I'm glad someone's talking about this. My list that I'm still building is specifically a multi-color themed list so I've running both (of course) but it's good for me and interesting too to see everyone talking about the up and downsides of these two cycles.
Wow, that is really high. Don't you get way to many 4+ color goodstuff decks this way? I run only 10% fixing lands. Cutting the Vivids and slightly reducing the amount of fixing lands made 4+ color decks much rarer while still being enough for good 2 color decks.
I like Vivids more than Shards lands, too. The latter always fix only shard mana. The former can be used for shard mana and/or for wedge mana. And you seldomly need the fixing more than two times anyway.
Ah, because they "check" if you control a basic land of a certain type? I recently heard the term "buddy lands" for those. Never heard "checklands" befoee.
I run the Shock Lands and the M10 lands. I feel like I am light on lands now - everyone tends to run 3 land cycles at 360. What does everyone think about adding the Vivid lands to my cube? My cube is all foil so ABUR and Fetches are not possible. What does anyone think the next best cycle would be for me to run?
I'm considering going to 450 with my cube soon, but lands are holding me back.
Foil bouncelands are cheap(ish) and the lands are good. In a pinch, you could get foil Guildgates. I'll take lower-quality fixing over not enough fixing any day. Painlands are good fixers, but I think they're kinda expensive to get a foil set of all 10.
Instead of running Vivids/Trilands, I run one more cycle of duals for each color combination. Just customize your 4th favorite group of lands. I prefer that, because it still gives fixing to the decks that want it without overdoing the support for 4-5 color-control; which is already plenty competitive without being able to auto-draft itself with an abundance of lands that fix 3+ colors simultaneously. And in decks that are only playing 2 colors, the quality of that 4th fixing land will be higher than that of a Triland or Vivid, and far less likely to be stolen by drafters playing multicolor control builds.
I think this is the way to go with any cube running the shock/fetch/dual cycles. I have the classic triumvirate, a few manlands as guild choices, and some rainbow fixers like Gemstone Mine, City of Brass, etc... in my colorless section. Throw in fixing mana rocks and I see 3-5 color ramp and control decks pretty regularly when we get drafts off and it seems to be enough for when we use the small number formats. If I was being forced to choose one or the other I'd probably go with the trilands in a small cube and the vivids in a large one.
The vivids are amazing, but as stated, there's already enough support for 4-5 color good stuff. I also prefer not running vivids due to thebfact they citp tapped, which is a hinderance for more aggro centered decks.
Doesnt change the fact that vivids are amazing mana fixers.
I run the Shock Lands and the M10 lands. I feel like I am light on lands now - everyone tends to run 3 land cycles at 360. What does everyone think about adding the Vivid lands to my cube? My cube is all foil so ABUR and Fetches are not possible. What does anyone think the next best cycle would be for me to run?
I'm considering going to 450 with my cube soon, but lands are holding me back.
I wouldn't run a cycle, unless you go Fetch or Duals. I'd customize for each pair so it gets the lands it wants most. You could mix painlands, hybrid lands, Rav bouncelands, Scars duals (great for the aggro pairs), and Horizon Canopy.
We used to run the vivids and tri-lands...but every deck seemed like it was 4c/5c mindrange/control so to lighten up on the manafixing a bit we cut the tri-land cycle, then replaced the vivid cycle with the worldwake manlands. Now every once in a while a 4c control will show up but it's because they had been actively picking fixing/got both city of brass and grand coliseum.
Have a helicopter drop you off out front. Light your cigar with a small Indonesian boy holding a black lotus. Then bust out a craw wurm deck with no sleeves. Raw dog shuffle, loose terribly, flip the table, leave in a hovercraft.
Foil bouncelands are cheap(ish) and the lands are good. In a pinch, you could get foil Guildgates. I'll take lower-quality fixing over not enough fixing any day. Painlands are good fixers, but I think they're kinda expensive to get a foil set of all 10.
Actually, a foil set of ten painlands is pretty damn cheap. I think this'd be the way to go, if running the whole cycle is important.
Used to run both, in my 540 powered - both shardlands and vivids have been cut.
Shardlands were pretty good, but once the WWK man duals were out, they got the boot pretty quickly.
Vivids lasted longer, and they're fantastic lands -- they weren't cut because they weren't good enough -- they were cut because they were making 5cc entirely too common an occurrence in our cube drafts.
