So here's a card I've loved ever since I first saw it.
I saw some deck lists with Altered Ego when it first arrived, but I think most people have forgotten about it. I dug it back out to try to build something new with the new ramp from Amonkhet, particularly Weaver of Currents, who taps for two colorless mana like Hedron Archive but only costs 3 to cast. MTGGoldfish recently had videos of a UG Ramp Control deck that did well at the SCG tournament the first week of Amonkhet Standard, and that was my inspiration for using the same ramp strategy to push out big, hard-to-kill creatures.
The deck list for Altered Ego Ramp is here, and I have included a description (I would have done it here, but it's easier when the pictures are in the same place as the text, and the pictures are conveniently already there on MTGVault).
I think how competitive this deck can be really depends on whether people are relying on countermagic control decks or decks full of 2/1s or whether they can midrange you out of the game.
I slotted in two mythics -- Aetherwind Basker (currently under $1) and Sphinx of the Final Word (now in the $2 range and possibly rising due to popularity of blue control heading into the Pro Tour). Both are very hard to kill and match up well against the respective creatures they may face up against, and both make great Altered Ego targets.
One more thing I might want to add to a deck like this (in sideboard) is enchantment removal. I feel like enchantment removal is highly underrated right now -- Amonkhet sneakily upped the playable enchantment count quite a bit, and being able to take off a Cast Out at instant speed can be a huge blowout. Appetite for the Unnatural is probably the best green can do without Naturalize in Standard.
I tried Longtusk Cub instead of Skyship Plunderer for some sample draws, but I found that I usually wanted to cast my mana makers instead of it, and it's a card that is really best on Turn 2. Plunderer gives you an effect that's good later in the game on a creature with evasion.
Non-budget cards I would urge you to play in this deck if you happen to have them: Nissa, Steward of the Elements; Vizier of the Menagerie; Walking Ballista; Rhonas the Indomitable. However, Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and Kozilek, the Great Distortion are slightly higher cost than this deck is designed for. It wants to power out 4 - 7 drops.
What do you think? How would you do this deck differently? Please comment!
I built this deck on Xmage and tried it in a couple casual matches. Both times wound up against UR decks that had 1) Censor/countermagic & 2) decent red removal. Maybe I was playing the deck wrong, but this made it hard to ramp - either my mana dorks are getting countered if I don't hold up 1 mana - which kills my temp - or else they die really quick. Attune is pretty slow and it alone doesn't give Bristling Hydra enough energy to survive getting targeted as soon as it ETBs. Still, it can be a fun deck to play - in different games I Alter Ego-d a Hydra, Skyship Plunderer, Thing in the Ice (being a Horror kept it on board after it flipped), a Torrential Gearhulk, and a Sphinx otFW. Skyship Plunderer is an interesting card - it was the best defense I could find against TitI to slow down that clock. I was happy to get all the Heroic Interventions I could. It was hard to cast the larger creatures - needing to play around countermagic was very tough with the mana dorks being so fragile. These were weird decks I was playing against (one side-boarded in Indomitable Creativity and hit an Ulamog - that's the game I won with the AE flier delivering lethal over his head) but I thought the deck looked a lot stronger on paper than it played for me. Not sure what changes I'd recommend - maybe I'd try Pyramid of the Pantheon because I wasn't really feeling too much ramp, and Skyship Plunderer was getting in quite a few times w/o any other permanents to target.
ReplyDeleteAwesome, thanks for trying it out and giving feedback!
DeleteOne of the biggest problems for creature-based ramp decks is decks that can kill the mana makers, so that's very matchup-dependent.
I hadn't thought about the problem of Bristling Hydra not having energy to protect it when it lands (one of the downfalls of never having actually played a card), but that's pretty important. It's the only energy sink in the deck, so I assumed Attune and Rogue Refiner plus Plunderer and Altered Ego would give enough energy to help Hydras out, but maybe it's borderline not enough.
I love Plunderer as a design, but it's tricky to find the best way to use it, and it's fragile enough that it was probably only surviving in your games because your mana makers were more threatening.
Glad Heroic Intervention was desirable. Blossoming Defense is more efficient, but Heroic Intervention has more flexibility.