Yeah, a lot of game guides rely on heuristics. It is easier to churn out content. Most deckbuilders out there are not “bad” but stick to those “rules” so much their decks are mediocre or unoptimized.
Here's another example. When building a Zacama deck, I generally run a large number of land based ramp, and only a couple of non-combo mana rocks (only Sol Ring and Arcane Signet, and those will change once I get a couple more 2 mana land ramp spells). This is due to Zacama's ETB caring about untapping lands, which is important for infinite combos. This means my curve and mana base reflects that: lots of basics, and a heavy leaning on forests/green producing lands. My deck runs smoothly as a result, and both Kodama's Reach and Cultivate play an important part in making sure that happens consistently, but I rarely put Cultivate/K. Reach in my other green decks unless I'm playing landfall or land-discard for value synergies. Great analysis, Snail!
@@AnonymousAnonymous-ht4cm Since Zirda is my companion, most Aura based ramp is inaccessible to the deck. There's a couple I could play, like Wolf Willow Haven, but I have a few ways to copy instants and sorceries, so those work better anyways.
Discovered your channel today, this is the second video I've ever watched of yours. I'm new to commander, and was wondering why cultivate felt so bad to cast in my Henzie deck, whereas all the dorks felt so good. You've just made it click for me. I need to rebuild my ramp entirely, and then watch every video on your channel.
I agree, Ramp spells have nuance. For example, my Henzie deck runs Cultivate/Kodama's reach even though they get in the way of casting my Commander. However, since he's only a flavor tool for my big Haymakers and 3 colors, they serve their purpose of color fixing, ensuring that I don't miss a land-drop, which is vital for a Timmy-deck like mine, and getting me faster to my Etalis, lol.
I've been being more creative with my ramp outside of green decks with Bauble, Solemn, Sword of the Animist, Ornithopter of Paradise, etc and less rocks. It is shaking my buddy who I have review my rough draft of decks to his core.
This was immediately helpful to me. I had jammed Cultivate& Kodama's into Arcades, as well as both of the haste boots for protection for him. This made it immediately obvious why my favorite ramp spells were wrong for my deck, and just questioning the boots gave me the opportunity to look at better options. My ramp base is better suited to my game plan now and I'm running protection spells that actually make sense for my deck instead of just the boots
For Toski and Tovolar, and G. Sunslayer I suppose, it's hard to argue against the good trifecta of Exploration, Burgeoning, and Life from the Loam. For Sarulf... I've found Cultivate to be quite satisfying to cast in that deck, because otherwise he'd be haumphing my own permanents.
Jesus, I've been playing since New Phyrexia and I've never thought of my ramp package like that. I do always just throw in a lot the staples without much critical thought... thinking about what turn you actually plan on casting your commander is so obvious I'm smacking myself in the face right now. Thanks for the video!
Given that i run roughly 20-24 lands usually, cultivate works pretty good. But, collective voyage or tempt with discovery go great with the other thigs mentioned here. Yes. I am insane. Yes. It can work
Hey man, great video! I already knew the principles you presented, but still watched the whole video. You really nailed the point of ramp in EDH. I guess you got a new subscriber ✌🏼
I'm a green player, so most of my EDH decks at least have green. I run cultivate and kodama's in all of them because that's the ramp cards I have in the collection. I think the main think with these types of cards is that people WILL focus on the "juicy sinergies" (taking your words) of the deck, because that's the fun part of the game. A good part of the players in my playgroup don't have the possibility to put that many money in the decks, so when they can, they will get the "cool flashy cards" and stick the base core cards like these ramp spells (e.g. rampant growth, cultivate) and artifacts (e.g. sol ring, arcane signet), even more as they como in EVERY precon
This is fair, I'm definitely sympathetic to people building from their collections, and the other day I made a comment to a friend something along the lines "yeah if somebody is deckbuilding with a pile of random draft bulk with a Cultivate in it, they should definitely play with the Cultivate." The alternatives to Cultivate are cheap if you've already committed to the effort/time/shipping cost of ordering specific cards online, but those are real costs that not everybody is currently choosing to pay.
It all depends. The one thing that annoys me with EDH is the lack of land destruction. Single land destruction is good for the format and should definitely be run more by everyone.
Excellent video and outlook. Ramp optimization is something I was very bad at for a long time. Just putting in good stuff and I ended up buying too many of a lot of cards. I totally look at it this way now. I love ramp (and land) cards that do something else my deck needs. I think cost-reducers should be included in ramp as well. Even a -1 for 4cmc can be a boon late game.
Thank you for making a video to send my friends to, when playing expensive cmc commanders that require to play high cmc spells (like Ovika Enigma Goliath) the ramp suite for the deck based on edhrec is a mess as the mana curve is heavily skewed to 4+ mana so almost everything has to tap for multiple or give discounts to really contribute to the gameplan, but so many people see 2 mana mana rocks is the end all that EDH rec only suggests a couple of bigger rocks
They kind of had lost relevance because of more efficient mana rocks abd faster format. I still think they are worth consdering for 5+ mana commanders. They are still better usually than any 3 mana rock. They are still really efficient due to not going hand negative and gaining board permanence
I like running cultivate, because I tend to not run a lot of lands, about 33-34. And so, In many cases, I get to use that extra landrop in next 2 turns. So in a way, it becomes explosive vegetation with one untapped land for 1 less
If you pass turn 4 without making a land drop you'd wish you had that cultivate over harrow or most the other ramp spells at 3 mana. "Cultivate is bad" is a meme perpetrated by people who on turn 3 have a sol ring, a mana crypt, a dockside and are hellbent (someone countered their necropotence).
Three things not mentioned in the video that explains Cultivate's popularity. 1. Power creep is real. The cards used in commander are getting more powerful by the minute. I assume they're releasing a new set as we speak. All old players know cultivate and play it in every green deck. 2. It's not the same game all us older players used to play. All the players who came over after standard died brought their competitiveness to the format, so now everyone is trying to go off quickly and win using combos that would have got you booed off the table back in the day. Remember, original EDH = gatekeeping... So games went longer, and getting one land for one card isn't as good as two for one when playing true EDH. 3. Mana dorks are great for going off like a competitive noob that crys at bored wipes and wants to move on to the next game after their glass cannon plan fails. Build for the board wipe. Cyclonic Rift goes off: Your rocks and dorks are gone, my lands aren't. "Let's move to the next game, my board is gone and i can't do anything." Long games with interesting interactions are the entire reason EDH exists. Whats worse than drawing a card that goes and gets two lands on turn 14? Drawing a card that gets one... Well, that or a 1/1 that taps for mana next turn.
