For the past six months or so I've exclusively played with Zedruu the Greathearted as my commander. One lesson I've learned through this experience is that mana ramp feels not only powerful, but mandatory. This may be old news to Commander players everywhere, but I've actually felt troubled by this lesson lately. While I am not particularly interested in winning games of Commander, I would like to be able to compete with my opponents. In games where I lack mana acceleration, there's almost no contest; I tend to be irrelevant and consequently ignored by other players who were fortunate enough to draw into fast mana. From there, those players develop such a prominent lead in the game that it becomes difficult to stop them from snowballing further.
I suppose this wouldn't be too great of a concern for me if I had access to green, but as a Jeskai player, my options are limited. Sure, there are a few white ramp spells such as Knight of the White Orchid and Kor Cartographer, but these pale in comparison to both the quantity and the quality of green's spells. Without black, I also lose out on the opportunity to use Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth alongside Cabal Coffers or other black exclusive mana generators. Furthermore, as a three color deck, I cannot effectively employ Extraplanar Lens or Caged Sun either. The only direction I can seemingly turn to is to artifacts like Sol Ring, Chromatic Lantern, and Gilded Lotus.
This isn't a complaint, mind you. I'm not particularly upset by playing these cards; I just feel as though my deckbuilding is limited by their seemingly forced inclusion. Drawing multiple accelerators feels so important that I feel compelled to include numerous of them just so I can draw more than one in a single game. There is almost never a point where I feel I have too much mana; I routinely witness myself saying things like "If only I had seventeen mana." By including such a vast quantity of mana rocks into my deck though, I limit the number of other spells in the 99 that I can play with that do genuinely interesting things. Playing with as many of these types of cards as possible is at odds with playing the mana rocks necessary to cast them efficiently.
What I would like to know is that if you, reader, have any solution to this conundrum. Is there any way around playing mana rocks in Commander? So far I've thought of a few solutions, but nothing I'm seriously considering. It's possible to circumvent building a Commander deck with mana rocks by having an aggresively low mana curve, but I question the usefulness of such a deck. I could also enlist the help of cards like Kataki, War's Wage, but that has consequences as well.
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Pass up the rocks and play tutors for/aggressively mulligan to Stony Silence and Null Rod? I don't think there's an easy answer to this, and on top of that I think that RWU can be a very mana hungry color combination.
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EDH playing competitive Magic cast away
Current Decks GTitania midrange RGThromok tokens/goodstuff | UB Grimgrin zombie tribal GW Sigarda enchantress | R Godo voltron U Braids aggro | WR Kalemne punisher RU Mizzix storm | BUG Mimeoplasm competitive reanimator | UG Ezuri infect
You could simply counter their mana rocks by blowing them up. You're in Red/White, you have cards like Vandalblast, Austere Command and various others at your disposal. White and Red are both very good at evening the playing field, I'd suggest you make use of it if you don't want to run the mana rocks. Combine with a few targeted land destruction cards (Might want to avoid Mass land destruction based on how your playgroup feels about that) in order to take out the likes of Coffers or Cradle.
As for the ramp, you have the already mentioned Knight and Kor, and you also have the obvious Solemn Simulacrum. If your deck can afford a blink suite (Which white and blue both are good at), you could combine those with some of the ETB Destroy A Land creatures (Avalanche Riders, Goblin Settler) red has to keep mana parity.
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My Commander decks:
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
I build decks without ramp all the time. Sometimes because they have strong on-curve plays every turn (Aurelia) or because it's a control deck that wants to leave mana open constantly. Of course there's almost never a reason to leave out sol ring and mana crypt, because they're both ridiculously OP, but it's completely possible to build a deck with many high-impact cards that aren't particularly expensive to cast.
One of my favorite decks, that works quite well against ramp strategies, is Nahiri. They ramp, I run out my commander, then I wipe their board (or render it irrelevant with humility, the best card in the deck, and arguably in the color - at only 4 mana, mind you), then I usually wipe their lands, and grind out a win with equipped tokens before they can rebuild. It does use a little ramp itself because Nahiri does cost 5, but it's a good example of why ramp strategies don't always rule supreme.
It's obvious any deck will run more smoothly with mana accelerators. You can design a deck with 40 lands and play 1 per turn for your first 5. Or you can have 20 accelerators and 10-15 cards to help with draw, and have 10 mana open turn 5 with a full hand.
