I have a lot of decks at a variety of power levels. When I see other people playing the most competitive versions of my decks, I often see a lot more ramp than I would typically play.
For example, my Karador, Ghost Chieftain plays Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Sakura-Tribe Elder, and Wood Elves for ramp. My deck has a very low curve for a Karador deck. I never included mana dorks in my deck because they are bad top-decks. STE and Wood Elves are much better top-decks as they can be abused to ramp a lot harder.
The top-tier competitive decks I see for Karador usually play every 1-mana dork available to it. I see that these decks are trying to race to their combo as fast as possible, so it make sense. My deck, while very competitive, is trying to control the game before executing the win.
I simply feel like it is so bad to draw an Elvish Mystic on turn 5... that it is unplayable.
So my question is: Do you have to play ramp to be competitive? Are there situations where you do not play ramp?
Example: My Marchesa, the Black Rose deck is close to being very competitive. The deck has a very low curve, trying to play creatures turns 1-3 before playing Marchesa turn 4, for maximum value. It is a very grindy deck, with a lot of land destruction, wraths, edicts, and card advantage. This deck plays 2 mana rocks. It has no signets. No Talisman.
I feel like if I added 5-10 mana rocks, it would be a much worse deck. It could be more explosive, but overall less consistent.
For low-curve, grindier decks, what is best practice for mana ramp?
If we treat the forest as the baseline any of the above cards that allows you reach the amount of mana you need earlier then just playing one land each turn means you can winn earlier.
When does the Llanowar Elves stop being worse then a forest? It comes out faster, it can attack and block, it accelerates you. The downside is that it dies to spot removal and wrath effects and it is a bad toppdeck the turn you really needed the last mana. But more often then not you are more conserned with assembling the right amount of mana, then drawing that forest the turn you need it. The downside of topdecking it instead of a forest is far outweighted by the posetives sides of having a creatue. Keep in mind that just having a Llanowar Elves dead or alive makes your Karador cheaper.
In 'competetive' commander the game usualy ends with a combo or some grand flashy gesture. A bubble hulk combo, or Strip Mine, Exploration and Crusible of Worlds post armageddon, winter orbs and stax effects etc. Mana acceleration means you get to make that big play earlier then you usually should.
Asuming you have the colour you need (commander tower etc.) then is there any senario you would rather draw forest over Sol Ring? What about drawing forest of Gaia's Cradle? What about drawing forest over Ancient Tomb? The awnser to all of these questions is usually no.
Picture this senario: Both you and your opponent has the exact same deck, draw and hand. Except his hand included an exploration, who will winn?
Do your deck include card draw? This usually goes very well with ramp, as ramp gets you to your card draw earlier, and then allows you to cast the cards you draw into earlier as well. Speaking of this how inpactfull are your 1, 2 and 3 drops in Marchesa? I can understand if you one drop is Mother of Runes and your two drop is Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and the 3 drop is Acen Mindcensor. But for the most part I would rather go 2 mana artifact acceleration turn 1 or 2 (Rakdos, Orzhov, Boros signet, Mox Diamond, Mana Vault, Mana Crypt, Prismatic Lens, Fellwar Stone, Mind Stone etc.) into Marchesa turn 3. That way turn 4 you can do something really god.
Edit: I found out I thought of the new marchesa instead of the old one. My points stil stand even if the examples I had where white. I know I would rather get Jeleva out ASAP, or Ydris. Pr even the good cards in my hand.
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I have dyslexia, no I am not going to spell check for you, yes you have to live with the horrors of it.
If you're going balls-deep for some combo, you need lots of ramp (preferably free or nearly-free stuff like Mana Crypt or Lake of the Dead) and tutors. If you're aiming for a longer game, you can probably get away with less.
If we treat the forest as the baseline any of the above cards that allows you reach the amount of mana you need earlier then just playing one land each turn means you can winn earlier.
When does the Llanowar Elves stop being worse then a forest? It comes out faster, it can attack and block, it accelerates you. The downside is that it dies to spot removal and wrath effects and it is a bad toppdeck the turn you really needed the last mana. But more often then not you are more conserned with assembling the right amount of mana, then drawing that forest the turn you need it. The downside of topdecking it instead of a forest is far outweighted by the posetives sides of having a creatue. Keep in mind that just having a Llanowar Elves dead or alive makes your Karador cheaper.