@@salubrioussnail I don't think a Mono Green All-Stars Creature based Board Control deck should run Mox Diamond/Chrome or Elvish Spirit Guide just for a shot to play Shigeki on turn 1
@@PlutoDarknight probably not lmao. I love me some Shigeki though. It’s kinda cute that they designed a channel card so that it actually works as a commander.
reliquary tower is a classic noob trap. In the right archetype it's obviously good. But outside of that it's functionally useless and just hurts your colors. But everyone including myself looks at it early on and thinks "Woah, you mean I will NEVER have to ever discard to hand size again, on a LAND? THIS IS SO POWERFUL" and then it almost never gets used and you forget about it until you finally start notice it doing nothing and all those times you needed a color and only had RT in hand. I remember when I started commander around maybe 2011ish every person I knew ran Reliquary tower and considered it a staple. I think it used to be close to 10 bucks back then too.
Hey, that's a good number for some decks. My Glissa deck is running roughly that many, and I have another deck that runs 26 ramp spells with a land count of 43.
“Play 10 ramp, several wipes, etc” drives me up a wall. When do I want to play ramp, how many cards have I seen by then, etc. determines the quantity I’ll go after.
I get that take, but I can also say that since I started building my decks from that Command Zone style baseline and THEN deviating from there, my decks just function way better.
Cultivate and Kodama’s Reach were “staples” in the early days of Pre-cons and still show up in most pre-cons which contributes to their prevalence in EDHREC stats as many popular commanders are from pre-cons which often form the start of most decks.
Pretty much yeah. Like, it's not the *best* card, but it is solid enough that it tends to stick around just a little bit longer as other cards get phased out.
Personally I’ve always prioritized Natures’s Lore and Three Visits. Early turns that untapped land can be useful. In addition, 4 mana on turn 3 is stronger than 5 mana on turn 4, ie Cultivate vs Nature’s Lore
I prefer cultivate over nature's lore, wile putting a land on the battlefield is great especially untapped I find the 1 mana more to grab another land ensuring I have a land drop next turn faaaar more beneficial in commander especially if you have a card that lets you play an extra land which every deck with green should have.
@@toedrag-releaseI find your logic on not missing a land drop favorable but that every green deck should run a “you may play an additional land” type card not as much.
@@ReactiveDeactive To each their own, I like to include a couple cards that lets me play an additional land in my green decks definitely useful with cards like Cultivate.
@@toedrag-release oh I agree to your statement definitely a good pairing. Just not consistent as that is the statement being made about cultivate. It all boils down to how you build a deck and if cultivate plus extra land plays works for you then who am I to judge as well!
Commander Mechanic had a video that talked about tailoring your ramp to your mana curve. Their video was good at explaining the math, but this video really contextualizes why you would want certain types of ramp in certain decks. Also, Prof's recent videos about mana base and ramp got me thinking about these topics a lot more. 3+ CMC ramp is practically unplayable now in most decks, due to how fast MTG has become and the prevalence of good 1-2 CMC options. Once I started to apply all of this my decks suddenly became a lot more playable, and the high playrate of Cultivate now seems insane to me.
The secret is that 3cmc ramp was never good. There was an article + stuff I know I wrote myself at mtgSalvation going back to 2007 about 2cmc ramp in the format. 80%+ of the 2cmc ramp predates the year 2007. Arcane Signant is a famous card and all, but Signants are from Ravnica in 2005; Talisman AR from Mirrodin block two blocks before that; Three Visits is a 90s Portal functional reprint of the even older Nature's Lore and so forth. It kinda makes me angry how many people (The Command Zone) began to act like they discovered the value of 2cmc ramp in about 2019/2020 and tried to take credit for the discovery when so many pinned and shared content predated them by over a decade back then.
@@PaulGaither Yup. I remember being resoundingly mocked in my local pods back in 2011/2012 for running Ravnica signets plus the Lordwyn/Shadowmoor filter lands in my Zur commander deck. "Magical scenario" I was told, to expect that they'd line up just how I need them. To this day I include those filter lands in any tri-color deck that has more than a couple of important cards with double or more pips of the same color.
I think that personally my deckbuilding got so much better when I started to look at ramp spells in the context of bridging the early turns to my commander/pivotal turns, instead of generic cards that up my mana. so like you mentioned, I love cultivate and Kodama when i want to cast my 5 mana commander. it fixes my colors, ramps me for one and ensures I have the last land I need the next turn. on the opposite end of the spectrum, I went back to the very first draft of my tovolar list and realized how ridiculous it was for me to run cultivate with a 3 mana commander.
It really depends. I'd still run cultivate/kodama if I want to be set up for later turns playing multiple spells (including card draw). Ignoring the mid/late game is kinda silly.
I have a deck that has an interesting problem when putting this advice to use. It only really has 1 mana spike at 3, but the commander is Beledros Witherbloom, a 7 drop that fuels my aristocrat plays with the ability to untap lands and generate plenty of pests. Would Cultivate and Kodama's reach be bad in my deck if they greatly help towards getting my commander out faster without risking too much since I have multiple cards that would just kill my own mana dorks or destroy my own artifacts if I played them?
There probably is a good reason to run a combination of the two. The dorks can be dropped t1 -> into a t3 cultivate/kodama on a very good opening hand, your other 3mana spikes, and at the very least they are aristocrat fodder to your sacrifice outlets if drawn off the top. Cultivate and Kodama on the other hand get you closer to 7 mana by a land etb and a land in hand (lands being important for your commander). I'd recommend goldfishing your deck to see what combination plays the best for you. Try: Bird of Paradise, Boreal Druid, Elvish Mystic, Fyndhorn Elves, etc for the dork ramp Rampant Growth, Cultivate, Kodama's reach, Skyshroud Claim, etc (4 mana ramp card that gets you to 7 on turn 5 if you hit all land drops) for the land ramp Primal Druid, Viridian Emissary, Phyrexian Tower, The Golden Throne, Crowded Crypt, DawnTreader Elk, Growth Spasm(land + sac fodder) and Sakura-Tibe Elder these care about being sacrificed/ creatures dying.