I think it just comes with the territory. In general the effects that are worth playing in EDH cost more than those in other formats, so it makes sense you have to dedicate more of your deck to make sure you get there. The only other options are speeding yourself up by lowering your curve, slowing everyone else down through hate/metagaming, or risk falling behind by doing neither.
My Karador deck that I play on cockatrice has a total of five mana ramp cards: Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Three Visits, Nature's Lore and Wood Elves. I very rarely ever feel as if I don't have an impact on a game or even feel that I need more ramp in the deck. This is because I have maintained a nice curve and while I don't have a lot of bombs to drop, I certainly have a plethora of answers to my opponents' threats. I regularly win games through combat damage just because I've exhausted all the threats and they don't have anything to strike back at me with, despite the deck easily being able to combo out. However, I think this is much more because I'm in WBG and have access to all the answer anything cards. There is no way someone can achieve a perfect defense against these colors (excluding a very few cornercases such as perfect defense cards being put into play all at the same time).
Still, I believe my deck doesn't need as much ramp because :
A) Tight curve
B) Plenty of versatile, cheap answers
With the above, even if your opponents have 10 mana available to them on turn five, you will still have an impact on the game and won't automatically lose. Then again, if it's your entire meta doing this, then there might be problems.
Don't think of it a forced design, think of it as optimizing slots that would've been land. Without accelerators you would likely be running land in almost all the slots, accelerators simply allow you to play 2 mana producers a turn rather than wait till the next.
You SHOULD run mana accel, it's just a good idea. However you can also beat those who ramp ahead with hate cards and board resets. Aura of Silence is a great preemptive answer (although ironically way better if you accel turn 1 to get it our a turn or 2 early). You also have board nukes that hit those cards like Oblivion Stone. Decks that rely on tons of fast ramp can easily be left with a few cards in hand or a commander that must hit to be relevant. A Counter or other forms of answers can leave them in top deck mode. So don't feel that the game is dictated by mana ramp. How you incorporate it has a lot of flexibility.
If you're just trying to avoid mana rocks specifically, consider Planar Birth plus Land Tax, looting effects, etc.
As for the broader problem of mana slots taking away from business slots, I don't see any way around that. You've got to find your mana one way or another. If you're playing big spells you've got to devote the slots to pay for them.
Most of my decks run little to no mana rocks and are fine, though that is usually because they all tend have fairly aggressive starts and begin putting down threats on turn 2 or 3. Animar, Skullbriar, and Marrow-Gnawer are all based on swinging hard early on while everyone else is ramping or trying to build a defense. My GW tokens deck is the only one with any ramp, and even then, many of it's token generators are cheap.
I find that a better way to go about it is to just lower my mana curve in decks that aren't running green. In my Zedruu, I only run 6 cards that have a CMC of 6 or more and I'm only running Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, and Solemn Simulacrum as mana ramp. Burnished Hart is another card that I've moved in and out of the deck. Rather than expending more deck slots on mana rocks, I advise cutting high casting cost cards and replacing them with less mana intensive options.
I play Oath of Lieges in my Zedruu deck. There is the downside that it helps other non-green players on the table most of the time too, but usually it helps me the most and I'm able to keep up if I get into play early (It's also donateable for Zedruu, since it's a global effect). Getting Land Tax and Terrain Generator into play together early can help, too.
But I don't think the deck can completely forgo the use of mana rocks, to be honest.
I don't really count Oath of Lieges as a ramp; and I don't see any issue forgoing ramp altogether. I run zero ramp in my Zedruu. Just run hate cards. They're as good as ramp most of the time. Torpor Orb and Stony Silence are perfect gifts.
You can get away with it in more aggressive decks (combo or aggro), or if you have lot of disruption to prevent others from getting ahead. BUT...both of those things might not mesh with your playgroup if it leans more casually where people aren't cool with quick kills or mana disruption. If that's the case then you are probably stuck playing mana rocks if you want to keep up. If it makes you feel any better I've felt the exact same way in the past, wishing that the whole group would just agree to not play them so that we could spend early turns actually playing Magic moreso than waiting til turns 3-4 to actually do stuff. Thankfully my group has gotten a bit faster, more competitive, over the past couple of years and moved to the point where there is a lot more interaction early on.
