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Author Topic: Your favourite sans-green ramp?  (Read 1331 times)

Aetherium Slinky

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Your favourite sans-green ramp?
« on: January 11, 2022, 03:48:31 pm »
What are some of your favourite ramp pieces in nongreen decks, mainly the monocoloured ones? Multicolour decks have access to Talismans and Signets so it's sort of easy to fix the mana that way but do you have something else you like playing? Is it all permanent based or do you use rituals as well?



Most of my decks play the usual Talismans and Signets but I have a monoblue Kami of the Crescent Moon deck that obviously can't do that. It plays other cards: High Tide, Extraplanar Lens, Caged Sun and Gauntlet of Power to double the available mana. It also draws a lot so Terrain Generator has proved to be an effective form of ramp.
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Bonethor

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Re: Your favourite sans-green ramp?
« Reply #1 on: January 11, 2022, 04:23:47 pm »
I like Retraced Image, Energy Tap and Thieving Skydiver in blue, even if the last one doesn't really count as ramp, but it's usually nabbing people's rocks anyway..

Energy Tap is nice with higher mv commanders or decks with a healthy amount of permanents (possibly rarer in blue, but eh..).

Retraced Image can give some turn 1 ramp which is rare enough in itself, basically requires one to have a bunch of islands in the deck. Although rarely an opponent has the same card as you already on the field and you get to cheat something in.

The Golgari Guy

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Re: Your favourite sans-green ramp?
« Reply #2 on: January 11, 2022, 04:38:02 pm »
Some of my favorites in addition to those you already mentioned are:

- Burnished Hart, Ornithopter of Paradise, Sad Robot and the Myrs (e.g. Leaden Myr) in decks with heavy creature synergies.

- Sword of the Animist, Sword of Hearth and Home and Dowsing Dagger in decks with cheap evasive creatures.

- Midnight Clock, Skyclave Relic, Cursed Mirror, Heraldic Banner, Inspiring Statuary: Some of the best 3-cmc rocks, each one of them offers great utility.

- Archaeomancer's Map and Keeper of the Accord: Catch-up ramp, but still very consistent. Pair with Lotus Field and bouncelands for maximum effect.

- Mind Stone, Liquimetal Torque, Thought Vessel: 2-cmc rocks are pretty good.

- Wayfarer's Bauble: I include it in every deck without green. It's great!

- Myriad Landscape: Excellent in monocolored decks.

- The monuments (e.g. Oketra's Monument) and the medallions (e.g. Jet Medallion) can be pretty strong in monocolored decks.
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Aetherium Slinky

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Re: Your favourite sans-green ramp?
« Reply #3 on: January 11, 2022, 04:54:13 pm »
I always forget about Liquimetal Torque. I'm going to go and add it to a bunch of decks now so that I don't forget.
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CleanBelwas

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Re: Your favourite sans-green ramp?
« Reply #4 on: January 11, 2022, 07:12:30 pm »
Everflowing Chalice.

It's a 2 mana rock, which is great in your opener.
It's a 4 mana rock, which is great for more expensive commanders or decks with high curves (the jump from 4 to 6 is huge on turn 3).
It scales with the game.
It synergises with counters and proliferate.
It can tap for multiple mana, so it synergises well with untappers (and can go infinite in certain combos if that's your thing).
It can be played for 0 for artifact synergies (Jhoira, Sai, Saheeli etc.).
It enters untapped so you can use it straight away.

I love it.

Landale

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Re: Your favourite sans-green ramp?
« Reply #5 on: January 12, 2022, 03:07:56 am »
I end up using Dreamscape Artist a lot in any blue decks. Turn any unneeded cards, or maybe just ones you need in the graveyard, into blue Harrow.

Aetherium Slinky

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Re: Your favourite sans-green ramp?
« Reply #6 on: January 12, 2022, 08:18:11 am »
I end up using Dreamscape Artist a lot in any blue decks. Turn any unneeded cards, or maybe just ones you need in the graveyard, into blue Harrow.
I keep hearing good things about it but I'm worried about the discard part of it if I'm not playing self mill. How bad is it?
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CleanBelwas

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Re: Your favourite sans-green ramp?
« Reply #7 on: January 12, 2022, 09:21:35 am »
I've played with dreamscape artist a fair bit too and in my experience, the discard is fine. Here's why:

- as with all the spellshapers, you are discarding a card (or sometimes more) to get the effect of a different spell. I like to think of it like "each spell in my hand can also be a harrow instead of what it is" rather than "I have to get rid of this card to activate the artist".
- activating it is a choice. If the things in your hand are more useful to you right now than a harrow, you just don't activate it. This makes the cost of inclusion pretty low.
- it's pretty rare for decks to not have some graveyard recursion. Most decks will at least be running a eternal witness or a archaeomancer or something, so having things in the bin can usually be seen as a temporary thing.

