These are interesting, the black one especially has caught my eye. The blue and white ones are okay, not feeling the green one, and the red one is probably worse than Teetering Peaks unfortunately.
I like the black one, which seems to be the most cube worthy of these. But I fear it is not strong enough an effect to make it worth a slot. But I hope someone tests this and lets us know how it plays out.
I'm really mad that Skyline Cascade does not actually tap the creature. That would of been an A+ include.
Sandstone Bridge would be good if white didn't depend on hitting its creatures on curve from 1-4. Still seems ok, vigilance is an underrated mechanic.
Mortuary Mire seems good although in black this card is in an awkward position where you want to reanimate the creatures that are in the graveyard rather than put them back on top of your library.
I actually like Looming Spires more than Teetering Peaks. Less damage on an empty board, but helps to push through damage when the opponent has blockers roughly the size of your attacker.
Due to red's lack of good utility lands, I might try Spires if I ever include a second cycle of colored utility lands. If I don't do that, then none of these lands has a chance to make my cube.
These would be a slam dunk include in almost any on-color deck you're building, but yeah, hard to justify a spot in the cube. As we get more and more fun utility lands I want more and more to draft like a 4-card per person utility land pack between packs 2 and 3 or something.
Skyline Cascade seems to me like the best of the bunch. You can turn a race around with that kind of effect; it's always been way more underrated on Ajani Vengeant than it ought to be.
I do wonder about Fertile Thicket though. How do the games you lose by playing a CIPT land compare to the games you win by guaranteeing you hit your next land drop? It's going to drastically affect mulligan decisions.
I currently support Gifts Ungiven and am adding Life from the Loam next rotation (I always try to support whatever the theme of the new block is to mix it up). For those playing any of these 2 cards, the black spell land seems VERY promising.
I run a cycle of spell lands (Sandstone Bridge, Halimar Depths, Mortuary Mire, Teetering Peaks, Fertile Thicket). Right now they're in my color section and they've been included whenever they're pulled. I also have a "free" land section that I'm thinking of moving them to. The problem is, if I put them in the colored section, they push out an excellent color card. If I put them in the free-land section, players might pick one of those instead of taking a color-fixing land which is what the free-land section is there for. I believe they belong in the cube and have been fun to play with. So for now, they have earned their place in the color section.
My cube aims to showcase the most powerful spells that were once Standard legal from the Lorwyn block forward. Both the individual cards and the archetypes are heavily influenced by the decks and cards that saw competitive play during their lifetime in Standard (and to a lesser extent Modern). In card selection, preference goes to cards that made a greater impact on any constructed format. An average FNMer should feel nostalgic while playing this cube.
These lands, together with the Blighted lands, are a huge argument in favor of starting a Utility Land Draft in your cube. Simply move any land cards that you think suffer from "worth a deck slot not a cube slot" syndrome into your ULD section, and draft them separately.
Presto change-o! Now your cube has extra space, an ever-more-precious commodity, and your drafters get to play cool lands. There is literally no downside.
"But wait," you might say. "Won't that make for a ton of extra sorting hassle? How do you keep them separate?"
Well, there's many options for that scenario. Some folks use stickers on the inside of their card sleeves. Some keep a list. I made things easy for myself and just put ALL my lands into the ULD. Even duals! That way things are nice and simple: I've got a main Cube full of spells, a Land Cube full of nonbasic lands, and a basic land box full of basic lands.
I highly, HIGHLY recommend trying a ULD to all cube architects everywhere. It is a huge help to me in finding space for cool stuff in my main list, and a huge help to my drafters in building fun decks that run lots of fun lands. Everyone wins when you ULD.
EDIT: To answer Metamind's question, I run all of these and all the Blighteds. My personal favorites are Mortuary Mire and Blighted Cataract, because I often run Ux control builds. My drafters really like the Jund Blighted lands, and I've enjoyed Skyline Cascade myself. The combat-trick-esque common lands haven't been used much yet, nor have the Green common land or the White blighted land. However, they have niche applications in lifegain and top-of-library manipulation decks, so they've stayed in so far.
