I think there is a serious underestimation of Celestial Colonnade's value here. That card is great, and is one of the control cards that I'm most excited to take from a pack. Colonnade and Creeping Tar Pit compete to arguably be among the best cube cards in their guilds, not just among the lands.
Lands are often much better picks than spells especially a manland. Even if you managed to draft all the best spells, not having the lands to help cast it doesn't do you much good.
I haven't been able to try out the Amonkhet cycle lands or a few other cool cycles to date, but the more I think about it the less I want to cut Tar Pit, Vent and Ravine, as they are the most unique and consistently powerful, but I can't help but feel like Colonnade is just overkill and will continue to never get activated, as it's just so much mana in the one deck that always has stuff to do. I don't think I've ever lost a game with a WUx Control deck without a handful of cards. The issue is never about running out of threats and answers, but rather having time to actually use them.
Tar Pit does almost the same thing for 2 less mana, while Vent offers a unique recovery mechanic, Ravine is a fast clock in a deck that lacks card advantage and really benefits from extra threats even if they're over-costed, while Colonnade isn't even an especially fast clock for how much mana you're paying.
Another overlooked issue with Colonnade is the opportunity cost of picking it in draft. Even if the power level is half-decent, it means you aren't picking a powerful spell. This means that as a land, It needs to be consistently useful (ie: deliver a bit more than just being a gulidgate). If I had the option of picking a Sheltered Thicket or Raging Ravine, Ravine would win every time. However, I cannot say the same for a Mystic Gate and Collonade, as Gate can at least enter play untapped and allow for greedier manabases. I could even see Irrigated Farmland being played in off color decks like W/x midrange or U/G Ramp. I don't know, maybe I'm being to harsh on Colonnade, but from what I can tell it feels serious;y overrated. Maybe I'll just force U/W Control the next time just to make sure I get to test it conclusively.
The evasion of tarpit and collanade are the primary atributes that seperate them above the rest. Being able to snipe planeswalkers, double swing for lethal etc.
Because collonade has vigilance, once you get 5+ lands, it effectively only costs 1 mana more than the lands you are mentioning (same as raging ravine).
Imagine you are facing down an elspeth or a gideon, or a sorin, or hell any token producing planeswalker. Imagine the difference between having a 4/4 flyer and a 2/3 lifelink in this spot!
Also, 4 toughness is relevant if your cube runs a lot of searing spear variants.
I'm all for questioning cube stables, but trust me , you are wrong about colonnade.
I haven't been able to try out the Amonkhet cycle lands or a few other cool cycles to date, but the more I think about it the less I want to cut Tar Pit, Vent and Ravine, as they are the most unique and consistently powerful, but I can't help but feel like Colonnade is just overkill and will continue to never get activated, as it's just so much mana in the one deck that always has stuff to do. I don't think I've ever lost a game with a WUx Control deck without a handful of cards. The issue is never about running out of threats and answers, but rather having time to actually use them.
Tar Pit does almost the same thing for 2 less mana, while Vent offers a unique recovery mechanic, Ravine is a fast clock in a deck that lacks card advantage and really benefits from extra threats even if they're over-costed, while Colonnade isn't even an especially fast clock for how much mana you're paying.
Another overlooked issue with Colonnade is the opportunity cost of picking it in draft. Even if the power level is half-decent, it means you aren't picking a powerful spell. This means that as a land, It needs to be consistently useful (ie: deliver a bit more than just being a gulidgate). If I had the option of picking a Sheltered Thicket or Raging Ravine, Ravine would win every time. However, I cannot say the same for a Mystic Gate and Collonade, as Gate can at least enter play untapped and allow for greedier manabases. I could even see Irrigated Farmland being played in off color decks like W/x midrange or U/G Ramp. I don't know, maybe I'm being to harsh on Colonnade, but from what I can tell it feels serious;y overrated. Maybe I'll just force U/W Control the next time just to make sure I get to test it conclusively.
If you always win the game with more cards than you can play in hand, why not replace one of the win conditions with Collonade? It will never be stuck in your hand.
Tar Pit is great and I advise everyone to play it, but Collonade is equally as good. Pit dies to every single burn spell. It also cannot kill planeswalker with 4 loyalty in one attack. By the time I am activating manlands, the one mana difference isn't huge anyway. Finally, Tar Pit isn't a good blocker (and remember you don't need to actually block with it - if you have six mana untapped with colonnade you are already limiting their attacks).
