I have been playing with all snow basics for a long time and eventually banned Cold Snap because I think it was the one card I had that made snow basics feel like a punishment instead of a fun benefit. I also never cubed with Freyalise's Radiance, although that card is probably a bit worse then Cold Snap.
I still have Zombie Musher, but a 2/3 unblockable regenerator for 3B is in line with the overall power level of Peasant, even if it punishes players for having snow basics.
Is the assumption with Freyalise's Radiance that they will have snow lands and you won't? Because you aren't going to be able to pay the CU long if your lands are snow as well.
All my basics are snow for all players, without a specific opt-in or opt-out. With Freyalise's Radiance, the assumption would be that you have some sort of way around the effect, like mana elves, artifact mana, etc. At that point, it kind of becomes a Winter Orb with cumulative upkeep. There are probably some situations where even two turns of locking out an opponent from mana could win the game.
I've run a snow peasant cube since Modern Horizons. My own sentiment is that snow should add to gameplay, not take it away. From that perspective, I wouldn't include Cold Snap or Freyalise's Radiance.
With the release of Kaldheim and more importantly the snow dual cycle, is it perhaps time to re-evaluate cards like Nature's Lore, Into the North and Farseek? Being able to fetch duals off of a ramp spell is something we've not been able to really do barring the Coldsnap half-cycle.
I think the snow duals aren't really worth playing in general if you don't have a lot of snow synergy. There aren't enough significant synergies from individual cards like Farseek or Arbor Elf to be better than Karoos or the Khans gain lands (which are even less popular with the addition of the Thriving lands). The best argument for them would probably just be swapping in the green ones for whatever duals you're already playing since green cares the most about basic land types, but even then it's probably okay at best.
If you really wanted to you could play them in combination with slow fetches. It would give you good mana, but fetching a tap land with a tap land is so slow it's probably not worth considering.
I think they're the third best, as minor synergy is better than none, my general thoughts is I don't run karoos due to them being specifically very powerful for defensive decks, whereas this gives green, imo the weakest colour a minor boost but not affecting others if we compare to guildgates.
I'm not even under the impression anyone at any size under 500 should be running etbt duals. Between trilands, thriving lands, and vivids, that should be enough color specific fixing.
I'm not even under the impression anyone at any size under 500 should be running etbt duals. Between trilands, thriving lands, and vivids, that should be enough color specific fixing.
Two-color lands simply don't do enough. They always enter tapped, but they only match about 10% of decks, which makes them worse than a basic 90% of the time. (It's 10% of two color decks, 30% of three color decks, and 0% of monocolor decks). So, whether they are Guildgates, Refuges, or snow duals, I don't run any of them.
At 240 (2 player cube) I currently only run lands that can go into any deck. 5 Vivids, 5 Thriving, 5 City of Brass and 1 Gemstone Mine. Before the arrival of the thriving lands and breaking singleton for City of Brass, I ran the trilands. City of Brass is great for supporting 2 colour aggro. Having enough 1 drops in white AND red would take too many precious slots. City of Brass fixes that.
I'm considering adding the bounce lands for GW, GU and GB to support Gxy ramp decks. Bounce lands almost reads as an etbt dual with "etb draw a land." That should be nice when needing 7 mana for the curve toppers. Initially I will add these to my hybrid section.
Edit: I also used to run Ash Barrens, Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse. With a baby on the arm the last 6 months, we decided to cut all cards that forced us to shuffle one handed...
I do not understand this aversion to two-color fixing at Peasant. I understand there are a lot of differences between Peasant and regular Rare cubes, but there is a reason the CubeTutor 360 Average Cube has 44 fixing lands in it. The point of Cube is that the average card is very playable and that you should be deep on playable cards. Mana fixing makes all decks run smoother and increases the power level by letting you cast your spells consistently. I think every Cube deck would happily trade their 15th and 20th best cards and two basics for their 24th and 25th best cards and two ETBT lands, so why not give players a chance to make that happen?
Also, two color fixing lands are like archetype support cards, sometimes they get taken early and sometimes they get taken late. How many decks really want Mother Bear or Chained Brute or Storm Fleet Aerialist? Probably just as many as want a Gruul land in their decks. This is not me saying to cut archetype specific cards but to compare two-color lands to other sometimes underpowered support cards that also need a specific deck.
This is also not to say people need to flood their CUbes with two-color lands either. I play 46 mana fixing lands, including Karoos and snow duals, at 512. That means I have about 32.3 for a 8-person draft (360/512 * 46), which is an extra land per person compared to your current Cube (which is 24.3 - 360/400 * 27). I think this makes decks better on average even if it means more lands going around late in drafts.
