View in the Demesne of Dawson Grove by Thomas Roberts (18th c). Plaguemaw Beast by Whit Brachna.
This week's post will be devoted to exploring Ramos, Dragon Engine.
I'm not going to explore the combo opportunities this week, though clearly they are many and convoluted. You can gain WWUUBBRRGG mana by removing 5 +1/+1 counters from Ramos, and if you can flicker him freely you can do it as many times per turn as you like because each one will be a new Ramos.
Super exciting, right?
You can find a way to win the game while your friends just sit there and watch you, wishing they were playing Krosan Grip or had a handful of counterspells.
Well, if you know me at all, you know that while I have some respect for combo, that's not my jam. I like to win through combat damage. It's how I learned the game and how I enjoy it the most. It feels more honest for some reason. This article is going to be devoted to trying to abuse Ramos' first ability, where for every color of a spell you cast you get to put a +1/+1 counter on him.
We're going to try to win by inflicting 21 commander damage. That means we'll want evasion, but Ramos already has evasion - flying - so chances are good there will be someone we can swing on once Ramos gets out and starts getting big even if we don't pull into cards that give make him unblockable. If every color of every spell we cast will pump up Ramos, how can we build a deck with as many colors on our cards as possible?
I'm going to explore lots of options, from mana rocks to auras, creatures, equipment and strategies we can employ to see how much we can get out of this approach. Then we'll look at what we've uncovered and try to figure out whether it's any good, or at least any fun.
Mana Rocks
This may be one of the few decks where I would never play Sol Ring. Any mana rock that can't put counters on Ramos is probably a non-starter, because I never want to be in the mid or late game, draw a mana rock and not be excited about pumping my commander up just a little bigger. While most mana rocks won't help us, there are five that will.
In Alara Reborn there were a lot of color symbols on cards - even artifacts - and a cycle of five mana rocks from that set can all go into this deck. Early game they won't help expand our color footprint (they produce the same colors it costs to cast them) but they will ramp us. Late game, they'll drop two +1/+1 counters on Ramos. It's a long way to 21 so we'll be looking for advantage at every turn.
Equipment
The all-star in this cycle of 5 cards is one that should be familiar to anyone who plays EDH - Behemoth Sledge, again from Alara Reborn. These will all help out and for the cost of 2 or 3 mana, we'll be putting two +1/+1 counters on Ramos. Their other abilities aren't nothing and at least for this initial list we'll add all five of them in.
Blades
Alara Reborn had a thing for colors. Another cycle of cards from that set were the five blades, each of which costs two mana but will put THREE +1/+1 counters onto our commander. On their own they're not exactly win-cons but putting those counters on your commander and getting a warm body as well isn't bad. Voltron decks always want something to sacrifice other than their commander when they've got no choice but to sac a creature. None of them are amazing but you'll see in a moment that we're going to want these low CMC cards available. In the long run the meager value we get from the extra color pip may not be enough to keep them around when this deck goes through revisions and improvements.
At the same casting cost - a hybrid and a second color not included in the hybrid mana symbol, there are auras that can give Ramos three +1/+1 counters in addition to what they bring to the table as auras. I was able to find Crystallization, Trace of Abundance and Sangrite Backlash when looking at cards for this project, but there may well be more that I'm not aware of. While I initially thought I was going to make a quick list of cards to throw in that could make for an interesting and colorful Ramos build, it's looking more and more like I'm going to have hard decisions to make on what I keep in the final list. With that in mind, we're going to add a wrinkle to our plan.
Cascade
One of the most powerful and abusable keyword in Magic is Cascade. A strong Maelstrom Wanderer deck can really wreck a table of midrange decks, so let's explore it a little.. Ramos is going to get counters for every spell you cast. That makes something like Storm less attractive as a strategy because those extra spells are copies not castings, but Cascade will work just fine. When you cascade you're casting the spells for nothing, and you are most assuredly casting them. Casting Maelstrom Wanderer and cascading into another 5 or 6 colors worth of +1/+1 counters could bring you from dangerous to lethal pretty quickly.
