For any two colour combination only 10% of the duals provide the right colours, rendering 90% of the duals useless for your deck (besides splashes and 3c+ decks). In contrast, a mono coloured utility land fits in 40% of the colour combinations, making the card an attractive pick for more players than just the lucky guy that is in the two colours of the dual he gets passed.
In the end, it's just personal preference (my land section is now down to20/360 cards). Both sides have their reasoning and points explaining why, it just depends on personal preference what points you weight higher (potential colour smoothing for 10% of the players VS increased overall pick and pack quality for 40% of the players).
In the end, it's just personal preference (my land section is now down to20/360 cards). Both sides have their reasoning and points explaining why, it just depends on personal preference what points you weight higher (potential colour smoothing for 10% of the players VS increased overall pick and pack quality for 40% of the players).
Don't you get too many playables or more hatedrafting your way? I mean with all the lands in our Cube even we get playables a plenty and I am always happy with every special land I can play even in two colour decks.
Only true single colour decks (with no splash whatsoever) have a lowering of the power of their picks. But they get extra focus because they 'win' a couple of picks usable to make sure they have enough good cards (which can be risky in mono coloured decks as you depend on the randomness of the booster more then those using two or more colours).
In the end, it's just personal preference (my land section is now down to20/360 cards). Both sides have their reasoning and points explaining why, it just depends on personal preference what points you weight higher (potential colour smoothing for 10% of the players VS increased overall pick and pack quality for 40% of the players).
Removing dual lands and multicolor cards completely will not result in increased overall pack quality for anyone. If anything, you're greatly reducing the pack quality by severely limiting the decks that are viable to play.
Hypothetical example:
P1P1: Sword of Fire and Ice
P1P2: Balance
P1P3: Damnation
P1P4: Hymn to Tourach
P1P5: Exalted Angel
Now... I have a decent start to a BW midrange or control deck (depending on how the rest of the packs end up). In a deck such as this, I need to have BB on turn two for my early Hymn for disruption and WW on turn four to flip my morphed Exalted Angel. Without fixing, a deck like this becomes a lot harder to build and a lot less attractive. I'd rather take the chance that I won't get a lot of fixing for my BW deck, than know for sure that I won't see any at all.
Does your group primarily build monocolor decks? Does your cube primarily include cards that have only one mana symbol in their casting cost?
Don't you get too many playables or more hatedrafting your way?
Too many playables is often the case, but I see it as something positive because it increases your options during the deckbuilding/sideboarding and thus leads to a better overall quality of the decks, although for the price of less mana consistency (which makes decisions during the deckbuilding even more skill intensive).
Hatedrafting is quite rare in my cube since you have more cards that fit your deck to pick.
Removing dual lands and multicolor cards completely will not result in increased overall pack quality for anyone.
I disagree. If there are more monocoloured cards in your packs and less duallands and multicolour cards, more players have potential picks to choose from, making the packs overall more attractive.
I thought I would chime in here. I'm sure I've suggested this somewhere on this forum before, but...
Have you guys tried playing without basic land in your decks? It fixes every mana screw problem; too little land, too much land, wrong type of mana. Basically the stuff that makes 20% of games not fun to play.
Just construct your deck of 40+ cards you drafted (including non-basic land). Then once per turn, as a sorcery, you may exile any one card in your hand and put any one basic land into play.
Mana screwing has just been fixed. We started playing this way about a year and a half ago and have never looked back. Every game we play now is fun and competitive. Read that last sentence again. No more losing a game because you just didn't get enough mana, not because you were outplayed.
Obviously if you're Cube is more serious this may not be for you. Our goal is mostly to have fun.
.......
Even with 8 players there is only a 57% percent chance that a dual/gold card will fit into someones colours of the deck.
I don't buy this number ... for all duals. If you have just one ABU Dual or Shockland for your two colors (assuming everyone is doing two colors) then 70% of the fetchlands work for your 2 color deck (just one drafter let alone 8!) ... Also 40% of Vivids work well in any 2 color combination (as oppossed to your presumed 10%) and technically 100% of them could provide fixing if pressed. Trilands are better than 10% too (math is trickier since 40% work for Allied Pairs but 20% for Enemy Pairs).