But 2 colour decks don't want more than 3 fixing lands even if they draft them. A 3/7/7 split is good enough mana that another etbt dual is mostly worse than a basic, and even 2/8/7 is good enough without many CC cards. So if all lands are rainbow (trilands being effectively rainbow), you don't need more than 3 per person + however much lenience you want for undervaluing fixing, splashing, or 3+ colour decks. So at 360 you only want a maximum of 24 + lenience to get good mana, which we can do since we have 27 good rainbow fixers now (tris + vivids + thrivings + 3 fetches + City of Brass + Aether Hub + Gemstone Mine + Mirrodin's Core).
Outside of bailing out players who didn't bother drafting lands I don't really see how fixers (past 3 per person + lenience) are ever better than even just decent archetype cards, and that's even ignoring that dual lands are effectively gold cards but are being compared against mono coloured cards.
Probably just as many as want a Gruul land in their decks.
Monocolor decks: 0/5 want a Gruul land
Two-color decks: 1/10 want a Gruul land
Three-color decks: 3/10 want a Gruul land
Four-color decks: 3/5 want a Gruul land
Five-color decks: 1/1 want a Gruul land
So, of the 31 possible deck color combos, only 8 can use a Gruul land, or just over 25%.
But, considering 4-5 color decks are pretty rare, it's more like 4/25 or 16%.
And, if your drafters rarely splash a third color, it's more like 1/15, or 7%.
That just makes it a dead card for any of the other color-combos, not worthy of any consideration. Rainbow lands, Thriving lands, and trilands are at least a choice for more players.
And your list of Mother Bear / Chained Brute / Storm Fleet Aerialist - they may not be great, but they at least offer a castable blocker in 40% of guild decks, which is 4x higher than the decks that would run a given guild land over a basic land.
@Purplemurasaki- I think saying "3 per person + lenience" reasonably gets you to 4 per drafter in an 8-person draft. It is certainly not the case that every drafter always gets to draft exactly the fixing they want. Sometimes you do not know exactly which colors you are in until pack 2 or you speculate early on a pathway that closes up. When you also consider that certain decks might want 5+ fixing lands, it gets pretty easy to find a home for all those lands in a draft. I definitely understand that too many ETBT lands becomes redundant, but I can easily see playing 1 cycle of duals at 400-500 cards and 2+ cycles for cubes over 500 cards.
@FunkyDragon- I want to advocate for considering duals to be archetype support that is specific from Cube to Cube. Maybe your Cube is evenly split between each mono-color deck and each color-pair, but if you want your Cube to instead be 10% one-color decks, 50% two-color decks, 30% three-color decks and 10% four-color decks, suddenly 20% of decks want a Gruul dual land. To me, that is where most low-tier archetype cards sit, which is where I imagine cards like Mother Bear, Chained Brute, and Storm Fleet Aerialist are, even if you can begrudgingly play them as a 23rd card sometimes.
How many drafters in your Cube want to play a black +1/+1 counter support deck (Oona's Blackguard), or a red graveyard deck (Gibbering Fiend? Those cards are in your Cube because you want those decks to be supported, the same way I play dual lands to support multi-color decks.
The upshot of all of this is that I think supporting multi-colored decks should be the same as supporting any archetype- if you want people to draft those decks in your Cube, you have to support them. Also, I want to push back on Cubes here being too similar, and let people try different things if they want to.
I have the Khans Gain lands in my 360. But I don't consider thriving Lands to be modern legal and I don't want the stupidly strong fixing of the vivid lands.
They absolutely are late picks and I don't expect aggro decks in colour would pick them either.
Basically, I don't want fixing to be too easy like vivid lands (or signets) allow things to be sensible.
Maybe Thriving lands will be printed in a modern legal set and then I'd consider them, probably leaning towards them being the right level of fixing for my cube.
I omit the tri-lands and vivids to prevent 3-4 colour value decks being too prevalent, since in early renditions of my cube they proved the dominant archetype.
Even in your scenario where 20% of decks want a gruul land because you're pushing for more 3colored decks, you still have the thriving, vivid, and trilands as the best support for that.
And while a fringe playable might not be desired in 20% of decks, it's still always at least playable in about half of your decks. The difference between "I ended up with mother bear but I'm not a graveyard-centric deck" and "I ended up with gruul lands and I dont have red cards" is a big deal.
