MTG Salvation

I saw someone on the forums mentioning the idea of running Maze's End in their cube and include a house rule that let the player that drafted Maze's End get all the Ravnica guildgates 'for free'.
I can't find the post mentioned this, but I thought it was a really cool idea and I'd like to discuss it further with everyone on the forums. The guildgates themselves are fairly weak which is why I think it wouldn't be too strong (compared to Worldknit?). You could even create an 'all-or-nothing' rule that forced the player to choose to either include Maze's End and all 10 guildgates in their deck or none of them.
I feel like it would be a balanced pick, providing you with sub-optimal mana fixing and win condition for a 5-color deck while also decreasing the need for drafting additional mana fixing for the rest of the draft.

It also adds more support for the Exploration/Fastbond/Explore/Oracle of Mul Daya ramp decks that I really like.

That's my thoughts - I would love to hear what you think about the idea .

Even with all the tutors in the cube, all the land ramp in the cube, and getting Maze and all 10 gates for free, this will never win a cube game. Ever.

I think never is a pretty strong word here. Is it highly highly highly improbable? Yeah, but you give enough monkeys a cube with that package in there and let them do infinite drafts and play infinite games, and eventually one will. There's no world I can think of where I can support it, but there is a world where someone could win a game with this package. It would be EXTREMELY rare and ultimately disappointing, but hey gotta follow your unrealistic dreams sometimes!

Seems like a cool house rule, but Thawing Glaciers got cut from our cube some time ago. So Maze's End isn't going to get there as a value card, and forcing a deck to run 5 color nonsense with risky fixing (10 unfetchable, unweighted CIPT lands out of your ~18 land deck) seems like a bad way to go all for the sake of one iffy win condition.

Maybe some decks will pick it up if they want access to a random guildgate if you don't implement the all or nothing rule, but I don't imagine that's the context you want this card to be used in.

@salmo: If there's a cube world where this is potentially a winning strategy, I've never seen it. Or anything close to it. I can confidently say that this card + 10 gates in a deck would never have won a cube game (through the Maze win condition) in any cube I have ever drafted.

You said it would never win a cube game. That seems like an exaggeration. I don't think it's impossible, just extremely difficult and more akin to winning the lottery than winning a coin flip. But I've definitely been in match ups where both sides go through their entire deck, and I could definitely see a deck with 10 guild gates + Maze's End win in that match up--with the help of a lot of other cards, sure, but the win condition could be 10 gates + ME. *****, if this package was in the legendary cube with how slow and big-fisty that cube is, it could certainly win a game there.

But obviously this is the land of make-believe here so there's no point in debating this. You think one way strongly, I think the other.

Quote from TheTennesseeFireman »

Seems like a cool house rule, but Thawing Glaciers got cut from our cube some time ago.

That wouldn't matter as it can only fetch basic lands.

Quote from Eryops »

Quote from TheTennesseeFireman »

Seems like a cool house rule, but Thawing Glaciers got cut from our cube some time ago.

That wouldn't matter as it can only fetch basic lands.

I believe the implication is that if that card didn't do well, an arguably-worse version that has a win-con attached prob won't do well either.

As someone who runs the Maze End win con in EDH, I can tell you right now they will almost never win without Scapeshift, which becomes a draft or die card. All the gates enter tapped, which means probably 50% of the decks lands will be entering tapped, making it less likely that they will ever win since it'll take them 15+ turns on average, with an absolute minimum of around 6 turns. Did I mention that they're just always open to combat damage? It works for me in EDH because my commander is Child of Alara, and the deck is 80% lands and tutors.

It also disrupts the drafting process really hard. Are the gates included in the cube or do you just get them as land, because they'll be drafted unwillingly eventually, then your all-or-nothing just forces whoever gets stuck with mazes end playing a deck they don't want to be playing. If you don't have the all or nothing rule and people draft the gates as land, they have to give them up if someone actually wants to do mazes end.

You could never force them to draft the gates, that would be horrendous. The "combo" seems bad enough as is, nevertheless forcing your players to draft 11 specific cards. And having them give up draft picks seems terrible as well. This archetype that is nigh-unplayable is looking for help, not ways to make it harder!

Alright guys. Maybe it will almost never win the game with the ability on Maze's End, but is it still a bad pick? Following my suggestion, it gives you 10 fixing lands just by picking the card. Remember that it still has the 'Thawing Glaciers'-like ability. I guess I just like the idea of a card that heavily promotes a slow controlling 5-colored deck without being too oppresive like I think Worldknit is.

Just run Horn of Greed and Karoos if you want to have shenanigans with lands.

Quote from Tactuz »

is it still a bad pick?

Are you forcing them to put all 10 Gates and the Maze into their final 40? Because if so, yes. It's bad.

