"An enigma as vexing as life itself."
Following the ranks of Gustav Holmberg and his epic deck guide about Legacy Turbo Lands in legacy (you should really check it out!), I felt the need to expand the horizons a little bit and include one of the most played formats in magic, i.e. Modern. This will be the first part of a two-part article. This first part will mainly focus on the deck ‘Eldrazi Ramp’ and its content. The second part of the article will be more focused on Sideboarding against specific archetypes. Before we start however, a brief introduction is in order.
My name is Joakim Sund, and I am a local player at Alara Games. I have been playing Magic the Gathering since 2009 and been loving it ever since. Like many, I was introduced to “kitchen table magic” and were hooked right away. I have been piloting several different archetypes (aggro, midrange, combo, control) throughout my days but I always tend to go back to midrange, thus, it felt natural that Eldrazi Ramp was something that I fell in love with. I did not choose the deck for its popularity but mainly because it looked fun to play. However, it did correlate with my playstyle and thus, has given me good results when playing too.
Why play Eldrazi ramp?
With the release of Modern Horizon 3, many new Eldrazi cards were printed and the new deck Eldrazi Ramp was made. I would say it is difficult to categorize the deck in a specific deck type; however, I would call it a “midrange control/ramp” deck that utilizes big mana creatures that disrupts the opponent’s game plan. This usually includes creatures like, Sowing Mycospawn (Exiles lands and ramp you), Devourer of Destiny (Powerful looting and exiles coloured permanents) and World Breaker (Exiles lands/artifacts/enchanments). The cheekiest part about the creatures in this deck is that almost all of them (not Sire and Icetill) have cast triggers. These cast triggers will make it harder for control decks to counter your spells and will make it harder for most deck to defend against all aspects of the card.
Like its predecessor (Tron), Eldrazi Ramp utilizes lands that accelerate its mana potential to drop powerful 7 mana drops on turn three. The specific lands are Ugin’s Labyrinth and Eldrazi Temple. Utopia Sprawl and Talisman of Impulse both help the ramping process too. There are different versions of the deck, but this article will cover the “Gruul” (green and red) version.
Here is my version of the deck:
Eldrazi Ramp Gruul // Modern deck list mtg // Moxfield
- Like any other deck, one could tweak and tinker with the deck to fulfil your needs and whichever version you like!
With this brief background, let us look at the deck in whole, shall we?
The deck Content
Lands
The land base in the deck varies depending on meta but it usually looks something like this:
4 – Basic Forest
2 – Stomping Ground
4 – Fetches (Misty rainforest I guess)
12 – 14 utility lands – The regular utility lands are usually: Sanctum of Ugin, Bojuka Bog, Cavern of Souls, Commercial District, Ghost Quarter, Gemstone Cavern and Shifting Woodlands.
Sanctum of Ugin is quite self-explanatory since it lets you search your library for a colorless creature card. Keep in mind, that X-spells (Kozilek’s Command) and cards that cast for alternative cost e.g. evoke or emerge, will trigger Sanctum of Ugin! I highly recommend putting the tutor effect last on the stack if there is a sequence where a card is about to get drawn in case you draw the creature card that you want to search for.
Bojuka Bog is great in a grave heavy meta. Many decks that you will fight against uses their graveyard one way or the other. All in all, auto-include in your deck.
Cavern of Souls is recommended if you are anticipating a Modern metagame where many counterspells are prevalent. However, Consign to Memory will still counter your beautiful cast triggers.
Commercial District is good to manipulate the top of your library. Can help you with delirium and reducing the cost for Emrakul too.
Ghost Quarter will help you against Titan, Belcher and other Eldrazi/Tron decks. Play if you anticipate a Modern metagame where these decks are present.
Gemstone Cavern is great on the draw since it will accelerate your ramping abilities. In theory, you can have 5 mana by turn 1 if you are on the draw. Pregame action - Reveal Gemstone Cavern --> Turn one: Ugin’s Labyrinth with imprint and use that mana for a Talisman of Impulse, here, one can use the mana from the talisman and Gemstone Cavern to cast Malevolent Rumble and thus, have 5 mana at the end of the turn. Of course, this is a theoretical scenario and will leave you with few tools left in hand, but pretty sweet!
Last but not least, Shifting Woodlands is good if you want to get value from your own graveyard. It can copy any permanent card in your graveyard but keep in mind that “enter the battlefield” and “this permanent card enters with”-effects will not apply. Same applies for Planeswalkers; they will enter with zero loyalty counters and thus, will end up in the graveyard because of state-based actions.
Ramp
Like I previously mentioned, the deck heavily relies on ways to ramp quickly and deploy big threats early on. Sol lands (lands that generate 2 colorless mana) are a key factor, Utopia Sprawl and Talismans too. Eldrazi Temple and Ugin’s Labyrinth both give you two colorless mana. However, Eldrazi Temple only gives you two mana to cast Eldrazi spells or abilities.
