General When Is Fixing Too Good?

[Eric Chan]

Please pardon my ignorance but how about just straight up dual lands for fixing? 3 copies of each dual and NO fetches for a 360 cube. Duals get wasted, they help aggro and they don't thin your deck. Moreover Duals are Powerful. They communicate to players their importance through their gravitas so they resonate on picks. It seems to me that they would be a very proactive fixing solution. Barring the obvious monetary constraints.

Welcome to the forums!

There's a long and storied history of why we're so enamoured with fetchlands on this site, but Jason's seminal article on this topic explains it better than any of us can:

http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/channelfireball-learning-from-legacy-part-1.40/

 

[Jason Waddell]

Notes on the vid itself: a bit long on the examples. I watched through 4 or 5 then skipped to your conclusions. I think if this were meant to be an external product, you'd have to do just a little bit more work setting up context than you do. Basically summarize the arguments on each side I guess. I viewed the vid more as an experiment in doing videos while also creating an internal product, so this criticism probably doesn't apply.

Thanks for the feedback. Originally the into was even longer with me summarizing both sides, but I 're-recorded it to make it quicker. Agree that fewer examples were needed.

My biggest issue was that Windows Movie Maker didn't work at all for me. In the end I used YouTube's editor to crop and combine two videos, which was awful but at least functional. I've used iMovie or whatever it's called and liked it, but I don't have a Mac, so if anyone has a similar recommendation for PC I'd love to hear it.

 

[Jason Waddell]

To be clear, I'm not so much interested in the average case scenarios of Wasteland as I am the worst case scenarios. Will Wasteland produce interesting sequencing decisions for both the Hero and Villain some amount of the time? Sure, I have no doubt that it provides good play and counterplay when everything is going according to plan. It's the non-games that Wasteland has the potential of producing that I'd rather focus on. At the risk of incurring the wrath of half the forum, I'll say that I believe some amount of bias exists from players who are coming from Legacy backgrounds in their unusual attachment towards a card that can very obviously ruin games of Magic before they even start, because it's dificult to understand why else the card is so beloved when the worst case scenarios are very much Net Negative Fun for one player.

Certainly, there will be games where you choose to use it turn three or four, both players cast a few spells before the disruptive element occurred, and everyone can agree that it was a Real Game of Magic. You'll see no argument from me. What I do take issue with is when one player, through no fault of their own, nor through the random machinations of the Shuffler, doesn't get to play Magic because of circumstances entirely out of their control. Perhaps this may happen only one in ten games where Wasteland is played - and I suspect that's a conservative estimate - but even that is too much. Remember that even powered cubes can and will produce some number of real, back and forth affairs, but they will occasionally give you games of solitaire that one player didn't realize he wasn't allowed to play in. How often that happens will vary from cube to cube, but I don't think I'm being too hyperbolic in drawing that analogy.

Chris: your math seems... "fuzzy", at best. You run 20 fetches in 450 cards, as far as I can tell, so the average drafter will have 2, perhaps 3 fetchlands if they've drafted well. With those numbers, you're more likely than not to have access to zero fetchlands by turn three. Why are we talking about the "first fetch", if your drafters may only draw one fetch per game, if even that?

For me, the worst case scenario for Wasteland is pretty painless. You scoop early and shuffle up again. It's not like when you do a lot of good plays and feel it's all been wasted when a Wurmcoil comes down or some other GRBS. I don't usually feel bad when I lose to Wasteland. I also know that, personally, I'm less inclined to draft aggro if there are 0 wastelands. Certainly there are other ways to balance, but...

Also, you can fight against Wasteland decks in sideboarding. Maybe you lower your curve or add a basic or something. There are ways to configure your deck in a way that makes Wasteland less impactful.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Please pardon my ignorance but how about just straight up dual lands for fixing? 3 copies of each dual and NO fetches for a 360 cube. Duals get wasted, they help aggro and they don't thin your deck. Moreover Duals are Powerful. They communicate to players their importance through their gravitas so they resonate on picks. It seems to me that they would be a very proactive fixing solution. Barring the obvious monetary constraints.

To summarize the article, fetches are way better for two color aggro. With duals, a two-color player can just use one per cycle, whereas three-color and four-color drafters can use 3 and 6 respectively.

With fetches, a two-color drafters can use 7 of the 10. They can fight for a much higher representation of fixing, whereas in the proposed system a two-color aggro player would be eligible for a maximum of 3 lands.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Here's another analogy. I got it from my buddy Rhetoric, though, and he's a little... over the top, so you'll have to forgive him if he steps out of bounds. He assured me this was worth passing onto you guys, though.