(Also, full disclosure, I think you did your math wrong purple. I'm at work and rushing, but I got 31% of decks being r/g with your hypothetical distribution)
If youre hellbent on making your cube the 3+ color cube, then something like the snow duals I suppose would accomplish that. After the good lands, of course.
//
Big bird
That's a common concern. Usually a smaller gold section and a more pushed aggro section tends to clear that up. Especially if blue aggro is a thing, diluting a control deck's ability to lean into a deep cardpool.
There are no downshifts in rarity in Timespiral remastered?
I've been waiting to see some, but I didn't notice any, either. I guess it makes sense, as they are trying to replicate the block, not make something new.
My favorite part, though, is that Mark Rosewater said they considered upshifting a common to mythic:
Sprout Swarm was a common creature from Future Sight. It was one of our mix-and-match cards that took nonevergreen named keywords that hadn't appeared in the same block and put them together. Convoke and buyback seemed like they would work well together (because buyback is an additional cost you can pay for with convoke), so I put them together on a card. It seemed cute and innocent when I designed it. The card would later go on to be a major problem in Draft, as it was near impossible to beat once it got going. (Once you created enough Saproling creature tokens, they started generating new creatures without any need for mana.)
The design team tried moving the card to uncommon, but it was still causing problems. They then moved the card to rare. It was still causing problems. They considered mythic rare but realized that it was causing more problems than it was worth and chose to pull it from the set.
Even in your scenario where 20% of decks want a gruul land because you're pushing for more 3colored decks, you still have the thriving, vivid, and trilands as the best support for that.
And while a fringe playable might not be desired in 20% of decks, it's still always at least playable in about half of your decks. The difference between "I ended up with mother bear but I'm not a graveyard-centric deck" and "I ended up with gruul lands and I dont have red cards" is a big deal.
Per my Cube philosophy, I do not put any stock in a card being "at least playable in about half of your decks." For me, the point of Cube is that all the cards are playable and a Cube should be built around raising the ceiling of the average deck instead of raising the floor.
Here is my hypothetical: You are in a Peasant Cube draft and it is Pack 3, Pick 7. You have 36 cards so far and are trending towards a Simic deck with one piece of graveyard support, Fact or Fiction. You have a choice between Mother Bear and Gruul Turf.
Scenario #1- You are solidly Simic, with about 26 blue and green cards, 2 cards with white mana costs, 2 cards with black mana costs, and 2 cards with red mana costs. You also have 2 artifacts and 2 pieces of A-Tier fixing (Thrivings, Vivids, Trilands, and various 5-color lands). Mother Bear is in the bottom 25% of blue/green cards you drafted and may get played depending on curve or matchup, but is easily replaceable. Gruul Turf might get played as land 17.5, but likely would not be played.
Scenario #2- You are likely Simic, with about 20 blue and green cards, 4 cards with white mana costs, 4 cards with black mana costs, and 4 cards with red mana costs. You also have 2 artifacts and 2 pieces of A-Tier fixing (Thrivings, Vivids, Trilands, and various 5-color lands). Mother Bear would very likely make your deck as a 22nd/23rd card. Gruul Turf is now your third piece of fixing for red, along with the 2 pieces of A-Tier fixing you have. Drafting it makes it much easier to splash any powerful single red mana spells among the 4 you drafted.
Scenario #3- You are hopefully Simic, with about 8 blue cards and 8 green cards, along with 5 cards with white mana costs, 5 cards with black mana costs, and 5 cards with red mana costs. You also have 3 artifacts and 2 pieces of A-Tier fixing (Thrivings, Vivids, Trilands, and various 5-color lands). Mother Bear is 100% making your deck and you are trending towards a 3rd color. If a few of those red cards are generally stronger than Mother Bear, you can take Gruul Turf to make your mana smoother and your deck stronger.
In my ideal Cube, I want most players to end up in scenario A where they have a lot of playable cards and a lot of choices. Lower-tier archetype cards end up in the 1 (or possibly 2) decks that really want them. Cube construction obviously makes a lot of difference in which archetypes are viable.
When you get to scenarios B and C, each of the cards is playable in its own way. I tend towards that B-Tier fixing (two-color duals) since it raises the ceiling more than it raises the floor of a Cube deck. My Cube is designed to be very powerful in a lot of weird ways. I have not banned anything for power, I run snow cards, I run Conspiracies, I am even about to run 5 Mystery Booster Test Cards that I think are cool and roughly Peasant-level power wise.
