Rumor is that's not exactly true. You have the option of playing their land side any time you can play a land (from any zone). So according to some folks that have had early access for testing, you can play them (as lands) off the top of your library with Courser effects (like Radha, Heart of Keld) and from your 'yard with Crucible effects. But only when you have the option to PLAY the card. You're right that it can't be targeted by Loam or W&6 in the 'yard. We'll have to wait for the official rules release to see how they work exactly ...but there may be additional interactions in store for these cards.
I'm higher on these effects than WTWLF123 by his example because reducing cost by 1 [...]
This has been the funniest part of the process to me so far. I've been having to defend my position that they're currently being undervalued by the cube community at large ...and I know I'm intentionally undervaluing them!
I put the 1 "tax" estimation on there for me to be able to build an upfront baseline with, which will likely need to be revised and expanded later. These cards are likely worth well more than 1-mana, but I'm trying to err on the side of being conservative with these evaluations.
I don't think anyone said it's always better than cycling. But I do think it's better than cycling, and by quite a bit.
There's two reasons why I might be cycling a card. It's either because I want to, or because I need to. When I want to cycle a card it's because I think any random card might be an improvement, so I'm willing to trade it for an unknown card. However, when I NEED to cycle a nonland card, the vast majority of the time it's because I need to hit a land. And in those instances, which I believe occur more often than the others, the land option simply can't miss. Whereas cycling won't hit any specific type of card you're looking for with any level of certainty.
Between being capable of finding a land 100% of the time I need it to and the impact that MDFCs have on the landscape of opening hand land/spell ratios, I think they're a significantly bigger advantage than cycling is. The existence of situations where cycling is better doesn't change these aspects of the evaluation. Originally I thought that the "situational" cycling cards would be better off with cycling following the same logic you did. But after simple goldfishing with Jwari Disruption it became apparent that my logic was flawed. 100% land when you need one + guaranteed land instead of cycling when you're making mulliganing decisions has just been much better than cycling so far. This mechanic allows you to keep otherwise unkeepabble hands, and cycling when you NEED to hit a land can't miss. Just so good.
you're going to find the spell side to be dead a good bit of the time and be wishing for an island.
This is the case with almost every non-land card. Every spell can be a dead card in your hand based on the board state or lack of available mana. But at least with MDFCs, they can be a land in cases where you really need them to be. This likely won't replace a basic for me during deckbuilding in the same way the mythic MDFCs do, since they have to enter tapped. It'll be a playable non-land card that can be used in a land in situations where you'd otherwise be stuck with yet another uncastable card in your hand.
Our respective lenses of evaluation are different too. Deciding whether or not a card can make the cut in a powered 360-card cube is a different question than it is for an unpowered 1440-card cube, for example. I used to be guilty of the "it's not good enough for the current iteration of my cube so therefore it's not good enough for cubes" stances, but even at 720, the powerlevel of some of the cards in my on-deck binder is staggering. Cube is a living format, so don't dismiss cards that may not make your initial wave of additions too hastily, because there could be some real gems that get overlooked.
That example gets brought up a lot, but I think it's a big misstep in evaluation. There's a HUGE difference between a land with a marginal (and often nonexistent) upside, and a card that is both a spell AND a land. I know we want to try to quantify these MDFCs with a known existing mechanic, but they're not really comparable. Flagstones can't ever function as a meaningful spell, and it can't ever change an unkeepable opening hand into a keepable one by meaningfully changing the land/spell ratio. And it doesn't have anywhere near the ceiling of having access to a 3-mana clone copying a bomb can.
I explained where I personally draw the line in my post above. Maybe you missed that part.
For me, I value the tapped land to be worth approximately 1 as a "tax" on the nonland side. So if the spell is something I would cube for 1 less, than the tapland MDFC is something I'm interested in. Mythics have a different metric since the land can enter untapped.
Obviously if the card isn't a card you'd ever want, then don't play it. But a 2cc self-Clone would be sweet. So I'll give a 3cc one a shot since it has a land stapled to it.
In reality, I expect this mechanic to be worth far more than 1. So even spells that are overcosted by 2 or even 3 mana might very well be amazing cards we should be cubing with. But even in an extremely conservative evaluation, a 1 tax is more than safe, and all the cards that fit that criteria should play well in my estimation.
Does adding the option to play it as a tapped, single-color land really make playable a card that couldn't beat out Goblin Instigator?
Yes.
