There are two certainties when you are playing today’s deck.
One, you are going to have a lot of mana. Like…a lot, a lot.
More than that.
Two, you are going to have something to spend that mana on.
Since the ramp deck featured today is entirely colorless, you don’t have to bother with fancy two-color lands or a ton of basics. You get to play every sweet colorless utility land in the format so you never feel bad about leaving one on the sidelines. Your mana base is basically Batman’s belt. It has a land for every situation. A whopping nineteen of them have functionality beyond tapping for mana, and another eight potentially make more than one mana at a time. As someone who loves utility lands, I’m already sold.
So that does it today for the Digest! See you all next week!
Oh, you want more? I guess I can do that.
Essentially, what we have is a ramp deck. But this ramp deck isn’t interested in going small or even medium. It may not even like to go large. It’s XXL or bust for this deck with the full four copies of Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger as well as two copies of Kozilek, The Great Distortion. In that sense, this deck is like a Big Gulp at 7-Eleven. The sizes range from a kiddie two gallons to the top size, Olympic-size swimming pool, for those of us that want to do laps in Mountain Dew in a futile attempt to burn off the extra calories.
In order to ramp into these gigantic monsters, we’re going to need some serious mana. Fortunately, the tools are available for this entirely colorless deck to get there. Hedron Crawler and Warping Wail start the party, Hedron Archive arrives fashionably late because it’s so full of itself, and everything goes crazy when Oblivion Sower drops in. Sower is the key to making everything work, bridging the gap from your ramp spells to your big spells while also helping to stabilize the battlefield.
To a lesser extent, Matter Reshaper serves the same purpose, often trading for an early creature while putting an extra land onto the battlefield. Since ramp decks by their nature have to be light on interaction, having ramp spells that also help stabilize the battlefield or interact with your opponent is welcome versatility. Oblivion Sower and Matter Reshaper do both simultaneously, but Warping Wail can also serve both functions. Wail can even counter key spells like Transgress the Mind and Declaration in Stone.
The sideboard gives the deck even more versatility, using Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher to transition into a more aggressive plan once your opponent brings in all their interaction with your bigger threats. These creatures are already well-supplemented by the removal and utility lands in the maindeck, and the lands mean that even without big spells you won’t run out of action. Thraben Gargoyle is a great early blocker against Humans and similar aggressive decks that can help you turn the corner if you draw it later on.
Ultimately, I’m impressed by how much is going on in a deck that is so limited in the card pool it’s choosing from. Or maybe I just have a hankering for a beverage the size of a small child. It’s at least one of the two.
Creatures (20)
- 4 Oblivion Sower
- 1 Kozilek's Channeler
- 4 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
- 2 Kozilek, the Great Distortion
- 4 Hedron Crawler
- 4 Matter Reshaper
- 1 Warden of Geometries
Lands (28)
Spells (12)