Let's take Vendilion Clique. It's a card beloved by almost everyone on the forum, present company included, and proclaimed by Jason to be the best designed card in all of Magic. Imagine it had another rider:

When Vendilion Clique enters the battlefield, roll two six-sided die. If the total of the die is 36, your opponents lose the game. If the total of the die is 2, you lose the game.

36? So... V Clique with a downside?

 

[Chingonman]

Thank you for the reception

Well since the original poster thought about 4 color decks beign an unfair advantage to experienced drafters, maybe there is some positive tension to be had in funneling player to 2 color decks? Whats the cutoff between color identity and draft archetype bleed? Its super interesting To me that the land options basically determine this.

 

[Laz]

Well since the original poster thought about 4 color decks beign an unfair advantage to experienced drafters, maybe there is some positive tension to be had in funneling player to 2 color decks? Whats the cutoff between color identity and draft archetype bleed? Its super interesting to me that the land options basically determine this.

Again welcome.

The land options don't really determine the cut off between archetypes across colour identities, they instead determine how many colours the archetype represents in individual decks. One particular archetype (say, sacrifice, aka 'on-death triggers') could show up in a BR deck one draft (BR Aggro Zom-bardment), and then a WG deck (Reveillark-Pod combo) another. The land options will determine if some insane WRBG sacrifice deck is possible, but doesn't limit the archetype bleed across colours.

 

[Aoret]

Can we get Chingo a standing ovation for stepping out of the shadows for the first time into the fire that is this thread? Brass balls dude.

And yeah, land determines a lottttt about your format. See: Grillo's, mine, and actually any generic riptide cubes for that matter.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

 

[Diakonov]

My biggest issue was that Windows Movie Maker didn't work at all for me. In the end I used YouTube's editor to crop and combine two videos, which was awful but at least functional. I've used iMovie or whatever it's called and liked it, but I don't have a Mac, so if anyone has a similar recommendation for PC I'd love to hear it.

I recorded a few drafts for DraftMagic.com early on and we used Camtasia. It was pretty easy to use and had a lot of features.

 

[Eric Chan]

Another vote for Camtasia, that was our go-to software at work for recording our product demos. We tried a bunch of others, but none were as good as Camtasia. Doesn't it cost like $200 or $300, though...?

36? So... V Clique with a downside?

Uh, my buddy Rhetoric was never good at math. He's more of a word guy.

 

[Eric Chan]

For me, the worst case scenario for Wasteland is pretty painless. You scoop early and shuffle up again. It's not like when you do a lot of good plays and feel it's all been wasted when a Wurmcoil comes down or some other GRBS. I don't usually feel bad when I lose to Wasteland. I also know that, personally, I'm less inclined to draft aggro if there are 0 wastelands. Certainly there are other ways to balance, but...

I understand where you're coming from, and I think I'm beginning to understand some of the philosophical differences in our approaches. But this argument doesn't hold water for me, for several reasons.

1) Even in the complete absence of any GRBS in a given cube, losing to the platonic ideal of a "fair" control deck may still feel painful to your average drafter. There will be situations in which Hero's threats are removed, their hand is torn apart, and their board state rendered completely impotent, and yet the game itself will take another six or eight turns to come to a merciful close. If removal, counterspells, discard, sweepers, and planeswalkers are available in your environment, this is a scenario that can and will occur. Finishers like Aetherling will at least put you out of your misery, but if the kill card of choice is something like Nephalia Drownyard, be prepared to have your tooth pulled out slowly and painfully.

2) You correlate the amount of time before scooping with the "net negative fun" someone experiences, and while there may be merit to that, the metric I would prefer to correlate inversely with fun is the volume of the decision tree pruned. Let me explain. What I view as the most painful games are those where you draw what you feel is a good, strong opening 7, sculpt a sequence and a game plan in your head for the next several turns, take one or two steps along that decision tree, and then see the entire tree razed to the ground. For me, it's less about the amount of time spent without a decision tree, as much as the magnitude of the decision tree that was reduced, in proportion the magnitude of the tree traversed. Or, in plain English, the games where I had a Sweet Plan but got to execute exactly zero of it. Those, to me, are the most painful experiences, whether I'm in the position of the Hero, or arguably even moreso when I'm observing over their shoulder.

 

[sigh]

I'm so with Eric on this viewpoint. I view cube as the pinnacle of Magic for the fun of it above all else. Cool/fun cards, fun drafting, fun playing. Having even a rare chance one of my drafters sits there miserable for even one game (even if the game is short) is not a pill that I can swallow easily, if at all.

This is very evidently a YMMV topic that I feel is best looked at per group and cube. I just want to push that many many people want to cube for fun. LD is a less fun thing for many of those same people. I implore the vast majority of cube designers to take a different approach unless you are specifically aiming to achieve a legacy-like experience (almost no cubes here do so imo).

