Friday, December 10, 2010

What to SB against ramp?

Valakut was over 30% of the metagame at worlds, and is a non-crazily-expensive deck to build online ($200-400).  My most recent deck is 8-0 vs non-ramp (3-4 real decks), and 0-3 vs ramp (2 real decks)
There are a couple routes that we could take here, given our colors of Red and Blue.
1) Blitzkreig.
Kiln Fiends
Twisted Image (For walls, plant tokens.  Cantrips, kills a blocker is a pretty awesome deal)
Maybe Spell pierce
At the cost of:
Mana Leak
ITR or Ascension
Perils:
They may leave Lightning Bolt in.  Lightning Bolt is pretty awesome vs. Kiln Fiend.
0/1s are pretty good against Kiln Fiend.  Red is pretty good against KF.
 





2) Resource Denial.
Standard Valakut lists play ~5 Forests, 0-1 Raging Ravine, 0-1 Khalni Heart Expedition, 0-4 Overgrown Battlement that tap for G.
Standard Valakut lists are playing between 7 and 15 of their cards they want to play against you (Primeval Titan, Avenger of Zendikar, Acidic Slime, Obstinate Baloth) that cost GG to cast.
They play about a million ways to get forests, but many of them require forests to begin with, and they actually only have at most 7 lands in the deck that tap for G, and 0-4 walls that do the same.
So, we could play 4x spreading seas, and 3-4x Demolish, in order to try and lock them out of GG, or better yet, G, or best yet, G, and Valakuts.
Perils:
This is a moderately high-variance plan.  At RRRU, the valakut deck can cast perhaps 0 spells out of their hand.  At G, they can cast quite a few more.  At GG, they can cast everything, and you die.
This plan is relatively okay against ramp in general.  It can shut down their Valakuts, which are ~1/3 of their win conditions.  They also don't slow down your own mana development, or screw with your mana base like Tech Edge might.
Demolish is already a good sideboard card against Ratchet Bomb, and Valakut/Emeria/MimicVat/Equipment/Manlands.  It gets copied by PA, and charges it up.  Spreading Seas doesn't have nearly the synergy with the deck, but at least it draws a card.



3) Say No. 
Spell Pierce, Mana Leak, Flashfreeze, Negate, Deprive, Cancel, Mindbreak Trap are reasonable.  (Not all of them, but some of them)
Mindbreak Trap, Mana Leak, and Flashfreeze are probably the most versitile.  Spell Pierce is a role-player.
Perils:
In the end, you can counter all their ramp, and then they just play a Primeval Titan, and you lose.
Or a Gaea's Revenge, and you lose.  Or an Avenger of Zendikar, and you lose.
Or, you hold Spell Pierce against their Titan, or Mana Leak against their Cultivate on 6 mana.  Or they have 2 Summoning Traps, and you lose.
Copying countermagic is pretty lame.  It only works okay against opposing countermagic, or with conditional countermagic, that becomes a hard counter when doulbed-tripled.  (Pay 6 more?  Bah.)
If any threat lands, you're basically dead.  It takes multiple cards to deal with PT, Gaea's can't be dealt with, and Avenger can get out of hand very quickly.
 

4) Become more streamlined/faster.
Sideboard in something (burn or draw(Twitch/See Beyond)) for bounce and counter.  Get the PA up and running, and just burn them out.Perils:
There's not alot of good burn after the three I already have in the deck.  Galvanic Blast is okay. Arc Trail is okay.  Forked Bolt is okay. 
Sometimes you don't draw your Ascension despite seeing half your deck.  And if they land any sort of threat, even with this plan, you're basically dead.  (It's hard to even kill a PT with two cards, and they still get the land, etc)
 







5) Tunnel Ignus.
This might compliment a burn plan, to burn out a Valakut player once they get their titan out, or one turn after.  (Valakut kills the TI pretty well).
This would probably work much better against the creature-light version (aka non-GerryT) of Valakut, and less well against the omni-ramp version.  (With KHE, Harrow, Oracle)
 











At this time, I like the LD plan the most, because it uses some cards I already am including, and Valakut seems like it'd be pretty weak to land disruption, depsite being a ramp deck, as long as that land disruption can hit basic forests.What would I take out?  Mana Leak (If I am countering a P.T., I've probably already lost), and probably Burst Lightning.  Leaving in stagger + bolt, as the best two burn spells, and ITR to deal with KHE or Overgrown Battlements that land before the land disruption hits. Problems once this happens?  Artisan of Kozilek.  Koth the Hammer.  Inferno Titan.  But these are dealable problems.  And if the Forest-Hate sticks, they won't be casting these earlier than appropriate, so I may even have time to kill them before anything terrible happens.Also, this plan doesn't work very well against MGE, which is a concern.
Anyway, something to think about.  I relish feedback on this topic, since I clearly need an edge in this matchup.

Edit: I've created a proxy Valakut ramp deck, that i'll be trying a few of these strategies on.

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