Same here but instead of cultivate kodamas reach, put land ramp on creature so it can turn on your aristocrat build (one more card with grim haruspex, one more creature to sacrifice for one more drain with blood artist, etc.) The examples for those kind of creatures are wood elves (probably the best), sakura tribe elder, farhaven elve, elvish rejuvenator, yavimaya granger, topiary stomper, yavimaya dryad, etc. Ask me for more, I'm the creature synergy guy ahahaha
I second the suggestion of creature-based ramp, that sounds great in aristocrats sounds great if you need more on 3. That’s not to say that Cultivate/Kodama’s reach are bad-if you’re ramping to 7 the extra land might come in handy sometimes, but it’s certainly worth considering how that stacks up in comparison to the benefit of having an extra 1/1.
IMO in any 2 color deck with green, Nature's Lore & Three Visits, then Skyshroud Claim should come in first for sorcery-speed ramp since if you have any duals w/ the Forest type these automatically get you exactly the lands you need and get them untaped. Each of these costs less than sticker cost on net, so the first two should act like 1 mana dorks or 2 mana rocks that make the colors you need, and the second acts like a 4 mana rock that makes 2 of your colors. That plus dorks / land ramp creatures should be enough ramp - green should never need to run rocks unless its an artifact-centric green deck, which as far as I know Beledros isn't. Wood Elves is probably the best land ramp creature since it gets an untapped Forest as well. So it acts more like a 2 mana rock.
Culling the weak is an incredible ramp card in black. With a dark ritual, a 1 drop, a forest and swamp you can get Beladros out on turn 2. Elves of deep shadow is a great golgari mana dork. Blood pet could be useful to invest one mana on one turn to use it later on a later turn.
I noticed this when I built Polukranos Reborn/Ruin Engine. I was loading it with a bevy of 2 drop ramp because that's the "bread and butter" and what I'm used to doing by default. It got bottlenecked. Forgetting that most of my commanders are at 4, and Polukranos is at 3, then flips at 6. I traded out all my 2 drop ramp for 1 and 4 drop ramp. So I could hit Polukranos on turn 2, ramp again on turn 3 with an explosive vegetation or something similar... in order to flip Polukranos as early as turn 4.
I'm interested in what your ramp package looks like; polukranos reborn is my highest win-percentage, favorite, and most consistent commander and I am *always* looking for ways to improve the deck's functionality, in any way that I can. I was wondering if you have a decklist, and/or, a "ramp package" including anything that makes you mana-positive 🤗
I have to disagree with you on this one. Cos for hands tribal Kodama's Reach and Cultivate are the only acceptable ramp. Lol. I totally agree though, people get used to something long enough they don't really look at it until it's presented to them.
I didn't even go past 30 seconds of this video to side with you and say YES... STOP PLAYING CULTIVATE. Cultivate and others are really only good in landfall/lands matters decks. Even if you are in mono green, the elvish dorks are a million percent better. Cultivate, if you play it on curve, you spent THREE mana (borderline too much for ramping these days) for a TAPPED land and one in your hand--you've already played a land this turn and so now the newly found land in hand will most likely be discarded at the end step. Three mana for a tapped land and and oversized hand and your turn is over... Furthermore, why is green so bad at doing what it does best? Most ramp via land comes in TAPPED.... WHY?! This is green's strong suit, and they come in tapped? No, we have Three Visits and Harrow and the likes that have them come in untapped or are an instant that can be done before your turn. But mostly a feels bad as a whole as even land ramping at all pulls lands from the deck and messes with your land/flooding/bricking ratios. It's incredibly bad card design. Green is a great color, but man...
This video is especially interesting to me. I recently brewed a Mazzy Aura deck where I wanted as much interactions and stuff as Auras. So I ended up with fertile ground, utopia sprawl and so on for ramp and Kenriths transformation and Darksteel Mutation as removal and it really get my gears grinding when I really brew all by myself
I love that your channel is basically just "idk, maybe think for yourself" There's so much homogeny in the most varied format, it's really quite pathetic. I've played Emmara for years, and looking at others' lists makes me gawk how little thought has gone into any of the picks. Glad you're pushing back against the influx of lame decks.
Cultivate feels fantastic in landfall decks, then again the goal there is to create more and more triggers so it’s actually a pretty good spell specifically in that context.
Agreed. One of the best things you can do to improve Cultivate is to make the "put...the other [land] into your hand" part more impactful. A landfall deck would *love* to put an extra land into their hand. That's straight gas if they have landfall engines on board. Plus the archetype encourages a lot of ramp, making it easier to fit in ramp card and paying more mana for them. Even if Cultivate is "ramp piece #14", well I may very well be running 14 ramp in a landfall deck.
@@Icameron259 Timing specific triggers can matter. In a vacuum they're more efficient but in context of 100 singleton landfall they're all comparable spells with minor ups and downs to each other. Harrow is the only objectively superior of the 3cmc ramps due to the untapped entry at instant speed.
This is very good advice. I run all creature based ramp in my sidisi deck, and I tried to stay away from mana dorks in favor of things like wood elves or sakura tribe elder that are less vulnerable, but before now i hadn't considered any of the things you bring up. Maybe i can do better than just looking at what the card type is
Wait did my question on tovolar spark this video? Because thats cool. My main opinion for tovolar (and toski by extension since they do similar things) is burgeoning. Burgeoning is a very powerful ramp card getting potentially 3 more lands by the time its your next turn on play. But its main weakness is that you quickly run out of lands to play. Tovolar and toski solve that problem by simply drawing lots more lands. It fits neatly as a turn one play as well which is always welcome in a fast deck (tho honestly for my tovolar decklist im most excited by a turn one village messenger. Play lotus petal tovolar get card from moonrise intruder)
The general direction i have started thinking for the deck is very fast mana. Lotus petal and chrome mox (drawing lots of cards means less lukely to care about it costing a card) to get a body and follow it up with tovolar the next turn as quickly as possible
Yup, thanks for the inspiration! I’m a big fan of commanders that let you design your deck in a very streamlined way by fully solving one of the deck’s problems.