Waiting a turn for the mana is awesome if it's painless 5 color (if you're control).
Not running either, couldn't be happier. If I was going no-proxy or peasant, I'd probably run them.
To answer one of the other questions raised in this thread, I run 10% pure mana fixing lands at 450. This is full cycles of ABUR duals/fetches/shocks, a 4th "cycle" of lands being whatever that colour pair needs (e.g. dual manland or filter land or painland or Horizon Canopy...) for 40, and then 5 "rainbow" fixers as someone called them.
Something to keep in mind with mana fixing is what I call the "+1 rule". Basically, whatever fixing you provide in bulk will tend to encourage the number of colours it fixes plus one.
For example, take a simple set with no fixing and run an 8-player draft. What fixing do you have? I said "none", but really you have basic lands, so that's effectively 1-colour fixing. How many colours do drafters tend to play? Of course, they can play whatever they like, but the most common configuration is 2 colours.
Now, take that same set and add in Terramorphic Expanse. It only takes up one common slot, but because it can fix any colour, how is it most often used? In my experience, it is most often used to splash a third colour, not just make your 2-colour deck stronger. Of course, as always, it can be used this way but the tendency is to go +1. (Note that if there were as many Terramorphic Expanses in such a draft as there are guild gates, then, because they can fix anything, you would likely end up with 4-5 colour decks.)
Ok, so look at the original Ravnica block. There were 10 2-colour fixers at common (well, plus the signets which was overkill). Anyway, the most common draft strategy in that environment? 3-colour decks.
Now look at Shards of Alara draft. This contained the Tri-Lands which are the topic of this thread. What did draft decks look like in that environment? Generally 4-5 colour decks. My experience was that 4-colour was actually most common, but I'm not going to split hairs on 5-colour here.
In fact, this leads to a corollary observation:
Once fixing is good enough for 4 colours, 5 colours is almost automatic.
I know someone will point out that in the current Return to Ravnica block draft 2-colour decks are the strongest strategy - that's fine, but the mana fixing was actually designed for 3 colours and if you're not highly disciplined then you will end up in 3 colours.
What does this all have to do with the thread? Well, really I'm just saying what everyone else is saying - that if you support Vivid and Tri-lands, and they make up any significant percentage of your cube, then you are pushing your environment into 4-5 colour decks. (I just took longer to say it).
For my own cube, I want the tension to be between 2- and 3- colour decks. For this reason, I mostly provide 2-colour fixers. The "rainbow" fixers that I provide are minimal and just meant to smooth things a little more - it's possible that it's correct to remove some of these (I'd like to keep City of Brass and Gemstone Mine at the least since they help enable 3-colour aggro). The strength of the 2-colour fixing, though (fetching other 2-colour fixers), means that I'm already worried about the strength of the mana, but there are enough 2-3 colour decks that so far I'm happy.
The reason that I want the tension between 2- and 3- colours is because this is where the greatest diversity lies: out of 32 possible colour combinations in a Magic deck, 10 of them are 2-colour and 10 of them are 3-colour. Combine this with the corollary from above that once 4-colour is easy, 5-colour usually also is, then what you get is an environment with very little need to make decisions about colour choice. Since I find those decisions to be interesting (at the most basic level of drafting) I want them in my environment. Plus, with this configuration and a few artifact/Green helpers, 4-5 colour decks are still possible and mono-colour decks are always possible - you just need to prioritise your picks according to what you're trying to do.
Finally, back to the answer I gave at the beginning of this post - why 10% fixing? I got to this number based on what I call "ideal mana". Basically, how many sources of each colour do you want in your deck, assuming it's not a splash colour? In a 60-card deck, my answer is about 16, since that gives you a 90% chance of having one in your opening hand. For a 40-card deck, I put it at about 10, which is 89% chance of having one in your opening hand. For a true 2-colour 40-card deck, then, for ideal mana I'd want 10 sources of each colour. Assuming I'm running 17 lands, I'd need 3 dual lands in my deck. With a 450 cube, with 8 players drafting, then on average I should have access to 3.2 of my 4 on-colour dual lands, plus the rainbow fixers, giving me at least a shot at my ideal mana. Sometimes there will be contention and I'll get fewer, sometimes I'll get all of my options and have even better mana. Sometimes they just won't show up in the draft. But I'm working to optimise the average case here.
