3drinks wrote: ↑1 year ago
Yes, it
is redundant. That's the point, to have a truly redundant, consistent manabase. You don't need your mana to do anything flashy, just ensure you have zero issues consistently hitting whatever combination of colours you need. Statistically fetchlands are the best, easiest way to ensure you can hit this point, ergo it stands to reason that having more options to do this with will raise your consistency. Do people really only fetch 2-3x a game? Cause I fetch every turn, and will jam
Crucible of Worlds in everything, as well as
Ramunap Excavator in decks that support it (i.e. anything with
G).
Life from the Loam in all
GX grave decks. Do people not regularly do this? I can't wrap my head around not utilizing the grave and my lands to effortlessly fix everything for me, so I can then use my spell slots to do my business. It's resource management.
Even if you're consistently fetching every turn, past a certain point you can just hit basics instead without having much detrimental effect on your colors available. But of course you won't always have access to crucible, or even access to a fetch, though ofc with 9 copies you are fairly likely to have at least 1. You're not going to BS me with this "I always fetch every turn" nonsense. There are 9 fetches available to a 3c deck. That means you'll average 1 fetch in the first couple turns. Mathematically "fetching every turn" is not going to happen, stop hyperbolizing.
If you want to jam a bunch of tutors into a deck to find crucible then you could make it likely that you fetch a lot more often, but I really don't think it's worth that much effort in most decks. So long as you have good fixing and good draw, your mana typically sorts itself out. Some decks - i.e. landfall decks - might get extra value from this sort of setup and justify a lot of commitment to setting up a crucible engine, but for most decks it's not worth the investment.
Nothing you can do will ensure perfect mana every game*. Everything is a balancing act. Running more fetch targets improves the quality of your fetches, sure, but running bad duals weakens your other land slots. The goal is to find the middle ground where you aren't sacrificing too much of either. For a normal deck that's not hard-committing to a land recursion engine, it's usually as simple as triome + shocks/abus + a few basics. Sans recursion it's very unlikely for that to negatively impact the value of your fetches, and those lands are generally good draws as well. Beyond that, I think I'd rather have non-typed basics since I don't think it makes any real difference to my fetches and they are much better draws.
I do also think that crucible isn't that great of a card. Can be great in the right context, yes, but since most decks want substantial draw anyway, you'll naturally draw the lands you need without needing to rely on crucible, and it's a bad draw when you're already drawing sufficient lands. And unless you're running heavy tutors, you can't base your mana around having it. Plus it could just get blown up, especially if you're relying on it heavily.
*shut up 99 mountain ashling "players"
That's why you fetch those lands first. Fetching those hits your colours and those premium lands latre then become painless if you did draw them since they're probably going to come untapped. And in the case of bicycles and tricycles, if you draw them late in this way, you can at least bin them for a fresh card, which you couldn't if you rushed into fetching them first. And even then, if you drew one of these tap lands late before you could fetch it? So what.
Flooting fodder, Retrace fodder, pitch to seismic assault/ayula's influence, or any other manner of discard outlet most decks would want to play (i.e.
Compulsive Research, which is really, really good, btw).
So let's play out a scenario. In both scenarios, you have 2 fetches, RW and BW, and you need UU for a T3 play in a bant deck. You have no turn 1 or turn 2 play. This is literally the perfect scenario for your manabase, btw. 2 fetches is somewhat unlikely, but both of them being in a single color which isn't the color you need, and you need two of that color, is all very unlikely. So I'm being insanely charitable here.
In scenario 1, you have an etbt dual, a shock, a bicycle, a tango, a triome, and an ABU dual. Turn 1 you fetch the triome because it keeps you most flexible. T2 you fetch the etbt dual because it's the worst draw later. Now your lands you could draw are a tango, a shock, a bicycle, and an abu dual. The abu dual is obviously good, the shock is good, the bicycle is okay if you want cycling and bad if you want a land, and the tango is just bad.
In scenario 2. you have a triome, and abu dual, a BBD, a filter, a painland, and a checkland. Turn 1 you fetch the triome, just the same. T2 you fetch the abu dual even though you can't use the mana this turn. Now, the lands you could draw are a BBD - good, a pathway - good, a painland - good, and a checkland - good. Any of these will enter untapped and provide mana of either color immediately when drawn, exactly what you want from your land. And any other fetch you could possibly draw will be able to hit your other two abu duals, so drawing a fetch isn't a problem either.
So even in this situation that's a very good scenario for the first manabase, I'd still rather have the second manabase.
Now lets play out some different, less charitable but more realistic scenarios. Instead you draw that crappy tapped land when you really need an untapped one. Or a tango early when you don't have any basics. Or a bicycle early when you don't want to cycle land and you want untapped mana. In these scenarios the second manabase is WAY better. The worst case is drawing the checkland without another typed land, but that's no worse than drawing the tapped dual and significantly less likely since multiple things have to go "wrong". Of course if you dislike checklands you could run a shock or a filter or another basic, or whatever you like. (Shocks are probably best but it muddied the example a bit so I left them out of the second manabase. I also think you can make an argument for bicycles if you want to run them, and I do in some decks, but again it muddies the water of the argument. I'm primarily focusing on the etbt dual and the tango and how those lands are bad and not worth running for fetch targets outside strange budget situations where you don't have a shock and a triome)
As far as what to do with crappy lands you've drawn, obviously many decks don't have many ways to get value from discarding, and many that do won't always have it, or would rather have a playable land instead of discard fodder. But more importantly. you can also discard good lands instead. They discard just as well as the crappy ones.
No offense, but the way you talk about how all your decks have land recursion and all your decks have discard outlets kinda makes it seem like all your decks are the same. There are a ton of different things you can do in this game. Most decks do not do those things. Outside of your mind, those things are not ubiquitous.
To me, it seems like it feels better to you to fetch a tapped land when you don't need the mana, rather than an untapped land that's "wasted". And it feels better to discard a crappy land rather than sometimes discard a good land, because it's not "wasting" a good card. But that's just not a good way to think about card quality. When there's no downside to the "waste", then there's no reason to worry about preventing it. You can have a manabase that gives you good fetch targets AND good draws, with very minimal compromise.