I don't think cultivate and kodama's reach are overplayed or anything. They get 2 cards from your library for 3 mana. Are they particularly useful in most game plans outside of landfall? No, not generally. But what they do is increase the chance of you pulling a card off the top that you're actually going to play. I still think it's better to play ramp that benefits your playstyle though. Kami of whispered hopes is a prime example for +1/+1 counter decks. It's a hardened scales effect on a body that taps for mana based on its power so it progressively becomes more useful as the game goes on rather than becoming redundant as the game goes on. I'll find tapping kami for 4 mana exponentially more useful on turn 7 than I will tapping elvish mystic for 1 green on the same turn.
as a yugioh player, i needed to hear this SO BADLY! im not used to juggling both mana and card advantage so, this really gives me an insight on how to factor in mana better
There is one basic thing edh players need to undertand about Cultivate and Kodama's Reach. If your commander is 3cmc/4cmc and you want it out as early as possible, never play 3 mana ramp spells, never. Play the two mana ones, the mana dorks, the enchantments, but never 3cmc spells that ramps you. I know that, in lower power level tables, "loosing" a turn 2 (if you ramp on turn 1) or 3 on cultivate is not bad, it's OK actually, but playing always Sol Ring, a mana dork or Wild Growth on turn one; or a Farseek/Nature's lore, etc... On turn two is far more important and efficient.
I often tell to people, it depends. Why play things like Kodama's reach in a poison counter deck... when "Expand the sphere" exists? sure, its one more mana... but top decked in the late game, it can be an out of the blue win-con. Why play Cultivate in a landfall deck, when "entish restoration" potentially gives you more landfall triggers? It's about floor and ceilings of a given card in the context of your list. As he said this, "what are you ramping for?" is an important question. Stick to your lanes, do what your deck want to do.
People play the same cards over and over again because they don't want to spend energy searching for more options. Most players dont consider ramping as part of the "deck's fun", hence they dont care and always play the same ones
The reason I'm willing to play more mana inefficient spells that grab lands is because faster forms of acceleration often can make you more of a target, and mass removal of enchantments artifacts and creatures is very common among my play group, so dorks, rocks and mana boosting enchantments make you more vulnerable to getting set back when the inevitable boardwipes occur.
@@Interrobang212 Greed is easily punished tho. Interaction is a thing and I sincerely believe that lands are a much safer option when it comes to mana. It much harder if not straight out "Taboo" at most table to destroy people's lands. I'll do it as part of a win-con if I have to, but I'll usually refrain from that out of courtesy to my casual friends... *most* of the times anyways. There is also the fact that cards like blasphemous act card destroy entire boards for the low-low cost of one red mana... your 3 1 mana-dorks are not so ... "efficient" no more.
The justification for why you value land ramp is fair. But not in the afore mentioned example. 2cmc ramp gets you toski out a turn earlier, which replaces the 'land draw' of the cultivate example.
@@TheSpectralFX Board wipes are what, 2 cards in most decks? I put them on better have it. Playing a lot of board wipes is just not a great proactive way to build. The best boardwipes either are all encompassing or are grossly cheap, like blasphemous act or toxic deluge.
Name 3 cards that do the same thing for less or equal mana cost, that aren't creatures. Cultivate isn't a bad card. It is sometimes overrated, but that doesn't mean the card isn't useful or good for its use.
He didn't say that it was bad though. He was merely saying it is thrown into decks without thought more than the opposite. Every thing has it's time and place.
Idk if this is a hot take or not but I don’t find Counterspell to be that good. There are much better counters for 2 mana that are either less color intensive or have additional bonus effects. Sometimes both.
I have a Sarkhan soul aflame deck that runs basically no ramp at all because you want to either tap out for a dragon or leave up all your mana for tricks and counter magic every turn
My anecdotal evidence agrees with your analysis. Cultivate was awful in my Chatterfang deck where it sat in my hand because I'd rather cast my commander and then make tokens. On the other hand, it made my Reaper King deck functional where 5 colours as fast as possible is the goal.
Can we try to approach this from another angle of point? The big reason to play cultivate is that while it's a colorfix, it's also 2 lands for 3cmc. Not 1 _land_ for 2cmc. Big difference. Also, 3cmc with single-color bip is fantastic from a typical ramping point in EDH. This means we have all the stupid nut lines from ultra-fast mana rocks (ie. sol ring, mana crypt so on). So in the end it's more like turn 2 ramp to turn 3 drops. Consider these lines: Turn1 Turn2 Turn3 Land + Mana crypt + Cultivate 5cmc Commander/Hand dump Land + Sol ring (+ 2cmc rock) 5cmc Commander/Hand dump or Cultivate 7cmc Commander/Hand dump Land + Mana dork (or similar) 3cmc Commander or Cultivate 5cmc Commander/Hand dump Etc. surely there are more lines with lotus petals and so on. In contrast, if you play something like rampant growth, you are missing the extra value and you are probably better off playing 2cmc mana rock unless you are on landfall. Maybe there are more nuances, but in general, if you play rocks and want to supplement that with extra ramp, personally I would probably play cultivate and its twin if you are aiming for 7+ cmc clonking fridge beatdown. Edit. But yes, the main point of the video is that people should think about how to build their ramp packets in their decks, which I totally agree with.
Another thing to add would be the synergy to be had between turn 1: 1 mana-ramp into turn 2: 3 mana-ramp Turn 3: ... Turn 4: Win the game. A LOT of people don't understand that. It's not a CEDH list, its just consistent. I learn from Constructed 60 card that consistency is easily weaponized, and a lot of my casual commander friends don't understand the RAW POWER of having differently named cards that does the EXACT same thing. It makes for so consistent decks that one ought to respect those spells. Also, bolt the birds, I don't care about decorum at a multiplayer table, if you have a turn 1 sol ring game and I can vandalblast the thing before it gets out of hands? bet.
It is better to play the best 1 mana dorks alongside all the best 2 mana rocks to take advantage of strong turn 1 hands. Mana crypt/sol ring and a land can easily lead to rock+dork since the rock can then tap for the dork. Cultivate just ends your turn regardless of what else you have, and if you have a better play turn 1 it gets worse as you already ramped to playmakers
I wish you would have commented on "play extra lands per turn" kinds of ramp as well, because I've found that an Exploration usually feels way more powerful than any other ramp spell if you're playing a deck that's good at drawing lots of cards, while spells like Cultivate feel better in decks that don't draw as much.