Collonade has been P1P2 here before, and I think that's right.
Collonade is great, and this conversation is a great example of the pitfalls of small sample size analysis. If I don't activate my tar pit or colonnade in the next ten drafts, those cards aren't suddenly 'bad', it's just how the situations played out in this small subset of games featuring those cards. But these cards aren't universally acclaimed because they're overrated but because--in the grand scheme of things--being a guildgate is less of a detriment than the pros of being a dual and a manland provide.
This seems to have become more of a discussion on Celestial Colonnade specifically and it's place in fast cubes, but I think this is a reasonable direction to take as I think it is by far the most overrated. For that reason I'll be addressing it more directly.
If you always win the game with more cards than you can play in hand, why not replace one of the win conditions with Collonade? It will never be stuck in your hand.
Tar Pit is great and I advise everyone to play it, but Collonade is equally as good. Pit dies to every single burn spell. It also cannot kill planeswalker with 4 loyalty in one attack. By the time I am activating manlands, the one mana difference isn't huge anyway. Finally, Tar Pit isn't a good blocker (and remember you don't need to actually block with it - if you have six mana untapped with colonnade you are already limiting their attacks).
Collonade has been P1P2 here before, and I think that's right.
Because control win conditions are value engines that not only win games, but also stabilize you to get into a surviving position. Colonnade has and never will be anything even remotely as good as, say, Gideon Jura, Elspeth SC or Ugin. Unless I'm misinterpreting what you're saying, your advice to slot out insane cards like that in my control decks is undeniably terrible. Secondly, "By the time I am activating manlands, the one mana difference isn't huge anyway" is simply false. Tar Pit's body is playable in midrange and combo decks, not just control. This is because having to get 6 lands/rocks before your first animation is incredibly difficult, and many games are decided by then, while a Tar Pit activation can simply be tossed into the mix if you need pressure on a player or a walker for cheap. Additionally, 4 attack is not some kind of magical number against anything except green planeswalkers. That extra point of attack is hardly ever worth the extra 2 mana. I'm not doubting the validity of it's pick priority in your playgroup, but the reasoning you used just doesn't add up to anything remotely reasonable.
Collonade is great, and this conversation is a great example of the pitfalls of small sample size analysis. If I don't activate my tar pit or colonnade in the next ten drafts, those cards aren't suddenly 'bad', it's just how the situations played out in this small subset of games featuring those cards. But these cards aren't universally acclaimed because they're overrated but because--in the grand scheme of things--being a guildgate is less of a detriment than the pros of being a dual and a manland provide.
I don't know how long you've been cubing for or how often you cube, but I can assure this is definitely not a sample size issue for me. I've had this cube for almost 2 years now and I cube with the people I know that play MTG probably on average every other week (sometimes more, sometimes less). I was also not exaggerating when I said that Colonnade has failed to impact a game more than a gainland in months. We each play 3 rounds, each of those being a best of 3, so a single draft is a sample size of at least 6 games. I try my best to not make ignorant assumptions about things, and that includes the quality of cards that I haven't extensively tested, as I'll only cut cards that are either blatantly outclassed by new ones or that fail to impress anybody in my playgroup. Some manlands might be good, but as a whole they are absolutely overrated, and while there is no problem whatsoever with including cards because they are a blast to play, overstating their power relative to other more consistent cards imo does more harm than good. Not to say that the card is too weak for small cubes, because the power is certainly there, but I think a lot more people need to pay closer attention to how Colonnade really preforms compared to a cycle/filter/fast land, because there is no way that I'm the only person in this whole forum who hasn't had Colonnade do anything but do a mediocre job at fixing mana for such an enormous period of time.
Hope that clears up any information and nuances from my previous posts that I failed to get across.
Actually, a multiple month sample is not very large, unless you guys are cubing every day. It's relevant, but not long enough to rule out bad luck completely.
You are comparing the downside of ETB tapped on your mana curve (often small), against the upside of access to a free 4/4 vigilance flyer in the mid-late game. That's a nuanced comparison that requires a HUGE sample for in-game performance to be the main metric of evaluation.
You have to draft collanade (1/5-1/10 drafts?). You have to DRAW collonade (1/3-2/3 of games?). You have to play it in multiple decks, across multiple matchups... and then consider the variance within that.