You don't really have to run all 5/10 of them. In my cube, I am only playing the U+G ones, since these are the most common colors to go 3+c.
Agreed. That's why I said "and they make up any significant percentage of your cube" - putting a few rainbow fixers in is going to smooth out the mana and not break things. It's when getting that kind of fixing is easy that things will tend to warp to 4-5 colour. In both Lorwyn and Shards of Alara draft, these cards were uncommon and at that frequency drafting many colours was pretty easy to do.
Also - disciplined drafters can stay two-colour anytime. I'm just going on what the average player is going to do.
(I assume that you are talking about land based mana fixing, since otherwise 10% seems really low.)
Yes, I'm referring specifically to mana-fixing lands. This doesn't count any artifact fixing, though my cube is extremely light on this, nor does it count all of Green's fixing.
When you don't pick all over the place, you end up with more than enough nonland playables for your deck, but everything but the 23 best of them don't improve your deck (not counting sideboarding). However almost every fixing nonbasic is going to make your deck better.
Many of the best cards in each color require CC and to get to two sources of that color on turn 4, you need to have 12-13 sources to get to 90% = 7-8 duals. If you take into account that the lands are not distributed optimally among all players and the colorless lands that hurt your mana base, the above mentioned 3 duals aren't nearly enough.
Yeah, I see that. But that's part of drafting - prioritizing picks (land, cards that are easier to cast, primary vs. secondary colour, etc.). In any event, fetchlands actually do a lot of work here as well to even things out. Players that prioritize fixing and taking "off-colour" fetchlands can have access to more virtual copies of their on-colour duals.
Would I consider maybe going up to a fifth set of duals? Maybe if they're on the power level of the big 3, but even as it currently stands I've had complaints. I sometimes get the drafters to voluntarily answer a few simple questions. In response to the question "What did you like least about the cube draft experience?" I've received the answer "Too many nonbasic lands." So, while I understand that more fixing is great, so is more cards that you can actually cast, and it turns out that mana fixing isn't considered that exciting by some drafters. I personally like to prioritize it but I think that drafters should have to stretch just a little to make their mana work - shouldn't be too easy.
EDIT: Looking at it a different way, you can use Cube Rarity. In a 450-card cube, a card or effect is "common" if there are 3 copies. Since I have 4 on-colour fixers per guild, "duals" for each guild occur slightly more frequently than a common would in a traditional booster draft. 5 rainbow fixers is almost an additional 2 commons.
So, imagine a booster draft of a traditional large set (229 cards not including basic lands). Imagine if that set contained all 10 guildgates at common, plus Terramorphic ExpanseandEvolving Wilds, also at common. The land-based fixing levels that I've recommended for cube are a little better than this, and of course of much higher quality and flexibility given fetchlands.
(XCCC cards like Cryptic Command are counted in the X1CC section. Only monocolored cards between 1 and 6 mana got considered.)
If you look up the values in this table
possible on curve color requirement issues in percent otp with 8/9/10/11/12/13 sources of that color: W////: 18/14/11/ 8/ 6/ 5 1W/U/B/R/G: 14/10/ 8/ 6/ 4/ 3 WW/U/B/R/G: 49/41/34/28/23/18 2W/U/B/R/G: 10/ 7/ 5/ 4/ 3/ 2 1WW/UU/BB/RR/GG: 41/33/27/21/16/12 3W/U/B/R/G: 8/ 5/ 4/ 2/ 2/ 1 2WW/UU/BB/RR/GG: 34/27/20/15/11/8 4W/U/B/R/G: 6/ 4/ 2/ 1/ 1/ 1 3WW/UU/BB/RR/GG: 28/21/15/11/ 8/ 5 5W/U/B/R/G: 4/ 3/ 2/ 1/ 1/ 0 4WW/UU/BB/RR/GG: 27/16/11/ 8/ 5/ 3
You get the following percentages for not having enough the appropriated colored mana for a card:
Cube:
8 sources: 23
9 sources: 18
10 sources: 13
11 sources: 11
12 sources: 8
13 sources: 6
Tl;dr: The increased color requirements of the cards that you find in a cube demand a significantly increased amount of mana fixing compared to a regular limited environment if you want to keep things comparable.
Interesting analsysis and choices. I have a few comments:
1. This is good analysis that I think will be useful for deeper examination of my cube. It might be the kind of thing to add to the wishlist over on the cubetutor thread - I've checked it out but haven't posted my feature requests yet.
