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Cube Primer: Mono-G Ramp

Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2013 2:39 pm
by Checkbox
Mono-Green Ramp

Green cards can do lots of things, but traditionally they've always been able to ramp. When you get to play your 4-drop on turn 3 or your 6-drop on turn 4, sometimes your opponent just can't deal with it, or are put so far behind that they can't come back.

Bombs (These are cards that can win the game single-handedly and could possibly pull you into the archetype on their own)

Natural Order
Tooth and Nail
Survival of the Fittest/Fauna Shaman
Plow Under

Although Natural Order and Tooth and Nail aren't strictly "ramp" cards, they fit what the archetype already wants
to be doing; play fatties. Natural Order is just the most efficient way to get a Big Green Fatty into play, while Tooth and Nail is a finisher at the high end of the curve that should end the game when cast, entwined or not.

Survival of the Fittest and Fauna Shaman are just cards that make you want to play Green, and in the ramp deck they smooth everything out. The card selection these create allow your "silver bullet" creatures (like Uktabi Orangutan and Wickerbough Elder) as well as your finishers (like Kalonian Hydra or Deranged Hermit) to be accessible whenever you need them.

Plow Under is just one of the most crippling things to ramp into; throwing this down on turn 3 just sets your opponent back so far that many times its "Game Over" right then and there. What's amazing about this card,
though, is that its also decent on-curve or late game. It buys you time like nothing else can, and the extra turn or 2 of dead draws for your opponent can be the difference between finding your fatty or not sometimes.

Priorities (These cards are needed to make the deck go; they may not be the most powerful cards in your deck, but without them your deck will suffer greatly)

1cc Mana Dorks (Llanowar Elves, Birds of Paradise, Joraga Treespeaker)

Ramp Spells/Accelleration (Wall of Roots, Yavimaya Elder, Oracle of Mul-Daya, Cultivate)

Just like the Mono-R deck, you almost can't have enough one-drops in ramp. Having something to do turn-1 is important, and really gets the rest of your deck going. Being able to play a [card]Kodama's Reach[/card:
29jhymw1] or a Cultivateon turn 2 really smooths out the first few turns of the game and ensures that you are reaching the levels of mana necessary to start playing your game-winning cards, and it all starts with the turn-1 mana guy.

Mana Dorks aren't much use if they can't help you go bigger, and the way you go bigger is with ramp spells. Setting up your early turns with mana-acceleration is the bread-and-butter of this archetype, and ramp spells are the next level that mana dorks help to build to.

Draft ‘em if you see ‘em (Take advantage of these cards when they appear in your packs, but make sure you don’t ignore the above categories)

Huge Fatties/Powerful Spells (Woodfall Primus, Avenger of Zendikar, Kalonian Hydra, Hornet Queen, Genesis Wave, [card]Garruk, Primal Hunter[/card:
29jhymw1], Stunted Growth, Karn Liberated)

Card Draw (Wall of Blossoms, Sylvan Library, Harmonize)

Recursion (Eternal Witness, Regrowth, Restock, Noxious Revival)

Efficient Beaters (Thrun, the Last Troll, Troll Ascetic, Call of the Herd, Scavenging Ooze)

Huge Fatties are the way you win the game, but you don't need very many of them in your deck. You should have some ways to find them, but even if you don't, more than 3 is probably pushing it. They are critical to your deck though; you don't want to be all ramped up with nothing to ramp into. For that same reason, ramping into creatures isn't the
only way you can win the game. Cards like Genesis Wave and Garruk, Primal Hunter are perfectly fine ramp-targets, and are still crazily effective when played earlier than they should be.

Card draw is very helpful in Green, and especially in this deck where you want to play your win conditions as soon as possible. Things like Wall of Blossoms will also help against the hyper-aggressive decks as well by fending off potential attackers.

Recursion is one of the ways you can deal with prepared opponents; it can allow you to replay a ramp spell that's either been countered or played already, it can grab a fatty that's been put into the graveyard for some reason, its an answer (albeit a slow one, but versatile nonetheless) to many, many things.

Effiecient Beaters are a "plan-B" of sorts; sometimes you don't end up needing to "go big" to overrun your opponent. Sometimes all it takes is a
well-positioned Thrun, the Last Troll that your opponent just can't deal with, sometimes a pair of 3/3's from Call of the Herd buys you enough time to find the missing piece to go over the top with your ramp. These are just "goodstuff/midrangey" cards that can sometimes just win the game, and other times just clog up the board long enough for your deck to do its thing. These aren't always necessary, but don't be afraid to draft some good Green creatures that don't cost a million mana.

Make sure you have: Enough early ramp spells/creatures. New ramp drafters will oftentimes find themselves drafting all of the sweet-looking huge Green creatures and keep passing all the mana dorks, not realizing that the mana dorks are in higher demand than a Green 8-drop is. Don't fall into the trap of not taking your ramp high enough and be left with sweet 7 and 8 drops and no way to play them.

Only a light dusting of: Ramp
targets. This may seem silly, but you don't want too many 6+ drops clogging up your opening hands and early turns. Yes, they are your win conditions, but you don't need to draft a ton of them. Oftentimes, it doesn't matter as much which ramp target you have as much as it does that you have some ramp targets.

Stay away from: Green aggro cards (Jungle Lion, Experiment One, Strangleroot Geist, River Boa

Best splashes: White for [card]Mirari's Wake[/card], Blue for Simic Sky Swallower. There aren't many cards that slot well into the Mono-G ramp deck; with the right fixing, these cards can be powerful additions, however. [card]Mirari's Wake[/card] is a card that lets you go even bigger than you otherwise could, and also works quite
well with cards like Deranged Hermit and Hornet Queen. Simic Sky Swallower is just a powerful, evasive beater that is very difficult to get rid of.

Cards you can likely wheel: Hornet Queen, Tooth and Nail, Genesis Wave, Plow Under. Thjese are fairly narrow cards to this style of deck; other green decks will be fighting you for the mana dorks and 2cc ramp, but not so much these huge ramp targets.

Cards to hate, if you’re into that sort of thing: Stone Rain/Armageddon effects (Strip Mine, Catastrophe, Avalanche Riders), Control Magic effects (Bribery, Treachery, Sower of Temptation). There aren't many specific cards that this deck is afraid of, but messing with your mana base hurts a lot, but more then that, being smacked in the face with your own fatty is a humbling experience as well (and not one that is likely to result in a win for you).

Sample Decklist:
[
deck=Mono-Green Ramp]
//Creatures
1 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Lotus Cobra
1 Call of the Herd
1 Eternal Witness
1 Yavimaya Elder
1 Master of the Wild Hunt
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Wickerbough Elder
1 Kalonian Hydra
1 Thragtusk
1 Hornet Queen
1 Myr Battlesphere
1 Woodfall Primus

//Spells
1 Mana Vault
1 Farseek
1 Rampant Growth
1 Regrowth
1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Natural Order
1 Mirari's Wake
1 Tooth and Nail
1 Green Sun's Zenith

//Land
1 Library of Alexandria
1 City of Brass
1 Plains
14 Forest

Sideboard
1 Experiment One
1 Wolfbitten Captive
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Tarmogoyf
1 Wild Mongrel
1 Troll Ascetic
1 Uktabi Orangutan
[/deck]