The Road to the Pyramids by Edward Lear (1873). Ratchet Bomb by Dan Scott.
I didn't expect June to turn into the month of Ramos, Dragon Engine, and my work on this deck is now continuing into July. This week I'm going to walk you through the final decisions made in the development of the deck's first draft. If you're expecting this installment to wind up with a neat and tidy conclusion and a perfect decklist to look at, I'm going to tell you right now - my deckbuilding rarely goes so smoothly. It's a long process of twists and turns, bad decisions and hard lessons learned. My hope is that this look into my own process will continue to be worth the read and might even feel familiar to some of you.
I'm so excited about working on this deck I even created a proxy to keep with the deck while I goldfish and tweak it to make it better. The artwork was from a fantastic artist on Deviantart who goes by Sandara, and I think I like it more than the art that's going to be on the actual card.
Ramos not only looks awesome, but he is going to be a threat.
He'll be able to put an opponent on a 2 turn clock faster than you'd expect and his access to all 5 colors gives us a plethora of options for building him. Two weeks ago I explored the world of hybrid mana spells and made more than a few errors in my analysis, frequently conflating colors and color identity. Last week I discussed my plans to add a Cascade theme to the deck and I walked you through a Conflux-driven wincon that I cobbled together. In all that work I continued to struggle with how I would protect Ramos.
One of my pet decks is Narset so I'm used to having my voltron commander loaded up with enough hexproof, totem armors and indestructibility to weather most storms. Ramos only comes with flying, which isn't nothing but provides no protection, and as an artifact creature he is vulnerable to a whole new range of removal options that Narset doesn't have to worry about. Protection Hexproof is a wonderful thing. It means you no longer have to worry as much about dozens of the most common removal cards in the format.
Two of the most basic forms of providing hexproof or shroud are Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves, both of which also give a creature haste. The problem for Ramos is that he really wants you to play spells with colors. The second problem for Ramos is that he starts as a 4/4 and gets bigger as you cast spells, so he isn't always a threat when he first hits the table. That means haste may not be as big a deal as it would be for other decks. The biggest protection I'm going to get will come in the form of Grand Abolisher and Dragonlord Dromoka. These two may only hit the table when I'm about to win, but they should go a long way towards getting those elusive victories.
We may have to accept that he's simply going to be removed - possibly a lot. Is it really OK to accept that Ramos is going to be removed more often than we'd like?
With most commanders you're just going to have to recast him on the next turn, but with Ramos you've got options. If you have at least 5 +1/+1 counters on Ramos and he gets exiled or destroyed, you can always pull those counters off to make WWUUBBRRGG and then re-cast him. That won't always save you from an untimely end, but it's not bad at all. Of course, it's better to not lose him in the first place. One of my early plans was to load up on counterspells. One of the best ways to dodge a boardwipe is to keep it from happening in the first place. Ramos is an artifact creature, so he'll be a huge target for Krosan Grips. K-Grip has split second so it can't be countered, but counterspells are still a strong way to navigate and protect your wincon. Sunforger
Sunforger is an equipment that costs 3, costs 3 to equip and for WR you can tutor for a red or white instant spell. When used well, it seems like you always have just the right answer for whatever your opponents are throwing at you.
I've dabbled with Sunforger but I always wind up taking it out of my decks. It's a fantastic and versatile card but you need to really build your deck to take full advantage of it. You don't run Sunforger with a 2 card package of Boil and Deflecting Palm. You go all in and your opponents will hopefully feel like you always have the right answer.
Instead of assembling a huge pile of blue counters I went and grabbed as many sunforger targets I could find that could counter my opponents' spells. The result was interesting. I never knew about Double Negative, and it took a little thinking to figure out how that could be useful in a game.