2. I'm not entirely sure that the analysis was relevant to my comparison to limited; my point about the hypothetical set containing guildgates and common fetches was simply to illustrate the relative frequency of appearance of a card in a draft and to give a feel for how easy or difficult it should be to get fixing in an "average" draft.
3. The specific example that you chose was Avacyn Restored - it's an interesting choice because it's also worth noting that the only land-based fixing in that set is Cavern of Souls at Rare; there's also no artifact-based fixing. So, basically, outside of Green, there is no fixing whatsoever. As you've illustrated, there's likewise no CC two-drops at common or uncommon and only one at rare. For the most part, there are actually very few of these difficult casting costs as you mention - but there is also pretty much no fixing available either.
4. If I understand your final analysis correctly, you're saying that across the board, in your cube, if you have 10 sources of the appropriate coloured mana for a given card, then 13 percent of the time you won't have the correct mana. Is that correct? If so, I have no problem with that number. If you want to run a number of CC two-drops, or whatever, then you need to look to draft more fetches, go after the rainbow fixers, etc. But otherwise, that number seems appropriate to me.
EDIT: Just a specific question about your analysis. In looking at AVR, you have identified that there are 20 commons with C casting cost, 4 at uncommon and 4 at rare. In your Aggregated section, you indicate 216 one-drops. How did you come up with this number? (I've tried a couple of different things but get different numbers).
3. AVR has artifact based fixing.
The only reason this expansion has been chosen was that it is the last non-multicolor themed set. With the above table, you can generate the numbers for any set you want and see if they are comparable.
I missed Vessel of Endless Rest at uncommon, but that's about it. I understand why you chose AVR - I guess my only point was that I agree you're correct that the average limited environment has fewer difficult-to-cast cards, but it's also worth noting that it generally has far less fixing as well.
Basically, to make things easier to cast, you can choose cards that are easier to cast, add more fixing, or some mix of both. At some point, there is a tradeoff with how easy it is to run 2, 3, 4 or even 5 colours in your deck and the associated need to identify "castability" as a factor in the power level of your deck in limited and prioritise picks accordingly.
Back to the original point of this thread, I personally believe that, in large quantities, cards like the Tri-Lands and Vivid Lands make it too easy to get 3+ colour decks while simultaneously favouring the slower midrange and control decks that can simply run any powerful card from any colour if they survive to turn 3-4 to get their mana sorted. While it is the prerogative of the cube designer, I personally find it more interesting and enjoyable to be forced to make decisions.
4. Kind of: This does not take artifacts, gold cards, disruption, (in)direct fixing or mulligans into account and only looks at the color requirements. In this model, all cards are equally popular. Etb tapped mana sources or casting multiple spells is not taken into account. The result is that in this model, the average nonland card has an average chance of 13% to be uncastable because of its color requirements by the time you could cast it if you hit all your land drops.
As a side note: If a card is uncastable this turn because of color requirements, there is an about 75% chance that you still can't cast it the following turn. This is a huge problem for cards that are only good in a limited time frame, like the classic WW Knights.
Understood. I agree that the CC cards are a problem. Obviously I agree that having more fixing available can make it easier to cast those. But as I've banged on about probably enough, I believe that brings with it other, in my view negative, consequences to the draft environment. Therefore I think that if you're running CC drops, then your deck should really be A/b, rather than truly A/B. That way, you can maybe have 12-13 sources of White to cast your knight, and run fewer sources of your second colour and focus on mid-late game threats in that colour. Again, it all comes down to whether you want to encourage decision making and tradeoffs at this level or simply allow everyone to live the dream.
5. The simplified aggregation function is just 10 x commons + 3 x uncommons + 1 x rares and reflects the frequency these cards appear in regular boosters.
Ah - I see. So it doesn't take into account the number of commons/uncommons/rares in the set to determine how frequently a particular card will actually appear in a draft on average. When I add this in, each common appears 2.4 times, each uncommon 1.2 times and each rare 0.4 times in an "average" draft. using these ratios I get 6:3:1, so I would multiply the commons only by 6 rather than 10. (EDIT: for the sake of completion, if you want to take Mythic Rares into account as well, then the ratios are 12:6:2:1. This assumes a typical large set containing 101 commons, 60 uncommons, 53 rares and 15 mythic rares. Avacyn Restored is one such "typcial" set, as are all of the core sets M10 through M13 and reportedly M14 as well).