With all this said, I think we are roughly on the same page here. I would find it very difficult to support running a dual cycle at 360, would probably run 1 cycle at 400+ and 2 at 500+. I also think our difference come from distinct philosophies on what a Cube is and what it should be. Some of this might come from the fact that you only draft 40 cards per player, meaning having those mono-colored cards is much more important to making decks functional.
I think I have an idea of the different evaluations you have.
I think the most important difference is how large the draft pool is. If you are using 360 cards for 8 players, and each player picks a 2 colour deck only 20 % of duals would be passed around as last picks. Duals would also ensure that if you find an open guild, you are likely to get fixing in your colours. If your goal is that each player should have 3 fixing lands for their guild, 3 sets of duals might be better for achieving that goal. If you only have vivids and the like, the competition for those might cause newer drafters to not get any fixing if they fail to evaluate how early they will be picked up.
When drafting with only 2 players, the numbers would be exactly opposite with 80 % lands being last picks. For my 2 player cube, I'm not even able to support aggro decks with the recommended 7 (?) one drops in a single colour. I considered just cutting all one drops, but instead added 5 City of Brass to make 2 colour aggro viable. In a 2 player draft environment you have a smaller draft pool and have to cut down on any card that won't have a shot of making it into any players deck. That is why I only have lands that can fix any colour.
I did a bit of a test draft after Strixhaven updates and ended up with a pretty crazy pool. Being as soft-hearted as I am, I was unable to force myself to cut a lot of cards so here's a question: With that pool, what would you have done differently? (It's a blue and white heavy pool with a decent number of goodstuff but a big concentration of tokens and removal.)
Midnight Haunting and Icy Manpulator were probably the hardest cuts for me and I think I mostly agree with your choices there. The Astrolabe vs. a land seems mostly up to taste.
I went with Mum since I figured that she was flexible enough to still help stall the board and protect my win-cons or push them through where needed. I can kind of understand Looter before her but was there any particular reason that you completely excluded Mum?
Only other cards I'm 100% pre-banning are Sol Ring and kinda Mana Drain (though that's half for budget reasons).
I still have Zombie Musher, but a 2/3 unblockable regenerator for 3B is in line with the overall power level of Peasant, even if it punishes players for having snow basics.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/peasantsnowcube
-- Updated with Outlaws of Thunder Junction
The PioneWer Peasant CUbe
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pionewer
-- Updated with Murders at Karlov Manor
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/peasantsnowcube
-- Updated with Outlaws of Thunder Junction
The PioneWer Peasant CUbe
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pionewer
-- Updated with Murders at Karlov Manor
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
450 Peasant Cube:
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/io8
If you really wanted to you could play them in combination with slow fetches. It would give you good mana, but fetching a tap land with a tap land is so slow it's probably not worth considering.
450 Peasant Cube:
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/io8
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
- 10 Trilands
- 5 Thriving Lands
- 5 Vivid lands
- Aether Hub
- Ash Barrens
- Evolving Wilds
- Mirrodin's Core
- Myriad Landscape
- Terramorphic Expanse
- Cave of Temptation (the weakest color-fixer, more for +1/+1 counters)
- Rogue's Passage (The only non-fixer)
Two-color lands simply don't do enough. They always enter tapped, but they only match about 10% of decks, which makes them worse than a basic 90% of the time. (It's 10% of two color decks, 30% of three color decks, and 0% of monocolor decks). So, whether they are Guildgates, Refuges, or snow duals, I don't run any of them.
2023 Average Peasant Cube|and Discussion
Because I have more decks than fit in a signature
Useful Resources:
MTGSalvation tags
EDHREC
ManabaseCrafter
I'm considering adding the bounce lands for GW, GU and GB to support Gxy ramp decks. Bounce lands almost reads as an etbt dual with "etb draw a land." That should be nice when needing 7 mana for the curve toppers. Initially I will add these to my hybrid section.
Edit: I also used to run Ash Barrens, Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse. With a baby on the arm the last 6 months, we decided to cut all cards that forced us to shuffle one handed...
Also, two color fixing lands are like archetype support cards, sometimes they get taken early and sometimes they get taken late. How many decks really want Mother Bear or Chained Brute or Storm Fleet Aerialist? Probably just as many as want a Gruul land in their decks. This is not me saying to cut archetype specific cards but to compare two-color lands to other sometimes underpowered support cards that also need a specific deck.