Let's say there are 20 forum members. Each forum member plays with collonade in 30 different games across a half year period. Thats about 30 cubes worth of experience with the card. ~10-20 games you will even draw collonande. There's a super high likelyhood that at least one forum member will be adversely affected by the ETB tapped clause multiple times, and almost never get to activate it.
I think you are that forum member. Trust me, the sample you quoted isn't small, but it isn't large.
It's not just group think why so many people think this card is good. There's a reason people rank it among the best cards in the guild for years on end. There's a reason every UWx deck in modern plays 4x collonade and no other manlands.. a format that is blistering fast and dominated by agro decks.
My sample with the card is in the multiple hundreds, and I've won and lost dozens of games to it across multiple formats... I'd wager my life that it is a top tier manland.
Sorry if it seems I'm coming down on you. I apreciate the post, It's well worded and reasoned and encourage you to share your experiences ... especially if it contradicts the "status quo".
I think a lot more people need to pay closer attention to how Colonnade really preforms
I've been watching it consistently perform at a high level in my powered cube since before the set even dropped. I really don't think that's an issue at all.
Quote from NotScottMescudi »
there is no way that I'm the only person in this whole forum who hasn't had Colonnade do anything but do a mediocre job at fixing mana for such an enormous period of time.
I would not be surprised at all if you were, honestly. It's been nothing but stellar in every cube environment I've drafted it in.
It can be difficult to evaluate cards based on their opportunity costs rather than their raw powerlevel. Even if goes a few games without activating, the opportunity cost to play it is extremely low for the amount of value it provides.
But it also sounds like your cube composition and/or playgroup preferences makes things play quite a bit differently for you than for typical cubes. Aggro/Combo being overwhelmingly powerful, Oath being a bannable card, Celestial Colonnade being bad... just things that aren't consistent with other cubes or playgroups that I've been involved with. Which is great! I'm glad to hear things from another new perspective, and I'm glad you're sharing your experiences with us here. It's okay for us to disagree with you on some thing and still have useful/positive discourse.
Collonade is great, and this conversation is a great example of the pitfalls of small sample size analysis. If I don't activate my tar pit or colonnade in the next ten drafts, those cards aren't suddenly 'bad', it's just how the situations played out in this small subset of games featuring those cards. But these cards aren't universally acclaimed because they're overrated but because--in the grand scheme of things--being a guildgate is less of a detriment than the pros of being a dual and a manland provide.
I don't know how long you've been cubing for or how often you cube, but I can assure this is definitely not a sample size issue for me. I've had this cube for almost 2 years now and I cube with the people I know that play MTG probably on average every other week (sometimes more, sometimes less). I was also not exaggerating when I said that Colonnade has failed to impact a game more than a gainland in months. We each play 3 rounds, each of those being a best of 3, so a single draft is a sample size of at least 6 games. I try my best to not make ignorant assumptions about things, and that includes the quality of cards that I haven't extensively tested, as I'll only cut cards that are either blatantly outclassed by new ones or that fail to impress anybody in my playgroup. Some manlands might be good, but as a whole they are absolutely overrated, and while there is no problem whatsoever with including cards because they are a blast to play, overstating their power relative to other more consistent cards imo does more harm than good. Not to say that the card is too weak for small cubes, because the power is certainly there, but I think a lot more people need to pay closer attention to how Colonnade really preforms compared to a cycle/filter/fast land, because there is no way that I'm the only person in this whole forum who hasn't had Colonnade do anything but do a mediocre job at fixing mana for such an enormous period of time.
Hope that clears up any information and nuances from my previous posts that I failed to get across.
I've been cubing for a while myself, but frankly that's irrelevant to this discussion. I could cube twice as much or half as much as you, and both of our sample sizes are still small.
When a card is new, then that's the best we have so we have to make leaps based on even smaller sample sizes and sometimes weeks/months/years later cards get re-visited and gems are found. But when we have about a decade's worth of cube experience and Collonnade has been around pretty much this entire time, a poster telling me there's no way the card could be performing how it is isn't just going to change my experiences, because like with you I have conviction on the card's power level based on its performance.
I think the thing you need to take away from this is that clearly we've had a ton of experience with these cards, right? So as much as I appreciate finding niches and doing things differently and etc., maybe it's time to realize that your experience doesn't reflect ours and that's OK because in comparison to the pooled games, it's technically a small sample. It's not a pot shot to say that--small sample sizes are parts of games where variance is involved--but we aren't lying about its performance here lol
If you always win the game with more cards than you can play in hand, why not replace one of the win conditions with Collonade? It will never be stuck in your hand.