In 'competetive' commander the game usualy ends with a combo or some grand flashy gesture. A bubble hulk combo, or Strip Mine, Exploration and Crusible of Worlds post armageddon, winter orbs and stax effects etc. Mana acceleration means you get to make that big play earlier then you usually should.
Asuming you have the colour you need (commander tower etc.) then is there any senario you would rather draw forest over Sol Ring? What about drawing forest of Gaia's Cradle? What about drawing forest over Ancient Tomb? The awnser to all of these questions is usually no.
Picture this senario: Both you and your opponent has the exact same deck, draw and hand. Except his hand included an exploration, who will winn?
Do your deck include card draw? This usually goes very well with ramp, as ramp gets you to your card draw earlier, and then allows you to cast the cards you draw into earlier as well. Speaking of this how inpactfull are your 1, 2 and 3 drops in Marchesa? I can understand if you one drop is Mother of Runes and your two drop is Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and the 3 drop is Acen Mindcensor. But for the most part I would rather go 2 mana artifact acceleration turn 1 or 2 (Rakdos, Orzhov, Boros signet, Mox Diamond, Mana Vault, Mana Crypt, Prismatic Lens, Fellwar Stone, Mind Stone etc.) into Marchesa turn 3. That way turn 4 you can do something really god.
Edit: I found out I thought of the new marchesa instead of the old one. My points stil stand even if the examples I had where white. I know I would rather get Jeleva out ASAP, or Ydris. Pr even the good cards in my hand.
Ideally on Turn 4, Marchesa comes down, I attack for the first time, putting counters on 3 creatures, making opponents discard and/or getting free land destruction.
Another issue with mana rocks is that my competitive playgroups will usually have a null rod or two at the table, or a Stony Silence.
While Sol Ring is a better draw than Forest, Arbor Elf is not a better draw than something like Grisly Salvage. It's not like mana ramp is replacing lands in the deck... mana dorks and mana rocks replace cards that have value being recurred, that interact with the board, etc. I am also not really ramping into anything. I play Sol Ring over a basic land.
I understand that ramp and card draw go well together, allowing you to cast multiple spells per turn. Karador doesn't really care about card draw, since the graveyard is an extension of the hand I am fine with dredging or recurring Satyr Wayfinder.
My takeaway so far is that my Karador deck, which is made for a long game, doesn't need to be explosive, and doesn't need much ramp.
My takeaway from Marchesa is that since I am trying to flood the board with disruptive pieces, cheap mana ramp like Mox Diamond, Mana Crypt, Etc, would be good.
Maybe I should just test out playing with 5 more ramp pieces in each deck to get an idea of how I like them.
While those are all good cards with marchesa t1 though 3 it is not as scary as someone who plays mana rocks. A manarock nulifies the fulminator mage to some extend. If they are good players and a running as many fetches and other lands that deal damage to themselves they will try to get their life total low so you can not dethrone them. I am asuming you are working on doing the same. That opening is also really dependent on having 4 mana turn 4. Running more mana in your deck will help you do thet more consistently. At some point it makes more sence to add non-land cards that generate mana as lands get clogged in your hand. Null rods and stony silences can be dealth with.
You are also comparing Arbor Elf with Grisly Salvage. Those are 2 entierly different cards. Arbor elf generates mana fast helping you cast your bubble hulk or other win condition faster, Grisly Salvage generates card advantage making sure your draw your bubble hulk. A better comparison for Grisley Salvage is Thawing Glaciers, those are both sources of card advantage. Although one of them is a lot better then the other.
Saying that Karador is ment for a long game is not an excuse for not ramping. If anything it means you need to play more ramp so you can battle the combo and prisson decks in speed.
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I have dyslexia, no I am not going to spell check for you, yes you have to live with the horrors of it.
The actual effectiveness when considering the power-level or "competitive nature" of ramp will depend on what your exposed to.
