General When Is Fixing Too Good?

[James Stevenson]

I run double shocks and double fetches. The last time I drafted my cube I 3-0ed with a 5-color tempo deck. I adored it, but I lost a game every match due to mana problems. It was really loose. Another guy on my team built a sweet Naya zoo deck, also with horrendous mana. He mulliganned a lot but ended up 3-0 or something like that. A friend on the other team, who's drafted my cube a few times now with the double fetches and shocks, said this:

"James, I know you like the fixing the way it is, but I gotta say I really don't. I like it when you have to draft a tight 2-color deck with a lot of consistency. I don't like that you can just take all kinds of stuff and hope for the fixing." (sic (obviously))

I see his point. Playing 4-color aggro decks is awesome, but when they're terrible they shouldn't be winning.
I feel that I should cut down on the fetchlands. Not only because the fixing is letting me make unholy manabases and win, but on a pointless personal level it doesn't feel like my cube anymore, it's so different.
Maybe 15 fetches is the right number for me? I have all 10 filterlands sitting around, maybe I can swap in 5 of those for 5 fetchlands. Or perhaps I should go down to 10 fetches, 10 filters and 20 shocks. (my reason for keeping 20 shocks is honestly that I've already traded for 9/10 of the second set)
What do you all think? A big part of the riptide philosophy is that good fixing is a big part of a good draft format, but I feel like I've overdone it somehow.
cube for reference: cubetutor.com/viewcube/1461

 

[James Stevenson]

Or do I need the Wastelands? Put the land destruction back in red? Molten Rain would be so much better now.

 

[Eric Chan]

I think this has as much to do with your playerbase as anything. As I said to Jason on the big Skype chat, I feel like the skill level of his playerbase is on the low side, which is why he keeps amassing upwards of five fetches and winning with multicolour aggro decks. Even with twenty fetches in a 360 list, that's only 2.5 fetchlands per player, so if you consistently end up with double that, someone somewhere is undervaluing them. As Jason pointed out on one of his CFB articles, two colour decks have as much use for fetchlands as five colour decks, so there's no reason to be passing them over, unless you're one of those monocolour holdouts.

I think that if you beat people enough with your multicolour monstrosities, people will hopefully catch on to the power of the fetch / shock manabase, and eventually come around on them. If you're lucky, that won't take too long!

 

[Dom Harvey]

If he wants to draft a consistent two-colour deck... he can still do that? All that's different is that he isn't forcing everyone else to conform to his ideal Cube experience. It's also much easier to 'correct' for easy manafixing with the likes of Wasteland or Molten Rain than it is to overcome mana problems ('should have drafted better!'). In any case, this 'take all the lands and then whatever spells you want' fear has been a bullshit rationale (see the MODO Cube) since at least 2009. It's much easier to punish greed now than it was back then.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I would point to uh... well, I played with some competent drafters last night and I ended up with 1 fetch and 1 shock and had to play a 1 color + splash deck and got criticized for playing a 2CC spell of the splash color. So, I doubt your fixing is actually too good.

 

[CML]

experientially, never

to be clear i hate signet cubes as much as the next person but just go nuts with fetches and duals

 

[anotak]

i don't really think this is a valid complaint. people had to pass you those lands and you had to pick them over spells. if you want to be in a 4/5c deck w/ competent drafters at the table you often have to give up important cards to pick fixing early to make sure you dont just get your fixing taken

however this is one thing i really like about having 1/2 devotion cards per color is it provides an anchor to be in 1 color + splash or whatever

to be clear i hate signet cubes as much as the next person but just go nuts with fetches and duals

i suspect you actually hate them more than the next person

 

[Changling Bob]

Don't the devotion cards have to be really good to make up for the fact that the guy picking lands over real picks can get the best cards across, say, 3 colours? Especially in a riptide-style synergy cube, where we try and have overlapping themes in all colours, and doubly especially in the last pack, where you can just draft gas. I don't know if this logic actually holds up; I did watch people drafting the modo cube with this logic, although they were picking signets over things that weren't the stax/storm/combo pieces that they were aiming for rather than extra copies of fetches, etc.