Sowing Mycospawn is a great way to both ramp your mana base and works great as an early pressure on the board. Additionally, the kicker disrupts your opponent’s mana which, in many cases, will get you the upper hand on board too. It is quite menacing to both ramp and exile your opponent’s lands.
Whrithing Chrysalis works as a ramp enabler and adds great pressure too. Since it has “reach”, it can block creatures that are pressuring you from above. If you look at the card, the “reach” text is also deviously placed in between two larger paragraphs which often gets overlooked. It also has the ability to grow when sacrificing spawn tokens, which makes it a threat on its own.
The latest addition to the deck is Icetill Explorer. This creature can both ramp and do convoluted combos such as looping Ghost Quarter or Sanctum of Ugin from the graveyard or hand. By not being a colorless creature card (having Devoid) it can dodge Consign to Memory.
Another effective way to ramp and loot is to play Kozilek’s Command (the real K-command – sorry Jund players). The utility of K-command is massive and one can argue that it is the reason to why Eldrazi decks are performing on a top level in the current meta. As one can see, the card is extremely powerful since it has the ability to scry and draw a card, ramp you with spawns, exile target creature and keep graveyard decks at check. With a highly diverse meta, the card’s flexibility matches it perfectly. Additionally, with the cherry on top, it is an instant which makes it even better.
Malevolent Rumble is a great tool to dig for answers against many decks, find some powerful threat like Ugin, Eye of the Storm, Sire of Seven Deaths or fill up the grave to get easier access to the mother of all Eldrazis: Emrakul, the Promised End. It is a great spell to help with delirium for Shifting Woodlands or Unholy Heat. Moreover, another upside of Malevolent Rumble is that it also ramp you since you will get a colorless spawn token that will give you one colorless mana if sacrificed.
Removals
Kozilek’s return is the deck’s main sweeper. If you expect a heavy creature based metagame, it will help you out in most situations. However, Blasphemous Act has been more prevalent in recent builds because of Affinity and Kappa Cannoneer and it is actually quite good since it does not rely on the CMC7 trigger like Kozilek’s Return.
Unholy Heat is a single target removal that has been included recently because of Quantum Riddler. It helps against smaller creatures like Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and Solitude when responding to an Ephemerate.
Creatures/Finishers
[Devourer of Destiny] will help you loot if you have it in your starting hand. It will act as a removal and keep great pressure on the board too!
World Breaker has a big upside since it will exile a land, enchantment or artifact. It has reach which is great and can return to your hand from the graveyard. Its toughness could outstand most of the threat in today’s meta.
Sire of Seven Deaths one of the midrange bazookas. It does not have a cast trigger but with its seven key words and 7/7 body, it will often make the opponent concede.
Emrakul, the Promised End will be the primary finisher in your deck. It can act as an early, mid or late game threat. All in all, the cast ability itself will often wrap up the game since you could mess with their gameplan completely. However, a 13/13 flying, trample creature that has protection from instants is something beautiful. Solitude is a great answer against Emrakul, therefore, be careful – keep Moma safe!
To keep in mind when piloting this deck, one must be aware of the hate pieces that exist in the format.
Blood Moon effects
Some of the most common sideboard cards against your deck will be Blood Moon, Magus of the Moon or Harbinger of the Seas. These cards will affect your non basic lands that will ramp you. In my experiences, Harbringer is the worst of the lot since you will never benefit from blue mana (unless you are playing temur version of course). The upside, however, is that it is a creature card which is easier to get rid of in comparison to enchantments. If you are playing open decklist one should keep this in mind when sideboarding – bring in the big guns (Unholy Heat, Dismember, Nature’s Claim) to keep yourself at bay. If you are playing closed decklist you should be aware of the possibilities that they might have these cards in sideboard. Be aware of how your opponent is fetching to predict whether they are planning to turn your beautiful “innocent” lands to mountains/islands.
One card that might be less common against us but could slow us down is Damping Sphere. In contrast to Blood Moon effects, this only slows us down and we can still benefit from colorless mana (thank goodness). However, it will be a lot more difficult to cast K-Command. Like previously mentioned, bring in Nature’s Claim or any other artifact removal to take care of it.
The bane of colorless cards and one of the most played cards in modern is Consign to Memory. This is one of the cards in which you usually must play around. It can disrupt most of your gameplan since your opponent will most likely replicate the effect and counter the cast cost and the creature.
Furthermore, like I said in the beginning, part two will be more in-depth discussions about Sideboarding and what to keep in mind when playing against certain archetypes!
Conclusion
To answer the title of this article, is this the perfect deck in modern? Well, no, most probably not. However, I really enjoy playing it and I feel like that should be your primary objective when picking a deck. Pick something that really speaks to you like Emrakul did to me. If you are a beginner to the game of magic, I would highly recommend reaching out to someone who has knowledge about the game or just pick “Burn” (Sorry 😉). The best thing about Modern in its current state is that almost every deck can compete at a high level (talking mainly about T1 and T2 decks). Hope you had a great reading and see you in the next article.
//Joakim Sund
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