For example, farseek vs cultivate. One is a staple 2:1 card advantage ramp spell. The other just comes out a turn earlier and can push non-basics. One spell clearly does more, but IMO farseek is still a more "competitive" card to play over cultivate just because it allows 4 cmc spells to be played on turn-3.
With that same mentality, birds of paradise would be more competitive than farseek. Yes creatures are far more vulnerable to removal than lands, but allowing 3 cmc drops on turn-2 is far more scary than a 4 cmc drop on turn-3.
Running multiple 1-drop mana dorks also means the deck can run less lands, thus giving the pilot more cards to play with.
Also, if your deck doesn't actually do anything with the mana, then accelerating extra mana doesn't...do.. anything? Take a Kozilek deck as an example (Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and Kozilek, the Great Distortion both apply). Those decks run an absurd amount of mana rocks, even some sub-optimal ones like worn powerstone, with the goal of resolving an early Kozi that refills their hand. Any deck can run those same rocks, but to what end? If the deck doesn't have a way to refill its hand (prime speaker zegana for another example), or doesn't actually use all of that mana, then ramp is pointless.
TLDR it all depends on what your deck does vs your opponents. In a casual meta full of battlecruiser decks, if none of the decks run ramp, then they will all be coming out around the same speed. But if one player adds just a thran dynamo, and can suddenly resolve a turn-5 inkwell leviathan, then compared to the others, his deck is more "competitive" since it does things faster.
I honestly can't see how a deck could function without 1-2 cmc ramp. I mean, not having it just sets you so far behind the other players because a lot of the high impact cards you want to run are 3-5cmc.
Xenagos, for example, has five ways of potentially ramping more than 1 on turn 1. Mana Crypt, Joraga Treespeaker, Sol Ring, Gamble (for Mana Crypt), and Carpet of Flowers. This exponentially increases the probability of having explosive starting hands. Yes, these cards can feel awkward to draw late game, but that is where I just jam as much card draw as humanly possible into it and also as much library manipulation as possible to minimize those probabilities. I honestly think Sylvan Library is what wins me more games in that deck than any other card.
While those are all good cards with marchesa t1 though 3 it is not as scary as someone who plays mana rocks. A manarock nulifies the fulminator mage to some extend. If they are good players and a running as many fetches and other lands that deal damage to themselves they will try to get their life total low so you can not dethrone them. I am asuming you are working on doing the same. That opening is also really dependent on having 4 mana turn 4. Running more mana in your deck will help you do thet more consistently. At some point it makes more sence to add non-land cards that generate mana as lands get clogged in your hand. Null rods and stony silences can be dealth with.
You are also comparing Arbor Elf with Grisly Salvage. Those are 2 entierly different cards. Arbor elf generates mana fast helping you cast your bubble hulk or other win condition faster, Grisly Salvage generates card advantage making sure your draw your bubble hulk. A better comparison for Grisley Salvage is Thawing Glaciers, those are both sources of card advantage. Although one of them is a lot better then the other.
Saying that Karador is ment for a long game is not an excuse for not ramping. If anything it means you need to play more ramp so you can battle the combo and prisson decks in speed.
I wasn't comparing Grisly Salvage to Arbor Elf. I'm saying that if I start adding a bunch of mana dorks, I need to make cuts. I lose synergistic cards for cards that are only good in the first few turns of the game.
From this thread, I'm seeing that others value ramp much more than I do. My conclusion is that I should run more ramp and see how differently it performs. I'm not sure how much I'll like it. For ramp to be effective, you need to have enough of it to reliably draw it in the opening hand. My Maelstrom Wanderer deck plays a huge amount of ramp, but it makes sense to me in that deck since ramp is not even a bad topdeck - I am trying to cast an 8-mana creature as many times in a turn as possible.
For a non-green deck with a very low curve and a lot of color requirements, what mana rocks should I be playing? Signets and Chrome Mox?
The way I basically think of it is that I would happily start the game with six cards if I could guarantee a Llanowar Elves in my opening hand. It's at least two cards worth of power in the early game, so the fact that it's a nearly dead draw in the late game doesn't matter.