Doubling Up
We're starting at 4 power and we want to get to 21. A little counter doubling will go a long way in this deck, so we'll toss in a handful of counter doublers to get us there faster. Now we're only looking to get to 11 and with this build that should be well within reach.
It goes without saying that we're now treading into more expensive territory. While you might be able to build a big janky voltron deck with cheap cards, if we're going to really go for it we're going to have to drop a little money on this build. I may well pull cards from other decks to build Ramos.
Five Color Fun
We're playing a 5/c deck and we're really rocking the color theme. Let's take it up a notch, but first a quiz! Out of the five cards below, which one is NOT a great card for Ramos, Dragon Engine?
My answer may surprise you. It's the second one. If you're like me (not judge or possible even a good Magic player), you initially thought that Etched Monstrosity would put 5 +1/+1 counters on Ramos. It won't. While its color identity is 5/c because of the colors in the lower part of the card - it will not actually count for ANY colors for Ramos when you cast it. As I understand it, Ramos cares about the colors in the CASTING COST of the card, not the card's color identity. Any judges reading this are welcome to correct me on this if I am wrong. For the other four cards, they are all great in varying degrees.
Conflux will let us tutor like crazy and in a proper combo build would be a key way to get our combo win into our hand. In this deck it should let us get exactly what we need to be able to seal the game and protect our commander long enough to do so.
Etched Monstrosity does give us card draw and you can use some of the mana from pulling counters off of Ramos to pay for removing five -1/-1 counters to draw cards, but it's not going to put counters ON Ramos as it is a colorless creature. Maybe it's good but I don't see it as great for this deck.
Door to Nothingness will close out a final player if we've got enough counters on Ramos and works as a great way to keep any one opponent from messing with us or trying to combo off.
Sunforger will give us +4/+0, tutoring and counters. Our deck can have a lot of hybrid cost cards so if we build it right we can grab plenty of different instants including lots of Charms and modal spells. This is a really good vehicle for this card given how much flexibility we have available in five colors. Some of them won't be viable targets for Sunforger but we should be able to build enough in to make it well worth including. I've somehow avoided playing Sunforger in any other deck but this might be the one. With enough charms and hybrid mana instants this deck could have a really deep and flexible Sunforger package.
Conqueror's Flail will give Ramos +5/+5 and some desperately needed protection during our turn - more than making up for its lack of colors. We may not run many equipments in this deck but this is a must have for Ramos.
Beyond Online Research
After writing the bulk of this article, I hit my LGS and actually start looking through cards. I was able to find lots of the cards here, including the blades cycle and a few of the other ones, but I also discovered something. There are a lot more interesting options than I had initially found in my online research. A friend who runs the LGS jumped in and helped me look and before I knew it I was flush with more options than I had even realized existed.
I picked up five more hybrid 1 cmc creatures - Rakdos Cackler, Slitherhead, Dryad Militant, Boros Recruit and Blistercoil Weird.
I also picked up four guildmages and a Burning Tree Emissary, all of which have a 2 hybrid mana casting cost.
I stumbled upon a bunch of Sunforger targets including Shattering Blow and Pit Fight and the hexproof-granting, card-drawing Shielding Plax.
I was also able to find some bigger creatures that cost 4-5 mana and have a hybrid mana in their casting cost in addition to a regular mana, so they'll give Ramos three +1/+1 counters. Giant Ambush Beetle and Slave of Bolas both cost 5 and Messenger Falcons and Marist's Twinclaws cost 4 mana. While we don't want to have anything that expensive unless it really helps us out, I'm going to add them to my stack of cards so they are options later on when I get serious about building a final decklist.
Filling out our list
We've got 31 card images including our commander. My actual pile of cards has just begun but plans change and I'm sure my final list will include some but not all of the cards I've shown you.
Once Ramos is on the battlefield every spell we cast is going to help our strategy. I'm going to suggest equal parts of ramp, removal, counterspells, and card draw. If we were to add 10 of each that gives us 40 more cards for a total of 61 cards and 39 lands. We're in five colors so we can run all of the best stuff in all five colors.
