatively low power, and in that situation loose mana is a lot less impactful. Cubes generally play at a much higher power level and more closely approximate constructed. And there in lies the rub.
Maybe I'm off base here, but how much more attention do we give mana bases in constructed versus limited? I feel like a lot more. And Cube is in this strange in-between place where we really should be caring a lot more about the mana than we typically do, but we can't because the draft mechanic makes it impossible to build constructed level mana bases.
That's exactly my point(s). How often evidently didn't matter, for one, because it's a 3-0 deck, and yes, it's only 2 cards out of 40. Now we are talking one card out of 40, at a higher mana cost (gives you more time to go other cool things, see grillo's note). If these 3-0 lists are anything to go by, from the thread as a whole, I'm not sure it actually is closer to constructed.
But, to try and progress, maybe it would be an issue. I think one person in particular is attacking that:
Aoret (rip skrap) and his "Free fixing lands yay!". Maybe when it all comes together, this is actually just a more consistent approach to take for competitive+ play?
So,
I've certainly become hypersensitive to this. I only vaguely noticed it during drafts TBH, but often enough to where it was always in the back of my mind as something that wasn't working as well as I felt it should. That article with the math simply solidified my opinion, and now I see it everywhere I go - drafts and during testing especially. I'm somewhat conflicted simply because in my mind you should be able to easily run two colors with a light splash on a 3rd color without doing P1-3P1 fixing. But the math says this is not possible without a fourth of your cube being land (more than I'm OK with running).
As far as cube becoming more competitive, I think it's more about lowering mana curves. Most guys are making plays each turn. It's rare when guys are just durdling for turns on end now (which I'm happy about). And those pushing aggressive decks (albeit not frequently in my cube), are playing more than one spell on T3+. Not being able to play a card or two in your hand is a dire (likely fatal) situation against a deck that has a play each turn. You get behind and it's then an unrecoverable situation. It comes up a lot in testing for me because I'm building and playing both decks (so my deck building and playing abilities are evenly matched on both sides - this highlights variance and mana weaknesses more than actual game play does).
Mana in the game of Magic has always been a weakly executed mechanic in my mind. It's just extremely fragile and finicky, and limited highlights that more than constructed does. I don't have a solution (though I've tried to sell guys on rule changes like exile/draw and resource land rules - but with no traction). The best bandaid I have is to just run as much fixing as humanly possible, and yes that means I run almost no colorless tapping lands in my cube now (down to less than 10 in 450). It is what it is though. Playing spells on time is more important I feel.
As far as cube becoming more competitive, I think it's more about lowering mana curves. Most guys are making plays each turn. It's rare when guys are just durdling for turns on end now (which I'm happy about). And those pushing aggressive decks (albeit not frequently in my cube), are playing more than one spell on T3+. Not being able to play a card or two in your hand is a dire (likely fatal) situation against a deck that has a play each turn. You get behind and it's then an unrecoverable situation. It comes up a lot in testing for me because I'm building and playing both decks (so my deck building and playing abilities are evenly matched on both sides - this highlights variance and mana weaknesses more than actual game play does).
Mana in the game of Magic has always been a weakly executed mechanic in my mind. It's just extremely fragile and finicky, and limited highlights that more than constructed does. I don't have a solution (though I've tried to sell guys on rule changes like exile/draw and resource land rules - but with no traction). The best bandaid I have is to just run as much fixing as humanly possible, and yes that means I run almost no colorless tapping lands in my cube now (down to less than 10 in 450). It is what it is though. Playing spells on time is more important I feel.
Using those as-is, one would need... 20 cards to complete each cycle? (5 colors multiplied by 4 splash colors?) However I can borrow from your Khans of Alara approach and support some color pairs more than others, which would reduce my needs to only 10 lands: B/r, B/g, R/b, R/w, G/b, G/u, W/r, W/u.
Thinking 2 of each such land for the lower-cmc players, total of 20 cards, and 10 scrylands+10 bouncelands in honor of pinched pennies everywhere.
If I run those taintland analogues, I also have a start on this new "colorless fixing" train, which may end up imploding and being a dead end that we all abandon a year from now but is at least interesting and exciting.
River of Tears is also a cool idea due to being one of those "sequencing puzzles" that Grillo_Parlante loves, so I'll keep cycle(s) of it in mind as a backup option especially if I ditch the colorless fixing idea. Dear god that's a pretty-looking card.
Of course you could combine them into one wordy mess of a card that functions more as a triland: http://www.magicmultiverse.net/cards/57091
Sorry to hear about your Herald. Sometimes people just aren't as awesome as their Tinder profiles!
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
To be perfectly blunt, cube in general is not a suitable competitive medium, nor is that the focus of most designers. With no prize structure in place, balance isn't really important, and there is no real motivation to even approach the format competitively.
You can't just be adding cards because they are novel, or good, or jamming in experimental themes: there has to be at least some reasonable rational--preferably backed up by solid testing--for each inclusion or cut. Its just a much higher standard.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
There's a serious point there - one of the biggest problems in Cube is that decks often demand Constructed-quality curves with a Limited-quality manabase, and this is more acute the faster your environment is - I actually saw wtwlf say on MTGS that CC cards should have a much higher bar for inclusion than is often assumed, because supporting UU and WW consistently in the same manabase is a fool's errand. I'd say the obvious solution there is to improve the fixing and cut all your Wastelands (it's hard enough to cast spells as it is, people!), but YMMV One nice thing about having a slower environment (even the much-maligned 'dragon cubes') is that you can afford to miss a colour or take a turn off to find it without just losing immediately.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
I also want to add that being a 3-0 deck is a relatively low standard in terms of consistency. If I took some of these decks and said you have to run smoothly for five or ten rounds, with real money on the line, I would expect to see some very strong opinions from players regarding balance, as well as drafting strategies to drastically change.