I know ramp still exists in every block, but RTR didn't have much of it, and it looks like Theros won't either.
What ramp exists is tied to creatures instead of spells, something that just scares me from a gameplay perspective. Yes, it's more flavorful to have creatures manipulate mana, but I liked the simplicity of "Play a sorcery, dig for lands, put them on the field tapped". And that's another thing I notice: there's been a perceptible shift away from "put lands on the field" and towards "put lands into your hand". This is also a bad sign; unless Wizards counterbalances this trend with cards that allow you to play extra land per turn, ramp is going to be in a pickle.
As you can see, there's a lot of enchantments right now that make additional mana, but these come in at Turn 3 or 4 and don't start taking effect until subsequent turns. Ordeal digs and gives us mana, but again, it's slow. Compare Burnished Hart to Dawntreader Elk - true, Hart gives us more mana, but I'd prefer to get my extra lands on the field as quickly as possible, and if that means only paying 1 mana for 1 land, then I'll take it.
I long for the Return of Rampant Growth and similar spells.
don't forget about nykthos, shrine to nyx. it is allowing some insane ramp right now. at one of the SCG opens, one player made around 50 mana in a turn and used it to monstrous a polukranos. it was silly.
EDH is like French fries: some people like waffle cut, crinkle cut, or plain old straight cut, and while there's slight flavor difference and personal preference, at the end of the day they're still fries.
There's plenty of ramp. Darksteel ingot, elvish mystic, sylvan caryatid, voyaging satyr, nykthos, elvish mystic...Green has enough ramp right now in fact green's ramp right now is very powerful.
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There's plenty of ramp. Darksteel ingot, elvish mystic, sylvan caryatid, voyaging satyr, nykthos, elvish mystic...Green has enough ramp right now in fact green's ramp right now is very powerful.
I agree. I even use Sylvan Caryatid as a ramp and an insane early blocker in my BUGw Superfirends. Allowing me to drop planeswalkers a turn earlier and saving me some life against aggressive decks makes a big difference.
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Ingot is horrible ramp - a three drop that adds one measly mana? And it's only a 3 drop because it's indestructible. Nykthos is good ramp, I agree, but I predict a sharp spike in price once people realize just how useful it is - it'll become this block's Cavern of Souls.
Speaking of Mystic, I don't get why they had to create an exact copy of Llanowar Elves but give it a new name. If they wanted new art, they could have just made new art for the card but kept it the same. What a waste of effort.
There's ramp, but it's hard to build a curve around.
Llanowar Elves is a premier mana ramp spell, but it's the only 1-drop dork in the format, meaning you can't build a mana curve around it that skips the 2-drop.
At the two drop you have Sylvan Caryatid, Voyaging Satyr and Satyr Hedonist, which can ramp into a 4 or 5 drop, and let you miss 3-drops. This is probably the most successful thing right now, with Advent of the Wurm, Polukranos, Ember Swallower, et cetera et cetera sitting at the four spot, and Stormbreath at 5.
Then there's a ton of quality ramp at turn three; all of the keyrunes, cluestones, Darksteel Ingot and Chromatic Lantern. Control can come to love all of these cards, but turn three ramp is too late to be an integral 1-2 punch a deck can be built around.
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Master of inaccurate, non-thought-out baseless and naive statements.
I like baby fowl.
Ingot is horrible ramp - a three drop that adds one measly mana? And it's only a 3 drop because it's indestructible.
Speaking of Mystic, I don't get why they had to create an exact copy of Llanowar Elves but give it a new name. If they wanted new art, they could have just made new art for the card but kept it the same. What a waste of effort.
They wanted to get rid of the fact that the name was "Llanowar Elves" when in fact it was only one elf.
One thing to note is that recently, ramp has been part of extremely successful decks. Farseek was the backbone of tons of decks, from Jund to Wolf Run Bant to Bant control. Even going back further, Rampant Growth was a key part of the Wolf Run Ramp deck which won Worlds 2011 and Pro Tour DKA.
Creatures are insane nowadays, and giving them a high mana cost is a way that WOTC uses to make them worse. Ramp removes that downside, sort of. It's impossible for most Standard decks to stop a turn 2 Farseek. Even a blue deck can't (or won't) stop it half the time. By putting the ramp in creature form, WOTC adds a bit more interactivity.
Speaking of Mystic, I don't get why they had to create an exact copy of Llanowar Elves but give it a new name. If they wanted new art, they could have just made new art for the card but kept it the same. What a waste of effort.