Utility land drafts are a neat idea but if I were to do it, I wouldn't take out the "regulars" such as dual, fetches, and City of Brass type cards because they add a whole new dynamic to the draft (compared to retail drafting) and play a huge role when it comes to signaling.
Of course there's a downside. The draft dynamic and skill required to balance land vs nonland picks during the draft is an important part of gameplay that is lost entirely with Utility Land Drafting.
Creates logistical hassle. (You need to remove the lands from the card pool after every draft and keep track of two distinct card pools.)
Makes the cube draft no longer work like a regular booster draft.
Removes the tension of how to value lands versus spells during the draft. (Especially if you remove duals from the main cube, too!)
Devalues basic lands. (The more nonbasics you get to play, the less basic lands you need.)
Adds to the complexity and subtracts from the clarity of gameplay. (More cards with abilities among your lands during play.)
Adds to the time it takes to finish the cube draft.
I build my cube because I love booster drafting and drafting a cube enables an infinite number of drafts without the need to buy new product. It also allows me to sculpt the environment, include lots of cool cards from Magic's history and remove all the garbage/filler cards. Despite all this, it is still a booster draft though. The ony difference between drafting regular limited and my cube is the content, not the function. This would no longer be true with an ULD. Adding an ULD to the cube draft would create a new fantasy format that is no longer my beloved booster draft.
Some people like quirky new formats (like Tiny Leaders instead of regular Commander), but those novelty formats are just so different that they are no longer the same thing. I - and almost everyone I know - would rather stick to the tried and true original booster draft format. Not the least because something like ULD does come with a whole bunch of downsides (see above).
Final note: I am aware that there are alternative draft formats like Glimpse, Rochester, Winston, etc. Some I like, some not. They all have in common though that you just do one draft. Not a main spell draft and then an auxiliary land draft after that. Even though they are different, (almost?) none of the downsides that ULD has apply to them.
I do not run an ULD with my cube but a couple people in my group do with theirs. They run all the duals, fetches, shocks, etc. in a separate draft. So I have drafted many times with and without a land draft.
It is true that it changes the entire nature of a booster draft. In addition to not having to value land vs. spells any more you barely have to pay attention to colors at all. I pretty much always go 5-color control because it is so easy with an ULD. You can almost just take the best card with each pick and not even think about your prior picks. For me, this takes most of the fun out of the draft.
Signaling goes out the window and if you do try to stick with mostly two colors you can't be sure that cutting them off from the guys to your left is going to give you a juicy pack 2 - because they too know they don't have to worry much about colors and might go the 4-5c route.
I think it is worth experiencing if you have a chance. But I much prefer traditional booster draft.
I think it really depends on how you run your ULD. It does't have to rob the main draft of the land vs non-land dynamic.
The ULD version I tried only had 1 available pick for additional fixing, so you still had to prioritize fixing in the main draft if you wanted to go 3+ colors (and you can do it with zero fixing options too if you want). The ULD in this capacity functions more as a way to get flavorful land picks (things not good enough for main draft but which you'd love to have in a specific deck depending on what you build). It's cool and I recommend everyone try it at least once before dismissing it.
It didn't stick with my group as the additional time was a buzz kill (though I suspect it gets easier and faster the more you do it). In my view, that is the only drawback (the extra time added to draft). But I doubt that is a big deal for most groups.
As far as the BFZ spell lands go... I've tested Mortuary Mire. It's a bit awkward, more so than I was expecting. A couple times it was wonderful (getting me a second use out of something awesome). Other times I wanted the creature now not next turn, and delaying a land drop was not always worth it. I like the B cycling land better FWIW.