Once you have mana in play you are always happy to draw Grisly Salvage over Arbor Elf. That is like saying 'I would rather draw Fact or Fiction or Ancestral Recall then an Island late game. Every person in the world would rather draw card advantage late over drawing an Island. The question for your deck is when would you rather draw Arbor Elf then Forest? I can tell you right away that it is a much better draw lategame then a simple Forest. Last time I checked Forests can't block. It is also much better early game then a Forest since you get your mana faster.
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I have dyslexia, no I am not going to spell check for you, yes you have to live with the horrors of it.
Typically the colours that don't involve green need the most ramp, like blue, red and white. So Marchesa needs Solemn Simulacrums and Burnished Hart-type cards that you can get multi-use out of. Green can do it with bodies moreso, however I like cards like Harrow, Primal Growth personally in my more tuned builds, because you get them untapped.
now in multiplayer cardadvantage is way overrated. tempo is the most dominant factor imo.
there was a lot of good stuff said in this post but i want to just focus on this and make the obvious point that it will depend to some degree on your meta. i'd say tempo is key in competitive edh (and that is what this post was about, so it is 100% correct), but it is less important in more casual metagames. if people are playing casual, they are not usually racing to combos, and the game is likely to be longer and more of slogfest with a few wraths thrown around and so on. in these situations it is much harder to win through early tempo advantage and it is often card advantage that wins the game in the long run.
as a silly example, i've played Rakdos, Lord of Riots for a while and that guy will generate massive tempo, effectively tapping for 10+ mana every turn. if i did that on turn 1 maybe it would win me the game. but i can't, and instead it gets me wrathed. so to win i pack a pile of recursion and card draw so that i can play through wraths, ie, win the card advantage game.
now of course it will be said that the wrath in this case nets major tempo as well as card advantage. and that is true, in fact most card advantage plays will also net tempo (understood broadly as spending less mana to deal with more mana spent by your opponent). but if wrath is not followed up with a win-con, that tempo is mostly useless and the card advantage is what matters. and if didn't run a ton of card-draw i would lose to the card advantage, not to the tempo.
i'd even go so far as to make a more general observation about tempo as compared to card advantage here: tempo advantage dissipates quickly while card advantage is more permanent improvement. if you cannot press the tempo advantage quickly (ie play threats and produce a clock), it becomes less and less relevant as time passes. this is why you see tempo decks in all formats always contain cheap clocks like Delver of Secrets, and why tempo matters more in cEDH because cEDH decks are more typically designed to produce threats quickly.
TL;DR tempo is more important in competitive metagames where an early advantage means getting the game-winning pieces in play sooner, less important in casual games where there is a more prolonged back and forth. accordingly, play more fast dorks and cheap rocks in competitive environments, more find-two-lands and card-advantage generating ramp in more casual metas.
I simply feel like it is so bad to draw an Elvish Mystic on turn 5... that it is unplayable.
You can also use other card advantage/conversion practices with the Mystic. Survival of the Fittest, Evolutionary Leap, or spellshapers, like Bog Witch. Turns a lackluster draw into some other resource of value.
I think in most cases those cards are card selection, and not card advantage. Card selection is often more powerfull the card advantage in a combo deck.
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I have dyslexia, no I am not going to spell check for you, yes you have to live with the horrors of it.
I think in most cases those cards are card selection, and not card advantage. Card selection is often more powerfull the card advantage in a combo deck.
That's why I wrote it as I did, "Avantage/conversion" as selection is an advantage, even if it isn't raw card numbers. Trading in your Elvish Mystic for a Reclamation Sage is an advantage when you don't need a turn 10 dork, but you need to kill that Grave Pact (or similar).
I simply feel like it is so bad to draw an Elvish Mystic on turn 5... that it is unplayable.
You can also use other card advantage/conversion practices with the Mystic. Survival of the Fittest, Evolutionary Leap, or spellshapers, like Bog Witch. Turns a lackluster draw into some other resource of value.
Good point - Though Survival is the only card I play with a discard cost. Liliana, Defiant Necromancer and Mindslicer are my only other discard effects.
I threw in some dorks - Elvish Mystic, Llanowar Elves, BoP, Avacyn's Pilgrim, Deathrite Shaman, and Arbor Elf. I also put Green Sun's Zenith and Dryad Arbor back in. With Steve, Wood Elves, Sol Ring and Mana Crypt, I now have 11 ramp sources. I also have Renegade Rallier.