Tar Pit is great and I advise everyone to play it, but Collonade is equally as good. Pit dies to every single burn spell. It also cannot kill planeswalker with 4 loyalty in one attack. By the time I am activating manlands, the one mana difference isn't huge anyway. Finally, Tar Pit isn't a good blocker (and remember you don't need to actually block with it - if you have six mana untapped with colonnade you are already limiting their attacks).
Collonade has been P1P2 here before, and I think that's right.
Because control win conditions are value engines that not only win games, but also stabilize you to get into a surviving position. Colonnade has and never will be anything even remotely as good as, say, Gideon Jura, Elspeth SC or Ugin. Unless I'm misinterpreting what you're saying, your advice to slot out insane cards like that in my control decks is undeniably terrible. Secondly, "By the time I am activating manlands, the one mana difference isn't huge anyway" is simply false. Tar Pit's body is playable in midrange and combo decks, not just control. This is because having to get 6 lands/rocks before your first animation is incredibly difficult, and many games are decided by then, while a Tar Pit activation can simply be tossed into the mix if you need pressure on a player or a walker for cheap. Additionally, 4 attack is not some kind of magical number against anything except green planeswalkers. That extra point of attack is hardly ever worth the extra 2 mana. I'm not doubting the validity of it's pick priority in your playgroup, but the reasoning you used just doesn't add up to anything remotely reasonable.
I meant exactly that. Collonade will increase your consistency, prevent mana screws, color screws and mulligans, while still keeping your finisher count the same. If you always end up with more cards than you can play, that's a big sign your curve is too high.
Collonade and Tar Pit are both good for the exact same reasons. The argument which is better is academic IMO as they should both be played and do not compete for slots.
Collonade effectively costs one more mana than Tar Pit as it has vigilance. Collonade is playable in every U/W deck, not just control, although it is so good in control they usually pick it up early and not let other decks get it. You certainly don't need to ramp to use its ability, it is not the sort of card you need to activate for it to be good or even playable. The power is in the inevitability and low opportunity cost.
What do you prefer, holding an Ugin that in your average game (that ends before turn 6) in a control deck will be just dead or have a dual land that will also win the game if you survive into the late game?
Just wanted to post an update here in case anybody who is interested in this same topic reads this thread six months or a year down the line and wants to know what I, the OP who previously wanted to slim down all but the 3 most efficient manlands thinks about all 10 of them them after 3 months of picking them with higher consistency:
- Raging Ravine: For its ability to pressure defensive decks absurdly quickly while simultaneously evading boardclears, a glaring weakness that RG creature-based strategies have always tended to experience, but without even costing a spell slot in your deck (in a color combination that lacks card advantage of any kind) this single land is capable of securing that weakness and can be tutored for alongside Treetop Village by a Primeval Titan to pressure any opponent with incredible speed and resiliency.
- Creeping Tar Pit: The premier 'Sword of X&Y' carrier as it can't be blocked and ensures that you will receive the combat triggers, in addition to its unique ability to counter nearly all Planeswalkers in just a matter of 2 or 3 turns, the natural predators of UB Control decks due to UB's unique lack of playable removal besides Hero's Downfall and its significantly worse overpriced and sorcery-speed variants that can efficiently answer Planeswalkers, very much unlike its color compadres like white with their Oblivion Ring variants, red with their direct damage spells like Burst Lightning, and green's Terastodon style fatties that can just destroy any non-creature permanents. Because it remains a non-creature land until you activate it, it also remains safe from your own boardclears that you commonly use to stifle aggression, and can stick around to inflict even lethal damage to your opponent if given enough time and protection.
- Shambling Vent: Exceptionally good against aggro as a means to restore your lost health once you've stabilized in the mid to late game, and because WB is a relatively versatile color combination, it can also be used to peck down planeswalkers on an empty board if you happen to be playing a slower and greedier variant of the color combination, but most notably Vent excels at carrying equipments like Swords and Jitte in the late game as it becomes almost impossible for your opponent to race against it due to the constant and repeated life gain generated each time it attacks, whether or not it goes unblocked.