If only 1 slot in the utility land pack goes to fixing, what are the other cards going in there? There aren't 120 nonbasics worth compiling without fixing lands being a huge majority of them. And if you use less than 1 pack per player worth of lands, every draft winds up with the exact same utility lands in every pool. The good ones will get played, and the bad ones will be excluded in favor of basics. Leading to a stale experience with the same nonbasics being selected draft after draft. The ULDs with fixing were diverse and deep enough to make them worth doing ...but it wrecked the dynamic/process/tension/skill that makes traditional cube draft enjoyable. And ULDs without fixing aren't deep enough to provide any variance in experience. Neither option worked for my cube, or any other cube I played that used it. There was another local cube group that loved their ULDs (they also dabbled in archetype expansions, precon packs, partial sealed and other draft alternatives), but when me and my crew were guest drafting, we found the experience to be severely lacking in strategic depth. Different strokes, I guess.
I did 4 rounds and you got to take 3 picks. First round was fixing (can't remember what - pain land or temple of choice I think were the options I used at the time). Second were mono-colored lands (and there are a ton of those). Third was colorless. Fourth was guild and themed lands (you could use two picks to get the artifact land package or lotus lands which were both more than 2 cards). The rest of the nonbasic were in the main cube (fetch, shock, manlands, certain stellar other cards that would have been auto-picks in ULD like stronghold, shelldock, wasteland, etc).
I did 4 rounds and you got to take 3 picks. First round was fixing (can't remember what - pain land or temple of choice I think were the options I used at the time). Second were mono-colored lands (and there are a ton of those). Third was colorless. Fourth was guild and themed lands (you could use two picks to get the artifact land package or lotus lands which were both more than 2 cards). The rest of the nonbasic were in the main cube (fetch, shock, manlands, certain stellar other cards that would have been auto-picks in ULD like stronghold, shelldock, wasteland, etc).
This sounds like a huge P.I.T.A to manage and coordinate. I regularly draft with people at my LGS and a good chunk of them didn't start playing until the modern era. Sometimes the complexity of some of the cards / interactions can be intimidating, the last thing I'd want to do is make the process even more complicated.
This sounds like a huge P.I.T.A to manage and coordinate. I regularly draft with people at my LGS and a good chunk of them didn't start playing until the modern era. Sometimes the complexity of some of the cards / interactions can be intimidating, the last thing I'd want to do is make the process even more complicated.
Yup. It was. And that is probably a big reason why it only happened one draft. I tried doing it in rounds with small groups of lands as a way to not overwhelm people, but it didn't work out that way unfortunately. My group is a tad too casual for the added complexity. FWIW though, most people who try running a ULD find their groups like it.
These are interesting, the black one especially has caught my eye. The blue and white ones are okay, not feeling the green one, and the red one is probably worse than Teetering Peaks unfortunately.
Thoughts?
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Sandstone Bridge would be good if white didn't depend on hitting its creatures on curve from 1-4. Still seems ok, vigilance is an underrated mechanic.
Mortuary Mire seems good although in black this card is in an awkward position where you want to reanimate the creatures that are in the graveyard rather than put them back on top of your library.
I don't think Looming Spires is better than Teetering Peaks
Fertile Thicket seems meh at best. Maybe the cool interaction between Oracle of Mul Daya and Courser of Kruphix make this ok but nothing more than that.
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Due to red's lack of good utility lands, I might try Spires if I ever include a second cycle of colored utility lands. If I don't do that, then none of these lands has a chance to make my cube.
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I do wonder about Fertile Thicket though. How do the games you lose by playing a CIPT land compare to the games you win by guaranteeing you hit your next land drop? It's going to drastically affect mulligan decisions.
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My cube aims to showcase the most powerful spells that were once Standard legal from the Lorwyn block forward. Both the individual cards and the archetypes are heavily influenced by the decks and cards that saw competitive play during their lifetime in Standard (and to a lesser extent Modern). In card selection, preference goes to cards that made a greater impact on any constructed format. An average FNMer should feel nostalgic while playing this cube.
Presto change-o! Now your cube has extra space, an ever-more-precious commodity, and your drafters get to play cool lands. There is literally no downside.