I've goldfished a bunch.... I obviously need more ramp to consistently draw it.
The thing I dislike the most so far is the interaction with Pernicious Deed.
The thing I like the most so far is that the deck is still consistent enough that I don't seem to run out of gas.
My two cents is that ramp, tempo and advantage are all part of a spectrum - they're making your plays more efficient, your deck more streamlined, and allowing your plays to have the effect you want them to. To my mind, this is obviously easiest in green, and the most sustainable in green, as there are plenty of big ramp effects and ETB untapped effects.
I think the biggest distinction between ramp and dorks is not being able to use dorks the first turn out. You've just lost tempo playing them, even if it's one mana down on T1, there are still better cards to be playing - the obvious being something like Sol Ring, but otherwise Wayfarer's Bauble, Crop Rotation, Mana Vault - these cards will put your game plan forward, not stall a turn waiting for one extra mana. At best, in that case you're achieving parity, which to me is redundant. For that reason alone, I generally don't play dorks at all. I'd rather have the mana unused on T1 or T2 than draw into them late game, as they achieve next to nothing. This is more true in a competitive meta where tempo can mean the difference between a win or loss. In my opinion anyway.
With all this in mind, I think there is a sweet spot for every deck; obviously anything running green can reach degenerate levels, and anything that combos out for mana too. I think outside of the colours and areas where there is obvious strength, you need to look for advantage in other areas - that's where cards like Necropotence, Mind's Eye, Rhystic Study, Faithless Looting, Mindmoil, Sylvan Library and such are staples - they don't get you mana on the field per se, but they do draw you into answers - the critical cards your deck needs to synergise properly, and if not these, they draw you into land or untap your stuff.
I think in the scope of the game, looking at ramp as isolated from card advantage, tempo advantage and mana advantage is to do oneself a disservice - these are all parts of the same spectrum of gas - getting your deck to its sweet spot in a timely manner, and keeping it there as long as possible. Some areas of play are better at this than others, and I think if you're playing in colours that lack in one part of this spectrum, there are usually options to alleviate this in other ways; that's the key to making your deck really hum along the way it should.
I don't think anything I've said here hasn't been said already, just wanted to weigh in and share my perspective.
For example, my Karador, Ghost Chieftain plays Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Sakura-Tribe Elder, and Wood Elves for ramp. My deck has a very low curve for a Karador deck. I never included mana dorks in my deck because they are bad top-decks. STE and Wood Elves are much better top-decks as they can be abused to ramp a lot harder.
The top-tier competitive decks I see for Karador usually play every 1-mana dork available to it. I see that these decks are trying to race to their combo as fast as possible, so it make sense. My deck, while very competitive, is trying to control the game before executing the win.
I simply feel like it is so bad to draw an Elvish Mystic on turn 5... that it is unplayable.
So my question is: Do you have to play ramp to be competitive? Are there situations where you do not play ramp?
Example: My Marchesa, the Black Rose deck is close to being very competitive. The deck has a very low curve, trying to play creatures turns 1-3 before playing Marchesa turn 4, for maximum value. It is a very grindy deck, with a lot of land destruction, wraths, edicts, and card advantage. This deck plays 2 mana rocks. It has no signets. No Talisman.
I feel like if I added 5-10 mana rocks, it would be a much worse deck. It could be more explosive, but overall less consistent.
For low-curve, grindier decks, what is best practice for mana ramp?
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
You also need to define what your mean with ramp? In theory a 'ramp' card is any card that gives mana. Are all of the below cards ramp?
If we treat the forest as the baseline any of the above cards that allows you reach the amount of mana you need earlier then just playing one land each turn means you can winn earlier.
When does the Llanowar Elves stop being worse then a forest? It comes out faster, it can attack and block, it accelerates you. The downside is that it dies to spot removal and wrath effects and it is a bad toppdeck the turn you really needed the last mana. But more often then not you are more conserned with assembling the right amount of mana, then drawing that forest the turn you need it. The downside of topdecking it instead of a forest is far outweighted by the posetives sides of having a creatue. Keep in mind that just having a Llanowar Elves dead or alive makes your Karador cheaper.