This is also not to say people need to flood their CUbes with two-color lands either. I play 46 mana fixing lands, including Karoos and snow duals, at 512. That means I have about 32.3 for a 8-person draft (360/512 * 46), which is an extra land per person compared to your current Cube (which is 24.3 - 360/400 * 27). I think this makes decks better on average even if it means more lands going around late in drafts.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/peasantsnowcube
-- Updated with Outlaws of Thunder Junction
The PioneWer Peasant CUbe
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pionewer
-- Updated with Murders at Karlov Manor
Outside of bailing out players who didn't bother drafting lands I don't really see how fixers (past 3 per person + lenience) are ever better than even just decent archetype cards, and that's even ignoring that dual lands are effectively gold cards but are being compared against mono coloured cards.
Two-color decks: 1/10 want a Gruul land
Three-color decks: 3/10 want a Gruul land
Four-color decks: 3/5 want a Gruul land
Five-color decks: 1/1 want a Gruul land
So, of the 31 possible deck color combos, only 8 can use a Gruul land, or just over 25%.
But, considering 4-5 color decks are pretty rare, it's more like 4/25 or 16%.
And, if your drafters rarely splash a third color, it's more like 1/15, or 7%.
That just makes it a dead card for any of the other color-combos, not worthy of any consideration. Rainbow lands, Thriving lands, and trilands are at least a choice for more players.
And your list of Mother Bear / Chained Brute / Storm Fleet Aerialist - they may not be great, but they at least offer a castable blocker in 40% of guild decks, which is 4x higher than the decks that would run a given guild land over a basic land.
2023 Average Peasant Cube|and Discussion
Because I have more decks than fit in a signature
Useful Resources:
MTGSalvation tags
EDHREC
ManabaseCrafter
@FunkyDragon- I want to advocate for considering duals to be archetype support that is specific from Cube to Cube. Maybe your Cube is evenly split between each mono-color deck and each color-pair, but if you want your Cube to instead be 10% one-color decks, 50% two-color decks, 30% three-color decks and 10% four-color decks, suddenly 20% of decks want a Gruul dual land. To me, that is where most low-tier archetype cards sit, which is where I imagine cards like Mother Bear, Chained Brute, and Storm Fleet Aerialist are, even if you can begrudgingly play them as a 23rd card sometimes.
How many drafters in your Cube want to play a black +1/+1 counter support deck (Oona's Blackguard), or a red graveyard deck (Gibbering Fiend? Those cards are in your Cube because you want those decks to be supported, the same way I play dual lands to support multi-color decks.
The upshot of all of this is that I think supporting multi-colored decks should be the same as supporting any archetype- if you want people to draft those decks in your Cube, you have to support them. Also, I want to push back on Cubes here being too similar, and let people try different things if they want to.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/peasantsnowcube
-- Updated with Outlaws of Thunder Junction
The PioneWer Peasant CUbe
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pionewer
-- Updated with Murders at Karlov Manor
They absolutely are late picks and I don't expect aggro decks in colour would pick them either.
Basically, I don't want fixing to be too easy like vivid lands (or signets) allow things to be sensible.
Maybe Thriving lands will be printed in a modern legal set and then I'd consider them, probably leaning towards them being the right level of fixing for my cube.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
450 Peasant Cube:
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/io8
And while a fringe playable might not be desired in 20% of decks, it's still always at least playable in about half of your decks. The difference between "I ended up with mother bear but I'm not a graveyard-centric deck" and "I ended up with gruul lands and I dont have red cards" is a big deal.
(Also, full disclosure, I think you did your math wrong purple. I'm at work and rushing, but I got 31% of decks being r/g with your hypothetical distribution)
If youre hellbent on making your cube the 3+ color cube, then something like the snow duals I suppose would accomplish that. After the good lands, of course.
//
Big bird
That's a common concern. Usually a smaller gold section and a more pushed aggro section tends to clear that up. Especially if blue aggro is a thing, diluting a control deck's ability to lean into a deep cardpool.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
My favorite part, though, is that Mark Rosewater said they considered upshifting a common to mythic:Seems a bit extreme to me.
2023 Average Peasant Cube|and Discussion
Because I have more decks than fit in a signature
Useful Resources:
MTGSalvation tags
EDHREC
ManabaseCrafter
Per my Cube philosophy, I do not put any stock in a card being "at least playable in about half of your decks." For me, the point of Cube is that all the cards are playable and a Cube should be built around raising the ceiling of the average deck instead of raising the floor.
Here is my hypothetical: You are in a Peasant Cube draft and it is Pack 3, Pick 7. You have 36 cards so far and are trending towards a Simic deck with one piece of graveyard support, Fact or Fiction. You have a choice between Mother Bear and Gruul Turf.