My Kaervek the Merciless deck is probably my most thoughtfully built deck wity regards to yhe manabase. He's a 7 mana commander and the deck does very little if he isn't on board. The game plan is to get him out on turn 4, so the build uses nothing that goes over 3 mana ramp and really wants rituals that can really pump him out as early as possible I probably need to tweak the deck more, as turn 5 is usually when he's out but it's definitely the only deck I have where I've very carefully chosen what ramp I use
"a healthy 33 lands" without a hint of irony. Do you manaweave before or something? Heres a better reccomendation than different ramp: play lands. ramp is completely and utterly pointless if you intend to miss landdrops starting turn 4. Ive never understood the fad for edhrec users to play 33 lands in all their decks (from 3 mana fast decks to 9 mana 5 color goodstuff)
I tried 35 lands in a 3-colour Jund elf deck and eventually cut a card for another forest, during my test-drawing / goldfishing I kept seeing opening hands without a forest, or 1 forest but none of my 1 CMC mana elves. That deck does not run Cultivate or Kodama's Reach as I have so many mana elves, but I do have a Gaea's Bounty to get my duals or shocks to secure my other 2 colours.
In my experience 33 is okay if you can avoid color issues and have a curve that’s heavily 1-3 mana and/or includes a lot of low cost filtering, which a lower-curved toski deck will satisfy generally since it can play commander on curve in order to ensure draws for land drops. For what it’s worth, I run 41 and 43 lands in my two most ramp-heavy decks, so we’re on the same page about that much.
I do really enjoy Cultivate and Kodama's Reach in Wort the Raidmother. If it's early then it can help setup turns to get Wort out easier but Wort can copy spells like crazy and Kodama's Reach and Cultivate grabs 4 cards out of the deck, normally deck thinning in EDH has a very miniscule gain but with a spell grabbing that many cards out of the deck then the actual gain of thinning starts becoming way more noticeable.
Yep, deck thinning in Wort is a very real thing. I especially love when I get to double cast Boundless realms - usually means I’ll be killed before my next turn or spend 10 minutes copying spells until everyone is dead.
I’ve played with a budget wort deck and I feel like I would never want that many lands to hand, since that means I might end up with a situation where I don’t have enough lands to ramp out and I have less mana than I would otherwise. I also feel like the deck thinning is probably still neglible, but the list I’ve played is running 7+ tormenting voice effects so I could see things feeling worse if those filtering slots were dedicated to some dumb techy bullshit enchantments or whatever cards most commander players run lol
@@salubrioussnail the tormenting voice effects is another thing I have that I enjoy doing with her. The absolute worst case is those extra lands are just used for land drops, best case it becomes fuel for things like pirate's pillage, reckless windfall, big score, or even the miniscule tormenting voice.
I am theorycrafting a 5 colour deck who's entire gimmick is that I run as many creature lands and double-sided land and other bad card lands as possible What kind of ramp would you reccomend for me? Ramp is itself its own reward here as it gives me mana to activate my land creature abilities
You’re overly simplistic. What you’re saying only applies to ramping to cast your commander. What if a Toski deck wants to get to a high amount of mana to cast big spells that Toski will help them draw?
The argument is that Toski as a commander incentivizes getting a wide board of low cost creatures, and that gameplan is helped more by getting toski out soon and putting your hand on the table so you can draw more cards. Cultivate comes down a turn later and gives you a card that you probably don’t really need. If your toski deck is filled with 5-7 mana beaters, cultivate is probably a good fit. Snail isn’t saying cultivate is bad, just that people don’t always consider if staples are actually the best card for the deck.
The argument is that Toski as a commander incentivizes getting a wide board of low cost creatures, and that gameplan is helped more by getting toski out soon and putting your hand on the table so you can draw more cards. Cultivate comes down a turn later and gives you a card that you probably don’t really need. If your toski deck is filled with 5-7 mana beaters, cultivate is probably a good fit. Snail isn’t saying cultivate is bad, just that people don’t always consider if staples are actually the best card for the deck.
It is 2024. The game has changed a lot since about 2019 or thereabouts. It isn't even power creep, it is a power Zurg rush. "Everything" is a wall of text and an Avengers level threat. The game was different for 25 years before that. It used to be okay to play a mana dork on turn one and a Kodama's Reach on turn two to fix fix your off green colors while setting up a turn three with five mana and likely all three of your colors to start playing most anything in your deck. That just isn't Magic or Commander anymore. Not even at casual tables.
I think Cultivate is heralded as a "must run" as the initial commander decks all had more expensive 3 color commanders with splashy effects (for the most part) so not only was it good at fixing mana, but it effortlessly fit into the curve of the deck
I first made this realization when building a Wise Mothman deck… I realized after having a Cultivate and Kodama’s Reach and testing a few times, my 4th turn always left me casting my commander, and then doing nothing with 2 lands untapped. So, take out the 3 mana ramps for the “worse” 2 mana ramps like Rampant Growth, and suddenly my turn 3 is always my commander, and I probably play a 5 mana card to set up an early synergy, start getting some +1 counters on 2 of my creatures that love counters, and there we go. Massively improved the flow and feel of my deck, despite playing cards I thought were “worse” than others.
Something I'm curious about, that oddly wasn't talked about, is the relevance/utility of the ramp spells. As in, I usually might run reach/cultivate but depending on curve (or sometimes regardless of curve) I'll run ramp that fogs or ramp that's attached to removal or ramp that has other modes. Usually it costs more upfront but has the benefit of not being a dead draw. Additionally, alongside that same core idea, preferring ramp that doesn't specify 'basic land' goes a long way as well. Especially in multicolor decks. Being able to Skyshroud Claim for example and find g/r and g/u land sources for example is huge. Some of my favorite ramp is land ramp. Land cards that ramp you or filter lands for you via land cycling (special mention the 2+ cycles of cards that can be cycled for land but equally are not a dead draw). For example, Myriad Landscape or my personal favorite Krosan Verge (which let's you not only ramp as a playable landslot but also can get nonbasic forest/plains so it's color fixing is huge in 3+ color decks with g/w
I tend to value flexibility over efficiency. In my 5 color control deck, I run things like Growth Spasm (makes a token blocker just in case I need it, or something to bargain), Road / Ruin (extra removal), Spring / Mind (card draw), Migration Path (cantrip), and Titania's Command (lots of modes). I usually don't have to worry about outpacing my opponents since I can just board wipe if they get too far ahead. I also draw a lot of cards, so stuff like Urban Evolution, Growth Spiral, and Eureka Moment can actually ramp me (or save me from a big swing if I have Glacial Chasm in hand)
@@joebaumgart1146 that's more expensive than my entire deck combined. Haha. I'm good with Farewell, Hour of Revelation, and the rest of my board wipes that can hit everything.