This is why I consider ABU Duals, Shocklands, Fetchlands and Vivids as the Core mana fixing lands IMO.
I disagree. If there are more monocoloured cards in your packs and less duallands and multicolour cards, more players have potential picks to choose from, making the packs overall more attractive.
Less multicolor cards, I agree. Less dual lands, not so much.
This is exactly the reason why I cut my multicolor section in half. My packs were littered with multicolor cards and decks almost always ended up being 3+ colors.
Dual lands, however, make cards with two or more mana symbols in their cost a lot more attractive. As DerBK said, even something like Silver Knight becomes a tough draft choice for anything other than monowhite. You want to be able to consistently have WW on turn two, and without fixing that becomes unlikely in a two color deck. And it makes a three or more color deck pretty much unplayable.
The "standard" decks from my cube are two colour decks that range from 50%/50% to 20%/80% colour balance.
The number of nonbasics in my cube is exactly the same as the number of monocolored cards in each section. The standard decks in my cube are normally two color decks with a 50/50 color balance. There are also decks that are basically monocolored and splash for the second color as well as three or more colored decks. So the only difference between our cubes and the standard decks are that the two color decks from my cube are more balanced and less likely to get color screwed or hosed and my cube allows for the occasional three or more color deck to be successful.
Having fixing lands in your cube doesn't just promote 5CC. It helps out every single deck that could possibly come out of the cube, and makes 5CC a possibility. If multicolor decks are running rampant, then don't run Vivids or Shard lands. Cutting the duals and fetches doesn't just punish 5CC, it punishes the entire cube.
I disagree. If there are more monocoloured cards in your packs and less duallands and multicolour cards, more players have potential picks to choose from, making the packs overall more attractive.
Gold cards pollute the packs, but mana-fixing is crucial. The two color decks are better off with a Plateau than the 24th card that doesn't make the cut. Pack 3 becomes a lot less important with no mana fixing drafted before or after that point.
The "standard" decks from my cube are two colour decks that range from 50%/50% to 20%/80% colour balance.
Same here. Except our 2-color decks are infinitely better because my manabase is stronger.
Our draft history has shown that a 2-color deck with a player grabbing manafixing is much stronger than a 2-color deck with the drafter scooping up nothing but playables. Like I said before, 45 playables and no manabase = bad deck.
A decks manabase is its backbone. I would never draft without mana-fixing lands, and the idea of drafting a cube without any isn't appealing in the slightest. What am I going to do with 45 playables and no lands? I still have the same 23 "best" playables, but no manabase to support it.
Quote from benalbert »
I thought I would chime in here. I'm sure I've suggested this somewhere on this forum before, but...
Have you guys tried playing without basic land in your decks? It fixes every mana screw problem; too little land, too much land, wrong type of mana. Basically the stuff that makes 20% of games not fun to play.
Just construct your deck of 40+ cards you drafted (including non-basic land). Then once per turn, as a sorcery, you may exile any one card in your hand and put any one basic land into play.
This is even less appealing than removing all the lands. Deckbuilding and resource management is part of the game. This takes all drafting/deckbuilding skill and throws it out the window. No thanks.
Quote from DerBK »
Has anyone even begun to address this central point:
Quote from Me »
This is really important to remember. ANY :symw::symu: fixing land is more important to your draft than the 24th white or blue card that doesn't make the cut.
?
Cutting the lands for more nonland "action" cards doesn't increase the quality of the decks that are being drafted. The best 24 cards will still be the same. If anything you are increasing the quality of your unplayed sideboard cards^^
No, they haven't, and you're 100% right. I don't care how good the cards in my undrafted pool are. I want a good deck.
Has anyone even begun to address this central point:
?