Not to belittle your problem, but it really just boils down to focusing on a strategy. There are so very many awesome proactive and reactive cards in Magic that it's hard to trim decklists down to size, even in 100 card highlander. Focus is important since not every deck needs to be able to do everything*. For instance, degenerate Hermit Druid combo decks don't need to worry about producing early blockers while generating value with Wall of Blossoms. By and large draw-go style control decks don't need to be ramping to be effective (a notable historical exception is the Accelerated Blue deck from Urza's/Masques Standard) so that style of deck is naturally suited to avoiding mana rocks. I used to have a pretty good Zedruu the Greathearted Jeskai control deck that was virtually all instant speed. Just hitting your land drops every turn is good enough for a deck like that because you get to spend two mana to counter their 8 cmc bomb or one mana to exile it. For much of Magic's history answers have been better and more efficient than threats. This is no longer the case, but we still have a huge pool of overpowered undercosted control cards to draw from.
*This is slightly less true in EDH than it is in other 1v1 forms of Magic.
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You would never guess, at the terrifying sight of the man, that Hunding was as charming a companion as one could wish for.
One thing that I think is being understated here is that mana ramp is also being used for mana fixing unless it is cards like like Sol Ring, Mana Crypt and other colorless producers. I put most of the cards that people consider ramp into my decks more for fixing than ramp, as having access to the colors I need is very important. As Green is the only color that can ramp/fix easily, artifacts get played in other colors to fix mana and in most cases the fixing also provides ramp.
Most ramp and fixing cards are low on the casting curve for a format that is much slower than your typical constructed format, giving players something to do on early turns other than play a land and pass. EDH also uses "bigger" cards, meaning their is no downside to playing fixing and ramp cards.
I routinely witness myself saying things like "If only I had seventeen mana."
My opinion is that most games should be over well before or immediately at that point. Most of my decks have low curves - and my Melek has a ridiculously low curve (1.8 average, I think). I use cards like Dreamscape Artist, Walking Atlas, Retraced Image, Lion's Eye Diamond, Mana Flare, Candelabra and all of the other top-tier EDH mana rocks + the legal moxes to get me where I want to be by turn three.
Red and White are particularly needy of ramp - since their primary original direction was fast aggro and most of their better early cards support that idea and fall short in EDH. Other colors have better ramp strategies, so people playing red and white need to adapt. There's lot of options out there - but the best ones are probably to run more artifact mana and lower your curve.
It's also worth noting that ramp is a popular option because it provides a positive action you can perform on your turn that doesn't have to take into account your opponents' board positions. If you're looking to lessen your reliance on ramp, and have already looked at some of the previously mentioned options (artifact/land destruction, W's scarce land tutors, lowering your curve), it would also help to figure out what you want to do in the early game that focusing on ramp might have restricted you from doing.
My Marchesa, the Black Rose deck is running fairly light on mana rocks currently, but makes up for it by trying to set up early value engines and holding out mana for Twincast effects and cantrips/low-impact draw spells ala Think Twice. Even if you aren't progressing your manabase as quickly as other players, using your mana efficiently can be enough to give you a fair shot in most groups.
Even if you aren't progressing your manabase as quickly as other players, using your mana efficiently can be enough to give you a fair shot in most groups.
This statement is worth repeating. Mana rocks and ramping aren't essential for success in EDH, but if you aren't going that route, then you should be spending the early turns doing something else that will give you a lasting advantage over the course of the game. This can be established by being careful about your mana curve, and by having a game plan based on taking the lead while others are establishing their manabase. My Shu Yun deck is like this; I start establishing threats on turn 2, and I can do 95% of what my deck does on 5 mana.
What you can't do if you want to win, or even be a significant factor in the games, is just sit around waiting on your mana while others are building their resources.
Thanks for the generous responses everyone. I'm never too certain exactly how well received my threads will be before I make them. I'm glad that enough of you found this topic compelling enough to discuss your thoughts with me. I'd also like to give thanks for some of the cards suggested thus far. Oath of Lieges, Planar Birth, and Retraced Image were all under my radar and seem like super sweet tech cards. That aside, I'd like to discuss the two significant alternatives presented so far in this thread.
Play More Stony Silence:
There are two big reasons that I'm reluctant to adopt this approach. The first is that Stony Silence and its brethren just feel mean. It would often become mass mana denial. Although I've negatively painted myself as someone who is inconsequential and ignorable in my opening post, those qualities are also one of my greatest assets in games. By virtue of not appearing threatening, my opponents tend to kill each other instead, doing my job for me. For this reason, I run no pillow-fort cards in my deck: I'm just too seldom bothered. Cards like Stony Silence, in addition to denying my own ability to play potentially useful artifacts, paints a big target on my head and draws the ire of everyone at the table who, in all honesty, are playing much more powerful decks than I am. While it would do a phenomenal job of demanding other players' attention, I feel that this approach would do a political disservice to me.
