MTG Salvation

Quote from Hicham

Just giving some support for Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds.

These cards are never super, but they always make maindeck here. Even two colour decks play them a lot. They also work well with landfall. We almost cut them two years ago but they have been so consistently played every draft, that they are not uncuttable for us at 450.

This. The shuffle effect is also welcome, and for those running Deathrite Shaman it is two more lands that can transform it to Birds of Paradise.

I'm also a pretty big fan of Expanse/Wilds.

Lol city of ass

I'm looking at adding it as my only Un- card.

Paliano, the High City is also good enough to be in any cube as far as I'm concerned. You'll pretty consistently wind up with at least one color pair you can use, and it comes in to play untapped.

I had the exact opposite experience with Paliano. I usually ended up with a land that maybe had my splash color on it but usually dead.

Paliano was great for us. It was pretty much always a land that produced two relevant colors of mana and entered the battlefield untapped.

Paliano has been great for us. It misses, but not as often as it was an on-color dual land.

Paliano is a lot of fun and adds some fun and interactivity to the drafting. Trying to keep a straight face when someone hits your colour, what colour you name, how people react to the information; it is a little game in itself.

I run:

• City of Brass
  
• Exotic Orchard
  
• Gemstone Mine
  
• Paliano, the High City
  
• Reflecting Pool
  
• Unknown Shores
  

We also have 6 or so teramorphics up for grabs to instead of basics but they get underused (I think they are usually forgotten/underestimated).

I should run more and will adding a few of the suggestions here.

Yea those are the 2 main ones I am eyeing up. Coliseum has the bonus of supporting those new Eldrazi and i want to find room for another 1 or 2 of them.

Has anyone mentioned City of Ass? If your ok with silver boarder then I see no reason not to run it, the half mana is even usable with way to untap lands. I think I'm gonna add that soon.

We run city of ass and round it down. (the half is lost to corruption)

It falls in/out of our cube as we tinker with things.

Quote from H2O4Sho »

We run city of ass and round it down. (the half is lost to corruption)

It falls in/out of our cube as we tinker with things.

Do you round down at the end of each phase, or right away? (In other words, it combos with cards like Kiora's Follower to make 3 mana if you don't round down immediately.)

We round it down immediately. Yes there are times when you tap/untap/tap and you lose out on one mana, but everyone in the group prefers the ease of this rule. 1.5 mana is just a weird number. Unless you untap it right away or have some sort of doubling effect out, you lose .5 mana anyways.

In much the same way, we have run Blacker Lotus as well. Obviously we don't tear up the card, we just exile it instead

We try not to have "house" rules, but these two rules are practical and efficient.

Aw, what a bummer. Rounding down the mana eliminates all that's fun and unique about the card. The 1/2 mana is actually relevant sometimes, and doesn't really break the way the game works.

Hadn't been printed yet, as most of those lists are ~4 years old. It's at or near the top of cube fixing nowadays.

Specifically, Mana Confluence is immediately above or below City of Brass, depending on whether you run Worldknit.

Quote from psly4mne »

Specifically, Mana Confluence is immediately above or below City of Brass, depending on whether you run Worldknit.

Or any of the other cards that are commonly cubed that can take advantage of City's drawback, like Rishadan Port, Tangle Wire and Icy Manipulator.

In what cube-relevant scenario is Confluence worse than City?

Dying with a lifegain trigger on the stack because you had to pay life instead of being dealt damage. Mainly mid-combat removal with lifegain involved.

Sweet baby threadnecro.

Confluence is a better card than Brass simply because Confluence can't be abused like Brass can be by lockdown tapping effects. That said, 99% of the time it won't make much of a difference at all.

If they were both in the same pack Id take Mana Confluence over City of Brass, mostly due to the Rishadan Port interaction.

Been tinkering with my mana base again.

I've been running the vivid lands which have been great, but in a small cube i feel maybe the extra fixing isnt needed (i know wtwlf has cautioned against too much fixing with these in the past). I also read about concerns over vivid lands helping control too much over aggro.

I am looking at adding in gemstone mine and undiscovered paradise along with a few other lands not related to fixing to replace the vivids. does this swing the lands too far in Aggro's favour vs control? I already have a very creature/combat focussed cube in which control can sometimes be harder to build.

Also does removal of the vivid lands make reflecting pool sub optimal to the point you might not play it?

What size we talking here? Do you have a link to a list?

375 unpowered. link to list is in my signature.

current proposed change is vivid lands out for:
strip mine
aether hub
grand coliseum
terramorphic expanse
maze of ith

I feel like these would all be maindecked by almost every deck. where gemstone mine and undiscovered paradise are much more narrow. I ran gemstone in the past and it was usually a last pick and not mainboarded.

Hmm sorry for some reason I can’t see sigs on the mobile version my phone is using, but I would say at 375 I’d probably be running City, Confluence, Gemstone, Wilds, Expanse, and Coliseum in addition to 4 cycles of guild lands (I’m probably in the minority here but I love the creature lands and 46 lands @ 375 will allow your drafters to build 2 color decks with good mana and some 3 color decks too in an avg 8 man draft).

Edit: just looked at your sig on my iPad and since you only support 1-2 aggro decks at most in an 8 man draft I definitely think you don’t need Gemstone. The Vivids probably play well for you and let you splash the insane amount of gold cards you have in the list so maybe those should stay!?