"But wait," you might say. "Won't that make for a ton of extra sorting hassle? How do you keep them separate?"
Well, there's many options for that scenario. Some folks use stickers on the inside of their card sleeves. Some keep a list. I made things easy for myself and just put ALL my lands into the ULD. Even duals! That way things are nice and simple: I've got a main Cube full of spells, a Land Cube full of nonbasic lands, and a basic land box full of basic lands.
I highly, HIGHLY recommend trying a ULD to all cube architects everywhere. It is a huge help to me in finding space for cool stuff in my main list, and a huge help to my drafters in building fun decks that run lots of fun lands. Everyone wins when you ULD.
EDIT: To answer Metamind's question, I run all of these and all the Blighteds. My personal favorites are Mortuary Mire and Blighted Cataract, because I often run Ux control builds. My drafters really like the Jund Blighted lands, and I've enjoyed Skyline Cascade myself. The combat-trick-esque common lands haven't been used much yet, nor have the Green common land or the White blighted land. However, they have niche applications in lifegain and top-of-library manipulation decks, so they've stayed in so far.
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Some people like quirky new formats (like Tiny Leaders instead of regular Commander), but those novelty formats are just so different that they are no longer the same thing. I - and almost everyone I know - would rather stick to the tried and true original booster draft format. Not the least because something like ULD does come with a whole bunch of downsides (see above).
Final note: I am aware that there are alternative draft formats like Glimpse, Rochester, Winston, etc. Some I like, some not. They all have in common though that you just do one draft. Not a main spell draft and then an auxiliary land draft after that. Even though they are different, (almost?) none of the downsides that ULD has apply to them.
Uril, the Miststalker RGW -- Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre C -- Vhati il-Dal BG -- Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer RW -- Animar, Soul of Elements URG
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker R -- Maga, Traitor to Mortals B -- Ghave, Guru of Spores BGW -- Sliver Hivelord WUBRG
It is true that it changes the entire nature of a booster draft. In addition to not having to value land vs. spells any more you barely have to pay attention to colors at all. I pretty much always go 5-color control because it is so easy with an ULD. You can almost just take the best card with each pick and not even think about your prior picks. For me, this takes most of the fun out of the draft.
Signaling goes out the window and if you do try to stick with mostly two colors you can't be sure that cutting them off from the guys to your left is going to give you a juicy pack 2 - because they too know they don't have to worry much about colors and might go the 4-5c route.
I think it is worth experiencing if you have a chance. But I much prefer traditional booster draft.
The ULD version I tried only had 1 available pick for additional fixing, so you still had to prioritize fixing in the main draft if you wanted to go 3+ colors (and you can do it with zero fixing options too if you want). The ULD in this capacity functions more as a way to get flavorful land picks (things not good enough for main draft but which you'd love to have in a specific deck depending on what you build). It's cool and I recommend everyone try it at least once before dismissing it.
It didn't stick with my group as the additional time was a buzz kill (though I suspect it gets easier and faster the more you do it). In my view, that is the only drawback (the extra time added to draft). But I doubt that is a big deal for most groups.
As far as the BFZ spell lands go... I've tested Mortuary Mire. It's a bit awkward, more so than I was expecting. A couple times it was wonderful (getting me a second use out of something awesome). Other times I wanted the creature now not next turn, and delaying a land drop was not always worth it. I like the B cycling land better FWIW.
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
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http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
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My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
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http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
This sounds like a huge P.I.T.A to manage and coordinate. I regularly draft with people at my LGS and a good chunk of them didn't start playing until the modern era. Sometimes the complexity of some of the cards / interactions can be intimidating, the last thing I'd want to do is make the process even more complicated.
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Yup. It was. And that is probably a big reason why it only happened one draft. I tried doing it in rounds with small groups of lands as a way to not overwhelm people, but it didn't work out that way unfortunately. My group is a tad too casual for the added complexity. FWIW though, most people who try running a ULD find their groups like it.
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/