Once I had my meager pile of counterspells (more than the five shown above) with red or white in the casting cost I realized that I had a problem. Even if everything went as planned, I was building a deck with a Cascade subtheme. When you cascade you'll wind up hitting your counterspells and that's never going to feel good. I suppose you could counter your own spell on the stack but it'll really just be a waste of a spell. I actually posed the question of whether to run counterspells alongside cascade spells to Maelstrom Wanderer players on Facebook and the response was a resounding "no". Cascade is all-in and they don't generally mess around with counters. If you counter or remove him they just get to cast him again, which is what Maelstrom Wanderer players want to do anyways. Modal Spells What do you do when you want counterspell support but also want to cascade and hit good stuff you'll actually want to cast? Simple - you build around modal spells like the Temur Charm shown above, giving you a huge amount of flexibility! Modal spells provide a number of options and allow you to pick one or in rare cases, two of them. The multicolored ones mostly come in the form of Ravnica Guild Charms and Dragonlords' Commands. It felt like a clever plan, but one that would put me in the position of having to search through my deck for just the right answer from a dizzying assortment of options. If I found 10 of these modal spells, that would give me at least 30 options for effects if I were searching for an answer. As it turned out, I found 12 modal spells with Red and White in their casting costs, giving me around 40 different effects. I already had 7 other spells lined up for the deck, putting me at 19 possible targets. Unfortunately, very few of them allow you to counter a spell. Cascading into any of the modal spells would probably be fine, though not fantastic. While we're aiming for fantastic, let's take a look at what these 19 spells would bring to the party. The chart below has an "X" in each category where the card might reasonably fulfill a need.
As you can see, this covers a lot of bases. Tutoring for an answer with Sunforger should work well enough with 12 modal spells. The only question is whether devoting that much of the deck to non-creature spells is the right way to build this deck.
Rather than include pics of all 12 of these spells, I'll simply provide the decklist for this draft of the build. Hopefully you'll get a feel for what's going on.
Ramos III: The Search for Sunforger
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/ramos-iii-the-search-for-sunforger/ In playtesting this draft of the deck I found a number of issues. I constantly had instants in my hand and no idea whether or not they'd be useful in a game. I rarely saw Sunforger. I also found that I was constantly lacking early creature drops. There's no better way to lose a game than to have nothing in the way of early defenders, and I do love to have something of a boardstate. I've learned that lesson the hard way against Alesha / Master of Cruelties one too many times.
The illusion of a creature and combat-based game plan can sometimes distract your opponents away from what you're really trying to accomplish, so let's take a look at some of our options if we were to remove our 13 spell Sunforger package and add in better cards. Wait - I thought this was a Sunforger article!
An essential part of deckbuilding for me is experimenting. I explore options, play-test, sometimes actually play the deck and evaluate whether I think my plans are working or not. Often I'm not being ruthless enough. Sometimes I build stuff I find interesting but that doesn't have a very high ceiling in terms of the effect a strategy is bringing to the table. In a deck with the amount of flexibility Ramos provides I'm not in the least bit surprised that I'm already considering moving away from a plan that a week ago seemed clever.
Twelve modal spells plus Sunforger is a pretty big slice of this deck. What if I were to pull all thirteen of those spells out of the deck and just run a bunch of those goofy yet tempting hybrid creatures? I'll probably always have a boardstate. I also won't have to burn brain cells trying to remember each and every modal spell effect I have in the deck and where they are. I also have no guarantee that I'll even run into Sunforger that often - it's just one card in the deck and as yet I'm not running tutors to go get it. The search for Sunforger often felt like time spent looking at a hand full of big creatures and tiny instants of questionable use.
In the first installment of these Ramos articles I waxed poetic about all the great cards that could go into this deck to really make it click. Instead of playing creatures that bring nothing to the table but a hybrid casting cost, let's see how the deck feels with some truly busted cards added in. All-In Combo
If we're going all-in on our combo strategy, we need speed and power. We need to add cards that are mean. We're not playing group hug. This is EDH, not patty-cakes. So how mean can we get?
First off, let's load up on tutors so we can get just what we need for what we're trying to do.
Time of Need and Worldly Tutor can go get Dromoka or Maelstrom Wanderer, but we're really looking for Conflux more than anything else. Mystical Tutor and Personal Tutor can both get Conflux, as it is a sorcery. They're all going to put just one +1/+1 counter on Ramos but they enable a wincon that we might not get to otherwise, so their colors are beside the point. We should add most of these in so we can get what we want when we want it. I may even have a copy of Behold the Beyond somewhere that might be worth adding as well. I'll have to do some digging... It goes without saying that Diabolic and Demonic tutor can get pretty much anything.