Cutting the lands for more nonland "action" cards doesn't increase the quality of the decks that are being drafted. The best 24 cards will still be the same. If anything you are increasing the quality of your unplayed sideboard cards^^
I have found this to be true in many of my cube drafts. Your early picks will usually be the cornerstone of the decks and dual lands only help by making them more consistent.
I know this is an old thread, but thought I'd chime in with some statistics and a comparison with 60-card Constructed decks.
In a 60-card Constructed deck, let's use 24 lands as the de facto standard. We can accept the argument that certain aggro decks will run fewer lands, and certain control decks will run more lands, but 24 is a fairly common starting point. As a rule of thumb, I consider 16 sources to be the number that I need to run in my primary colour, especially if I want to have a turn one play (e.g. playing my 1-drop, or having fast 1CC removal/counter online). 16 sources in a 60-card deck gives me a 90.1% chance of having a source of my primary colour in my opening 7. This not perfect, of course, but certainly reduces the amount of mulliganing and having even more sources can have diminishing returns. I refer to this as "ideal" mana, since it's not perfect but is usually the target mana makeup. (Note that, as expected, if my deck is mono-coloured and I still want/need to run 24 lands, then I still have 8 slots for non-colour producing utility lands).
If I am running a 2-colour deck, then I have to consider my mana situation carefully. If I'm running my second colour as a splash, then I might get away with fewer sources, but if it's a true 2-colour deck, with potential turn one plays in both colours, then the numbers hold true and I need 16 sources of each colour. Since I have 24 land slots available, and need 32 sources, then I need at least 8 dual lands to make up the extra slots. In a format with excellent fixing, I could run 12 duals and have room for 4 utility lands, but I need at least 8 duals to have "ideal" mana.
If I am running a 3-colour deck, then again there is room for splashing, but if I'm trying to push all three colours equally, then I'd need 16x3 = 48 slots, 16 in each of 3 colours. In order to achieve this with only dual lands, all 24 of them would need to be dual lands of the appropriate colours.
This can be made easier with multi-fixing lands (Vivid lands, City of Brass, etc.) and of course fetchlands, but potentially at the cost of making 4- and 5-colour decks easier (your choice).
Now let's look at this in Limited. We'll use 17 lands as the de facto standard for total lands in a deck, again accepting that certain decks will run more or fewer.
For a 40-card deck, 10 sources of your primary colour gives you an 89.1% chance of drawing it in your opening hand (11 gives youa 91.6% chance). I use 10 sources, then, as my ideal number.
In a 2-colour deck, with a roughly equal emphasis on both colours, then, you'd need 20 colour slots, meaning that with 17 lands, at least 3 of them would need to be dual lands to achieve "ideal" mana.
In a 3-colour deck, you need 30 colour slots, meaning that 14 of your 17 lands need to be dual lands.
Again, every deck is different, but these numbers tell me that it would be great to have access to 3 dual lands in my 2-colour deck for "ideal" mana. Since I'm aiming for 2-colour decks to have access to great mana, then I'd at least want this many available in the draft.
Also consider that in a 450-card cube, several cards, potentially including some of your dual lands, will not even be in circulation some drafts. In addition, players trying to run 3 colours will be competing for some dual lands with players running 2 of those colours. All this considered, I feel that 4 dual lands of each 2-colour pair is the amount that I want to run. I also augment this (currently) with 5 general purpose all-colour fixing lands (Terramorphic Expanse, Evolving Wilds, City of Brass - great for 3-colour aggro, Grand Coliseum, and Gemstone Mine - also great for multi-coloured aggro).
This way, I provide access to mana fixing with an emphasis on 2- and 3-colour decks. I shy away from an abundance of lands that can produce any colour (e.g. Vivid lands) because they encourage 4- and 5-colour decks more than dual lands do. (However, 4- and 5- colour decks are still possible because they are always possible).
I also don't run signets.
I think that the point being made earlier about duals in sealed is valid and perhaps misunderstood, however. I have built many sealed pools using my cube, and one thing that happens is that you get some number of dual lands and gold cards that would be awesome if they were on colour but are useless because the rest of your pool is pushing you in a different direction. Contrast this with lands like Terramorphic Expanse, which are always going to be useful regardless of which colours your pool best supports.