Because it doesn't run out of counters, doesn't favor a specific color, and doesn't take up 5 slots in the cube.
And who said Coliseum goes in aggro? Who said the Vivid lands are bad? All I said is that they're unnecessary. I don't need 6 (color-specific) Grand Coliseums in the cube.
I like the Vivids better. Just my opinion.
Do you mean Shocklands? Or is "Checklands" a nickname for some other duals?
Wow, that is really high. Don't you get way to many 4+ color goodstuff decks this way? I run only 10% fixing lands. Cutting the Vivids and slightly reducing the amount of fixing lands made 4+ color decks much rarer while still being enough for good 2 color decks.
I like Vivids more than Shards lands, too. The latter always fix only shard mana. The former can be used for shard mana and/or for wedge mana. And you seldomly need the fixing more than two times anyway.
Uril, the Miststalker RGW -- Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre C -- Vhati il-Dal BG -- Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer RW -- Animar, Soul of Elements URG
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker R -- Maga, Traitor to Mortals B -- Ghave, Guru of Spores BGW -- Sliver Hivelord WUBRG
The M10/ISD duals.
Ah, because they "check" if you control a basic land of a certain type? I recently heard the term "buddy lands" for those. Never heard "checklands" befoee.
Uril, the Miststalker RGW -- Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre C -- Vhati il-Dal BG -- Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer RW -- Animar, Soul of Elements URG
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker R -- Maga, Traitor to Mortals B -- Ghave, Guru of Spores BGW -- Sliver Hivelord WUBRG
I'm considering going to 450 with my cube soon, but lands are holding me back.
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I'm seriously considering bumping up to 370 just to run additional fixing.
I think this is the way to go with any cube running the shock/fetch/dual cycles. I have the classic triumvirate, a few manlands as guild choices, and some rainbow fixers like Gemstone Mine, City of Brass, etc... in my colorless section. Throw in fixing mana rocks and I see 3-5 color ramp and control decks pretty regularly when we get drafts off and it seems to be enough for when we use the small number formats. If I was being forced to choose one or the other I'd probably go with the trilands in a small cube and the vivids in a large one.
http://cubetutor.com/cubeblog/993
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/23690
Doesnt change the fact that vivids are amazing mana fixers.
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I wouldn't run a cycle, unless you go Fetch or Duals. I'd customize for each pair so it gets the lands it wants most. You could mix painlands, hybrid lands, Rav bouncelands, Scars duals (great for the aggro pairs), and Horizon Canopy.
Cheers,
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Actually, a foil set of ten painlands is pretty damn cheap. I think this'd be the way to go, if running the whole cycle is important.
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Shardlands were pretty good, but once the WWK man duals were out, they got the boot pretty quickly.
Vivids lasted longer, and they're fantastic lands -- they weren't cut because they weren't good enough -- they were cut because they were making 5cc entirely too common an occurrence in our cube drafts.
Waiting a turn for the mana is awesome if it's painless 5 color (if you're control).
Not running either, couldn't be happier. If I was going no-proxy or peasant, I'd probably run them.
Something to keep in mind with mana fixing is what I call the "+1 rule". Basically, whatever fixing you provide in bulk will tend to encourage the number of colours it fixes plus one.
For example, take a simple set with no fixing and run an 8-player draft. What fixing do you have? I said "none", but really you have basic lands, so that's effectively 1-colour fixing. How many colours do drafters tend to play? Of course, they can play whatever they like, but the most common configuration is 2 colours.
Now, take that same set and add in Terramorphic Expanse. It only takes up one common slot, but because it can fix any colour, how is it most often used? In my experience, it is most often used to splash a third colour, not just make your 2-colour deck stronger. Of course, as always, it can be used this way but the tendency is to go +1. (Note that if there were as many Terramorphic Expanses in such a draft as there are guild gates, then, because they can fix anything, you would likely end up with 4-5 colour decks.)
Ok, so look at the original Ravnica block. There were 10 2-colour fixers at common (well, plus the signets which was overkill). Anyway, the most common draft strategy in that environment? 3-colour decks.
Now look at Shards of Alara draft. This contained the Tri-Lands which are the topic of this thread. What did draft decks look like in that environment? Generally 4-5 colour decks. My experience was that 4-colour was actually most common, but I'm not going to split hairs on 5-colour here.
