General No Lands

[CML]

What if we just let everyone have a Legacy manabase? Drafter today brought up he hated drafting lands instead of sweet spells, sounds about right to me. It's always interesting to make that decision, healthy for our environments beyond the "always take a land" dicta of Cubes with less fixing (or formats like DGR), but why not take that a step further? Will open up lots of design space.

Up to 4 of any single fixing-only land (mainly fetch + dual? whatever) + Wastelands of your choice. Draft the following lands as if they were spells:



What are some cards I missed on that list? What are some cards I should take out?

Should we be instead drafting Wastelands too? What do we do with weaker variants like Rishadan Port and Tec Edge? (Trying to figure out then why we'd want a mono-color manabase)

Should the manabases be subject to more stringent restrictions?

What are some categories of cards that we want more of when we do this?

What are some specific cards we want? (Suggestions have been Back to Basics, Blood Moon)

What are some specific cards we don't want?

 

[Jason Waddell]

So the suggestion is to give fixing for free and shove the utility lands into the main draft?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Or we could add another booster with only lands (fixing and utility). Something like the Leaders expansion for 7 Wonders did, but after the third booster, so you know what colors you are in. So... How many nonbasics do you want people to run?

Ooooo... And should we add a custom land that works like Cogwork Libarian?

Reflecting Puddle
Land
Draft Reflecting Puddle face up.
As you draft a card, you may draft an additional card from that booster pack. If you do, put Reflecting Puddle into that booster pack.
: Add to your mana pool one mana of any type that a basic land you control could produce.

 

[Jonas]

Why not just run every land as a utopia land at this point?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Why not just run every land as a utopia land at this point?

I think it's important to have some tension. Drafts are more interesting when, at least some of the time, it's correct to take an on-color but slightly weaker card over an off-color but objectively stronger card. I've had the same complaints as CML from my group. My players don't like drafting lands, even though most understand that a good manabase is important. Maybe there is a solution better than peppering your cube with mana fixing lands. I'ld sure be interested to try something out if there are any viable ideas.

 

[Jonas]

For me, having to draft the lands creates that kind of tension, otherwise there is nothing that stops you from just taking the most powerful cards in every colour and going for it. Another idea for this is to give worldknit to everyone and just go to town.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

But if you don't run any land, you can just add more playables. What if the tension is not "should I pick Siege-Gang Commander or Wooded Foothills", but "should I pick Siege-Gang Commaner or Char"? I'm running 55 lands, a full 12% of my cube, at the moment. Cutting those would mean I can add some nice cards that I simply don't have the room for at the moment (because I'm not willing to bloat my cube).

 

[Jason Waddell]

But if you don't run any land, you can just add more playables. What if the tension is not "should I pick Siege-Gang Commander or Wooded Foothills", but "should I pick Siege-Gang Commaner or Char"? I'm running 55 lands, a full 12% of my cube, at the moment. Cutting those would mean I can add some nice cards that I simply don't have the room for at the moment (because I'm not willing to bloat my cube).

I'd like to add this to the framing: our cubes already run 24 more cards than retail (14 card packs + basic vs 15 card packs), and no unplayables. I have to make tough cuts regardless of how many lands I draft.

Tension drives drafting. When I draft aggro, I am always concerned that I'm not getting enough one-drops. Do I have enough reach? What are my on-curve color commitments?

Free fixing in my mind serves to:
a) remove most of the spell vs land tension (which I personally love, maybe others feel differently)
and if we replace the lands with more spells we:
b) remove some spell vs spell tension

If it's effortless to fill all the gaps in your deck, I don't think that's necessarily a good thing.

If you are going to increase your spell density, I'd focus on adding diversity of effects / archetypes enabled, rather than adding lower power alternatives to existing cards.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

If you are going to increase your spell density, I'd focus on adding diversity of effects / archetypes enabled, rather than adding lower power alternatives to existing cards.

Like supporting more themes? Can you afford to cube cards that usually end up 15th pick, but are really awesome in the correct deck if you cut lands from the main draft?

 

[Eric Chan]

I hate to be the naysayer shooting down new ideas at the beginning of a brainstorming session, but I've never really understood this problem. Assuming you draft 45 cards and run 23 spells, that's 22 cards you've taken that will sit on the sidelines. Doesn't it make more sense to start taking fixing lands at the point where you'd just be taking that 24th spell you're not going to run anyways? Shoving more spells into the main cube doesn't actually let people run more spells, so I guess I've never been a fan of "all lands as a separate draft".

Like Jason mentions, even with all the fixing lands in the main draft, drafters are usually having a tough time cutting their last two or three spells to get down to 23. It's not like normal limited, where, because of all the filler cards, the cuts are more obvious.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Like supporting more themes? Can you afford to cube cards that usually end up 15th pick, but are really awesome in the correct deck if you cut lands from the main draft?

Yeah, like, if for some reason you had to cut cards like Life from the Loam from your cube due to space, bring in stuff like that. Something that's not "yet another Rampant Growth" variant.