In 'competetive' commander the game usualy ends with a combo or some grand flashy gesture. A bubble hulk combo, or Strip Mine, Exploration and Crusible of Worlds post armageddon, winter orbs and stax effects etc. Mana acceleration means you get to make that big play earlier then you usually should.
Asuming you have the colour you need (commander tower etc.) then is there any senario you would rather draw forest over Sol Ring? What about drawing forest of Gaia's Cradle? What about drawing forest over Ancient Tomb? The awnser to all of these questions is usually no.
Picture this senario: Both you and your opponent has the exact same deck, draw and hand. Except his hand included an exploration, who will winn?
Do your deck include card draw? This usually goes very well with ramp, as ramp gets you to your card draw earlier, and then allows you to cast the cards you draw into earlier as well. Speaking of this how inpactfull are your 1, 2 and 3 drops in Marchesa? I can understand if you one drop is Mother of Runes and your two drop is Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and the 3 drop is Acen Mindcensor. But for the most part I would rather go 2 mana artifact acceleration turn 1 or 2 (Rakdos, Orzhov, Boros signet, Mox Diamond, Mana Vault, Mana Crypt, Prismatic Lens, Fellwar Stone, Mind Stone etc.) into Marchesa turn 3. That way turn 4 you can do something really god.
Edit: I found out I thought of the new marchesa instead of the old one. My points stil stand even if the examples I had where white. I know I would rather get Jeleva out ASAP, or Ydris. Pr even the good cards in my hand.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
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My Ideal Marchesa start would be
t1 Viscera Seer
t2 Oona's Blackguard
t3 Drana, liberator of Malakir or Fulminator Mage
Ideally on Turn 4, Marchesa comes down, I attack for the first time, putting counters on 3 creatures, making opponents discard and/or getting free land destruction.
Another issue with mana rocks is that my competitive playgroups will usually have a null rod or two at the table, or a Stony Silence.
While Sol Ring is a better draw than Forest, Arbor Elf is not a better draw than something like Grisly Salvage. It's not like mana ramp is replacing lands in the deck... mana dorks and mana rocks replace cards that have value being recurred, that interact with the board, etc. I am also not really ramping into anything. I play Sol Ring over a basic land.
I understand that ramp and card draw go well together, allowing you to cast multiple spells per turn. Karador doesn't really care about card draw, since the graveyard is an extension of the hand I am fine with dredging or recurring Satyr Wayfinder.
My takeaway so far is that my Karador deck, which is made for a long game, doesn't need to be explosive, and doesn't need much ramp.
My takeaway from Marchesa is that since I am trying to flood the board with disruptive pieces, cheap mana ramp like Mox Diamond, Mana Crypt, Etc, would be good.
Maybe I should just test out playing with 5 more ramp pieces in each deck to get an idea of how I like them.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
You are also comparing Arbor Elf with Grisly Salvage. Those are 2 entierly different cards. Arbor elf generates mana fast helping you cast your bubble hulk or other win condition faster, Grisly Salvage generates card advantage making sure your draw your bubble hulk. A better comparison for Grisley Salvage is Thawing Glaciers, those are both sources of card advantage. Although one of them is a lot better then the other.
Saying that Karador is ment for a long game is not an excuse for not ramping. If anything it means you need to play more ramp so you can battle the combo and prisson decks in speed.
For example, farseek vs cultivate. One is a staple 2:1 card advantage ramp spell. The other just comes out a turn earlier and can push non-basics. One spell clearly does more, but IMO farseek is still a more "competitive" card to play over cultivate just because it allows 4 cmc spells to be played on turn-3.
With that same mentality, birds of paradise would be more competitive than farseek. Yes creatures are far more vulnerable to removal than lands, but allowing 3 cmc drops on turn-2 is far more scary than a 4 cmc drop on turn-3.
Running multiple 1-drop mana dorks also means the deck can run less lands, thus giving the pilot more cards to play with.
