MTG Salvation

Lately I've found my cube's fixing to be too good and there isn't a very good way to punish it in my cube. I do want people to push for multicolored decks but I think my cube lacks a checks and balances system for it. I have Tectonic Edge and each color has around 1 targeted land destruction. I lack Wasteland as it is a bit out of my price range but I was wondering what alternatives there were other than land destruction. The few I know of are Price of Progress and Burning Earth but how good are these cards on an average basis? Thanks for any input or card suggestions.

Price of Progress is quite solid.

If you can't do Wasteland, there's also Ghost Quarter and Dust Bowl. Run Avalanche Riders and Ravenous Baboons. Acidic Slime hits lands and is a good utility creature. You can also go a little more extreme with things like Ruination and Back to Basics.

I lack Wasteland as it is a bit out of my price range but I was wondering what alternatives there were other than land destruction.

If you don't mind gold borders and use opaque sleeves, you can pick up the World Championship Edition of Wasteland for less than $4. I also notice you're not running Strip Mine, which is only about $6. Nothing punishes greedy manabases better than those two lands.

A lot of greedy mana bases also run a lot of manafacts, so you might want to try running more cheap artifact removal on a stick like Manic Vandal, Uktabi Orangutan/Viridian Shaman, Qasali Pridemage, and even Leonin Relic-Warder.

Ankh of Mishra and Zo-Zu the Punisher punish fetches quite nicely and give some extra reach to aggro decks. You might also try Blood Moon or Magus of the Moon to throw a wrench in the plans of players that are hogging all the nonbasics.

Primal Order.

Dwarven Blastminer.

You could just limit the amount of fixing players have access to. Looking at your cube, you currently have fetches, shocks, painlands, checklands, BFZ duals, fastlands, manlands and tri-lands. The latter are basically only good at supporting slow, greedy decks; cutting those might be a good start. You could also replace your 10 signets/talisman by other rocks (Diamonds, Coldsteel Heart, Mind Stone) that are less good at fixing.

Heck, in your green section, Harrow's only real upside compared to good ol' Rampant Growth is that it fixes more; that could make for an easy swap.

For what it's worth, I don't think it's very much fun to build a 5c monstrosity only to be randomly blown out by a price of progress or a blood moon; I think I'd rather just not be able to amass so much fixing that the triple splash becomes attractive. But hey, it's your draft environment, so take this with a grain of salt.

You could just limit the amount of fixing players have access to. Looking at your cube, you currently have fetches, shocks, painlands, checklands, BFZ duals, fastlands, manlands and tri-lands. The latter are basically only good at supporting slow, greedy decks; cutting those might be a good start.

Good call, I hadn't noticed that because your lands aren't sorted by guild on CT. I'd definitely cut the tri-lands if your players are building so many 4-5c goodstuff decks.

Quote from bmholle »

Dwarven Blastminer.

Seriously. Both this card and Dwarven Miner are kinda just GG against the 15-nonbasic 5cc deck.

I'm not a fan of punishing manabases. After all a draft pick was spent on it instead of a nonland card. And it requires a bit of skill to do it. But that's my opinion. I mean, there's already effects like Armageddon, Wasteland, and what not.

What I'm saying is there shouldn't be a need to fill the hate. It will come naturally in drafting if those said effects (that are staples) are in the Cube.

If fixing is too rampant then you have to do something to keep it in check. Otherwise the hate should be natural.