The lands above have always been very good and continue to see plenty of play, but one manland that was never getting activated or seeing play in my playgroup even though it had such a powerful presence in modern was Celestial Colonnade, but some of those on this forum instructed me to continue playing it because my poor results with it were likely just coincidence and and/or sample size issues. I have been picking it much more highly than before and have told others to follow suit if they decided to go into UW control, and actually had the personal opportunity to draft UW control twice, obviously in addition to others drafting the deck too, resulting in at least 1 UW control deck being drafted per 8-man for the past few months, instead of roughly once every other draft. Colonnade has been quite good as just a Serra Angel tucked away in the land slot to just whip out as a free threat if the time comes to apply pressure, and although I don't think I've seen any equipment shenanigans with it to date, I can say from experience that the card certainly pressures fast when combined with a Mutavault and an empty board.
However, besides Colonnade, my opinions on all the 6 remaining manlands has remained mostly unchanged, in that they are playable in larger cubes that either enjoy the novelty of playing the manlands without much regard for their powerlevel, or cubes that just find themselves needing more lands and already play the shocks, fetches, ABURs, and painlands. The main issue with the 6 remaining manlands is that they all have mediocre payoffs for their abilities and, besides Wandering Fumarole which is excluded because it is simply too overpriced for its body, happen to reside in some pretty aggressive color combinations, making the ETB-tapped cost feel much more real than when you're forced to miss out on your perfect curve in an RG midrange deck because you were busy developing a Raging Ravine knowing that there's a decent chance that you're still going to win on the back of that same Raging Ravine smashing in for 12 a few turns down the line, even though it forced you to play your kitchen Finks now instead of casting your Bloodbraid Elf a turn earlier.
I was reminded to come back here and post this by some discussion regarding the opportunity cost of Gavony Township, and although I know I didn't share anything new, special or even remotely surprising, I still wanted to update my opinion from earlier in this thread and mention that Celestial Colonnade isn't crazy or anything, but I promise that at least for the time being it certainly deserves a slot in your cube if are considering not playing it like I was in the past, no matter the size.
I think it depends on the cube, I can agree that they are probably too slow for vintage cube. They might work in legacy cube and I can definitely see them working in a modern cube (if someone made that)
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The evasion of tarpit and collanade are the primary atributes that seperate them above the rest. Being able to snipe planeswalkers, double swing for lethal etc.
Because collonade has vigilance, once you get 5+ lands, it effectively only costs 1 mana more than the lands you are mentioning (same as raging ravine).
Imagine you are facing down an elspeth or a gideon, or a sorin, or hell any token producing planeswalker. Imagine the difference between having a 4/4 flyer and a 2/3 lifelink in this spot!
Also, 4 toughness is relevant if your cube runs a lot of searing spear variants.
I'm all for questioning cube stables, but trust me , you are wrong about colonnade.
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If you always win the game with more cards than you can play in hand, why not replace one of the win conditions with Collonade? It will never be stuck in your hand.
Tar Pit is great and I advise everyone to play it, but Collonade is equally as good. Pit dies to every single burn spell. It also cannot kill planeswalker with 4 loyalty in one attack. By the time I am activating manlands, the one mana difference isn't huge anyway. Finally, Tar Pit isn't a good blocker (and remember you don't need to actually block with it - if you have six mana untapped with colonnade you are already limiting their attacks).
Collonade has been P1P2 here before, and I think that's right.
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Because control win conditions are value engines that not only win games, but also stabilize you to get into a surviving position. Colonnade has and never will be anything even remotely as good as, say, Gideon Jura, Elspeth SC or Ugin. Unless I'm misinterpreting what you're saying, your advice to slot out insane cards like that in my control decks is undeniably terrible. Secondly, "By the time I am activating manlands, the one mana difference isn't huge anyway" is simply false. Tar Pit's body is playable in midrange and combo decks, not just control. This is because having to get 6 lands/rocks before your first animation is incredibly difficult, and many games are decided by then, while a Tar Pit activation can simply be tossed into the mix if you need pressure on a player or a walker for cheap. Additionally, 4 attack is not some kind of magical number against anything except green planeswalkers. That extra point of attack is hardly ever worth the extra 2 mana. I'm not doubting the validity of it's pick priority in your playgroup, but the reasoning you used just doesn't add up to anything remotely reasonable.
