Standard

Bring the Chainsaw: Eldrazi Ramp in Standard

Hello, my name is Nelson, and my hunger for cardboard is ceaseless.

I played Green-Red Eldrazi Ramp at the WMCQ in Montreal, where I came within one win (or rather, one or two questionable gameplay decisions) from making top 8.

I was asked why, for such a high-profile event and in such a metagame, I would choose to play a deck like that. You know. The deck that somehow shows up in a top 8 every other week by “getting good pairings”. The deck that is often described as “naturally inconsistent”, “tier 2” or, quoting Pascal Maynard on the WMCQ stream, “really bad”. The deck that, nowadays, is mostly ignored in metagame analysis and sideboard guides.

The simple answer is that it’s just what I do. If there’s a viable ramp deck in Standard, chances are I’m gonna play it. I have worked on this archetype, tuned it, and had a really good win percentage with it ever since I’ve been allowed to sleeve up [card]World Breaker[/card].

The long answer is that I don’t really want to be playing a midrange deck in an endless sea of midrange decks. While the midrange approach rewards tight play, metagame knowledge and careful preparation, you always run the risk of falling victim to the “snowball effect”. Midrange decks in Standard, especially those involving [card]Gideon, Ally of Zendikar[/card] or [card]Collected Company[/card], are great at creating snowballing advantages: once they get ahead, they keep pushing their advantage further and further until the opponent taps out in agony. That’s great when you’re ahead, not so much when you’re the one falling behind. And regardless of what you do, sometimes your opponent just wins the die roll and casts Gideon first, and then you don’t get to catch back up. Of course I’m oversimplifying, but the point is, I’d rather take a different approach than put myself in these kind of situations.

And the approach that I chose is to ignore rocks, papers and scissors, and just bring the chainsaw.

Here is the list I played:

Green-Red Eldrazi Ramp – Nelson Guilbert

[deck]
[Lands]
2 Cinder Glade
10 Forest
4 Game Trail
2 Mountain
3 Sanctum of Ugin
4 Shrine of the Forsaken Gods
[/Lands]
[Spells]
2 Chandra, Flamecaller
4 Explosive Vegetation
3 Hedron Archive
2 Kozilek’s Return
4 Nissa’s Pilgrimage
4 Oath of Nissa
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
2 Dragonlord Atarka
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Hedron Crawler
2 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
4 World Breaker
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
4 Jaddi Offshoot
1 Kozilek, the Great Distortion
2 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
2 Tireless Tracker
1 Clip Wings
2 Kozilek’s Return
1 Chandra, Flamecaller
2 Roast
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

If you’ve seen any Green-Red Ramp list lately, you might notice a few differences here, and question some of my choices. The general idea here is that in the face of [card]Duskwatch Recruiter[/card], [card]Thalia’s Lieutenant[/card] and especially Gideon, it’s important to put more emphasis on the early game. If your opponent curves out, especially if he’s on the play, you can’t expect to get away with your first relevant action being [card]Nissa’s Pilgrimage[/card] or [card]Kozilek’s Return[/card] (which may or may not kill anything) on turn three.

The Two-Drops

The card that makes it all come together is [card]Elvish Visionary[/card]. Often, people play [card]Sylvan Advocate[/card] in that slot, but I don’t think that’s the best option. On the surface, Advocate seems to fit in quite nicely: it’s a good early blocker, it dodges your own [card]Kozilek’s Return[/card], it gets bigger faster than in any other deck. However, in practice, most of the time he attacks for two then eats a removal spell, and then you haven’t really furthered your game plan. Visionary, on the other hand, gives you board presence at almost no cost, chump blocks just as well as Advocate, trades profitably with removal and, most importantly, really helps solving one of the major issue of the current ramp decks, which is that they are often clunky and high-variance. Indeed, most of the versions that run rampant eventually encounter the classic “all ramp and no threats/all threats and no ramp”, a problem that gets even worse when mulliganing or facing discard. Along with [card]Oath of Nissa[/card], the little elf that could greatly helps mitigate that issue, helping you find what you need while acting as a speed bump. The added consistency also helps with mulligans.

[card]Hedron Crawler[/card] serves a similar role. It can get you to turn 3 [card]Explosive Vegetation[/card] or [card]Hedron Archive[/card], which in turn enables turn 4 Atarka or [card]World Breaker[/card]. It can be picked up with [card]Oath of Nissa[/card], which matters since it’s the only ramp spell that can be found that way. Why choose Crawler over, say, [card]Deathcap Cultivator[/card]? The latter can attack for two and trade with a few creatures, but Crawler has a few marginal upsides: it can’t be hit by [card]Ultimate Price[/card], it helps rebuy [card]World Breaker[/card], and it can be cast off a single [card]Shrine of the Forsaken Gods[/card] if you have seven lands, which can matter in a mana hungry deck such as this. For what it’s worth, it’s also quite hard to achieve delirium in time for Deathcap’s ability to matter.

About Kozilek’s Return

All these two drops, of course, don’t seem to interact so well with [card]Kozilek’s Return[/card]. But as I mentioned, they are here to buy time, and by the time you cast K-Return, they should be dead anyway, or expendable at the very least. The thing with K-Return is that it’s a very situational card. I’d be happy to maindeck four if the metagame warranted it, but other than the human decks and the occasional Jace, everyone plays creatures with three toughness or more, or plan to pump their creatures beyond 2 toughness. And then you have decks like Grixis Control, Sultai Midrange or Blue-Red Ulamog, where it’s pretty much a dead draw. This is why I believe the correct number of maindeck K-Returns is two, with two more in the board for matchups where it really matters.

