Artifact lands are one that interest me at times but at the same time I feel they are weaker and not worth the spots. I could see maybe see changing darksteel citadel into a card with remove a card you draft face up. you may draft an artifact land instead.
If I'm gonna do any sort of "wild card" drafting rule it's gonna be for something much more interesting than an artifact land.
It's certainly possible to make a set where these are great, but unless you're sleeving up Court Homunculus and similar stuff it's an easy pass. Urborg is about as useful, and can't backfire when your opponent has a Naturalize effect, making it likely just better overall.
One of my out there ideas was to allow players to pick 3 lands from a pile of nonbasics that helped enable certain synergies, or just be good mana fixers. My theory was that I could cram more synergies in my cube, and then if you saw something that had lands that could help support it, then it was easier to move in. I did put the artifact lands in that pile, as I suspect if you could auto-draft 3 of them, artifact matters cards become a lot easier to turn on. I never re-tooled my cube for the artifact synergy specifically though.
I think you need either a very specific cube with strong artifact synergies throughout, or special drafting / cube rules, to make them worth playing.
So were you thinking of adding a custom card to the cube that said "You may add 3 artifact lands of your choice to your deck" and then that card would be drafted as normal?
It sounded more like Bacchus would just make up to three nonbasics (from a certain subset, e.g. probably not Strip Mine and LoA) available at the end of each draft.
So were you thinking of adding a custom card to the cube that said "You may add 3 artifact lands of your choice to your deck" and then that card would be drafted as normal?
I did both. The following were essentially draftable cards:
- Draft a bounceland of your choice
- Draft a painland of your choice
- Draft a triland of your choice.
I threw 7 of each into the cube (well, I was too lazy to actually print something, I just threw 7 of the applicable cards in the cube and had extras outside to swap). I think this was more of a symptom of only doing 2 person drafts where you wouldn't see all the cards (such as the right fixing for your deck), and I just wanted us to be able to cast our spells, and make aggro decks more consistent. This approach does allow you to play more cycles without having to put all 10 in your cube.
From memory, the subset of cards I allowed you to pick 3 from were:
- Ash Barrens (good fixing, and could enable delirium / cycling matters)
- Evolving Wilds (good fixing and could enable delirium / landfall)
- Artifact Lands (enable artifact synergies)
- Aether Hub (enable energy cards, slightly more aggro oriented)
Maybe there was another group. It was more of a concept, and I didn't retool my cube enough to take advantage of it, and Ash Barrens / Evolving Wilds were often the right choice.
I've also considered just doing a land draft at the end, giving you X points, and probably cost lands at 1 or 2. So maybe you can draft 2 trilands, or 4 artifact lands. That's a concept that I'm probably not going to explore any time soon, but if I do I will let people know how it goes.
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I'm torn between Ice Age and Mirage. Probably Mirage if I had to pick one... I am now all singleton in my collection, and I don't remember which one I kept...
On topic, given that we are talking about a burn spell, where are people at on 'power level' for removal / burn in their cube? I started with Lightning Bolt, swapped it for Incinerate (or maybe I had both for a while?), and I don't think I've had it in for a while. My only 3 damage instant red spell for 2 mana is Abrade, which gives up going to the face for artifact removal. The rest of my 3 damage spells cost 3 mana with some other upside.
I'm of the opinion that the most efficient removal available to us doesn't necessarily lead to better cubes. In this regard, it probably matters a bit less for red burn than blacks 'kill something' spells, and Incinerate is probably fine. But I'd also be happy with Volcanic Hammer in that slot.
I'm using the promo with Ice Age art, but for non-foils Mirage is probably my favourite.
I'm on basically maximum single target removal power level. I'll diversify if the power level drop isn't too large, but I'll generally play the better version of the same effect.
I like that efficient removal puts more emphasis on curve and that it punishes decks that don't have a clear gameplan. It does help removal.deck, but I've found 2 for 1 removal is much more important than stuff like Lightning Bolt for those decks.
I try to create removal "tiers". So I'll play bolt as premium removal, but also a lot of the less powerful burn spells.
The danger that burn spells become too good isn't really there imho. They're already all limited by the amount of damage they do. It's only a problem if you cube too many of them, but if you keep the overall number in check you can't do too much harm. Of course that's a different issue than wanting burn spells to cost more.
Artifact lands are one that interest me at times but at the same time I feel they are weaker and not worth the spots. I could see maybe see changing darksteel citadel into a card with remove a card you draft face up. you may draft an artifact land instead.
It's certainly possible to make a set where these are great, but unless you're sleeving up Court Homunculus and similar stuff it's an easy pass. Urborg is about as useful, and can't backfire when your opponent has a Naturalize effect, making it likely just better overall.
I think you need either a very specific cube with strong artifact synergies throughout, or special drafting / cube rules, to make them worth playing.
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
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New card for today: Incinerate
also what are people's favorite art?
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MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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- Draft a bounceland of your choice
- Draft a painland of your choice
- Draft a triland of your choice.
I threw 7 of each into the cube (well, I was too lazy to actually print something, I just threw 7 of the applicable cards in the cube and had extras outside to swap). I think this was more of a symptom of only doing 2 person drafts where you wouldn't see all the cards (such as the right fixing for your deck), and I just wanted us to be able to cast our spells, and make aggro decks more consistent. This approach does allow you to play more cycles without having to put all 10 in your cube.
From memory, the subset of cards I allowed you to pick 3 from were:
- Ash Barrens (good fixing, and could enable delirium / cycling matters)
- Evolving Wilds (good fixing and could enable delirium / landfall)
- Artifact Lands (enable artifact synergies)
- Aether Hub (enable energy cards, slightly more aggro oriented)
Maybe there was another group. It was more of a concept, and I didn't retool my cube enough to take advantage of it, and Ash Barrens / Evolving Wilds were often the right choice.
I've also considered just doing a land draft at the end, giving you X points, and probably cost lands at 1 or 2. So maybe you can draft 2 trilands, or 4 artifact lands. That's a concept that I'm probably not going to explore any time soon, but if I do I will let people know how it goes.
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I'm torn between Ice Age and Mirage. Probably Mirage if I had to pick one... I am now all singleton in my collection, and I don't remember which one I kept...
I'm of the opinion that the most efficient removal available to us doesn't necessarily lead to better cubes. In this regard, it probably matters a bit less for red burn than blacks 'kill something' spells, and Incinerate is probably fine. But I'd also be happy with Volcanic Hammer in that slot.
I'm on basically maximum single target removal power level. I'll diversify if the power level drop isn't too large, but I'll generally play the better version of the same effect.
I like that efficient removal puts more emphasis on curve and that it punishes decks that don't have a clear gameplan. It does help removal.deck, but I've found 2 for 1 removal is much more important than stuff like Lightning Bolt for those decks.
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
The danger that burn spells become too good isn't really there imho. They're already all limited by the amount of damage they do. It's only a problem if you cube too many of them, but if you keep the overall number in check you can't do too much harm. Of course that's a different issue than wanting burn spells to cost more.
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Ulka