Ramos should be able to kill opponents via commander damage if we have no combo available. We run auras that will give him Infect so we should be able to get a kill here or there, and we should also be able to develop a respectable if not overwhelming boardstate. Our main goal is still to win by combo so let's see what else we can do.
I've got my Infect / Chandra's Ignition wincon ready but I want to make sure this deck isn't a one trick pony. I need at least one other reliable, strong wincon that I can tutor for if I have the right pieces in hand. Extra turn spells will help me get past that "once per turn" restriction on Ramos' WWUUBBRRGG ability, so let's add in the mother of all extra turn spells - Expropriate. While we're at it, let's guarantee that all we get is extra turns by including Illusion of Choice. If we have either one, can tutor for the other and have Dromoka or Grand Abolisher out we should be able to win the game. It's not as certain as the Conflux / Infect / Chandra's Ignition combo but it's pretty good.
There are also some great must-haves I haven't added yet, like Padeem,Consul of Innovation, Deadeye Navigator, Eldrazi Displacer and Cyclonic Rift. All five of those will probably prove more valuable than a modal spell. Padeem gives our commander hexproof. Deadeye lets us reset Ramos so we can use his second ability again. Cyclonic Rift is just... well, it isn't a commander game until someone overloads a Rift, so there you go. One last addition is Obsessive Skinner, who I stumbled across while looking for more mana dorks. In the mid to late game could give us a lot of extra counters if we have a graveyard, and that means lots of easy WWUUBBRRGG mana to use for our many shenanigans.
I've built a lot of bad and midrange decks over the years. I really want this one to click on all cylinders and just wreck tables, so I'm going to try not to shy away from the kinds of cards people talk about banning. Getting 10 mana in all colors by pulling a mere 5 +1/+1 counters off of our commander means that even the biggest spells are options for us, provided we can last long enough to get there.
In the time I've spent writing the last half of this article, I added in Eldrazi Displacer and then took him out again. I've also added in Kodoma's Reach, Kruphix and Upwelling. Those last two will allow me to float mana between turns, enabling Ramos to make an earlier appearance. They will also let me pull counters off of Ramos in response to removal and not lose that mana if it's not my turn. After I post this I may go grab a Sol Ring, Mana Crypt and Mana Vault from other decks I run. Getting Ramos out early is going to be huge and even if he is incredibly vulnerable to removal, that kind of speed is essential to making a deck more effective.
One last point is that we definitely need to rework our mana base - especially the many, many lands we run that enter tapped. Panoramas are cute enough but in a five color deck that wants to be competitive they are way too slow. I'm never going to spring for lands that cost a ton of money but I know I can do better than what I've currently got. That needs to be a priority between now and mid-August when the 2017 Commander decks get released.
One step that I haven't taken is to add in mass land destruction. The temptation is huge because we can pull 5 counters off of Ramos to get 10 mana once per turn. That's a big advantage if we can line things up right, but it's also not a strategy I have much experience with so I may leave that out for now. There's only so much room in any EDH deck.
If you want to look over the decklist at this stage you can use the link below. This is the live decklist. While it may change in the future, I think it's pretty close to its final form. Not all of the cards listed above will have made it into this list, as it reflects the current list build. Cards I haven't added yet (like many of those tutors) won't be listed until I actually get my hands on them.
Ramos Dragon Engine
Final Thoughts
I hope this glimpse into my process has been worth the read. If all the twists and turns make you crazy, you're not alone. I wish I was able to build the perfect list on my first try, but that's not usually how my decks get built. I don't include cards I don't own and I don't use a "staple binder" or proxies of any kind when actually playing my deck, so my mana base often suffers as a result. This deck will see a lot more testing over the next few months, and will probably never be a tier 1 powerhouse. I do expect it to have enough pop to win its share of tables and provide for a fun and interesting game with a number of different lines of play to follow.
As always, thanks for reading!
With any luck next week I'll be on to something new and totally unrelated to Ramos...