It's not the first time Wizards has created a functionally identical Llanwoar Elves. In the case of Fyndhorn Elves, they don't even have the excuse of being on a different plane (many cards in core sets are from Shandalar; both Llanowar and Fyndhorn are on Dominaria).
Ingot is horrible ramp - a three drop that adds one measly mana? And it's only a 3 drop because it's indestructible. Nykthos is good ramp, I agree, but I predict a sharp spike in price once people realize just how useful it is - it'll become this block's Cavern of Souls.
Actually, 3 is now the default for a mana rock.
Green dork: G
Green "untap target land" dork: 1G
Colorless dork: at least 2
Colorless rock: 3
Even the diamonds are too good to print today.
(Note, however, that in RTR, I swear colorless ramp was better than green ramp.)
And what about Gyre Sage? Not the best, but it exists.
If an enchantress-type card is printed, Mana Bloom might be one of the best spells out there, when it becomes 1G: Draw a card, add one mana of any color to your mana pool, and return CARDNAME to your hand. In short, it becomes a green Braingeyser.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Cards aren't ramp cards unless they accelerate your mana. If you have two mana on turn two, play a spell and only have two mana on turn three after untapping, you didn't ramp yourself yet. Lay of the Land, for example, doesn't ramp at all. It simply fixes.
You realize that it being a functional reprint means it took them just about no effort whatsoever, right? Wizards isn't sitting on a stockpile of 250 "efforts" and they just used one of their "efforts" up to make this card.
Besides, they must have done it to put another copy of Llanowar Elves in some other format, clearly.
So you are starting a thread to complain about not getting the exact kind of ramp you want? Really?
Mystic and Caryatid are strong ramp spells, Crypt Ghast is very powerful in that role for mono/heavy-black, Shrine gives EVERY color the chance to ramp powerfully. Just because you don't have a Farseek/Rampant growth doesn't mean ramp is dead, just a little different. It changes how you can use it and how opponents can fight it. And that change is a good thing, without it the game gets stale.
Core sets don't have a location. Darksteel Forge, as a random example, refers to Elesh Norn and the praetor is only found on one particular plane.
Many core set cards (although not all), at least in recent core sets, are from Shandalar. Shandalar wanders around the multiverse, and at any given time could be nearby any other plane.
So you are starting a thread to complain about not getting the exact kind of ramp you want? Really?
Mystic and Caryatid are strong ramp spells, Crypt Ghast is very powerful in that role for mono/heavy-black, Shrine gives EVERY color the chance to ramp powerfully. Just because you don't have a Farseek/Rampant growth doesn't mean ramp is dead, just a little different. It changes how you can use it and how opponents can fight it. And that change is a good thing, without it the game gets stale.
The thing about tying ramp to creatures is that if the creatures die, your ramp dies with them. Mystic is fragile and lacks haste so you can't tap for another mana immediately, although I doubt anyone's going to waste a Shock on taking it out. Admittedly, it's going to be hard to kill Caryatid, since it's got Hexproof, but there are ways to deal with that.
The artifacts that produce mana are more about fixing right now than actually accelerating your mana.
The thing about tying ramp to creatures is that if the creatures die, your ramp dies with them.
Bingo. Ramp has shifted roles from more midrange-control to more aggro-midrange in the latest iteration of Standard.
The current ramp spells play terribly with board wipes...and I am cool with that. G/X ramp/control doesn't always need to be a top deck. (although even now it probably is thanks to the strength of the Caryatid, who dies to your Verdict but is strong enough otherwise to offset that liability)
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What ramp exists is tied to creatures instead of spells, something that just scares me from a gameplay perspective. Yes, it's more flavorful to have creatures manipulate mana, but I liked the simplicity of "Play a sorcery, dig for lands, put them on the field tapped". And that's another thing I notice: there's been a perceptible shift away from "put lands on the field" and towards "put lands into your hand". This is also a bad sign; unless Wizards counterbalances this trend with cards that allow you to play extra land per turn, ramp is going to be in a pickle.
To prove this, I submit this list of ramp cards:
Lay of the Land
Into the Wilds
Verdant Haven
Karametra's Acolyte
Ordeal of Nylea
Sylvan Caryatid
Voyaging Satyr
Xenagos, the Reveler
Burnished Hart
As you can see, there's a lot of enchantments right now that make additional mana, but these come in at Turn 3 or 4 and don't start taking effect until subsequent turns. Ordeal digs and gives us mana, but again, it's slow. Compare Burnished Hart to Dawntreader Elk - true, Hart gives us more mana, but I'd prefer to get my extra lands on the field as quickly as possible, and if that means only paying 1 mana for 1 land, then I'll take it.
