The 4 Land Max cube

[Watermelon]

Link to the list:
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/d14aa119-4011-406d-a045-bc043401582c

cube ID in Cube Cobra:
d14aa119-4011-406d-a045-bc043401582c

The design goal of this cube is to make a very fast, highly interactive and diruptive environemt, in which
• the strategies I find very fun to play (things like old legacy UB death's shadow/delver, Legacy ninja thropters, Izzet tempo delver, UW tempo)
• some themes I find fascinating (delirium, infect and poison, counterburn, disruptive aggro)
• and some cards that I love (mana tithe, tarmogoyf, etherial forager)
are desirable things to draft towards


To provide the constant pressure of resource management, this draft environment has a special rule: players cant have more than 4 lands on the board.
This rule is implemented through having players build 30-card decks that don't contain lands,then put 4 lands in their command zone (any basics they want and the drfted non-basic lands) and they can play a land from command zone each turn.


This 4 land max rule ensures taxing effects and force spike type effects stay relevant for the whole match, mana and tempo are the number one concern for the whole duration of the game.
As a side effect, this fixes the non-games of drawing too few or too many lands. This fixed and non-draw-dependent mana base alongside the cube cards privides experience of playing legacy mtg with hearthstone-level mana base consistency.
At least this is my goal of design for this perticular cube.


The most challenging aspect for designing this cube for me was finding some way of color balance, especially considering Green being total garbage in high power levels aside from jamming a bunch of mana dorks,which I don't inteand to run because it goes againt the whole idea of mana limitation.
This cube is 200 cards for 4 players, mainly because I couldn't find enough green cards that are suited for the intended environment.
Still, green seems to be the least desirable

I strughled with every card choice for the green section. One the other hand, I had a hard time saying goodbye to all the cool counterspells I had to cut from blue's section.

A valid option for this problem that I don't disagree with is simply accepting green's color identity not matching with the "meta" created by this cube's design goals and give green a secondary, support rule with fewer cards than other colors, or even more radically, removing the color outright. I see this as a fair option, but I'd also like to give green a fair try before consideringPoison

Anyways
Aside from U/x tempo and W taxes there are some experimental motifs in the design, all of which I'm afraid might end up as traps due to not having enough playable pieces, so Im going to mention them:
-Poison, Infect
-Graveyard synergy mainly delve and delirium.
Ive tries using all the possible supertypes (including battles and even tribal) to help delirium.
There's also a vague shell of gruul madness archetypes
-Spells payoffs mainly in izzet
-Some +1/+1 counter synergy
-Red Burn

I'll be glad to hear feedbacks and discussions

 

[Kart]

Fun idea! I've been trying variations on this idea for a while (namely, removing land from the deck). Yours seems more promising than anything I came up with.

One idea for green would be to include more cards (in all colors) with double or even triple-pip mana costs. As it stands, there's little reason not to build a 3-color deck if you draft double-pip mana costs in only a single color - and a lone dual-land lets you go to 4 colors pretty easily (or possibly even 5). You could make green more about color-fixing so that players could run more powerful cards in various colors. If you did that, you might want to weaken or outright eliminate the dual lands, as they would intrude on this new dimension of green. Even as is, I suspect the duals might too powerful - let me know your thoughts.

 

[Watermelon]

Hi there, I've noticed the color problem as well

For now, I'm moving towards accepting green as a secondary color. I've removed all but the green dual lands so Getting into green is effectively free. I've also added some good green gold cards, usually ones that disrupt the usual plays of this perticular environment and I'm happy these things exist. Future me will probably cut the remainibg dual lands as well. Let's see how it goes. Regardless of duals or not, I like having non-basics in cube specifically for Wasteland.
Wasteland makes the mana pressure even more sever for the rest of the game. It also helps delirium

I'd love to find non-basic lands that work well in this environment. I've added inkmoth nexus already
Out: the 6 shocklands that dont have green
In: Voice of resurgence, Kutzil, cindervones, shadow in the warp, pernicious deed, edric

 

[Watermelon]

Update
I added a bunch of utility lands (most of them creating colorless only) to keep wasteland viable and give players reasons not to run 4/5 colors all the time. I'm keeping the green duals for now

The utility land package has many tools for infect, letting me cut some two-ofs from the list

Out: one copy of the poison guys that I ran as two-ofs, (blighted agent, glistener elf and bilious skulldweler), some cards that seem not good enough (captured by lagacs, elven farsight, bone picker, stromkirk occultist, hooting mandrills), GG cards(barkhide troll, werewolf packleader)

In: utility lands( access tunnel, barbarian ring, cabal pit, cathedral of war, howltooth hollow, karakas, pandelhaven, the seedcore, zhalfirin void, blast zone) and a copy of warping wail, a versatile card enabled by the colorless producing utility lands