The second reason why I'm averse to these types of effects is because they only affect players who run artifacts. That sounds like a big "Duh!," but this is significant. In order to play cards like Stony Silence without suffering consequences from it myself, I have to craft my deck in a very specific manner. When I don't draw those types of cards, I'm at a disadvantage because my opponents will have unmitigated access to their artifacts and I won't have access to any by virtue of simply excluding them from my deck altogether. In the event that I do draw into Stony Silence effects, it likely does little to hinder the green players. Dedicating my deck towards these effects feels counterproductive when an entire subset of ramping players are not even hindered by them. I have decided to increase the number of artifact-destroying spells in my deck by adding a copy of Wear // Tear though.
Lower Your Mana Curve:
This is fair advice, but I just find this so difficult to do. My goal as a player is to craft the best stories I possibly can. Interesting, intricate, and unusual cards tend to make for novel stories because of the odd ways they interact with players and the game in general. Those effects, sadly, tend to be expensive. Trimming the fat a bit may help my mana woes, but I'm still at a loss for which inexpensive cards I should proactively develop my board with in the early stages of the game. One Zedruu the Greathearted deck I've stumbled across on the boards that I'm a great fan of does this by running every Howling Mine variant possible in his 99 in order to begin drawing massive amounts of cards. Once he has assembled a respectable hand size he begins digging deeper and deeper into his deck with cards like Teferi's Puzzle Box and Mindmoil until he finds his win conditions. I'm not certain that I want to take that exact approach, but it does interest me. I suppose I just have no honest idea what cards I should be casting early game when I'm not casting ramp.
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I suppose I just have no honest idea what cards I should be casting early game when I'm not casting ramp.
Essentially, you have choices. First, you can play things - tax effects or limiting effects like Rule of Law, for example - which nullify some of the advantages others are gaining by ramping and playing mana rocks. Otherwise, you can cast other small things - utility creatures and artifacts, small enchantments with increasing or cumulative effects, etc. - which let you create an advantageous board state while opponents are establishing their mana. Doing this effectively requires you to have a specific game plan, of course; it doesn't tend to go with more "goodstuff" approaches. You mentioned not feeling a need to go the pillowfort route, but that's one of the sorts of things you can spend early turns setting up. Another option is to run lots of cheap draw and filtering effects to help you draw into your win conditions.
For the past six months or so I've exclusively played with Zedruu the Greathearted as my commander. One lesson I've learned through this experience is that mana ramp feels not only powerful, but mandatory. This may be old news to Commander players everywhere, but I've actually felt troubled by this lesson lately. While I am not particularly interested in winning games of Commander, I would like to be able to compete with my opponents. In games where I lack mana acceleration, there's almost no contest; I tend to be irrelevant and consequently ignored by other players who were fortunate enough to draw into fast mana. From there, those players develop such a prominent lead in the game that it becomes difficult to stop them from snowballing further.
I suppose this wouldn't be too great of a concern for me if I had access to green, but as a Jeskai player, my options are limited. Sure, there are a few white ramp spells such as Knight of the White Orchid and Kor Cartographer, but these pale in comparison to both the quantity and the quality of green's spells. Without black, I also lose out on the opportunity to use Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth alongside Cabal Coffers or other black exclusive mana generators. Furthermore, as a three color deck, I cannot effectively employ Extraplanar Lens or Caged Sun either. The only direction I can seemingly turn to is to artifacts like Sol Ring, Chromatic Lantern, and Gilded Lotus.
This isn't a complaint, mind you. I'm not particularly upset by playing these cards; I just feel as though my deckbuilding is limited by their seemingly forced inclusion. Drawing multiple accelerators feels so important that I feel compelled to include numerous of them just so I can draw more than one in a single game. There is almost never a point where I feel I have too much mana; I routinely witness myself saying things like "If only I had seventeen mana." By including such a vast quantity of mana rocks into my deck though, I limit the number of other spells in the 99 that I can play with that do genuinely interesting things. Playing with as many of these types of cards as possible is at odds with playing the mana rocks necessary to cast them efficiently.