If LD is still something any cube designer is looking at, I'd personally recommend Pillage/avalanche riders, Tec Edge, or the "Fading Wilds" card over in the Custom Lab.

 

[Ferritovore]

the games where I had a Sweet Plan but got to execute exactly zero of it.

Real talk, it might be a "best of 3", but I will not let my opponent leave until I've gotten a chance to show them how my deck works. I don't need to win, but I do need to demonstrte the cute tricks I picked out.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

Well since the original poster thought about 4 color decks beign an unfair advantage to experienced drafters, maybe there is some positive tension to be had in funneling player to 2 color decks? Whats the cutoff between color identity and draft archetype bleed? Its super interesting To me that the land options basically determine this.

Following this line of thought while also acknowledging the limitations, instead of having 3 of each of the 10 duals in the cube, one could have some number of"choice of dual land" slots.

 

[Ferritovore]

When one pick is "any dual of your choice", does anyone ever pass that? Is it ANY any dual, or just shocklands or just fetches or just alpha lands?

It seems you'd have to snap take the open-ended land, no questions asked. The nice thing about an inflexible 10 of them floating around is that everyone has a chance to see the one in their colors wheel around to them when other people are other colors. I might try an "any dual land that can tap for red mana"(etc) cycle when I add in the new lands I picked up this week.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

Whatever your dual is. In Chingo's example it was ABU duals (as the argument was eliminating fetches).

 

[Eric Chan]

This is very evidently a YMMV topic that I feel is best looked at per group and cube. I just want to push that many many people want to cube for fun. LD is a less fun thing for many of those same people. I implore the vast majority of cube designers to take a different approach unless you are specifically aiming to achieve a legacy-like experience (almost no cubes here do so imo).

Right, it might help to explain that my "regular" playgroup for cube features a rotating cast of characters, many of whom are fairly new to the game, and a handful of whom I've just taught to play Magic hours before their first cube session. Possibly one or two people in this rotating list of drafters have ever played a sanctioned game of Legacy. It would be difficult to explain to any given person, six hours after they've learned that yes your lands do untap every single turn!, why their first and best land was just blown into a million pieces, and that they now need to sit and watch dutifully as their opponent launches a session of Windows 95 Solitaire.exe.

When Diakonov described his group as a bunch of grizzled vets who all come from either a Vintage or Legacy background, a lot of things suddenly clicked together. This is a group of players who are used to How Things Were, back when not being able to play Magic while you were playing Magic was common. I've been there, too - in our casual '96 playgroups, Strip Mine had not yet been restricted in Type 1.5 (I think?), which was the banlist we were following, so I ran four of them in my mono-black disruption deck and blew a lot of people out. No, I mean, a lot of people. That's just how it was back then when you signed up for Magic. In the current day and age, though, my goal is more about keeping a fleeting cast of people from skipping cube nights to go play board games, or iPad games, or go outside, or whatever. Ensuring that they get to cast a couple of spells per game goes a long way towards that, in my opinion.

 

[Ferritovore]

to go play board games

I hope you go play with them sometimes! Honestly co-op board games are more "fun" in a pleasantness and camaraderie sort of way, but with rare exception they lack the thrill of danger. They're a nice complement/contrast to mix in with tense games of turning creatures sideways until you successfully make your friend sad.

More seriously, I think you have a good goal roping newer players in though. A game that only appeals to veterans is doomed to see its members drifting off or dying or getting lost under their beards. I need to keep in mind how onerous my cube might become if I add fancy new tricks to it all the time while cutting the straightforward stuff.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I hope you go play with them sometimes! Honestly co-op board games are more "fun" in a pleasantness and camaraderie sort of way, but with rare exception they lack the thrill of danger. They're a nice complement/contrast to mix in with tense games of turning creatures sideways until you successfully make your friend sad.

More seriously, I think you have a good goal roping newer players in though. A game that only appeals to veterans is doomed to see its members drifting off or dying or getting lost under their beards. I need to keep in mind how onerous my cube might become if I add fancy new tricks to it all the time while cutting the straightforward stuff.

I mean, it depends on a lot of factors. Whenever I played it was with the guys who are in the board game shop multiple nights a week playing Magic.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Another thing that we are kind of leaving out is how hackneyed these format police cards can feel once taken out of their respective formats and reduced in density. My players are mostly casuals who have never touched legacy, and have no idea how wasteland is "supposed to be played." If you are running 2-4 in a given cube, the card doesn't have the density to make its presence loudly known.

My players, not knowing anything about the card, of course never played around it, which might have been right given how few were in the cube. As a result, when wasteland happened it just sort of happened.