@@joebaumgart1146 card is not that good ngl. It is target opponent, so it is immediately way worse in EDH than any other boardwipe, but it is also 8 mana which is pretty nuts. Flexibility is far more valuable for removal than anything. It would be better to play toxic deluge, damnation, or any random 6 cost card would be better.
another thing to take into consideration is what your commander is, i feel like, if my commander is a plainswalker, i would rather have solum, sakura or burnished hart has ramp, who can also serve as protection to my commander insted of ramp spells
This is so true this is why I find my decks perform way stronger and way more efficient because I don't net deck or build a lot of decks that others would. Try getting on Scryfall and just checking out some really weird cards . Also get really excited about those really odd cards that nobody seems interested in sometimes they are crazy. Sometimes they suck. Also play Smoke y'all it's a cool card
A good way I found to know how much Ramp you need is to goldfish. So let's say you're uninterrupted and you can play a regular game (not counting on Sol Ring) and you get all your combo pieces which would let you win the game, there. For example. * On my Yarok deck I'll play a Mana Dork on turn 1 *Turn 2 I play A mana rock or signet. (I'll use the mana usually on either a 2 cmc ramp spell or tutor *Turn 3 I play either Birthing Pod or Vannifar *Turn 4 Ill play Yarok. Then use vannifars effect to go for Peregrine Drake by chaining the untappers that ETB and you know the rest. Infinite mana with either Eternal Witness or Archaomancer and a victimze or ghostly flicker. So for a consistent Win turn 4/5 win I need 2-3 mana accelerants. The components are the Mana Dork and the signet/talisman. So I would suggest 20 ramp for a deck with that power. It's just a bit slow for CEDH territorry but consistent enough to put up a decent threat by turn 5. So I usually use about 7 mana dorks and 10-12 rocks (talismans, signets,fellwar stone and of course arcane) or cards like rampant growth and farseek. This usually assures me a turn 2 double spell and a turn 3 engine set up so Yarok comes out and immediately provide value. I might delay it a turn if I don't have the follow up play. So yeah. I suggest 18-20. Ramp spells if you're setting up the wincon on turns 4-5)(Uninterrupted)
In my Nikya deck, she is the ramp, I spend my first four turn dropping whatever dumb enchantments were in my oppning hand before doubling my lands. In my Lucea deck, she needs to come down on turn 3, so I play anything that costs 2 & makes a color. Also Iceberg. In my OG Krenko deck, I have exactly 3 5+ drops, so I don't even have ramp slots, Sol Ring is a "Humor land" (With Gobblin Burrows & Rogue's Passage) whereas Battle Hymn, Brightstone Ritual, & Skirk are wincons. In my Niv Parun deck, turn number dosen't really matter, but I'm hungry for colors & utility lands, so 3-4 cost is ok, but it has to make colors (Love you Corrupted Grafstone😘).
3:44 I have no way to prove this, I swear its true: I clicked on this vid thinking "I use Cultivate in my Gimbal deck. I hope this vid helps me decide to keep it in." This is a divine omen right here.
People in the comments talking about how 3-4cmc rocks are bad compared to 2cmc rocks, meanwhile I'm out here playing Sauron with half of my 15 rocks being 3-4. Sometimes it's just rough as hell playing high cost commanders in colors without 'proper' ramp. I think I'll keep running my Relic of Sauron and my Everflowing Chalice kicked 2-3 times.
The biggest problem with mana curve that I have noted. Especially after playing enough commander, is that getting your commander out once for 3 mana does not means it’s the most efficient play if you minimize your ramp for that consistency. In all likelihood, if you commander is a king pin. You will need 1-2 extra mana to keep him alive and have haste if you need to deal combat damage. In that case ramp big before your command is played is the viable option in 90% of commander decks. Unless your kingpin commander is cmc 1-2 you have no downside from ramping to 5/6 or even 9-11 mana by turn 3. Especially if you drop a quick card draw engine or general card draw to keep up tempo
This is such a great video, and I have seen it absolutely abused lately. I'm not sure how people point to this and say "Putting Rampant Growth in a 3CMC commander decks or Cultivate in a 4CMC commander deck is wrong" after you put so much thought and nuance into this explanation, but internet gonna internet I guess. Anyway, this is super helpful. While I don't run green often, I do get to see this at work in a lot of my decks. I have a Clavileno deck that absolutely wants to curve out into an attacking Vampire + Clavileno by turn 3, so the ramp it looks for is stuff that gives it additional value and late-game reach, and some ritual effects that give it explosive openings and cash in on its inherent card advantage later on. On the other hand, Stella Lee also costs 3, but she really wants to come down and either threaten interaction, or just immediately double-spell to trigger her impulse draw. And she's heavily incentivized to hold onto some cheap cards so she can double/triple spell later on, meaning holding back an Abrade or Bitter Reunion for later turns becomes extra cards.
Cultivate is still pretty great, I would take any 2-3 cmc land ramp over a mana rock or mana dork unless I have strong enough artifact/creature synergies to justify playing ramp that dies to any board clear. I feel like the importance of resiliency in ramp spells was underplayed in this video; since mld is stigmatized in EDH, you want to play land ramp whenever possible; burnished hart, solemn, and myriad landscape are the first cards I add to any non-green deck. Nature’s lore, three visits, rampant growth, farseek, into the north, and sky shroud claim are some of the most powerful spells that can be played at non-CEDH table.
Cultivate is a very solid card in certain decks, your deck either needs to be shaving lands (which can make these risky at 3 mana, so you'd need lots of 1 and 2 mana options) or care a lot about that bonus land in hand, either because you need a ton of fixing (and run a lot of Basics) or because you're in Landfall, in such a deck Cultivate is a VERY good spell. I don't run it in every deck by any means, but fetchlands are still too expensive, and I don't like ETB tapped lands beyond a certain point, meaning plenty of Basics even in 5 colour decks. Cultivate doesn't go in every deck, but it's not a bad card IMHO, there are only so many 1 and 2 mana land ramp effects available, and getting a land into hand is a huge upside in plenty of decks. I think in non-landfall decks that draw a lot of cards you're probably better off running another land. IMHO the most neglected Green land ramp is Crop Rotation, the ability to find any land and have it potentially enter untapped (meaning the spell is usually 'free', if not mana positive), the only downside is that you need pretty strong lands to generate value off it right away, but it feels incredible to Rotation out a Temple of the False God (I don't have any Ancient Tombs due to the value to dollar ratio, but you can Crop Rotation a Forest turn 1 into a Ancient Tomb into a Talisman or Signet, useful right up to cEDH IMHO) and be mana positive on your 1 mana ramp, it's like Sol Ring at home in my Tatyova deck, because I don't run artifact ramp in that deck.
