MTG Salvation

I'm looking at some cards and wondering if there is a deck in here somewhere:

• Ramunap Excavator
  
• Tireless Tracker
  
• Ramunap Hydra
  
• The Gitrog Monster
  
• World Breaker
  
• Hour of Promise
  
• Desert of the Glorified
  
• Desert of the Indomitable
  
• Dunes of the Dead
  
• Hashep Oasis
  
• Ifnir Deadlands

In particular, using Dunes of the Dead to get more value out of sacrificing lands and putting them back into play with Ramunap Excavator.

There's a potential brew.
Here's what I would do as a base:

4 Blooming Marsh
2 Desert of the Glorified
3 Dunes of the Dead
2 Evolving Wilds
4 Forest
3 Hissing Quagmire
2 Hostile Desert
4 Swamp
20 Creatures
4 Channeler Initiate
4 Ramunap Hydra
4 Obelisk Spider
3 Ramunap Excavator
2 The Gitrog Monster
3 Tireless Tracker
10 Spells
3 Fatal Push
3 Grasp of Darkness
2 Never // Return
4 Blossoming Defense
2 Pulse of Murasa
2 Others
2 Liliana, Death's Majesty

There's a lot of testing to be done, for example whether Blossoming Defense is justified, or even if Hostile Desert has a spot, since the activation cost is quite high and we do need colored mana to play our spells.
Ifnir Deadlands: too expensive for the effect. Not sure it's useful. A card you could consider instead would be Grasping Dunes, it's much cheaper and with Ramunap Excavator in play, it can be quite effective.
Pulse of Murasa is just there to get back up in life and recover a land or sometimes a creature, it's nowhere near essential in the deck.

I think Jund may be the to go with this deck. R gives us access to Cathartic Reunion and Mina and Denn, Wildborn, which can help us ramp into our threats even faster. I've been looking for ways to break Ramunap Excavator since it was first spoiled and it is the card I'm most excited to play with. So far I've come up with:



Deck is good at ramping into midrange threats fairly fast, usually one to two turns sooner. Card/Deck filtering and card draw comes from Oath of Nissa, Cathartic Reunion, Hour of Promise, and clue tokens made by Tireless Tracker. Not sure what the sideboard should look like. Possibly more removal than anything else.

So far, I have run Wastes-based ramp (Ruin in their Wake as pseudo Rampant Growth), but Hour of Promise makes me want to transition into ramping with Deserts (which, unfortunately, aren't Wastes and vice versa) for the extra line of defense the zombie tokens provide, as well as being able to dig up any land (Sea Gate Wreckage anyone?). I'll try and make some adjustments to the deck and hope to come up with something that feels satisfying and powerful.

So back in Kaladesh I had a jund gitrog deck that did okay it would often go 3-2, 4-1 in tournaments and My deck relied a lot on Crawling Sensation, Splendid Reclamation, and Noose Constrictor. I think that you could use Ramunap Excavator in place of reclamation, but when I previously played my gitrog deck I had my primary finishers as World Breaker, Westvale Abbey, and whatever other creatures I had. I think that this deck has found the perfect finisher with Torment of Hailfire. The way that I played my deck previously was I would just grind out value with tokens and get big creatures out that my opponent couldnt answer until I went in for the kill, and hailfire provides the perfect 1 shot for this deck I feel, because you either destroy their board, destroy their hand, or destroy their life.



With hour of promise you can get some really nasty stacks with this deck. If your on the crawling sensation plan of getting tokens you can get a westvale abbey and dunes of the dead if you have either a desert sac card or gitrog, or you can get 2 deserts and get the 2 zombies if you already have westvale out or you can go full removal with blighted fen and ifnir deadlands. This card just lets you do so much.

As for sideboard I don't really know much of what we should do. We could go aggro-ish with grim flayer and Rhonas the Indomitable, or for aggro matchups we can play more control with Hour of Devastation, Yahenni's Expertise, or Bontu's Last Reckoning with Liliana, the Last Hope, and more spot removal, but I don't think our colors can handle that to well since we want to play more colorless lands. We also then would probably need some artifact hate like Dispossess, and Appetite for the Unnatural.

So for a sideboard I think the Aggro SB could look something like this


And a more controlly SB could look something like this

I Think this would be a fine starting point for a control sideboard I put the liliana's defeat in their because why not was thinking of either that or Hour of Glory.

Quote from ericbsmtg »

So back in Kaladesh I had a jund gitrog deck that did okay it would often go 3-2, 4-1 in tournaments and My deck relied a lot on Crawling Sensation, Splendid Reclamation, and Noose Constrictor. I think that you could use Ramunap Excavator in place of reclamation, but when I previously played my gitrog deck I had my primary finishers as World Breaker, Westvale Abbey, and whatever other creatures I had. I think that this deck has found the perfect finisher with Torment of Hailfire. The way that I played my deck previously was I would just grind out value with tokens and get big creatures out that my opponent couldnt answer until I went in for the kill, and hailfire provides the perfect 1 shot for this deck I feel, because you either destroy their board, destroy their hand, or destroy their life.