My point is that a 500 card cube without it is better off than a 501 card cube with it. Urborg is better than Swamp, and Hammerheim is better than Mountain, but neither belong in the cube.
urborg is not better than a swamp if you ask me. I know you were just citing an example, but if I remember right the day I took urborg out of my cube was the day it enabled my opponent to cast damnation and win the game. A swamp never would have betrayed me so fiercely.
All that aside, when I first built my cube, I didn't put lands in it either. Adding lands instantly made my cube much better and enabled multicolor in a way that wouldn't otherwise be possible. It doesn't water down packs at all, it actually improves packs. if you pick lands, more of your final 40 cards will be draft picks and less of them basic lands. You only use 22-25 cards from the draft, with nonbasic lands that number can increase to 25-30 in some cases. Your curve will smooth out, with your spells coming down exactly when you need them to, and some of them even do some really neat tricks with crucible of worlds, or wild nacatl. Running lands is not just a good idea, its necessary. if you proxy cards, proxy the ABU dual lands, the shocklands and the fetchlands to start with. If you don't proxy, find budget solutions like the Ravnica Karoos, the Vivids, the painlands, and the shadowmoor, filterlands.
urborg is not better than a swamp if you ask me. I know you were just citing an example, but if I remember right the day I took urborg out of my cube was the day it enabled my opponent to cast damnation and win the game. A swamp never would have betrayed me so fiercely.
Urborg has also caused me to hit a turn 3 necropotence before when I played 2 non black sources turns 1 and 2. So it also has its upsides. I cut it a long time ago and haven't missed it since however
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Curious to get more thoughts on Yavimaya Hollow. Why would it not be in more cubes? To me it seems incredibly powerful and thought it was an important green land.
Because tapping for C sucks... A land has to be insanely powerful to justify that kind of drawback, and Hollow just isn't.
Being able to regenerate any of your creatures for 1 green is not insanely powerful? With also the ability to tap for 1 colorless otherwise? In our group it is a beast, just very surprising that it is not viewed similarly here.
Because tapping for C sucks... A land has to be insanely powerful to justify that kind of drawback, and Hollow just isn't.
Being able to regenerate any of your creatures for 1 green is not insanely powerful? With also the ability to tap for 1 colorless otherwise? In our group it is a beast, just very surprising that it is not viewed similarly here.
I think it depends on the power level of your cube; the higher it is and the more playing on curve the worse it gets unless you can spend it at instant speed EoT.
A lot of the most powerful removal exiles and alot of the ones they dont carry the "no regeneration" rider.
I think the card also sits in a spot where its a little pricy for the more casual cubes where it would shine. It would proaaly be decent in some of the grindy mid range games in my cube, but I could also get a ton of cards that are better in more decks for that price.
How does it play out? It did always seem interesing. Do you often hit the problem of certain removal blanking it?
Being able to regenerate any of your creatures for 1 green is not insanely powerful?
It's 2 mana, and no. It's not insanely powerful. It can be decent in some situations, but a lot of good removal circumvents regeneration, and saving 2 mana up all the time is horrid on the curve of a midrange green deck. In a really slow battlecruiser kind of format (like multiplayer EDH) the card is quite good. But in cube? It's just not great.
Because tapping for C sucks... A land has to be insanely powerful to justify that kind of drawback, and Hollow just isn't.
Being able to regenerate any of your creatures for 1 green is not insanely powerful? With also the ability to tap for 1 colorless otherwise? In our group it is a beast, just very surprising that it is not viewed similarly here.
I agree with you, it seems like a great card. Often times regeneration is just indestructible. It's a land, so it's a free inclusion most of the time.
Magic players will bend over backwards to reason themselves out of playing good cards.
In the end, it's just personal preference (my land section is now down to20/360 cards). Both sides have their reasoning and points explaining why, it just depends on personal preference what points you weight higher (potential colour smoothing for 10% of the players VS increased overall pick and pack quality for 40% of the players).