Also, if your deck doesn't actually do anything with the mana, then accelerating extra mana doesn't...do.. anything? Take a Kozilek deck as an example (Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and Kozilek, the Great Distortion both apply). Those decks run an absurd amount of mana rocks, even some sub-optimal ones like worn powerstone, with the goal of resolving an early Kozi that refills their hand. Any deck can run those same rocks, but to what end? If the deck doesn't have a way to refill its hand (prime speaker zegana for another example), or doesn't actually use all of that mana, then ramp is pointless.
TLDR it all depends on what your deck does vs your opponents. In a casual meta full of battlecruiser decks, if none of the decks run ramp, then they will all be coming out around the same speed. But if one player adds just a thran dynamo, and can suddenly resolve a turn-5 inkwell leviathan, then compared to the others, his deck is more "competitive" since it does things faster.
Links to my most current deck lists;
Primary EDH; Rakka Mar Token Perfection, Crosis Mnemonic Betrayal, Cromat Villainous, Judith Gravestorm, Rakdos Empty Storm, Exava Artifacts, Bant Trash, & Fumiko Voltron!
EDH kept at home; Ruzzian Isset & Rakdos LoR!
EDH (nostalgic/pimp/retired) in storage;
Latulla Burns, Akroma Smash, Jeska Voltron, Rakdos Storm, Bladewing Darghans, Lyzolda Worldgorger, Xantcha Steals your Heart, Jori Storm, Wydwen Permission, Gwendlyn Paradox, Jeleva Warps, & Sigarda Brick!
Legacy Showanimator and High Tide!
Xenagos, for example, has five ways of potentially ramping more than 1 on turn 1. Mana Crypt, Joraga Treespeaker, Sol Ring, Gamble (for Mana Crypt), and Carpet of Flowers. This exponentially increases the probability of having explosive starting hands. Yes, these cards can feel awkward to draw late game, but that is where I just jam as much card draw as humanly possible into it and also as much library manipulation as possible to minimize those probabilities. I honestly think Sylvan Library is what wins me more games in that deck than any other card.
The Unidentified Fantastic Flying Girl.
EDH
Xenagos, the God of Stompy
The Gitrog Monster: Oppressive Value.
Marchesa, Marionette Master - Undying Robots
Yuriko, the Hydra Omnivore
I make dolls as a hobby.
I wasn't comparing Grisly Salvage to Arbor Elf. I'm saying that if I start adding a bunch of mana dorks, I need to make cuts. I lose synergistic cards for cards that are only good in the first few turns of the game.
From this thread, I'm seeing that others value ramp much more than I do. My conclusion is that I should run more ramp and see how differently it performs. I'm not sure how much I'll like it. For ramp to be effective, you need to have enough of it to reliably draw it in the opening hand. My Maelstrom Wanderer deck plays a huge amount of ramp, but it makes sense to me in that deck since ramp is not even a bad topdeck - I am trying to cast an 8-mana creature as many times in a turn as possible.
For a non-green deck with a very low curve and a lot of color requirements, what mana rocks should I be playing? Signets and Chrome Mox?
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
(W/U)(B/R)GForm of Progenitus, Shape of a Scrubland
BRGJund Tokens with Prossh, the Magic Dragon Foil
URGAnimar, the RUG CleanerFoil
RRRFeldon of the Third Path 2.0 Foil
BG(B/G)Not Another Meren DeckFoil
UR(U/R)Mizzix, Y Control and X Burn Spells
(W/U)(B/R)GHarold Ramos - The 35 Foot Long Twinkie (In +1/+1 counters)
UB(U/B)Dragonlord Silumgar
there was a lot of good stuff said in this post but i want to just focus on this and make the obvious point that it will depend to some degree on your meta. i'd say tempo is key in competitive edh (and that is what this post was about, so it is 100% correct), but it is less important in more casual metagames. if people are playing casual, they are not usually racing to combos, and the game is likely to be longer and more of slogfest with a few wraths thrown around and so on. in these situations it is much harder to win through early tempo advantage and it is often card advantage that wins the game in the long run.
as a silly example, i've played Rakdos, Lord of Riots for a while and that guy will generate massive tempo, effectively tapping for 10+ mana every turn. if i did that on turn 1 maybe it would win me the game. but i can't, and instead it gets me wrathed. so to win i pack a pile of recursion and card draw so that i can play through wraths, ie, win the card advantage game.