Th3M4g1cM4n's DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
Creatures 3x The Gitrog Monster 4x Ramunap Excavator 4x Channeler Initiate 2x Mina and Denn, Wildborn 2x Noose Constrictor Enchantments 4x Crawling Sensation 2x Cryptolith Rite Instants 3x Fatal Push 3x Grasp of Darkness 1x Never // Return	Sorceries 2x Hour of Promise 2x Torment of Hailfire 3x Cathartic Reunion Lands 2x Westvale Abbey 4x Evolving Wilds 3x Blooming Marsh 1x Hissing Quagmire 2x Sheltered Thicket 2x Dunes of the dead 5x Forest 1x Swamp 1x Mountain 2x Hashep Oasis 1x Ifnir Deadlands 1x Blighted Fen

With hour of promise you can get some really nasty stacks with this deck. If your on the crawling sensation plan of getting tokens you can get a westvale abbey and dunes of the dead if you have either a desert sac card or gitrog, or you can get 2 deserts and get the 2 zombies if you already have westvale out or you can go full removal with blighted fen and ifnir deadlands. This card just lets you do so much.

As for sideboard I don't really know much of what we should do. We could go aggro-ish with grim flayer and Rhonas the Indomitable, or for aggro matchups we can play more control with Hour of Devastation, Yahenni's Expertise, or Bontu's Last Reckoning with Liliana, the Last Hope, and more spot removal, but I don't think our colors can handle that to well since we want to play more colorless lands. We also then would probably need some artifact hate like Dispossess, and Appetite for the Unnatural.

So for a sideboard I think the Aggro SB could look something like this

aggro sbMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
4x Grim Flayer 2x Rhonas the Indomitable 2x Dispossess 2x Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet 3x Transgress the mind 2x Ramunap Hydra

And a more controlly SB could look something like this

Control SBMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
1x Sweltering Suns 2x Bontu's Last Reckoning 1x Hour of Devastation 3x Transgress the mind 1x Fatal Push 1x Grasp of Darkness 2x Liliana, the Last Hope 2x Appetite for the Unnatural 1x Liliana's Defeat

I Think this would be a fine starting point for a control sideboard I put the liliana's defeat in their because why not was thinking of either that or Hour of Glory.

I've taken many of your suggestions into consideration:

Torment of Hailfire: I've always considered this to be more of a control finisher, but I can see the value in playing it in ramp decks such as ours. It's horrible against aggro, but great against midrange/combo decks. However, I don't think its mainboard material. UW Monument, 4C Control, and UR Control are currently dominating the meta. All of which Hailfire is very weak against.

Bontu's Last Reckoning: I'm not sold on this just yet. Taking a turn off in a midrange deck such as ours can prove to be fatal in some cases. It's weak against aggro, control, and vehicles decks. I'd much rather we run Sweltering Suns (as you suggested) or Yahenni's Expertise.

Dispossess and Appetite for the Unnatural: Yes! I've been looking for artifact removal spells. At first, I was gonna try to squeeze in Abrade, but I didn't think the mana base could/can support it.

I like your control SB, and will be removing protection spells from my own deck and adding more removal. The only suggestions I can currently offer about your deck build itself is that you don't have a means of really pushing damage through and none of your creatures do anything when they ETB. I recommend adding some form of evasion or buff that guarantees some solid hits, otherwise your creatures are gonna get chump blocked for days. You also should consider a means to recur creatures from the graveyard that either died in combat or get pitched to your discard outlets. Also, I like the idea of having lands ETB untapped, BUT, running Hissing Quagmire as a "4 of" instead of as a "1 of" is a more powerful play than running +3 Blooming Marsh. Quagmire stalls the board and makes our opponent pause and have to play around it. Meanwhile, we get to easily recur it with Ramunap Excavator for free each turn. In order to make Hour of Promise worth playing, consider adding more Deserts to your mana base. Five Deserts is just too few. Moving forward, I'm looking at:



I think Blossoming Defense is an important deck piece. Once our opponents figure out we rely on playing lands from our graveyard via Ramunap Excavator, they WILL be gunning for it with their removal spells. The good thing is that Excavator is normally out of range of Magma Spray and an un-Revolt-ed Fatal Push, but still falls prey to Grasp of Darkness, Abrade, and Harnessed Lightning. A well placed Defense stops this. Failing Defense, Liliana, Death's Majesty can get Excavator back for us.

So quick edit to my deck after testing a few games online.



cuts are as listed:
1x Ramunap Excavator
1x Grasp of Darkness
1x Torment of Hailfire
1x Westvale Abbey
1x Blooming Marsh
1x Forest

Adds are as listed:
1x Splendid Reclamation
2x Blossoming Defense
1x Hissing Quagmire
1x Hashep Oasis
1x Ifnir Deadlands

SB changes:
- Bontu's Last Reckoning
+ Yahenni's Expertise

I feel that having a full playset of Excavator can sometimes be a pain when you get multiples in hand because in those moments you aren't really ramping you're just consistently hitting land drops which is good but having a one of reclamation I feel can help you launch yourself into the mid game really well. On Blossoming Defense, I was thinking about putting that in as a way of doing silly combat tricks and also protecting my key cards once they land but I thought that my cards would be immediately answered and it would make playing on curve hard since I want to leave one more up in reserve. But after playing a good number of games(a lot against control) I realized that I was leaving an addition mana up and playing my spells off curve to avoid Censor and also playing my Excavator off curve so that it could grab me my t4 land drop from grave. So all in all I think it could take the spot of a grasp and torment. Went and changed the lands up to get desert count higher, I did notice sometimes I just couldn't/didn't want to grab 2 deserts with hour so now I can more consistently just grab 1-2 and still get the zombies. I just wanted to test out Reckoning and see if it was worth it over yahennis I don't really think so.