I don't know how long you've been cubing for or how often you cube, but I can assure this is definitely not a sample size issue for me. I've had this cube for almost 2 years now and I cube with the people I know that play MTG probably on average every other week (sometimes more, sometimes less). I was also not exaggerating when I said that Colonnade has failed to impact a game more than a gainland in months. We each play 3 rounds, each of those being a best of 3, so a single draft is a sample size of at least 6 games. I try my best to not make ignorant assumptions about things, and that includes the quality of cards that I haven't extensively tested, as I'll only cut cards that are either blatantly outclassed by new ones or that fail to impress anybody in my playgroup. Some manlands might be good, but as a whole they are absolutely overrated, and while there is no problem whatsoever with including cards because they are a blast to play, overstating their power relative to other more consistent cards imo does more harm than good. Not to say that the card is too weak for small cubes, because the power is certainly there, but I think a lot more people need to pay closer attention to how Colonnade really preforms compared to a cycle/filter/fast land, because there is no way that I'm the only person in this whole forum who hasn't had Colonnade do anything but do a mediocre job at fixing mana for such an enormous period of time.
Hope that clears up any information and nuances from my previous posts that I failed to get across.
You are comparing the downside of ETB tapped on your mana curve (often small), against the upside of access to a free 4/4 vigilance flyer in the mid-late game. That's a nuanced comparison that requires a HUGE sample for in-game performance to be the main metric of evaluation.
You have to draft collanade (1/5-1/10 drafts?). You have to DRAW collonade (1/3-2/3 of games?). You have to play it in multiple decks, across multiple matchups... and then consider the variance within that.
Let's say there are 20 forum members. Each forum member plays with collonade in 30 different games across a half year period. Thats about 30 cubes worth of experience with the card. ~10-20 games you will even draw collonande. There's a super high likelyhood that at least one forum member will be adversely affected by the ETB tapped clause multiple times, and almost never get to activate it.
I think you are that forum member. Trust me, the sample you quoted isn't small, but it isn't large.
It's not just group think why so many people think this card is good. There's a reason people rank it among the best cards in the guild for years on end. There's a reason every UWx deck in modern plays 4x collonade and no other manlands.. a format that is blistering fast and dominated by agro decks.
My sample with the card is in the multiple hundreds, and I've won and lost dozens of games to it across multiple formats... I'd wager my life that it is a top tier manland.
Sorry if it seems I'm coming down on you. I apreciate the post, It's well worded and reasoned and encourage you to share your experiences ... especially if it contradicts the "status quo".
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I've been watching it consistently perform at a high level in my powered cube since before the set even dropped. I really don't think that's an issue at all.
I would not be surprised at all if you were, honestly. It's been nothing but stellar in every cube environment I've drafted it in.
It can be difficult to evaluate cards based on their opportunity costs rather than their raw powerlevel. Even if goes a few games without activating, the opportunity cost to play it is extremely low for the amount of value it provides.
But it also sounds like your cube composition and/or playgroup preferences makes things play quite a bit differently for you than for typical cubes. Aggro/Combo being overwhelmingly powerful, Oath being a bannable card, Celestial Colonnade being bad... just things that aren't consistent with other cubes or playgroups that I've been involved with. Which is great! I'm glad to hear things from another new perspective, and I'm glad you're sharing your experiences with us here. It's okay for us to disagree with you on some thing and still have useful/positive discourse.
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I've been cubing for a while myself, but frankly that's irrelevant to this discussion. I could cube twice as much or half as much as you, and both of our sample sizes are still small.
When a card is new, then that's the best we have so we have to make leaps based on even smaller sample sizes and sometimes weeks/months/years later cards get re-visited and gems are found. But when we have about a decade's worth of cube experience and Collonnade has been around pretty much this entire time, a poster telling me there's no way the card could be performing how it is isn't just going to change my experiences, because like with you I have conviction on the card's power level based on its performance.
I think the thing you need to take away from this is that clearly we've had a ton of experience with these cards, right? So as much as I appreciate finding niches and doing things differently and etc., maybe it's time to realize that your experience doesn't reflect ours and that's OK because in comparison to the pooled games, it's technically a small sample. It's not a pot shot to say that--small sample sizes are parts of games where variance is involved--but we aren't lying about its performance here lol
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I meant exactly that. Collonade will increase your consistency, prevent mana screws, color screws and mulligans, while still keeping your finisher count the same. If you always end up with more cards than you can play, that's a big sign your curve is too high.