 

[Changling Bob]

I also dislike fetches at this point, but can't really say why. They do all sorts of useful things and allow for cool plays, but something about them is pinging my game design radar in cube recently. As opposed to modern, where I'm fairly certain they're what's causing the biggest stagnation in the format.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I also dislike fetches at this point, but can't really say why. They do all sorts of useful things and allow for cool plays, but something about them is pinging my game design radar in cube recently. As opposed to modern, where I'm fairly certain they're what's causing the biggest stagnation in the format.

Maybe the "loading screen" problem? I think this is a maro-ism, but the idea is that with the fetch-laden mana of modern and legacy, there's a lot of moments where people are just waiting, either for the search to be done or the shuffling to happen.

I dunno about modern, but good mana seems odd when some of the best decks are 2-3 colors anyways, or are pod (which has so much tutoring that mana almost doesn't matter, see Douggggggg's draft deck )

 

[Changling Bob]

I don't think it's even that, I think it's that cracking a fetch is easier fixing than a genuine dual land, given that we're fetching shocks (or duals). Especially the fact that it may well be worth it to grab off-colour fetches to grab your choice of your on-colour shocks/duals in cube. In modern your fetches might as well be tri-lands most of the time, as you can grab the shock you need now, and then grab the shock you need later with the next one.

Sure this all costs some life, but, basically, that only matters if the game is close, especially if everyone can spend 6 life to not care about mana, so we're all effectively starting at 14 but with tri-lands. If you can wombo combo out you don't care; if you can control them so they can't do anything you don't care; if you're hard aggro you don't care; if you're midrange you don't care. The only recourse is getting blood mooned, which destroys you; you don't even have a timing window to stop the fetch that they can't just pop it and get what they want and fizzle your ability (unless they're running voidmage husher or stifle).

 

[Chris Taylor]

Stifle not being legal in modern is a problem there :*(

The impact of wasteland and force of will on legacy is not one to be understated it seems

 

[Changling Bob]

Oh huh, I thought it had come up in something.

But yeah, fixing is dirt simple in modern. And only 5 of the fetches are legal.

 

[Eric Chan]

Sure this all costs some life, but, basically, that only matters if the game is close, especially if everyone can spend 6 life to not care about mana, so we're all effectively starting at 14 but with tri-lands. If you can wombo combo out you don't care; if you can control them so they can't do anything you don't care; if you're hard aggro you don't care; if you're midrange you don't care.

I.. would contend this point. Almost all the decks care about their life total, except for the single deck in the draft that's going to be the beatdown in all potential matchups. One of the main reasons control is sorta unviable in Jason's list is that you take five damage from all your fetching and shocking, only to see your land immediately blown into a million pieces while your opponent beats you down with a hasted, Reckless Charging five-power creature.

Besides, aren't all matches in cube close?

 

[CML]

I don't think it's even that, I think it's that cracking a fetch is easier fixing than a genuine dual land, given that we're fetching shocks (or duals). Especially the fact that it may well be worth it to grab off-colour fetches to grab your choice of your on-colour shocks/duals in cube. In modern your fetches might as well be tri-lands most of the time, as you can grab the shock you need now, and then grab the shock you need later with the next one.

Sure this all costs some life, but, basically, that only matters if the game is close, especially if everyone can spend 6 life to not care about mana, so we're all effectively starting at 14 but with tri-lands. If you can wombo combo out you don't care; if you can control them so they can't do anything you don't care; if you're hard aggro you don't care; if you're midrange you don't care. The only recourse is getting blood mooned, which destroys you; you don't even have a timing window to stop the fetch that they can't just pop it and get what they want and fizzle your ability (unless they're running voidmage husher or stifle).

eh, the other argument is that you can wait to pick up fetches 'til later as there are only 3 on-color duals for a 3-color deck but 9/10 on-color fetches. in practice i see it work out more this way.

your life total is a really important resource in modern too taking 3 is no joke and (nearly) every deck attempts in practice to alleviate this. the quality of the fixing and the inability to interact with it via wasteland is arguably taken a little far in modern, but in Cube, where fixing will always be worse, the fetch and shock dynamic is so much better than color-screw

 

[Chris Taylor]

...the fetch and shock dynamic is so much better than color-screw

This is basically the whole dynamic explained

 

[Changling Bob]

I fully accept I'm probably tilting at windmills here.