It is definitely best in decks that are looking to specifically utilise the graveyard, but it's fine in just decks that want land ramp that aren't green. Every deck has cards in it that are more useful at certain stages of the game/in certain match ups. This guy allows you to turn those into ramp on the times you don't need them, and that's pretty good.

Landale

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Re: Your favourite sans-green ramp?
« Reply #8 on: January 13, 2022, 12:15:34 am »
On top of what CleanBelwas already said about it, being an ability rather than a spell also makes it a little harder to counter and opens up some interesting interactions. Giving it Battlemage's Bracers in an Izzet deck or Illusionist's Bracers anywhere, for example, gets you 4 lands for the cost of the one sacrificed.

Another bit of non-green ramp I've found myself liking is Vesper Ghoul. A little expensive for a mana dork, but outside of green that's fairly normal. The life loss isn't even all that bad, since if you're playing black that's either an advantage in and of itself or you'll recover it in a second anyway. Or both.

Bonethousand

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Re: Your favourite sans-green ramp?
« Reply #9 on: January 13, 2022, 02:11:07 pm »
One of my favorites for my The Mimeoplasm deck is Deranged Assistant. Even in a non-mill deck, how often does blue want spells in the graveyard? Pretty often.

The Golgari Guy

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Re: Your favourite sans-green ramp?
« Reply #10 on: January 13, 2022, 03:48:12 pm »
One of my favorites for my The Mimeoplasm deck is Deranged Assistant. Even in a non-mill deck, how often does blue want spells in the graveyard? Pretty often.

Deranged Assistant and Millikin are great in self-mill decks, especially with creature synergies. I play them both in Araumi and I play Millikin in Syr Konrad!
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Aetherium Slinky

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Re: Your favourite sans-green ramp?
« Reply #11 on: January 13, 2022, 05:01:02 pm »
One of my favorites for my The Mimeoplasm deck is Deranged Assistant. Even in a non-mill deck, how often does blue want spells in the graveyard? Pretty often.

Deranged Assistant and Millikin are great in self-mill decks, especially with creature synergies. I play them both in Araumi and I play Millikin in Syr Konrad!
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anjinsan

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Re: Your favourite sans-green ramp?
« Reply #12 on: January 16, 2022, 02:41:16 pm »
Top non-green ramp spell? Probably Stoneforge Mystic, and I'm not even joking.

Other colours don't really have a lot in the way of direct ramp, certainly not land ramp (Kor Cartographer notwithstanding). Black has a load of mana doublers and the like which are great, Crypt Ghast being the most obvious one, though these are a lot less good in 2+ colours. Red does too but it's more rituals and treasure generation which function as ramp but don't work in quite the same way as it's disposable.

I keep hearing good things about it but I'm worried about the discard part of it if I'm not playing self mill. How bad is it?
Compare this with, say, Nature's Lore. When you cast Nature's Lore you're throwing away a card (i.e. Nature's Lore itself) to put a land onto the battlefield. Dreamscape is the same, you throw away a card in your hand to put a land onto the battlefield (you also sac a land and replace it with another land which can provide additional colour fixing). In a way, this is better, because you can choose from all the cards in your hand which to throw away.

Personally, I find this guy a little clunky. I have to sac a land and replace it which is annoying if I only have nice utility lands out that I'd like to keep, and can only tutor for basics. Discarding a card is, as I said, usually worth it, but can also be an awkward choice. Plus he costs three to activate and you have to pay 2 for him in the first place and untap with him, making his first activation like a very slow five-mana Harrow. Eww. I don't even like Harrow (though admittedly, this is blue, not green). You can play him T2 and activate T3, which is fine, but normally I'd rather play a 2-mana rock T2, and then already have that much mana, and later game he's even more awkward. I am often a bit too greedy with my manabases too so I don't even have that many basics often, though if we're talking monoblue, no worries, and even two-colour that should be fine.

All in all, he seems like a fair option for monoblue, but you want to activate him more than once and I think you'd ideally want ways to use the discarded cards somehow too to get the most out of him.