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http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/deck-creation-modern/773885-sultai-deaths-shadow-bug-aggro]
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Don't you get too many playables or more hatedrafting your way? I mean with all the lands in our Cube even we get playables a plenty and I am always happy with every special land I can play even in two colour decks.
Only true single colour decks (with no splash whatsoever) have a lowering of the power of their picks. But they get extra focus because they 'win' a couple of picks usable to make sure they have enough good cards (which can be risky in mono coloured decks as you depend on the randomness of the booster more then those using two or more colours).
I feel compelled to repeat everything I hear
Removing dual lands and multicolor cards completely will not result in increased overall pack quality for anyone. If anything, you're greatly reducing the pack quality by severely limiting the decks that are viable to play.
Hypothetical example:
P1P1: Sword of Fire and Ice
P1P2: Balance
P1P3: Damnation
P1P4: Hymn to Tourach
P1P5: Exalted Angel
Now... I have a decent start to a BW midrange or control deck (depending on how the rest of the packs end up). In a deck such as this, I need to have BB on turn two for my early Hymn for disruption and WW on turn four to flip my morphed Exalted Angel. Without fixing, a deck like this becomes a lot harder to build and a lot less attractive. I'd rather take the chance that I won't get a lot of fixing for my BW deck, than know for sure that I won't see any at all.
Does your group primarily build monocolor decks? Does your cube primarily include cards that have only one mana symbol in their casting cost?
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Too many playables is often the case, but I see it as something positive because it increases your options during the deckbuilding/sideboarding and thus leads to a better overall quality of the decks, although for the price of less mana consistency (which makes decisions during the deckbuilding even more skill intensive).
Hatedrafting is quite rare in my cube since you have more cards that fit your deck to pick.
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http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/deck-creation-modern/773885-sultai-deaths-shadow-bug-aggro]
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Discuss my Cube @ MTGsalvation:
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I disagree. If there are more monocoloured cards in your packs and less duallands and multicolour cards, more players have potential picks to choose from, making the packs overall more attractive.
The "standard" decks from my cube are two colour decks that range from 50%/50% to 20%/80% colour balance.
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Modern: Sultai Death's Shadow
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/deck-creation-modern/773885-sultai-deaths-shadow-bug-aggro]
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Discuss my Cube @ MTGsalvation:
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Have you guys tried playing without basic land in your decks? It fixes every mana screw problem; too little land, too much land, wrong type of mana. Basically the stuff that makes 20% of games not fun to play.
Just construct your deck of 40+ cards you drafted (including non-basic land). Then once per turn, as a sorcery, you may exile any one card in your hand and put any one basic land into play.
Mana screwing has just been fixed. We started playing this way about a year and a half ago and have never looked back. Every game we play now is fun and competitive. Read that last sentence again. No more losing a game because you just didn't get enough mana, not because you were outplayed.
Obviously if you're Cube is more serious this may not be for you. Our goal is mostly to have fun.
I don't buy this number ... for all duals. If you have just one ABU Dual or Shockland for your two colors (assuming everyone is doing two colors) then 70% of the fetchlands work for your 2 color deck (just one drafter let alone 8!) ... Also 40% of Vivids work well in any 2 color combination (as oppossed to your presumed 10%) and technically 100% of them could provide fixing if pressed. Trilands are better than 10% too (math is trickier since 40% work for Allied Pairs but 20% for Enemy Pairs).
This is why I consider ABU Duals, Shocklands, Fetchlands and Vivids as the Core mana fixing lands IMO.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=385729
Less multicolor cards, I agree. Less dual lands, not so much.
This is exactly the reason why I cut my multicolor section in half. My packs were littered with multicolor cards and decks almost always ended up being 3+ colors.
Dual lands, however, make cards with two or more mana symbols in their cost a lot more attractive. As DerBK said, even something like Silver Knight becomes a tough draft choice for anything other than monowhite. You want to be able to consistently have WW on turn two, and without fixing that becomes unlikely in a two color deck. And it makes a three or more color deck pretty much unplayable.