Its kind of why I hate running FOW in cubes, its not something you are really going to ever play around, but every once in a while you just have to grin and bear as some key spell is countered out of nowhere and you lose the game. As there are no brutal combo decks in cube that have to be stopped on turn 1, that type of disruption doesn't really add anything to the format. Sure, no one might really complain about it, but what is it adding to the format? I feel thats pretty analogous to how wasteland plays in cube.

 

[Aoret]

Another thing that we are kind of leaving out is how hackneyed these format police cards can feel once taken out of their respective formats and reduced in density.

I kinda feel like most of us have made up our minds and we're going in circles at this point, but didn't this all start because I suggested increasing that density?

 

[Ferritovore]

Sorry everyone, I'm locking this thread too.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

So, unbelievably I go to channel fireball this morning and see Caleb Durward has this article, about the legacy ban list. Legacy aficionado caleb, advocating that wasteland should be banned from legacy...

----
Well—funny story about that. I would do crazy things to the Legacy banned list. I'm talking absurd, filthy things. Borderline war crimes.


It all started when I realized I was playing more Modern than Legacy on MTGO, and I started thinking about why, and I realized that a large difference in the quality of play between the two formats comes down to the existence of one card in particular.

The most miserable, fun-sucking card in Legacy is:



Hear me out.
Cons:

It instigates bad game play.

Sure, Wasteland has some play to it. Some hands you need to plan out and save it to pay for aDaze or an equip cost or something, and sometimes you need to hold it to shuffle away withBrainstorm, and every once in a billion games a sweet play will come up like Wasting an opponent's lone untapped fetch while they have a spell on the stack so that you can Daze the spell in response to the fetch crack.
Most of the time, Wasteland is way better if you use it immediately, as it has a higher chance of screwing the opponent and winning on the spot. Curves need to be hyper-tight and efficient to compete, which means fewer lands, and there are a decent number of land-light keeps that are necessary to avoid mulling to oblivion. You can't just mulligan every hand that loses to Wasteland, especially in the dark when your opponent might not even have it in the 75.

It feels like everyone with a fair deck needs to run Wasteland to get the free 5% win against their opponents, all while also losing to that same 5% from said opponents, and then there are the games where both people Waste each other into oblivion, and when it all adds up a significant percentage of games are non-interactive, miserable Wastefests.

I'm not saying that mana screw doesn't have a role in Magic, but it is one of the worst aspects of game play, and things that alleviate screw (like the new mulligan scry rule) tend to improve it. Wasteland is batting for the wrong team.

Why is Strip Mine banned? What percentage of the time is Wasteland functionally Strip Mine?

It punishes mulligans.

After a mulligan, you're much less likely to have an extra land, and even if you're running a sound mana base you can still lose to Wasteland.

Sure, other 1-for-1 removal also gets better against a mull, but Wasteland is particularly egregious because lands are what we need to actually play Magic. If we can play spells, there's a chance we can outplay the opponent or otherwise come back, but that can't happen if we get Wasted out of the game.
It's also bad to draw on a mull, as that's one less card that's producing colored mana or applying pressure.

Pros:

It punishes greedy mana bases.

I've heard this defense of Wasteland a lot, but I'm not sure it holds up to scrutiny. That's partly rooted in why people might be playing a third (or fourth) color in Legacy. In Limited, people often splash for bombs at the expense of consistency, so we get in the mindset that more colors=more power.

In Legacy, people splash for answers or synergistic threats more often than anything else, likeLightning Bolt in RUG. Anyone that's trying to play fair is going to need a specific set of tools and disruption to compete, and different colors are going to fill those holes.

The most powerful decks are generally 2-color combo decks like Ad Nauseum or Sneak and Show. If they're focused on putting together a game-winning combo, they don't need the diverse answers that the creature-based midrange decks do, allowing them to stick to two colors.

The mana bases getting punished are all the 3-color midrange decks Wasting each other. Again, they can't just not play Wasteland and give up the free percentage points, and they can't play a more basic-heavy mana base without giving up some tool (and thus losing that percentage somewhere else) or by switching archetypes.

Deathrite Shaman facilitates some actual greed, and it works well with and against Wasteland.

---

Maybe he lurks? Because that is a plot twist.

 

[Diakonov]

Caleb Durward:

...It feels like everyone with a fair deck needs to run Wasteland to get the free 5% win against their opponents...

...It punishes greedy mana bases...

...Again, they can't just not play Wasteland and give up the free percentage points...

The article makes some fair points, but it seems kinda strawman-ish to say the above reasons and not even once mention how Wasteland affects tempo, which I would argue is really the primary reason people run the card.