In fact, this leads to a corollary observation:
Once fixing is good enough for 4 colours, 5 colours is almost automatic.
I know someone will point out that in the current Return to Ravnica block draft 2-colour decks are the strongest strategy - that's fine, but the mana fixing was actually designed for 3 colours and if you're not highly disciplined then you will end up in 3 colours.
What does this all have to do with the thread? Well, really I'm just saying what everyone else is saying - that if you support Vivid and Tri-lands, and they make up any significant percentage of your cube, then you are pushing your environment into 4-5 colour decks. (I just took longer to say it).
For my own cube, I want the tension to be between 2- and 3- colour decks. For this reason, I mostly provide 2-colour fixers. The "rainbow" fixers that I provide are minimal and just meant to smooth things a little more - it's possible that it's correct to remove some of these (I'd like to keep City of Brass and Gemstone Mine at the least since they help enable 3-colour aggro). The strength of the 2-colour fixing, though (fetching other 2-colour fixers), means that I'm already worried about the strength of the mana, but there are enough 2-3 colour decks that so far I'm happy.
The reason that I want the tension between 2- and 3- colours is because this is where the greatest diversity lies: out of 32 possible colour combinations in a Magic deck, 10 of them are 2-colour and 10 of them are 3-colour. Combine this with the corollary from above that once 4-colour is easy, 5-colour usually also is, then what you get is an environment with very little need to make decisions about colour choice. Since I find those decisions to be interesting (at the most basic level of drafting) I want them in my environment. Plus, with this configuration and a few artifact/Green helpers, 4-5 colour decks are still possible and mono-colour decks are always possible - you just need to prioritise your picks according to what you're trying to do.
Finally, back to the answer I gave at the beginning of this post - why 10% fixing? I got to this number based on what I call "ideal mana". Basically, how many sources of each colour do you want in your deck, assuming it's not a splash colour? In a 60-card deck, my answer is about 16, since that gives you a 90% chance of having one in your opening hand. For a 40-card deck, I put it at about 10, which is 89% chance of having one in your opening hand. For a true 2-colour 40-card deck, then, for ideal mana I'd want 10 sources of each colour. Assuming I'm running 17 lands, I'd need 3 dual lands in my deck. With a 450 cube, with 8 players drafting, then on average I should have access to 3.2 of my 4 on-colour dual lands, plus the rainbow fixers, giving me at least a shot at my ideal mana. Sometimes there will be contention and I'll get fewer, sometimes I'll get all of my options and have even better mana. Sometimes they just won't show up in the draft. But I'm working to optimise the average case here.
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Agreed. That's why I said "and they make up any significant percentage of your cube" - putting a few rainbow fixers in is going to smooth out the mana and not break things. It's when getting that kind of fixing is easy that things will tend to warp to 4-5 colour. In both Lorwyn and Shards of Alara draft, these cards were uncommon and at that frequency drafting many colours was pretty easy to do.
Also - disciplined drafters can stay two-colour anytime. I'm just going on what the average player is going to do.
Yes, I'm referring specifically to mana-fixing lands. This doesn't count any artifact fixing, though my cube is extremely light on this, nor does it count all of Green's fixing.
Yeah, I see that. But that's part of drafting - prioritizing picks (land, cards that are easier to cast, primary vs. secondary colour, etc.). In any event, fetchlands actually do a lot of work here as well to even things out. Players that prioritize fixing and taking "off-colour" fetchlands can have access to more virtual copies of their on-colour duals.
Would I consider maybe going up to a fifth set of duals? Maybe if they're on the power level of the big 3, but even as it currently stands I've had complaints. I sometimes get the drafters to voluntarily answer a few simple questions. In response to the question "What did you like least about the cube draft experience?" I've received the answer "Too many nonbasic lands." So, while I understand that more fixing is great, so is more cards that you can actually cast, and it turns out that mana fixing isn't considered that exciting by some drafters. I personally like to prioritize it but I think that drafters should have to stretch just a little to make their mana work - shouldn't be too easy.
EDIT: Looking at it a different way, you can use Cube Rarity. In a 450-card cube, a card or effect is "common" if there are 3 copies. Since I have 4 on-colour fixers per guild, "duals" for each guild occur slightly more frequently than a common would in a traditional booster draft. 5 rainbow fixers is almost an additional 2 commons.