The number of nonbasics in my cube is exactly the same as the number of monocolored cards in each section. The standard decks in my cube are normally two color decks with a 50/50 color balance. There are also decks that are basically monocolored and splash for the second color as well as three or more colored decks. So the only difference between our cubes and the standard decks are that the two color decks from my cube are more balanced and less likely to get color screwed or hosed and my cube allows for the occasional three or more color deck to be successful.
Having fixing lands in your cube doesn't just promote 5CC. It helps out every single deck that could possibly come out of the cube, and makes 5CC a possibility. If multicolor decks are running rampant, then don't run Vivids or Shard lands. Cutting the duals and fetches doesn't just punish 5CC, it punishes the entire cube.
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Gold cards pollute the packs, but mana-fixing is crucial. The two color decks are better off with a Plateau than the 24th card that doesn't make the cut. Pack 3 becomes a lot less important with no mana fixing drafted before or after that point.
Same here. Except our 2-color decks are infinitely better because my manabase is stronger.
Our draft history has shown that a 2-color deck with a player grabbing manafixing is much stronger than a 2-color deck with the drafter scooping up nothing but playables. Like I said before, 45 playables and no manabase = bad deck.
A decks manabase is its backbone. I would never draft without mana-fixing lands, and the idea of drafting a cube without any isn't appealing in the slightest. What am I going to do with 45 playables and no lands? I still have the same 23 "best" playables, but no manabase to support it.
This is even less appealing than removing all the lands. Deckbuilding and resource management is part of the game. This takes all drafting/deckbuilding skill and throws it out the window. No thanks.
No, they haven't, and you're 100% right. I don't care how good the cards in my undrafted pool are. I want a good deck.
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I have found this to be true in many of my cube drafts. Your early picks will usually be the cornerstone of the decks and dual lands only help by making them more consistent.
In a 60-card Constructed deck, let's use 24 lands as the de facto standard. We can accept the argument that certain aggro decks will run fewer lands, and certain control decks will run more lands, but 24 is a fairly common starting point. As a rule of thumb, I consider 16 sources to be the number that I need to run in my primary colour, especially if I want to have a turn one play (e.g. playing my 1-drop, or having fast 1CC removal/counter online). 16 sources in a 60-card deck gives me a 90.1% chance of having a source of my primary colour in my opening 7. This not perfect, of course, but certainly reduces the amount of mulliganing and having even more sources can have diminishing returns. I refer to this as "ideal" mana, since it's not perfect but is usually the target mana makeup. (Note that, as expected, if my deck is mono-coloured and I still want/need to run 24 lands, then I still have 8 slots for non-colour producing utility lands).
If I am running a 2-colour deck, then I have to consider my mana situation carefully. If I'm running my second colour as a splash, then I might get away with fewer sources, but if it's a true 2-colour deck, with potential turn one plays in both colours, then the numbers hold true and I need 16 sources of each colour. Since I have 24 land slots available, and need 32 sources, then I need at least 8 dual lands to make up the extra slots. In a format with excellent fixing, I could run 12 duals and have room for 4 utility lands, but I need at least 8 duals to have "ideal" mana.
If I am running a 3-colour deck, then again there is room for splashing, but if I'm trying to push all three colours equally, then I'd need 16x3 = 48 slots, 16 in each of 3 colours. In order to achieve this with only dual lands, all 24 of them would need to be dual lands of the appropriate colours.
This can be made easier with multi-fixing lands (Vivid lands, City of Brass, etc.) and of course fetchlands, but potentially at the cost of making 4- and 5-colour decks easier (your choice).
Now let's look at this in Limited. We'll use 17 lands as the de facto standard for total lands in a deck, again accepting that certain decks will run more or fewer.
For a 40-card deck, 10 sources of your primary colour gives you an 89.1% chance of drawing it in your opening hand (11 gives youa 91.6% chance). I use 10 sources, then, as my ideal number.
In a 2-colour deck, with a roughly equal emphasis on both colours, then, you'd need 20 colour slots, meaning that with 17 lands, at least 3 of them would need to be dual lands to achieve "ideal" mana.