But if drafting the Maze gives me the option of using up to 11 of those cards, than it's fine. I wouldn't ever add the Maze and 10 Gates into a final 40, but if an Esper control deck could get 3 Coastal Tower lands for their deck, it's a fine option.

I'll take the opposite view of wtwlf123 and say that I could totally see this winning a grindy game or two. Throw in a few enablers and you may even do it before turn 20. The win condition isn't the problem; the problem is that 5 color decks don't want to be running 10 guildgates and 1 ETBT colorless land. Not only are you playing the entire game a turn behind schedule, you probably don't have room for actually GOOD fixing, since that only leaves you with about 7 or so remaining land slots. Do you try to eek out a fetchland package? Cut yourself off of basic land effects? Give up on other fixing for fear of being too slow? Overload on basics for the colors you actively want to play? There are just so many deckbuilding compromises that I can't see it ever working the way you want it. Standard decks required 4 Maze's End and a full TurboFog package just to be fringe playable in a meta full of Revelation decks.

I think this is going to end up resulting in the situation wtwlf123 describes above: nobody ever maindecks the Maze and control players will just draft it to fill in a fixing gap if you allow them to.

Yeah, I think the Maze's End plan is pretty unlikely to win a single game in cube. Maybe only if the opposite player is having a really bad time after decide to procees a game after mulligan to unplayable 3. Even then, draws would have to be damn bad in order to give enough time to the ME's player to succesfully drop put 11 land on the battlefield. And I'm also on the boat that see the «House rule» being mostly use by player wanting to lock some fixing in their 40. Seems like a pretty unbalacing rule to me.

Interesting idea, but unrealistic IMO.

If you went the optional play/access all route, I think the card is a reasonable pick with control and maybe some ramp decks willing to play this and 3-5 of the gates. If the environment is a low powered, bigger cube maybe, just maybe you'd occasionally see someone run it as an alt win con. I'm about to reintroduce the best Conspiracy draft interaction cards, but I've never tried the one card accesses a group. Anyone else done it? Liked it?

If it's houserule to pick a maze I'm pretty sure it'll be use just to get mana fixing. Your cube need to be pretty slow for this to work Maybe it can work in dragon cube?

Quote from wtwlf123 »

Quote from Tactuz »

is it still a bad pick?

Are you forcing them to put all 10 Gates and the Maze into their final 40? Because if so, yes. It's bad.

But if drafting the Maze gives me the option of using up to 11 of those cards, than it's fine. I wouldn't ever add the Maze and 10 Gates into a final 40, but if an Esper control deck could get 3 Coastal Tower lands for their deck, it's a fine option.

I was thinking of either all 10 guildgates or none, but maybe that rule is too much. It could be 'Put Maze's End and any number of Guildgates in your deck' instead. That would probably make it bad for 2-color decks and possibly bad for 3-color decks as Maze's End would be almost useless. But it would provide some fixing for 4- and 5-color decks. Would that model be better / good enough?

And am I really crazy for thinking that a 5-color Maze's End deck can win in a control mirror match or against slow midrange?
I agree that such a deck would be crushed by aggro and fast decks, but I can see some favorable matches, but maybe I'm just seeing ghosts .

I will try it out in my cube. The 'house rule' could be altered in different ways aswell, I'm open for ideas to make the deck better.

If you allowed unlimited amounts of Guildgates to be added to a deck during construction like you normally do for basic lands (for everyone, not just the person with Maze's End) it could become interesting.

Probably not good, but in a very low powered Cube it might happen enough to be memorable.

That' will make mana fixing too easy, in my opinion. I'll suddenly placed very low priority in drafting mana fixing.

Quote from Tactuz »

And am I really crazy for thinking that a 5-color Maze's End deck can win in a control mirror match or against slow midrange?
I agree that such a deck would be crushed by aggro and fast decks, but I can see some favorable matches, but maybe I'm just seeing ghosts .

I don't think you're crazy. I don't think it's likely, or even something to support in the hopes it could happen, but I think it definitely COULD happen.

Also, never forget: Only a sith deals in absolutes!

IMO, fixing should be as great as your willingness to draft it. Meaning as a drafter you need to put enough weightage, just like any nonland card. Alot of drafters underrate the necessity of quality fixing.

The reason I don't think it could happen is because it would lose you so many games in your quest to unlock the achievement that it would get cut before it would ever come to fruition.

With infinite permutations, I'm sure it could win a game somewhere in the 10000 game mark or something, but it's so unreasonable that I don't think you'd ever be able to actually experience it.

You'd have to build around it by supporting some sort of turbo-fog/land-tutor archetype. But just tossing it into the average cube? ...no. You're far more likely to win with something like Door to Nothingness or even Coalition Victory.

I don't think anyone but maybe OP for a second has implied that this is anywhere close to reasonable.