I mean, as a thought experiment, say you had your drafters draft 4 15-card packs, and build the usual 40-card deck out of it. How would you design your cube when given that extra space. Would it be better? Would drafting have the same dynamics? How do you build the cube so that certain cards aren't just ignored?

 

[Chris Taylor]

Where's FSR when we need him, ya? IIRC he drafts all the lands in a seperate pack?

 

[Chriskool]

This idea interests me from a power cube (or double power cube...) mentality, since I yearn for my power cube experience to feel something like vintage 15 years ago (inconsistent & with really funny cards).

I know that it's common practice to just add more copies of lands to cubes, but what if... every deck got some free lands? Maybe some number (3-4) of free copies of the following: fetches, ONS cycling lands and... Wasteland, Mutavault/Mishra's Factory. I imagine a setup that would smooth out the gameplay experience but still force players to draft some lands (duals, some utility lands) and cards that interact with lands. Maybe, some of the lands (all but ONS cyclers) are also in the cube for decks that realllllly want 'em.

I'd be interested if there is an implementation of this that still forces players to draft tight decks but doesn't destroy a player (like WWx) if they don't get a chance at their appropriate lands. My local power cube is so large (800ish) that mana is extremely hard to come by and (since we draft with 9-card packs) impossible to table in most drafts.

(Semi-related... I have 48 draft sets of DGR and am planning on drafting them with the rule that players can write as they draft any basic/cluestone a gate from that set (or that corresponds to cluestone) to be added during deck construction. Wonder if the format will feel a lot more fun with more manafix.)

 

[FlowerSunRain]

I already do this. I have no lands in my cube. All lands are roto drafted afterwards. We do 8 picks per player usually.

My land binder contains most lands you'd conceivably want, minus strip mine, wasteland (recent drop, it had been in fore a long time), library of alexandria, workshop, bazaar and dark depths. It contains 2 of each shock and fetch, but each player can only have one of them. Its not a Legacy manabase, but you can usually get your 3 fetches/3 shocks, a misc. dual and a manaland in your combo which is pretty decent.

Everyone hates doing the land draft (at least they did initially), but everyone likes the decks better. Plus all the extra spaces lets me pack my cube with tons of weird/narrow cards, which is really fun because it drives deck variety.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

Tension drives drafting. When I draft aggro, I am always concerned that I'm not getting enough one-drops. Do I have enough reach? What are my on-curve color commitments?

I like this kind of tension when it is directly linked to the conclusion of the game. Like, to use a board game example, praying for a 5 or a silk in my final free tile in Medici. In cube, after I draft I still have to play ~9 games of Magic. If my draft busts and I get rolled all through, that's not very fun. I'd much rather the draft be loose and get good decks that make for tense games then the for a tense draft that leads to mediocre games.

 

[Eric Chan]

Do you still do three packs of 15 cards before the land draft, then? I'm mostly curious at how people build their decks when they have 45 (!) spells to sift over and choose from. It's already difficult enough with ~35 spells here.

I can see how overall deck quality would be higher with access to more cards overall, but the deckbuilding portion must be agonizing.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

I usually use Westchester Draft , so we don't pick 45 even though we look at over 50 per player. The nice thing about this format is that there aren't any "15th picks". The loose cards that no one wants are swept away at the end of the round and no one has them in their pile.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I'd much rather the draft be loose and get good decks that make for tense games then the for a tense draft that leads to mediocre games.

Is this perhaps a false dichotomy?

 

[Karl]

I believe drafting all the cards together helps teach players the importance of a good mana base. It's a difficult choice whether taking the fixing or a card you want for you deck, and that difficulty is one of the things that makes drafting fun and interesting, for me and my play group at the very least.

 

[Eric Chan]

Very much agree with that sentiment. Our newer players are learning, slowly but surely, that it's not enough to draft all sweet spells; it's also important to cast said spells. The value of fetchlands is slowly but surely going up in my new playgroup, much like their value increased over time when I used to cube with Lucas's crew.

FSR, what is Westchester Draft? Is this one of the things Jason invented?

 

[Jonas]

10 cards, everyone gets a card throw out the rest, isn't it? Rinse and repeat until you've seen the cube-

 

[Eric Chan]

That's Tenchester, I think...?

This is all very confusing.

 

[Jonas]

I thought so too, but it seemed so similar...

 

[FlowerSunRain]

http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/westchester-draft-outline.307/

Is this perhaps a false dichotomy?

Maybe on a theoretical level, I would say that it holds in practice.

I mean, if you took 12 superhardcore Magic dudes and had them play my cube twice a week, every week it might become an issue, but cube is confusing and everchanging enough of a format that my once or twice a month at most and four times in December schedule means that the need to avoid shit drafts far outweighs the need to have draft tension, which has literally never been a complaint (and my players give me feedback when things aren't working). If my players developed a high level of mastery for the format, sure, maybe its a false dichotomy, but its not going to happen so its not relevant to my needs.

 

[Eric Chan]

Ah, thanks for the link. That sounds really interesting! What is the typical number of people you draft with? I'm not sure I'd want to try this with a full 8 man, for time constraints alone, but it might be good the next time we find ourselves with four.