In a 3-colour deck, you need 30 colour slots, meaning that 14 of your 17 lands need to be dual lands.
Again, every deck is different, but these numbers tell me that it would be great to have access to 3 dual lands in my 2-colour deck for "ideal" mana. Since I'm aiming for 2-colour decks to have access to great mana, then I'd at least want this many available in the draft.
Also consider that in a 450-card cube, several cards, potentially including some of your dual lands, will not even be in circulation some drafts. In addition, players trying to run 3 colours will be competing for some dual lands with players running 2 of those colours. All this considered, I feel that 4 dual lands of each 2-colour pair is the amount that I want to run. I also augment this (currently) with 5 general purpose all-colour fixing lands (Terramorphic Expanse, Evolving Wilds, City of Brass - great for 3-colour aggro, Grand Coliseum, and Gemstone Mine - also great for multi-coloured aggro).
This way, I provide access to mana fixing with an emphasis on 2- and 3-colour decks. I shy away from an abundance of lands that can produce any colour (e.g. Vivid lands) because they encourage 4- and 5-colour decks more than dual lands do. (However, 4- and 5- colour decks are still possible because they are always possible).
I also don't run signets.
I think that the point being made earlier about duals in sealed is valid and perhaps misunderstood, however. I have built many sealed pools using my cube, and one thing that happens is that you get some number of dual lands and gold cards that would be awesome if they were on colour but are useless because the rest of your pool is pushing you in a different direction. Contrast this with lands like Terramorphic Expanse, which are always going to be useful regardless of which colours your pool best supports.
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urborg is not better than a swamp if you ask me. I know you were just citing an example, but if I remember right the day I took urborg out of my cube was the day it enabled my opponent to cast damnation and win the game. A swamp never would have betrayed me so fiercely.
All that aside, when I first built my cube, I didn't put lands in it either. Adding lands instantly made my cube much better and enabled multicolor in a way that wouldn't otherwise be possible. It doesn't water down packs at all, it actually improves packs. if you pick lands, more of your final 40 cards will be draft picks and less of them basic lands. You only use 22-25 cards from the draft, with nonbasic lands that number can increase to 25-30 in some cases. Your curve will smooth out, with your spells coming down exactly when you need them to, and some of them even do some really neat tricks with crucible of worlds, or wild nacatl. Running lands is not just a good idea, its necessary. if you proxy cards, proxy the ABU dual lands, the shocklands and the fetchlands to start with. If you don't proxy, find budget solutions like the Ravnica Karoos, the Vivids, the painlands, and the shadowmoor, filterlands.
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Urborg has also caused me to hit a turn 3 necropotence before when I played 2 non black sources turns 1 and 2. So it also has its upsides. I cut it a long time ago and haven't missed it since however
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Being able to regenerate any of your creatures for 1 green is not insanely powerful? With also the ability to tap for 1 colorless otherwise? In our group it is a beast, just very surprising that it is not viewed similarly here.
I think it depends on the power level of your cube; the higher it is and the more playing on curve the worse it gets unless you can spend it at instant speed EoT.
A lot of the most powerful removal exiles and alot of the ones they dont carry the "no regeneration" rider.
I think the card also sits in a spot where its a little pricy for the more casual cubes where it would shine. It would proaaly be decent in some of the grindy mid range games in my cube, but I could also get a ton of cards that are better in more decks for that price.
How does it play out? It did always seem interesing. Do you often hit the problem of certain removal blanking it?
It's 2 mana, and no. It's not insanely powerful. It can be decent in some situations, but a lot of good removal circumvents regeneration, and saving 2 mana up all the time is horrid on the curve of a midrange green deck. In a really slow battlecruiser kind of format (like multiplayer EDH) the card is quite good. But in cube? It's just not great.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
I agree with you, it seems like a great card. Often times regeneration is just indestructible. It's a land, so it's a free inclusion most of the time.
Magic players will bend over backwards to reason themselves out of playing good cards.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.