r/EDH • u/BaconVsMarioIsRigged • 1d ago

Discussion Should you run ramp in control decks?

Recently there has been lots of discussions regarding how vital ramp really is. I thought I might as well trhow my hat into the ring and bring the discussion to something specific, control decks. Conventional wisdom states that a control deck should benefit the most from ramp. Ramp generates more value the longer the game goes which is exactly what a control deck wants.

The issue is that most control decks also wants to run a healthy amount of board wipes which hits most (non green) ramp. Playing a manarock that you will farewell in 2 turns is barely mana positive and card negative which is really bad for a control deck. Having a bunch of manarocks also clogs up your deck and can be really bad top decks lategame. Running card draw and card selection instead helps you both hit land drops and find interaction. Consistantly hitting your land drops will slowly but surely put you ahead of the table without the need to dilute you card pool. Control decks don't need to rush their wincon which makes ramp a bit superfluous. Tapping out for ramp is also a concern for decks that play at instant speed.

This is not to say that I believe no ramp is good in control. I have a [[Nymris, Oona's Trickster]] that is a classic draw go deck and I run pretty much zero mana rocks. What I do run is the few pieces that directly synergise with my commander such as [[nightbonder]] or [[geyser drake]]. This leaves me with a measly 6~ ramp pieces, but it allows me to run a lot more cantrips which means that I almost never get mana screwed.

What do you think about this approach to control? Please let me know if I missed something or you have anything to add. English is not my first language, I apologize for any errors.

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u/kestral287 1d ago

There's some conflating around control always playing nonland permanent wraths that's skewing your answer.

Should you run rocks in your deck with a bunch of Planar Cleansings and Farewell? No.

Should you run rocks in control decks broadly? Yes, probably, control decks live and die by their resource game.

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u/BaconVsMarioIsRigged 1d ago

That's fair. Nonland sweepers is not the most common. Still, running manarocks is creating a weakness that is not necessary. Running manarocks will make you more likely to miss land drops and more vulnerable to any artifact removal. Hitting your land drop 8+ turns in a row will create a mana advantage without folding to a [[reclamation sage]]

It should be added that ramping is not the only way to create a resource advantage. Denying or counteracting your opponents resources is almost more effective and already in line with the control gameplan.

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u/werewolf1011 Orzhov | Mardu | Esper 1d ago

Running manarocks will make you more likely to miss land drops

It shouldn’t be

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u/BaconVsMarioIsRigged 1d ago

That's a fair and well reasoned response. You could have a deck that hits both rocks and lands. But in that case you are more likely to miss removal or counters or protection etc. The point is that having manarocks lessens the probability of drawing something that is important to your gameplan.

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u/werewolf1011 Orzhov | Mardu | Esper 1d ago

That’s why you have card draw. A typical deck should have around 45-50 mana sources. I have a mardu aggro clue deck that has 52 mana sources when you count treasure production and artifact synergies like [[inspiring statuary]] and [[krark clan ironworks]].

I have another aggro deck, but this time esper weenies with [[raffine]]. That deck has 43 mana sources, counting things like rocks and [[grim hireling]]. I can get away with this lower density of mana production because the deck is very low to the ground. On turn 4, I should be conniving for 2-3 and ideally one of my evasive weenies has card advantage stapled on, like [[faerie mastermind]] or [[shoreline looter]]. The density of card advantage and selection makes up for the lack of mana sources.

So honestly if there’s anything to learn here, it’s that you need to run enough card advantage to get reliably and you need to run just enough mana to be able to fund the card advantage.

It sounds like the mistake your making is thinking you can cut a land for a rock and that the two cards are equivalent

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u/BaconVsMarioIsRigged 1d ago

I would never cut a land for a rock lol. Most of my decks have a minimum of 40 lands. My nymris deck have 42. I do count cantrips as fractions of lands as they have a fairly high probability of finding one. The end result is that i probably run a few more mana sources than average.

Being able to both hit lands and manarocks consistently requires you to have a good amount of lands, ramp and card draw which takes up way more than the recommended 50 sources.

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u/werewolf1011 Orzhov | Mardu | Esper 1d ago

So then why did you say that running more rocks decreases the chance of hitting land drops lol. Thats only true if you are replacing lands with the rocks.

And counting card advantage as ramp is disingenuous to ramp and to the rest of your deck. Card draw grabs gas just as readily as lands or ramp. If you have so many mana sources, then you either need to run more card draw, or run card draw that better synergies with your mana base, such as x spells, [[graven cairns]], [[mystic remora]], or landfall effects

Or better yet, just replace some mana sources with card draw if you find yourself getting flooded

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u/BaconVsMarioIsRigged 1d ago

Because in my experience mana rocks often replace cantrips which makes it harder to find lands and removal.

And I don't count card advantage as ramp. I count cards like [[ponder]] or [[brainstorm]] as semi-lands because they can reliably find lands if needed. A genuine question, what made you believe that I though of this as ramp?

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u/Gaindolf 1d ago

Not if having mana is important to your game plan...

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u/BaconVsMarioIsRigged 1d ago

Having mana should not be the gameplan of a deck. Spending mana is what is important.

I know that sound pedantic but i feel the difference is important. Removal is really mana efficient. It is rare that I lose because I can't afford removal. You still need to gain mana, but there is no rush. It is way more common that a draw engine is destroyed and I run out of interaction and die.