We don't play Quench, but Miscalculation is great. We don't play Naturalize, but Wilt is fantastic. I think adding a tapped land option to a spell is even better than cycling (and by a pretty big margin, too). So ya, it's entirely possible for a card to go from bad to good because you add a flexible option to it. Any options we add on to the card that give us more ways to use them have historically been good. Kicker, cycling ...they all give us more than one thing we can do with our cards. There's no greater gap to leap than land to nonland and vice versa, and these MDFCs are going to be awesome. The land option is likely worth about 1 in terms of the acceptable "tax" that it adds to the non-land side ...that's the equivalent of adding 1-mana cycling that can't miss a land when you need to dig for one. So when I look at the Spell//Tapland combo card, if I would cube the spell if it cost 1 mana less, I'm interested in the MDFC. So in this case, I would play a 2-mana clone. So a 3-mana one with a land stapled to it looks great to me. And they change the keepable range of opening hands they're a part of too. Just amazing designs, really.
This looks good to me. The self-Clone is restrictive, but it's always a tapland too. And when you do have a target, 2U is a great rate. I'll be testing this one too.
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This has been the funniest part of the process to me so far. I've been having to defend my position that they're currently being undervalued by the cube community at large ...and I know I'm intentionally undervaluing them!
I put the 1 "tax" estimation on there for me to be able to build an upfront baseline with, which will likely need to be revised and expanded later. These cards are likely worth well more than 1-mana, but I'm trying to err on the side of being conservative with these evaluations.
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There's two reasons why I might be cycling a card. It's either because I want to, or because I need to. When I want to cycle a card it's because I think any random card might be an improvement, so I'm willing to trade it for an unknown card. However, when I NEED to cycle a nonland card, the vast majority of the time it's because I need to hit a land. And in those instances, which I believe occur more often than the others, the land option simply can't miss. Whereas cycling won't hit any specific type of card you're looking for with any level of certainty.
Between being capable of finding a land 100% of the time I need it to and the impact that MDFCs have on the landscape of opening hand land/spell ratios, I think they're a significantly bigger advantage than cycling is. The existence of situations where cycling is better doesn't change these aspects of the evaluation. Originally I thought that the "situational" cycling cards would be better off with cycling following the same logic you did. But after simple goldfishing with Jwari Disruption it became apparent that my logic was flawed. 100% land when you need one + guaranteed land instead of cycling when you're making mulliganing decisions has just been much better than cycling so far. This mechanic allows you to keep otherwise unkeepabble hands, and cycling when you NEED to hit a land can't miss. Just so good.
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This is the case with almost every non-land card. Every spell can be a dead card in your hand based on the board state or lack of available mana. But at least with MDFCs, they can be a land in cases where you really need them to be. This likely won't replace a basic for me during deckbuilding in the same way the mythic MDFCs do, since they have to enter tapped. It'll be a playable non-land card that can be used in a land in situations where you'd otherwise be stuck with yet another uncastable card in your hand.
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My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
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I explained where I personally draw the line in my post above. Maybe you missed that part.
For me, I value the tapped land to be worth approximately 1 as a "tax" on the nonland side. So if the spell is something I would cube for 1 less, than the tapland MDFC is something I'm interested in. Mythics have a different metric since the land can enter untapped.
Obviously if the card isn't a card you'd ever want, then don't play it. But a 2cc self-Clone would be sweet. So I'll give a 3cc one a shot since it has a land stapled to it.
In reality, I expect this mechanic to be worth far more than 1. So even spells that are overcosted by 2 or even 3 mana might very well be amazing cards we should be cubing with. But even in an extremely conservative evaluation, a 1 tax is more than safe, and all the cards that fit that criteria should play well in my estimation.
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That's because that card is bad.
Yes.
We don't play Quench, but Miscalculation is great. We don't play Naturalize, but Wilt is fantastic. I think adding a tapped land option to a spell is even better than cycling (and by a pretty big margin, too). So ya, it's entirely possible for a card to go from bad to good because you add a flexible option to it. Any options we add on to the card that give us more ways to use them have historically been good. Kicker, cycling ...they all give us more than one thing we can do with our cards. There's no greater gap to leap than land to nonland and vice versa, and these MDFCs are going to be awesome. The land option is likely worth about 1 in terms of the acceptable "tax" that it adds to the non-land side ...that's the equivalent of adding 1-mana cycling that can't miss a land when you need to dig for one. So when I look at the Spell//Tapland combo card, if I would cube the spell if it cost 1 mana less, I'm interested in the MDFC. So in this case, I would play a 2-mana clone. So a 3-mana one with a land stapled to it looks great to me. And they change the keepable range of opening hands they're a part of too. Just amazing designs, really.
I think you should probably be higher on it.
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My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
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