Collonade and Tar Pit are both good for the exact same reasons. The argument which is better is academic IMO as they should both be played and do not compete for slots.
Collonade effectively costs one more mana than Tar Pit as it has vigilance. Collonade is playable in every U/W deck, not just control, although it is so good in control they usually pick it up early and not let other decks get it. You certainly don't need to ramp to use its ability, it is not the sort of card you need to activate for it to be good or even playable. The power is in the inevitability and low opportunity cost.
What do you prefer, holding an Ugin that in your average game (that ends before turn 6) in a control deck will be just dead or have a dual land that will also win the game if you survive into the late game?
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Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
- Raging Ravine: For its ability to pressure defensive decks absurdly quickly while simultaneously evading boardclears, a glaring weakness that RG creature-based strategies have always tended to experience, but without even costing a spell slot in your deck (in a color combination that lacks card advantage of any kind) this single land is capable of securing that weakness and can be tutored for alongside Treetop Village by a Primeval Titan to pressure any opponent with incredible speed and resiliency.
- Creeping Tar Pit: The premier 'Sword of X&Y' carrier as it can't be blocked and ensures that you will receive the combat triggers, in addition to its unique ability to counter nearly all Planeswalkers in just a matter of 2 or 3 turns, the natural predators of UB Control decks due to UB's unique lack of playable removal besides Hero's Downfall and its significantly worse overpriced and sorcery-speed variants that can efficiently answer Planeswalkers, very much unlike its color compadres like white with their Oblivion Ring variants, red with their direct damage spells like Burst Lightning, and green's Terastodon style fatties that can just destroy any non-creature permanents. Because it remains a non-creature land until you activate it, it also remains safe from your own boardclears that you commonly use to stifle aggression, and can stick around to inflict even lethal damage to your opponent if given enough time and protection.
- Shambling Vent: Exceptionally good against aggro as a means to restore your lost health once you've stabilized in the mid to late game, and because WB is a relatively versatile color combination, it can also be used to peck down planeswalkers on an empty board if you happen to be playing a slower and greedier variant of the color combination, but most notably Vent excels at carrying equipments like Swords and Jitte in the late game as it becomes almost impossible for your opponent to race against it due to the constant and repeated life gain generated each time it attacks, whether or not it goes unblocked.
The lands above have always been very good and continue to see plenty of play, but one manland that was never getting activated or seeing play in my playgroup even though it had such a powerful presence in modern was Celestial Colonnade, but some of those on this forum instructed me to continue playing it because my poor results with it were likely just coincidence and and/or sample size issues. I have been picking it much more highly than before and have told others to follow suit if they decided to go into UW control, and actually had the personal opportunity to draft UW control twice, obviously in addition to others drafting the deck too, resulting in at least 1 UW control deck being drafted per 8-man for the past few months, instead of roughly once every other draft. Colonnade has been quite good as just a Serra Angel tucked away in the land slot to just whip out as a free threat if the time comes to apply pressure, and although I don't think I've seen any equipment shenanigans with it to date, I can say from experience that the card certainly pressures fast when combined with a Mutavault and an empty board.
However, besides Colonnade, my opinions on all the 6 remaining manlands has remained mostly unchanged, in that they are playable in larger cubes that either enjoy the novelty of playing the manlands without much regard for their powerlevel, or cubes that just find themselves needing more lands and already play the shocks, fetches, ABURs, and painlands. The main issue with the 6 remaining manlands is that they all have mediocre payoffs for their abilities and, besides Wandering Fumarole which is excluded because it is simply too overpriced for its body, happen to reside in some pretty aggressive color combinations, making the ETB-tapped cost feel much more real than when you're forced to miss out on your perfect curve in an RG midrange deck because you were busy developing a Raging Ravine knowing that there's a decent chance that you're still going to win on the back of that same Raging Ravine smashing in for 12 a few turns down the line, even though it forced you to play your kitchen Finks now instead of casting your Bloodbraid Elf a turn earlier.
I was reminded to come back here and post this by some discussion regarding the opportunity cost of Gavony Township, and although I know I didn't share anything new, special or even remotely surprising, I still wanted to update my opinion from earlier in this thread and mention that Celestial Colonnade isn't crazy or anything, but I promise that at least for the time being it certainly deserves a slot in your cube if are considering not playing it like I was in the past, no matter the size.