now of course it will be said that the wrath in this case nets major tempo as well as card advantage. and that is true, in fact most card advantage plays will also net tempo (understood broadly as spending less mana to deal with more mana spent by your opponent). but if wrath is not followed up with a win-con, that tempo is mostly useless and the card advantage is what matters. and if didn't run a ton of card-draw i would lose to the card advantage, not to the tempo.
i'd even go so far as to make a more general observation about tempo as compared to card advantage here: tempo advantage dissipates quickly while card advantage is more permanent improvement. if you cannot press the tempo advantage quickly (ie play threats and produce a clock), it becomes less and less relevant as time passes. this is why you see tempo decks in all formats always contain cheap clocks like Delver of Secrets, and why tempo matters more in cEDH because cEDH decks are more typically designed to produce threats quickly.
TL;DR tempo is more important in competitive metagames where an early advantage means getting the game-winning pieces in play sooner, less important in casual games where there is a more prolonged back and forth. accordingly, play more fast dorks and cheap rocks in competitive environments, more find-two-lands and card-advantage generating ramp in more casual metas.
Tymna & Ishai, ie Esper Edric
Crosis Turbotrash
You can also use other card advantage/conversion practices with the Mystic. Survival of the Fittest, Evolutionary Leap, or spellshapers, like Bog Witch. Turns a lackluster draw into some other resource of value.
That's why I wrote it as I did, "Avantage/conversion" as selection is an advantage, even if it isn't raw card numbers. Trading in your Elvish Mystic for a Reclamation Sage is an advantage when you don't need a turn 10 dork, but you need to kill that Grave Pact (or similar).
Good point - Though Survival is the only card I play with a discard cost. Liliana, Defiant Necromancer and Mindslicer are my only other discard effects.
I threw in some dorks - Elvish Mystic, Llanowar Elves, BoP, Avacyn's Pilgrim, Deathrite Shaman, and Arbor Elf. I also put Green Sun's Zenith and Dryad Arbor back in. With Steve, Wood Elves, Sol Ring and Mana Crypt, I now have 11 ramp sources. I also have Renegade Rallier.
I've goldfished a bunch.... I obviously need more ramp to consistently draw it.
The thing I dislike the most so far is the interaction with Pernicious Deed.
The thing I like the most so far is that the deck is still consistent enough that I don't seem to run out of gas.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
I think the biggest distinction between ramp and dorks is not being able to use dorks the first turn out. You've just lost tempo playing them, even if it's one mana down on T1, there are still better cards to be playing - the obvious being something like Sol Ring, but otherwise Wayfarer's Bauble, Crop Rotation, Mana Vault - these cards will put your game plan forward, not stall a turn waiting for one extra mana. At best, in that case you're achieving parity, which to me is redundant. For that reason alone, I generally don't play dorks at all. I'd rather have the mana unused on T1 or T2 than draw into them late game, as they achieve next to nothing. This is more true in a competitive meta where tempo can mean the difference between a win or loss. In my opinion anyway.
With all this in mind, I think there is a sweet spot for every deck; obviously anything running green can reach degenerate levels, and anything that combos out for mana too. I think outside of the colours and areas where there is obvious strength, you need to look for advantage in other areas - that's where cards like Necropotence, Mind's Eye, Rhystic Study, Faithless Looting, Mindmoil, Sylvan Library and such are staples - they don't get you mana on the field per se, but they do draw you into answers - the critical cards your deck needs to synergise properly, and if not these, they draw you into land or untap your stuff.
I think in the scope of the game, looking at ramp as isolated from card advantage, tempo advantage and mana advantage is to do oneself a disservice - these are all parts of the same spectrum of gas - getting your deck to its sweet spot in a timely manner, and keeping it there as long as possible. Some areas of play are better at this than others, and I think if you're playing in colours that lack in one part of this spectrum, there are usually options to alleviate this in other ways; that's the key to making your deck really hum along the way it should.
I don't think anything I've said here hasn't been said already, just wanted to weigh in and share my perspective.