I long for the Return of Rampant Growth and similar spells.
Also, don't forget about elvish mystic
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I agree. I even use Sylvan Caryatid as a ramp and an insane early blocker in my BUGw Superfirends. Allowing me to drop planeswalkers a turn earlier and saving me some life against aggressive decks makes a big difference.
WUBGR - Enchantment Realms - WUBGR
An all-enchantment EDH deck: 0 creatures, 0 artifacts, 0 instants and sorceries.
GBUWR - The Necrotic Teenager and its 1,000,000 Combos - GBUWR
A deck built around Necrotic Ooze and its many friends.
Speaking of Mystic, I don't get why they had to create an exact copy of Llanowar Elves but give it a new name. If they wanted new art, they could have just made new art for the card but kept it the same. What a waste of effort.
Llanowar Elves is a premier mana ramp spell, but it's the only 1-drop dork in the format, meaning you can't build a mana curve around it that skips the 2-drop.
At the two drop you have Sylvan Caryatid, Voyaging Satyr and Satyr Hedonist, which can ramp into a 4 or 5 drop, and let you miss 3-drops. This is probably the most successful thing right now, with Advent of the Wurm, Polukranos, Ember Swallower, et cetera et cetera sitting at the four spot, and Stormbreath at 5.
Then there's a ton of quality ramp at turn three; all of the keyrunes, cluestones, Darksteel Ingot and Chromatic Lantern. Control can come to love all of these cards, but turn three ramp is too late to be an integral 1-2 punch a deck can be built around.
I like baby fowl.
They wanted to get rid of the fact that the name was "Llanowar Elves" when in fact it was only one elf.
Yes, I've noticed that as well - the trend for cards with plurals in the name to have their P/T and/or # of abilities increased as a result.
Still, it's not THAT big a deal.
Creatures are insane nowadays, and giving them a high mana cost is a way that WOTC uses to make them worse. Ramp removes that downside, sort of. It's impossible for most Standard decks to stop a turn 2 Farseek. Even a blue deck can't (or won't) stop it half the time. By putting the ramp in creature form, WOTC adds a bit more interactivity.
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Actually, 3 is now the default for a mana rock.
Green dork: G
Green "untap target land" dork: 1G
Colorless dork: at least 2
Colorless rock: 3
Even the diamonds are too good to print today.
(Note, however, that in RTR, I swear colorless ramp was better than green ramp.)
And what about Gyre Sage? Not the best, but it exists.
If an enchantress-type card is printed, Mana Bloom might be one of the best spells out there, when it becomes 1G: Draw a card, add one mana of any color to your mana pool, and return CARDNAME to your hand. In short, it becomes a green Braingeyser.
On phasing:
Also, Llanowar is a place on Dominaria and M14 isn't set on Dominaria so the name wouldn't make sense.
Core sets don't have a location.
Darksteel Forge, as a random example, refers to Elesh Norn and the praetor is only found on one particular plane.
WUBGR - Enchantment Realms - WUBGR
An all-enchantment EDH deck: 0 creatures, 0 artifacts, 0 instants and sorceries.
GBUWR - The Necrotic Teenager and its 1,000,000 Combos - GBUWR
A deck built around Necrotic Ooze and its many friends.
You realize that it being a functional reprint means it took them just about no effort whatsoever, right? Wizards isn't sitting on a stockpile of 250 "efforts" and they just used one of their "efforts" up to make this card.
Besides, they must have done it to put another copy of Llanowar Elves in some other format, clearly.
Mystic and Caryatid are strong ramp spells, Crypt Ghast is very powerful in that role for mono/heavy-black, Shrine gives EVERY color the chance to ramp powerfully. Just because you don't have a Farseek/Rampant growth doesn't mean ramp is dead, just a little different. It changes how you can use it and how opponents can fight it. And that change is a good thing, without it the game gets stale.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
The thing about tying ramp to creatures is that if the creatures die, your ramp dies with them. Mystic is fragile and lacks haste so you can't tap for another mana immediately, although I doubt anyone's going to waste a Shock on taking it out. Admittedly, it's going to be hard to kill Caryatid, since it's got Hexproof, but there are ways to deal with that.
The artifacts that produce mana are more about fixing right now than actually accelerating your mana.
Bingo. Ramp has shifted roles from more midrange-control to more aggro-midrange in the latest iteration of Standard.
The current ramp spells play terribly with board wipes...and I am cool with that. G/X ramp/control doesn't always need to be a top deck. (although even now it probably is thanks to the strength of the Caryatid, who dies to your Verdict but is strong enough otherwise to offset that liability)