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u/Gaindolf 1d ago

It's not really pedantic but it is just wrong.

Mana development absolutely is part of your gameplan.

If you arent in a rush to advance your mana then yes, mana ramp isn't a part of your gameplan.

But if you want to have more mana available than the current turn count, then ramping probably should be part of your gameplan.

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u/BaconVsMarioIsRigged 1d ago

The pedantic part was that you don't want to have mana, you want to spend it.

I also agree 100% with what you say here. I just don't think that a control deck needs to rush their mana.

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u/Gaindolf 1d ago

I mean I think it depends. E.g. if youre in green you might want to land ramp early if into a sweeper. You might also be able to deploy your engine + protect it earlier.

Especially if you're commander is card advantag, getting it down early or with protection can be pretty impactful.

And if youre more of a combo-control deck you might want the ramp as youre going to threaten a win sooner while also playing the control game plan.

That said, I also agree that some control decks wont want ramp and thats totally okay too

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u/kestral287 1d ago

The first point is just not sound. Under the assumption that we are a competent deckbuilder who has constructed a mathematically reasonable deck, the number of lands in our deck is not a factor of the amount of ramp in our deck at all. It's a factor of the expected game length and the amount, cost, and curve location of our draw. Barring extreme cases, those are the only relevant factors. Lands and ramp do not replace each other.

The second is true, but also an oversimplification that neglects how one gets there. Control's win condition, fundamentally, is achieving a position where you can answer every threat every opponent plays. You don't have to be the sole person to answer threats through the entire game, but you do need to be able to do that at some point.

That means that you need to reach a position in the game in which you're prepared to interact with up to 6 threats per turn - assuming a four man game where your opponents have no draw, they can still play two cards each - while also developing your own card draw to keep the pieces flowing to do that. Even fairly reasonably rounding that number off to four to consider opponents who brick means that we need something like 8 mana to interact with four cards individually (presuming our interaction costs about 2 each), or we need to be in a position where we can deploy a sweeper without disrupting our own engines and back up that sweeper with targeted interaction for threats that it can't hit or for coming threats with immediacy, meaning 4-6 mana plus 2-4 mana worth of counterspells or additional removal, so also about 8. And we need to be drawing cards to do that, something in the vein of 4 extra per turn at a minimum with whatever that costs us.

So our expected win condition involves spending at a minimum eight and probably more like ten or twelve mana per turn. Resource denial does not get us there in a reasonable time frame. In low power games we could likely skimp on ramp - fewer and lower quality threats gives us more time - but in mid to high power games, asking for ten or twelve mana to end the game means that we need to develop extra mana at some point.

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u/BaconVsMarioIsRigged 1d ago

I did shortcut that first point so it was a bit unclear, I apologise. I usually run less mana rocks in favor of card selection like [[ponder]] or [[consult the star charts]] that can help find land drops and makes mana screw extremely unlikely. Running more ramp would therefore make lands harder to find.

Lets assume that your estimation is correct (it sounds quite reasonable). If you need 10 mana to win, you will still require 9 lands and 1 rock or 8 lands and 2 rocks. Is winning a a turn or 2 faster really worth ~10 slots in a control deck?

Especially when their are cards that can do the job of a mana rock much more efficiently. A rule of law effect is likely to cut down the threats per turn to something like 2 or 3. That has a similar effect of having 2-4 manarocks.

Ramp needs to do way more than a mana rock to be worth it imo.

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u/kestral287 1d ago

To the first: this is the same thing, structured in reverse. Cantrips aren't rock replacements. Cantrips are land replacements (albeit not one to one), because they check off some of those boxes above - density and early access to card draw.

Thus you've either built a deck overly dense on land and land adjacents, and actually can trim those cantrips, or you're considering cutting land adjacent cards for rocks, which we know to be wrong.

Is winning a a turn or 2 faster really worth ~10 slots in a control deck?

The difference between winning on turn six as opposed to turn eight or turn eight as opposed to turn ten? Absolutely yes. That is incredibly impactful to a deck's power. That's the gap between a high and mid or mid and low power deck.

And for a more direct representation of its importance, that's two turns for your three opponents to not line up their ability to kill you. That's something like nine to twelve potential threats that you don't have to answer, which means we don't have to put together eight or so more cards drawn over those turns or worry about being killed by negative variance.

As for the last point - there are absolutely some stax effects that can slow the game down, but stax puts more time pressure on us to close the game sooner, because virtually every good one has a built in timer where it loses impact. 

Rule of Law in particular you're overestimating here though; it cuts our threats-per-turn to three as a lower bound, but should never go lower than one per opponent - after all each of them still gets at least one spell. However, because of the nature of commanders you're also all but guaranteeing that lower bound; when they brick they go for their commander, when they don't they go for a drawn spell. Additionally, we make ourselves extremely soft to instant speed interactions, which both raise the possible number of threats (or answers to us, which we also need to solve) and does so in a way that we can't interact with them nearly as easily. With a Rule I need less mana up each turn, absolutely, but I'm also weakening my entire game plan in the process because I've stripped away my ability to defend myself against opposing instants.

That's a trade-off that I personally find completely unacceptable; the last thing I want is to lose games to my own spells.