Every deck that wants to heavily build around its commander should be using ramp primarily for getting its commander out fast, unless the commander actively encourages big spells or ramp like Runadi or a legend with landfall. I’ve never really been a fan of cultivate as most of my edh decks are one or two colors. When I built my Lazav, Dimir Mastermind deck that wanted to get him out and keep him out, my ramp consists of blood pet, Pentad prism, silver myr, and other cards that help me play my 4-mana commander with no generic pips on turn 3. Obviously because of that, the deck doesn’t run sol ring. Why would it want to?
Pool of players around me is huge on diversity, but if i play pure green or green with only one additional color in decks like Tovolar, Toski ... every elf ball deck - There be every time this line of ramp - Wild Growth ; Utopia Sprawl ; Three Visits ; Rampant Growth ; Kodama's Reach ; Cultivate - Pros = some recursive cards , suported by mana rocks, faster road go on more mana with draw, mean i go wider in leser time and also i cut near to 10 lands from average count of lands around 37 = so i gain posible speed and fev slots for additional smal creatures.
The most useless question in any game system is "What does your Deck/army/character want to do?" If you're looking for advice, you probably can't answer that question effectively, and if you can answer it, you're probably beyond the point of needing advice, just obscure recommendations. That out of the way, ramp is a topic that people should really think about more.
Toski and Tovolor don't need cultivate, but not because they are low mana and draw cards, but because you want to establish your board before playing them to get value from them. They want other permanents on the board before them to get value out of their triggered abilities. Cultivate is perfectly fine in a deck that doesn't really want to play other permanents before their commander because it's a "whenever you play x" value engine. Things like Miirym, Go-Shintai, etc. In a deck like Niv-Mizzet Parun, you want as much ramp as you can get (that will actually accelerate your niv), but in a deck like Raffine, you probably don't want to be playing any mana negative ramp at all because you want as many creatures as possible to get played before raffine comes out. You'll want to line your curve up with your ramp, but not necessarily in any order, that's just what you'll want to do to have an effective deck. I think that looking at what kind of game actions you want to be making for your strategy in the first 1-4 turns is more critical to what kind of ramp you want in your deck (and your land count) than what your curve looks like. But ultimately all of these factors feed into each other, and It's why cEDH decks run 28 lands but you should probably run 38.
I'm someone who proudly proclaims Cultivate as my favorite card ever printed in Magic. I can see objectively that it is showing its age compared to the days when Kaalia and Riku were the new hotness, however, if you think I should cut it from my decks: feel free to pry it from my cold, dead hands! But, yeah, great points and video!
Great discussion, with clear examples of places people are slamming their “ramp staples” without thinking. I used to auto include Cultivate in any green deck, but currently it’s only in a couple of landfall decks with 5 drop commanders (Maja and Yarok, Yarok draws a ton eventually but occasionally needs the early drops and fixing) and in Lucea Kane, where I haven’t bothered with improving the land or ramp package very much. But your points are good and suggest that Lucea might be better off with a Talisman. I think I’m gonna make that swap, it makes it easier to hit Lucea on turn 3, and a smaller tempo hit to just drop down in the midgame. That deck cares more about ramping and fixing on 2 than about the difference between land and artifact ramp, but not enough that I’m gonna buy a Birds of Paradise for it. Skyshroud Claim is nice for hitting the really big mana I eventually wanna see in that deck, but it might be better off as a talisman also. I’d rather ramp before Lucea comes down than waste a turn later, and the triome and one shock land don’t add that much.
I’ve taken the mentality of “what does it offer to the deck” into more consideration in the last few years. I found out spells like cultivate are amazing in a Field of the Dead strategy because they can help you get your (non-)snow basics to help get your lands with different names going, AND hit more land drops to trigger field. I normally don’t like cultivate for how much it costs, otherwise
I very much agree with a lot of your points, but I also wanna quickly play devil's advocate here in regards to Cultivate. Consistency: Cultivate makes decks more consistent by allowing them to hit land drops, acquire their colors, and curve out while ramping in a single spell. Card advantage: Getting both a signets worth of mana while also getting a land in hand is innate card advantage that every deck benefits from. Low cost ramp: Same cost as a sphere, not terribly out of the way even for the decks that would have better turn 3 alternatives. Super Cheap: Consistently sees reprints despite its popularity. Overall is it optimal for every deck/strategy? Of course not, however, can every single deck benefit from this card being included? Almost always. I'd even say it's better than say signet because sometimes signet gets played as your missing land drop for the turn (gross) or you play signet only to miss your land drop next turn. (also gross) Conclusion: Due to it's low cost (both real & in game), the built in card advantage, and the consistency it provides both for hitting land drops (which is very important) while also acquiring a player their colors, I'd argue that while Cultivate can be replaced depending on the deck/strategy, that it is very much a card deserving of its praise from the community.
Want to shout out one of my favorite ramp spells - Search for Tomorrow. Suspending on turn 1 give you 4 mana on turn 3, same as a signet. And there are very few 1 cmc ramp spells that aren’t mana dorks.
This suggests over-ramping is bad. It doesn't take into consideration that decks don't always curve out. Sometimes you play a 2 cost and a 3 cost on turn 5 rather than a 5 drop. Sure, if you have a super high density of 3 drops, this is important. But I find that all of my decks are mana greedy and will always find ways to spend extra mana, so this isn't much of an issue.
This video is a better argument than most on playing different ramp cards but there is one thing I want to bring up. Lower MV doesn't actually mean you don't want ramp, decks with a lower curve in EDH often do want to spend just as much mana as the higher curve decks but that mana will be spent on multiple small spells instead of just one big one. So yeah a deck may not want to play a 5 drop on turn 4 but it might want to play a 2 drop and a 3 drop. Tovalar and Toski especially as they both draw cards so you'll always have plenty of spells to play with that extra mana.
I will only play 3-mana ramp if it somehow synergizes with the deck. E.g. Relic of Legends in a deck fully of legendary creatures (not just the commander). If the deck cares about creatures a lot, stuff like wood elves is also cool. But it obviously depends on the manacost of the commander and even if it's cheap, when I want to actually cast it.