The real question is whether or not this crazy colors build will be any good.
I'm actually skeptical that this much goofy messing around with hybrid colors and odd shenanigans will result in a good deck but I think it'd be a lot of fun to play these cycles of cards and have some chance of getting value out of them in the form of extra +1/+1 counters.
In the long run, we'll probably want to swap out some of the cuter but less useful cards listed above and swap in better stuff even if it's only got one color on it.
Making Ramos Voltron "Competitive"
Yesterday in the EDH League I run, I got my first glimpse of a true top tier deck. One of the guys won on turn 2 in round 1, and on turn 3 in round 2. It was beautiful. It was amazing. It was gross. I had never seen such things - only read about them online.
I don't think Ramos is ever going to be a top tier commander, but we can probably build it better than just a big pile of Alara castoffs. I think it'd be fun to play the deck outlined above, and I may well do so, but I also admit that if our end goal is a powerful deck, not a cute and clunky deck, we're not done here.
We'll have to make hard choices like maybe not playing the amazing "blades" cycle.
The most important thing to note is that we don't actually have to run Ramos as a 5/c deck.
Casting Ramos can be done with ANY COLOR mana, so if we focus down on two or three colors we will have a better chance at getting consistent play out of the deck.
We want to keep our opponents from messing with us. We do that with counterspells. That means we're running blue.
We want to ramp like crazy. That means we're also in green.
We want to draw cards so that means more blue.
We want removal. That's in lots of colors but since we're in blue and green already, we'll load up on K-Grip and whatever other decent green removal spells we can find. We have access to every color so we could run goodstuff removal and throw in Path, Swords and anything else that is generally seen as a top removal option in EDH.
We already know we want to double up our counters. Again, that's in blue and green.
We know extra turns are fantastic. If we add in extra turns that again puts us in blue.
I think we're looking at a Simic deck with possible splashes of other colors when and where they will make the deck better. Anything giving Ramos hexproof is worth considering. Mana Crypt and Mana Vault should be looked at, as the sooner we get Ramos out, the sooner we can start adding counters and advancing our game plan.
I think the optimal Voltron non-combo build would probably involve heavy, heavy card draw, tons of counterspells and lots of ramp. Everything we do is going to pump Ramos so there's no downside to playing control and every reason to do so.
The 5/c crazy colors version of this deck looks like more fun to me but I have a feeling that a build more focused on Simic colors would be the strongest approach to building Ramos, Dragon Engine. I might even take apart my Vorel and Ghave decks to build this, as they have lots of pieces that will work in here. I'm not sure I'd want to build Ramos without Door to Nothingness though, so I think we will have to do some splashing of other colors.
Final Thoughts
This is more and more looking like part 1 of a multi-part series. We've got a few months before the commander decks come out so I'm going to work on my plan and may get back to you with a full decklist when the 2017 pre-cons are released in August. Hopefully I'll make those hard choices, resist the urge to build some dumb combo into it, and will have an interesting list to share with you.
If you missed last week's installment, it was an exploration of the argument around banning Cyclonic Rift. It wasn't posted on FB because the major FB EDH groups have been pushing back against posts about banning cards, and I didn't post it on Reddit because I'm trying to get away from self-posting there. If you've enjoyed this or other Commanderruminations posts, it might be worth a look. If you haven't enjoyed my recent work but gave this one a shot anyways, I thank you for your time and for giving me another chance.
As always, thanks for reading!
Corrections & Thanks
I should send a shout out to Elliot Lesser who pointed out a glaring error in this post. I had initially included the 10 card cycle of Lieges, but they would not actually help out Ramos at all, as his color identity is 5/c but he is not a blue or a green card. Tricky stuff, and Mr. Lesser is correct that they make no sense. I had also included the 5 enchantments that care about the card color (the cycle with Steel of the Godhead) but those also wouldn't help. Thank you for your corrections - they are always greatly appreciated!