Scenario #1- You are solidly Simic, with about 26 blue and green cards, 2 cards with white mana costs, 2 cards with black mana costs, and 2 cards with red mana costs. You also have 2 artifacts and 2 pieces of A-Tier fixing (Thrivings, Vivids, Trilands, and various 5-color lands). Mother Bear is in the bottom 25% of blue/green cards you drafted and may get played depending on curve or matchup, but is easily replaceable. Gruul Turf might get played as land 17.5, but likely would not be played.
Scenario #2- You are likely Simic, with about 20 blue and green cards, 4 cards with white mana costs, 4 cards with black mana costs, and 4 cards with red mana costs. You also have 2 artifacts and 2 pieces of A-Tier fixing (Thrivings, Vivids, Trilands, and various 5-color lands). Mother Bear would very likely make your deck as a 22nd/23rd card. Gruul Turf is now your third piece of fixing for red, along with the 2 pieces of A-Tier fixing you have. Drafting it makes it much easier to splash any powerful single red mana spells among the 4 you drafted.
Scenario #3- You are hopefully Simic, with about 8 blue cards and 8 green cards, along with 5 cards with white mana costs, 5 cards with black mana costs, and 5 cards with red mana costs. You also have 3 artifacts and 2 pieces of A-Tier fixing (Thrivings, Vivids, Trilands, and various 5-color lands). Mother Bear is 100% making your deck and you are trending towards a 3rd color. If a few of those red cards are generally stronger than Mother Bear, you can take Gruul Turf to make your mana smoother and your deck stronger.
In my ideal Cube, I want most players to end up in scenario A where they have a lot of playable cards and a lot of choices. Lower-tier archetype cards end up in the 1 (or possibly 2) decks that really want them. Cube construction obviously makes a lot of difference in which archetypes are viable.
When you get to scenarios B and C, each of the cards is playable in its own way. I tend towards that B-Tier fixing (two-color duals) since it raises the ceiling more than it raises the floor of a Cube deck. My Cube is designed to be very powerful in a lot of weird ways. I have not banned anything for power, I run snow cards, I run Conspiracies, I am even about to run 5 Mystery Booster Test Cards that I think are cool and roughly Peasant-level power wise.
With all this said, I think we are roughly on the same page here. I would find it very difficult to support running a dual cycle at 360, would probably run 1 cycle at 400+ and 2 at 500+. I also think our difference come from distinct philosophies on what a Cube is and what it should be. Some of this might come from the fact that you only draft 40 cards per player, meaning having those mono-colored cards is much more important to making decks functional.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/peasantsnowcube
-- Updated with Outlaws of Thunder Junction
The PioneWer Peasant CUbe
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pionewer
-- Updated with Murders at Karlov Manor
I think the most important difference is how large the draft pool is. If you are using 360 cards for 8 players, and each player picks a 2 colour deck only 20 % of duals would be passed around as last picks. Duals would also ensure that if you find an open guild, you are likely to get fixing in your colours. If your goal is that each player should have 3 fixing lands for their guild, 3 sets of duals might be better for achieving that goal. If you only have vivids and the like, the competition for those might cause newer drafters to not get any fixing if they fail to evaluate how early they will be picked up.
When drafting with only 2 players, the numbers would be exactly opposite with 80 % lands being last picks. For my 2 player cube, I'm not even able to support aggro decks with the recommended 7 (?) one drops in a single colour. I considered just cutting all one drops, but instead added 5 City of Brass to make 2 colour aggro viable. In a 2 player draft environment you have a smaller draft pool and have to cut down on any card that won't have a shot of making it into any players deck. That is why I only have lands that can fix any colour.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/deck/6079862169b8261055ecd8ae
My C/Ube on Cube Cobra
Thanks. I checked this at work and there were a few differences, with which I mostly agree. One of them was a bit interesting, though.
So, from mine to yours:
Mother of Runes -> Looter il-Kor
Arcum's Astrolabe -> Basic Land
Bonder's Ornament -> Midnight Haunting
Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor -> Icy Manipulator
Midnight Haunting and Icy Manpulator were probably the hardest cuts for me and I think I mostly agree with your choices there. The Astrolabe vs. a land seems mostly up to taste.
I went with Mum since I figured that she was flexible enough to still help stall the board and protect my win-cons or push them through where needed. I can kind of understand Looter before her but was there any particular reason that you completely excluded Mum?