 

[CML]

good discussion on the skype room today, gist of which was (as I read it) "if there are too many fixers in the funsies land draft, then nobody will take spell lands, but if this is true, then maybe there should be more fixers in the main cube, which might mean there shouldn't be fixers in the funsies land draft, so then everyone could take spell lands, so putting a bunch of fixers in the main Cube might be the way to go, except there shouldn't be too many, especially in a 360, because that would waste space, so maybe we should put some of the fixers in the funsies land draft, except then there might be too many fixers in the funsies land draft, and if there are too many fixers in the funsies land draft, then no

 

[blacksmithy]

Necro time!
Let's say you have a 450 Cube where people are typically going to draft 3-color decks, but are totally fine drafting 2-color decks or 4-color decks as well.
It's not got none of them there Titans or Cat King or that Japanesey Sword, but it's not what you'd call "low power level," either.
Let's call it a "high-powered Riptide cube."

-Is 50 duals (fetch/shock/dual/manland/whatever) in the main cube + 5 rainbows in the ULD enough?

-Would bumping the dual count to 60 be too much fixing? (I'd probably add scrylands cuz I like cycles)

-Are the Alara/Tarkir trilands worth consideration?

-Are these questions even answerable in an absolute way? (lol not hardly)

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Important question time: How big is this theoretical cube?

 

[blacksmithy]

Ah, crap. I knew that post was missing something. 450.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Ah, crap. I knew that post was missing something. 450.

- I ran 55 in my 450 for a while and got the complaint there were too many lands in the packs. I've gone down to 50 myself, but I explicitly support three-color decks. On average your drafters will see (360/450*50/8 =) 5 duals per player with that number, which certainly should enable a 3-color strategy for the people who prioritize fixing. If you think that's too much, I've seen people advocate a minimum of 4 fixers (ABU dual/fetch/shock/manland (if available)) per guild for a total of 40 in a 450 cube (4 duals per player).

- The Alara/Tarkir trilands are very fine fixers and perfectly playable, but be aware that they boost midrange and control decks slightly more than aggro decks because they cipt.

- No, but you can get a lot of opinions

- You can't call this a Riptide TM cube if you don't run double fetch, and double fetch without double duals sucks. Ergo, a true Riptide TM cube can't run less than 40 lands at any size. If you want to play manlands and call this a true Riptide TM cube, you have no choice but to go up to 50 (or 47 until Oath of the Gatewatch comes out I guess)!

 

[Chris Taylor]

My benchmark (it's probably somewhere in the preceding posts) is 12-15% of the cube should be fixing. I don't run a ULD, so trend those numbers downward if you're handing out free lands people don't have to spend picks on, but keeping 15 card packs.

So at 450, thats 54-67.5 lands, so 60 seems fine. Remember to count stuff like city of brass if it's off with the artifacts or something. Exactly 50 would be a bit on the low side.

A more useful number would be using some sort of fancy math to calculate how many nonbasics a given drafter ends up with on average, and see how many you think you need to build a successful 3-4 color deck, but I'm no mathamagician.

 

[blacksmithy]

You can't call this a Riptide TM cube if you don't run double fetch, and double fetch without double duals sucks. Ergo, a true Riptide TM cube can't run less than 40 lands at any size. If you want to play manlands and call this a true Riptide TM cube, you have no choice but to go up to 50 (or 47 until Oath of the Gatewatch comes out I guess)!

Double fetches? :eek:$$$ Gooby pls I have family

I wonder if breaking singleton on my favorite card design in all of Magic to the tune of, say, 5-10 copies, would be good for the environment. In my test drafts on CT, fixing always trips up my super-frickin-cool 3.5-color cross-theme decks, and I don't want the same thing to happen to my buddies when we play the new cube IRL.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Chris makes a good point. I run five Evolving Wilds in my ULD, plus City of Brass, Mana Confluence and Myriad Landscape, so every player can at least get one fixing land if they want. This checks out with Chris's math of 60 cards. Since you said you are going to run an LD as well, I'ld recommend eight fixers in there, which makes 50 a fine number in the main cube.