Innovative Deck design!

Vedrfolner · Joined: 04 Apr 2006 Posts: 1397

Ok screw the epic phail comment.

The problem with the GR ramp deck is that big red/green creatures plus mana acceleration and creature removal are the exact same thing being played in every other GR ramp deck. While I always try to give advice within the deck's own premise, for example as shown in the Madness deck thread someone posted not long ago (I told him to use more Madness cards and discard enablers - or eventually forget about it altogether), I cannot do that when the premise of the deck is the exact same as a proven deck.

It is okay that he wants to use his 4 Bogardan Hellkites in a deck, and it is okay that the colours he wants to use are Green and Red. If you look at the deck proposal I posted in that thread, I have given advice for how to use Hellkite in a better deck. Everyone tells you guys that Hostility is not good, that Stuffy Doll is not good at the moment because of all the answers to him, that Grim Poppet isn't the best of creatures, that Molten Disaster is at best a sideboard card vs Merfolk because it hardly works vs anything else - and above all that 19 lands isn't enough! But instead of taking the advice and changing the deck so that it becomes better, you and your friend are completely disregarding all of these good points and on top of that attacking verbally those who try to help you.

Again, your friend can't be mana flooded (drawing as much or more land than other cards) very often with 19 lands. That is nearly impossible with a deck having a curve more or less starting at 4cc. So I suspect that your idea of what it means to be mana flooded is to run out of cards in hand and starting to topdeck lands. When I tested the deck in solitaire mode, I had a really hard time getting enough mana to even play Hellkite and Poppet by turn 8-10. How long are your games lasting? A full match of 2/3 should take maximum 50 minutes, that means about 15 minutes per game. It will be really hard to go beyond 15 turns per head - 30 seconds per turn on average, unless you expect to win both games. So you should really design the deck to win by your turn 10. To do that, you must ignore the ultra-late-game "oh noes, I topdeck another land!" problem and have enough lands in the deck to play Hellkite _earlier_ than it would have been if you just have 30 lands in there and play it turn 8 with 8 lands. That is the purpose of acceleration (not, as it seems you two believe, to replace lands).

If your friend experience often that he have no cards left and draw nothing useful off the top of the deck (every third card a land), it is in my opinion a sign of one of two things:

A. The cards he actually draw are inadequate

B. He is not using his resources right

... or a combination of those two. The fact that you believe that starting with only 1 mountain in hand if you have a Into the North/Wall of Roots - is no problem - suggests that B is the main problem. One should never keep a one-land hand, regardless of what is in the hand. The reason for this is that you need to be lucky and draw the land you need very early on, otherwise the cards in your hand will be of no use; even though you are lucky and topdeck a forest at first attempt, and get to play Into the North/Wall of Roots turn 2, that is still 5 mana short of a Hellkite, 4 mana short of a Grim Poppet, 2 mana short of a Stuffy Doll etc.

It is very important to be patient and not burn away creatures the moment they enter play, as all those sweepers will do the job and give card advantage some turns later. Remember that the reason you should play all that mana and all that mana acceleration, is that you play superior spells instead of relying on the early beatdown curve. When Bogardan Hellkite enters play in the opponent's attack phase in turn 5 while he taps out all his creatures for a big swing, burns 2-3 creatures and blocks to kill one - then the full potential of that dragon is being reached. The reason he is not being played nowadays is that he enters play too late. In your friend's GR ramp deck, he enters play waaaaay too late.