So, imagine a booster draft of a traditional large set (229 cards not including basic lands). Imagine if that set contained all 10 guildgates at common, plus Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds, also at common. The land-based fixing levels that I've recommended for cube are a little better than this, and of course of much higher quality and flexibility given fetchlands.
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Interesting analsysis and choices. I have a few comments:
1. This is good analysis that I think will be useful for deeper examination of my cube. It might be the kind of thing to add to the wishlist over on the cubetutor thread - I've checked it out but haven't posted my feature requests yet.
2. I'm not entirely sure that the analysis was relevant to my comparison to limited; my point about the hypothetical set containing guildgates and common fetches was simply to illustrate the relative frequency of appearance of a card in a draft and to give a feel for how easy or difficult it should be to get fixing in an "average" draft.
3. The specific example that you chose was Avacyn Restored - it's an interesting choice because it's also worth noting that the only land-based fixing in that set is Cavern of Souls at Rare; there's also no artifact-based fixing. So, basically, outside of Green, there is no fixing whatsoever. As you've illustrated, there's likewise no CC two-drops at common or uncommon and only one at rare. For the most part, there are actually very few of these difficult casting costs as you mention - but there is also pretty much no fixing available either.
4. If I understand your final analysis correctly, you're saying that across the board, in your cube, if you have 10 sources of the appropriate coloured mana for a given card, then 13 percent of the time you won't have the correct mana. Is that correct? If so, I have no problem with that number. If you want to run a number of CC two-drops, or whatever, then you need to look to draft more fetches, go after the rainbow fixers, etc. But otherwise, that number seems appropriate to me.
EDIT: Just a specific question about your analysis. In looking at AVR, you have identified that there are 20 commons with C casting cost, 4 at uncommon and 4 at rare. In your Aggregated section, you indicate 216 one-drops. How did you come up with this number? (I've tried a couple of different things but get different numbers).
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I missed Vessel of Endless Rest at uncommon, but that's about it. I understand why you chose AVR - I guess my only point was that I agree you're correct that the average limited environment has fewer difficult-to-cast cards, but it's also worth noting that it generally has far less fixing as well.
Basically, to make things easier to cast, you can choose cards that are easier to cast, add more fixing, or some mix of both. At some point, there is a tradeoff with how easy it is to run 2, 3, 4 or even 5 colours in your deck and the associated need to identify "castability" as a factor in the power level of your deck in limited and prioritise picks accordingly.
Back to the original point of this thread, I personally believe that, in large quantities, cards like the Tri-Lands and Vivid Lands make it too easy to get 3+ colour decks while simultaneously favouring the slower midrange and control decks that can simply run any powerful card from any colour if they survive to turn 3-4 to get their mana sorted. While it is the prerogative of the cube designer, I personally find it more interesting and enjoyable to be forced to make decisions.
Understood. I agree that the CC cards are a problem. Obviously I agree that having more fixing available can make it easier to cast those. But as I've banged on about probably enough, I believe that brings with it other, in my view negative, consequences to the draft environment. Therefore I think that if you're running CC drops, then your deck should really be A/b, rather than truly A/B. That way, you can maybe have 12-13 sources of White to cast your knight, and run fewer sources of your second colour and focus on mid-late game threats in that colour. Again, it all comes down to whether you want to encourage decision making and tradeoffs at this level or simply allow everyone to live the dream.
Ah - I see. So it doesn't take into account the number of commons/uncommons/rares in the set to determine how frequently a particular card will actually appear in a draft on average. When I add this in, each common appears 2.4 times, each uncommon 1.2 times and each rare 0.4 times in an "average" draft. using these ratios I get 6:3:1, so I would multiply the commons only by 6 rather than 10. (EDIT: for the sake of completion, if you want to take Mythic Rares into account as well, then the ratios are 12:6:2:1. This assumes a typical large set containing 101 commons, 60 uncommons, 53 rares and 15 mythic rares. Avacyn Restored is one such "typcial" set, as are all of the core sets M10 through M13 and reportedly M14 as well).
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If you knew that 5CC was off the radar, and it just wasn't something people ever drafted, and rarely would be if at all, would you use vivids?
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They're on the chopping block for me in my 810 card cube. I have already cut the shard-lands.
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And who said Coliseum goes in aggro? Who said the Vivid lands are bad? All I said is that they're unnecessary. I don't need 6 (color-specific) Grand Coliseums in the cube.
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