What I would like to know is that if you, reader, have any solution to this conundrum. Is there any way around playing mana rocks in Commander? So far I've thought of a few solutions, but nothing I'm seriously considering. It's possible to circumvent building a Commander deck with mana rocks by having an aggresively low mana curve, but I question the usefulness of such a deck. I could also enlist the help of cards like Kataki, War's Wage, but that has consequences as well.
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
Current Decks
GTitania midrange
RGThromok tokens/goodstuff | UB Grimgrin zombie tribal
GW Sigarda enchantress | R Godo voltron
U Braids aggro | WR Kalemne punisher
RU Mizzix storm | BUG Mimeoplasm competitive reanimator | UG Ezuri infect
As for the ramp, you have the already mentioned Knight and Kor, and you also have the obvious Solemn Simulacrum. If your deck can afford a blink suite (Which white and blue both are good at), you could combine those with some of the ETB Destroy A Land creatures (Avalanche Riders, Goblin Settler) red has to keep mana parity.
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
One of my favorite decks, that works quite well against ramp strategies, is Nahiri. They ramp, I run out my commander, then I wipe their board (or render it irrelevant with humility, the best card in the deck, and arguably in the color - at only 4 mana, mind you), then I usually wipe their lands, and grind out a win with equipped tokens before they can rebuild. It does use a little ramp itself because Nahiri does cost 5, but it's a good example of why ramp strategies don't always rule supreme.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
BRGrenzo, Dungeon Warden EDH
GAzusa, Always in a Rush EDH
GWUDerevi, Empyrial Warlord EDH
Trade thread on MOTL
Draft my Mono-Blue Cube!
lichess.org | chess.com
Still, I believe my deck doesn't need as much ramp because :
A) Tight curve
B) Plenty of versatile, cheap answers
With the above, even if your opponents have 10 mana available to them on turn five, you will still have an impact on the game and won't automatically lose. Then again, if it's your entire meta doing this, then there might be problems.
Seriph0 on cockatrice
EDH Decks
WBGKaradorWBG
You SHOULD run mana accel, it's just a good idea. However you can also beat those who ramp ahead with hate cards and board resets. Aura of Silence is a great preemptive answer (although ironically way better if you accel turn 1 to get it our a turn or 2 early). You also have board nukes that hit those cards like Oblivion Stone. Decks that rely on tons of fast ramp can easily be left with a few cards in hand or a commander that must hit to be relevant. A Counter or other forms of answers can leave them in top deck mode. So don't feel that the game is dictated by mana ramp. How you incorporate it has a lot of flexibility.
As for the broader problem of mana slots taking away from business slots, I don't see any way around that. You've got to find your mana one way or another. If you're playing big spells you've got to devote the slots to pay for them.
GRUAnimar, Soul of CreaturesGRU
GWGW Tokens: Rhys,Tolsimir, or Trostani GW
BMarrow-GnawerB
BGSkullbriar, All's fun in the GraveBG
RWBAlesha, Who Smiles at DeathRWB
Jalira, Master Polymorphist | Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder | Bosh, Iron Golem | Ezuri, Renegade Leader
Brago, King Eternal | Oona, Queen of the Fae | Wort, Boggart Auntie | Wort, the Raidmother
Captain Sisay | Rhys, the Redeemed | Trostani, Selesnya's Voice | Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight | Obzedat, Ghost Council | Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind | Vorel of the Hull Clade
Uril, the Miststalker | Prossh, Skyraider of Kher | Nicol Bolas | Progenitus
Ghave, Guru of Spores | Zedruu the Greathearted | Damia, Sage of Stone | Riku of Two Reflections
But I don't think the deck can completely forgo the use of mana rocks, to be honest.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
*This is slightly less true in EDH than it is in other 1v1 forms of Magic.
Most ramp and fixing cards are low on the casting curve for a format that is much slower than your typical constructed format, giving players something to do on early turns other than play a land and pass. EDH also uses "bigger" cards, meaning their is no downside to playing fixing and ramp cards.
My opinion is that most games should be over well before or immediately at that point. Most of my decks have low curves - and my Melek has a ridiculously low curve (1.8 average, I think). I use cards like Dreamscape Artist, Walking Atlas, Retraced Image, Lion's Eye Diamond, Mana Flare, Candelabra and all of the other top-tier EDH mana rocks + the legal moxes to get me where I want to be by turn three.
Red and White are particularly needy of ramp - since their primary original direction was fast aggro and most of their better early cards support that idea and fall short in EDH. Other colors have better ramp strategies, so people playing red and white need to adapt. There's lot of options out there - but the best ones are probably to run more artifact mana and lower your curve.