Of Giant Monsters

Of course, the real incentive to play a deck like this are the threats. Even though she can’t always hit two creatures, big momma [card]Dragonlord Atarka[/card] burning away planeswalkers is very important, especially against Green-White tokens. [card]World Breaker[/card] will often take out lands, of course, but he can also eat [card]Hangarback Walker[/card]s (if you flash back a K-Return with it, remember to sequence your triggers properly so the Breaker’s resolves first) and many other pesky permanents such as [card]Evolutionary Leap[/card], [card]Stasis Snare[/card], [card]Hedron Archive[/card] and [card]Westvale Abbey[/card]. Of course, he often finds Ulamog by triggering [card]Sanctum of Ugin[/card], and his reach is sometimes clutch, especially when your opponent is holding Avacyn. Ulamog is the main reason to play this deck. Sure, he costs a whopping ten mana, but he’s worth every single one of them. Most decks can’t really kill the giant alien, and if you haven’t just been sitting on your hands prior to casting it, it will usually swing the game in your favor for good (and if it doesn’t, you can sacrifice Sanctum and get the second one for good measure). Attacking with it will also give you the wonderful gift of information, revealing the opponent’s outs and sideboard plans. Finally, Chandra, the Flamecaller is the perfect multi-purpose threat here, sweeping the board clear of those pesky 3-toughness creatures, killing opposing planeswalkers with hasty elementals, and turning excess ramp spells into business. I have tested many configurations with different numbers of high-end threats, and ten feels like the right number so you can see enough of them without having them clog up your hand in the early game, especially when you can dig for them with Visionary, Oath and Archive, or outright tutor for them with Sanctum.

A Few Notes on the Manabase

The reason the deck maxes out on [card]Game Trail[/card]s is that you really need to have your land enter the battlefield untapped most of the time in the early turns, which [card]Cinder Glade[/card] can’t do. [card]Game Trail[/card] also works really well with [card]Nissa’s Pilgrimage[/card]. In my experience, you want at least 16 green sources, to ensure you have at least one in your opener often enough, which is why the deck runs no [card]Wastes[/card], third mountain, or fourth [card]Sanctum of Ugin[/card]. When playing [card]Explosive Vegetation[/card], always go for the two [card]Mountain[/card]s first, as you want to save your [card]Forest[/card]s for Pilgrimage. When given the choice between casting [card]Hedron Archive[/card] and Vegetation, consider playing Exploding the Veggies first, as you can use Archive to double-spell later (and you might be able to cast it for cheap off a Shrine).

The Sideboard

Sideboarding in this deck is rather straightforward. While the maindeck is built to be as consistent as possible, the sideboard enables you to become grindier or more controlling, depending on the matchup you face.

Against human decks, and really any deck that relies on swarming with small creatures, you want to max out on removal and survive long enough to land a big threat and attempt to achieve board superiority. This is not an easy task, as these are the most difficult matchups you can face. It’s far from being unwinnable, though. Board out the 2 Ulamogs, the 4 [card]Hedron Crawler[/card]s and 2 [card]Hedron Archive[/card]s for 4 [card]Jaddi Offshoot[/card]s, 2 [card]Kozilek’s Return[/card] and 2 [card]Roast[/card]s. Once you establish control, it doesn’t really matter what you win with. Chandra is often too slow to matter here, so keep the third in the board.

Against green-white tokens and other similar planeswalker/token strategies, it gets a bit grindier: as such, Chandra is often better than [card]Kozilek’s Return[/card], and you’re looking to overpower them in a longer game. Take out 4 [card]Hedron Crawler[/card]s and a [card]Hedron Archive[/card] for 1 [card]Kozilek’s Return[/card], 1 Chandra, 2 [card]Tireless Tracker[/card]s and the [card]Clip Wings[/card] (to deal with Avacyn and the occasional Ormendhal).

The same basic sideboard strategy applies to the non-human [card]Collected Company[/card] and [card]Cryptolith Rite[/card] decks, except you want [card]Roast[/card]s instead of Trackers. Double [card]Reality Smasher[/card] in the early game is one of the only ways the Rite decks can really wreck you, so plan your sequencing around that if you can.

Against any midrange or control with black, you can hedge against [card]Infinite Obliteration[/card]; even if they don’t have it, it makes their answers less likely to line up correctly. You also want to “upgrade” your Visionaries to further diversify your threats and keep up in a longer game. The Crawlers are good here, as they will often sideboard out most of their Languishes and you can really take advantage of ramping early. 4 Elvish Visionaries, 2 [card]Kozilek’s Return[/card] and 2 [card]World Breaker[/card]s come out, to be replaced by 2 [card]Tireless Tracker[/card]s, 2 [card]Nissa, Vastwood Seer[/card], 1 [card]Kozilek, the Great Distortion[/card], 1 Chandra, as well as the 2 [card]Roast[/card]s for Kalitas, Dark-Dwellers or [card]Thought-Knot Seer[/card]s. Black-White control might be the toughest deck to sideboard against, as different configurations are good against different versions: [card]Roast[/card], for instance, is good against versions with Kalitas or Thought-Knot, but you might want K-Return if their plan involves [card]Secure the Wastes[/card] into a Gideon emblem or Ormendhal. In doubt, being proactive and forcing them to react to you might be the best plan.

Conclusion

With the forthcoming rise of Emrakul, the Promised End, it seems clear to me that ramp strategies need to be on everyone’s radar going forward. Whether other tools for the deck are printed, and whether the deck needs to be pushed in new directions – or even rebuilt from scratch – to take advantage of Emrakul’s “affinity for delirium” remains to be seen. Perhaps a return to Red-Green Goggles ramp, which was excellent at achieving delirium, is an option, though that strategy was notoriously soft to an attacking Gideon. In any case, I, for one, welcome our transparent alien tentacle horror overlord.

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