MTG Salvation

are u retarded?
i will not run it, im just surprised you guys dismiss it
afterlife isnt even a common and destroys
no reason to quote me

The flip lands are actually a perfect example of why I switched to just using my judgment on what rare lands to include as opposed to strict rarity. Because they are non-abusable, low upside, consistency machines... which are put at rare to sell packs.

I played uncommon duals when I started my C/Ube. The more I read opinions, the more I liked the idea to help aggro with better lands that entered untapped. So I changed Gates and Gainlands.

First, I tried with full cycles: Painlands and Checklands for everybody, also Prismatic vista and Fabled Passage. There are still Vivids and now Thriving lands instead of Trilands, but aggro had untapped lands, at least.

Games were good for aggro, but I like to read and read about the format, what I should run to improve my decks, learning about what matters or not if you play aggro, midrange or control, and finally, I recently changed my lands again. And the solution was to give each guild the appropriated land. Control had good options to cast Counterspell on T2 with a Painland, but will suffer against aggro with those pesky lifes to pay the colored mana. Also, a Checkland doesn't help too much if your first land was a Painland, for example.

So I gave each deck better lands for what the guild does. For example, all guilds now have shocklands. You may decide to play them tapped or untapped, so you are taking decisions, what is good and fun. And for control decks this only represents two lifes IF THEY WANT and not 3, 4 lifes if that was a Painland. Now Checklnds have more sense, but I opted to give my Blue (control) decks, also Temples and Bicycle lands from Amonkhet. You know, they enter tapped but you gain the opportunity to filter some draws, more decisions for colors that doesn't matter if they are a bit slow but gain some advantage later. And if it's late game you even can cycle them (Fetid Pools) to draw another thing. I don't have an izzet Bicycle land so I play with the UR canopy, Fiery Islet. Izzet plays midrange, tempo oriented, so you can change that land for a card if you need gas.

Boros and Rakdos have only lands to play fast. Well, shocklands, fastlands and canopy or painlands.

And midrange decks play with some mix, sometimes Temples, bicycles, checklands, even bouncelands in green...

I need more drafts to test these changes, because the pandemia doesn't allow me to play so much, but I think these lands should be a good addition for the games. I don't have a designer vision where I only have to play with uncommon tapped lands for cohesive / aesthetic reasons with a grey symbol on them.

I play Peasant for budget reasons, and many of these rare lands are proxies, to test them. Some fastlands and shocks are really expensive, but temples, painlands and bicycles not so much. I started with a Pauper cube but the lack of good payoffs in my guilds made me migrate to Peasant and I'm so happy with this change that I didn't look back. So, why not improve my decks with better lands when Wizards is making many of them Rares for monetary reasons?? I have it clear.

Lifegain matters is always going to be an archetype that I abstain from adding to cube, no matter how much support it gets. It is intrinsically much better against certain decks where gaining life in itself is a reward (i.e aggressive strategies). I don't like to have a match up that is so polarizing that it feels hopeless.

Even outside of a dedicated lifegain shell Silversmote Ghoul might honestly be a strong card as it's above rate if you can get it back once, which isn't overly difficult if you make minor deckbuilding considerations.