My Marchesa, the Black Rose deck is running fairly light on mana rocks currently, but makes up for it by trying to set up early value engines and holding out mana for Twincast effects and cantrips/low-impact draw spells ala Think Twice. Even if you aren't progressing your manabase as quickly as other players, using your mana efficiently can be enough to give you a fair shot in most groups.
RRR - Bosh's School of Hard(cover) Knocks
This statement is worth repeating. Mana rocks and ramping aren't essential for success in EDH, but if you aren't going that route, then you should be spending the early turns doing something else that will give you a lasting advantage over the course of the game. This can be established by being careful about your mana curve, and by having a game plan based on taking the lead while others are establishing their manabase. My Shu Yun deck is like this; I start establishing threats on turn 2, and I can do 95% of what my deck does on 5 mana.
What you can't do if you want to win, or even be a significant factor in the games, is just sit around waiting on your mana while others are building their resources.
Play More Stony Silence:
There are two big reasons that I'm reluctant to adopt this approach. The first is that Stony Silence and its brethren just feel mean. It would often become mass mana denial. Although I've negatively painted myself as someone who is inconsequential and ignorable in my opening post, those qualities are also one of my greatest assets in games. By virtue of not appearing threatening, my opponents tend to kill each other instead, doing my job for me. For this reason, I run no pillow-fort cards in my deck: I'm just too seldom bothered. Cards like Stony Silence, in addition to denying my own ability to play potentially useful artifacts, paints a big target on my head and draws the ire of everyone at the table who, in all honesty, are playing much more powerful decks than I am. While it would do a phenomenal job of demanding other players' attention, I feel that this approach would do a political disservice to me.
The second reason why I'm averse to these types of effects is because they only affect players who run artifacts. That sounds like a big "Duh!," but this is significant. In order to play cards like Stony Silence without suffering consequences from it myself, I have to craft my deck in a very specific manner. When I don't draw those types of cards, I'm at a disadvantage because my opponents will have unmitigated access to their artifacts and I won't have access to any by virtue of simply excluding them from my deck altogether. In the event that I do draw into Stony Silence effects, it likely does little to hinder the green players. Dedicating my deck towards these effects feels counterproductive when an entire subset of ramping players are not even hindered by them. I have decided to increase the number of artifact-destroying spells in my deck by adding a copy of Wear // Tear though.
Lower Your Mana Curve:
This is fair advice, but I just find this so difficult to do. My goal as a player is to craft the best stories I possibly can. Interesting, intricate, and unusual cards tend to make for novel stories because of the odd ways they interact with players and the game in general. Those effects, sadly, tend to be expensive. Trimming the fat a bit may help my mana woes, but I'm still at a loss for which inexpensive cards I should proactively develop my board with in the early stages of the game. One Zedruu the Greathearted deck I've stumbled across on the boards that I'm a great fan of does this by running every Howling Mine variant possible in his 99 in order to begin drawing massive amounts of cards. Once he has assembled a respectable hand size he begins digging deeper and deeper into his deck with cards like Teferi's Puzzle Box and Mindmoil until he finds his win conditions. I'm not certain that I want to take that exact approach, but it does interest me. I suppose I just have no honest idea what cards I should be casting early game when I'm not casting ramp.
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
Essentially, you have choices. First, you can play things - tax effects or limiting effects like Rule of Law, for example - which nullify some of the advantages others are gaining by ramping and playing mana rocks. Otherwise, you can cast other small things - utility creatures and artifacts, small enchantments with increasing or cumulative effects, etc. - which let you create an advantageous board state while opponents are establishing their mana. Doing this effectively requires you to have a specific game plan, of course; it doesn't tend to go with more "goodstuff" approaches. You mentioned not feeling a need to go the pillowfort route, but that's one of the sorts of things you can spend early turns setting up. Another option is to run lots of cheap draw and filtering effects to help you draw into your win conditions.
sure your opponents can ramp like mad, and the urborg might be helping them smoothen their mana a bit... but at the cost of some life, every upkeep!
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
Then your opponents laugh at you on your turn when Karma punches you in the face while one of them has an Urborg on the board.
The Mimeoplasm || Karador, Ghost Chieftain
Prossh, Skyraider of Kher || Vial Smasher/Tymna Group Slug
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief || Talrand, Sky Summoner
Yidris - Unblockable Saboteurs || Kiki-Jiki, ETB breaker
Kess, Dissident Mage