Man, I needed this. So many guides say '10-12 ramp', but not of the nuance beyond that
You play mtg?!???
first sleepycabin and now this, I can't get away from you
Yeah, a lot of game guides rely on heuristics. It is easier to churn out content.
Most deckbuilders out there are not “bad” but stick to those “rules” so much their decks are mediocre or unoptimized.
The command zone ratios have been a net detriment to edh deck building.
I was so confused when I saw this lmao.
Here's another example. When building a Zacama deck, I generally run a large number of land based ramp, and only a couple of non-combo mana rocks (only Sol Ring and Arcane Signet, and those will change once I get a couple more 2 mana land ramp spells). This is due to Zacama's ETB caring about untapping lands, which is important for infinite combos. This means my curve and mana base reflects that: lots of basics, and a heavy leaning on forests/green producing lands. My deck runs smoothly as a result, and both Kodama's Reach and Cultivate play an important part in making sure that happens consistently, but I rarely put Cultivate/K. Reach in my other green decks unless I'm playing landfall or land-discard for value synergies. Great analysis, Snail!
Do you play aura based ramp in that deck, since it also benefits from the untap?
@@AnonymousAnonymous-ht4cm Since Zirda is my companion, most Aura based ramp is inaccessible to the deck. There's a couple I could play, like Wolf Willow Haven, but I have a few ways to copy instants and sorceries, so those work better anyways.
Discovered your channel today, this is the second video I've ever watched of yours. I'm new to commander, and was wondering why cultivate felt so bad to cast in my Henzie deck, whereas all the dorks felt so good. You've just made it click for me. I need to rebuild my ramp entirely, and then watch every video on your channel.
I agree, Ramp spells have nuance. For example, my Henzie deck runs Cultivate/Kodama's reach even though they get in the way of casting my Commander. However, since he's only a flavor tool for my big Haymakers and 3 colors, they serve their purpose of color fixing, ensuring that I don't miss a land-drop, which is vital for a Timmy-deck like mine, and getting me faster to my Etalis, lol.
I run tatyova and I like cultivate. It's 3 mana for a card, a life, a land in hand and on the field.
I've been being more creative with my ramp outside of green decks with Bauble, Solemn, Sword of the Animist, Ornithopter of Paradise, etc and less rocks. It is shaking my buddy who I have review my rough draft of decks to his core.
This was immediately helpful to me. I had jammed Cultivate& Kodama's into Arcades, as well as both of the haste boots for protection for him. This made it immediately obvious why my favorite ramp spells were wrong for my deck, and just questioning the boots gave me the opportunity to look at better options.
My ramp base is better suited to my game plan now and I'm running protection spells that actually make sense for my deck instead of just the boots
For Toski and Tovolar, and G. Sunslayer I suppose, it's hard to argue against the good trifecta of Exploration, Burgeoning, and Life from the Loam. For Sarulf... I've found Cultivate to be quite satisfying to cast in that deck, because otherwise he'd be haumphing my own permanents.
Jesus, I've been playing since New Phyrexia and I've never thought of my ramp package like that. I do always just throw in a lot the staples without much critical thought... thinking about what turn you actually plan on casting your commander is so obvious I'm smacking myself in the face right now. Thanks for the video!
Given that i run roughly 20-24 lands usually, cultivate works pretty good. But, collective voyage or tempt with discovery go great with the other thigs mentioned here.
Yes. I am insane. Yes. It can work
Hey man, great video! I already knew the principles you presented, but still watched the whole video. You really nailed the point of ramp in EDH. I guess you got a new subscriber ✌🏼
Thanks!
I'm a green player, so most of my EDH decks at least have green. I run cultivate and kodama's in all of them because that's the ramp cards I have in the collection.
I think the main think with these types of cards is that people WILL focus on the "juicy sinergies" (taking your words) of the deck, because that's the fun part of the game. A good part of the players in my playgroup don't have the possibility to put that many money in the decks, so when they can, they will get the "cool flashy cards" and stick the base core cards like these ramp spells (e.g. rampant growth, cultivate) and artifacts (e.g. sol ring, arcane signet), even more as they como in EVERY precon
This is fair, I'm definitely sympathetic to people building from their collections, and the other day I made a comment to a friend something along the lines "yeah if somebody is deckbuilding with a pile of random draft bulk with a Cultivate in it, they should definitely play with the Cultivate." The alternatives to Cultivate are cheap if you've already committed to the effort/time/shipping cost of ordering specific cards online, but those are real costs that not everybody is currently choosing to pay.
It all depends. The one thing that annoys me with EDH is the lack of land destruction. Single land destruction is good for the format and should definitely be run more by everyone.
Excellent video and outlook. Ramp optimization is something I was very bad at for a long time. Just putting in good stuff and I ended up buying too many of a lot of cards. I totally look at it this way now. I love ramp (and land) cards that do something else my deck needs. I think cost-reducers should be included in ramp as well. Even a -1 for 4cmc can be a boon late game.
My main reason for using cultivate is that it isn't bad
Thank you for making a video to send my friends to, when playing expensive cmc commanders that require to play high cmc spells (like Ovika Enigma Goliath) the ramp suite for the deck based on edhrec is a mess as the mana curve is heavily skewed to 4+ mana so almost everything has to tap for multiple or give discounts to really contribute to the gameplan, but so many people see 2 mana mana rocks is the end all that EDH rec only suggests a couple of bigger rocks
This is a netdecking problem people just see other people play cards but don't question why the card is there or why they would want the card
They kind of had lost relevance because of more efficient mana rocks abd faster format. I still think they are worth consdering for 5+ mana commanders. They are still better usually than any 3 mana rock. They are still really efficient due to not going hand negative and gaining board permanence
I like running cultivate, because I tend to not run a lot of lands, about 33-34. And so, In many cases, I get to use that extra landrop in next 2 turns. So in a way, it becomes explosive vegetation with one untapped land for 1 less
So basically it depends on your meta and the deck...
Honestly, I Just Love Cultivate and don't care about playing optimal xD
If you pass turn 4 without making a land drop you'd wish you had that cultivate over harrow or most the other ramp spells at 3 mana. "Cultivate is bad" is a meme perpetrated by people who on turn 3 have a sol ring, a mana crypt, a dockside and are hellbent (someone countered their necropotence).
Wait, your saying most says i need 10-16 ramp spells? I use 4-6. Instead of cultivate, i use the strixheaven one of it.
So what about something like jarad, golgari lich lord if my main go to play is phyrexian devourer as fast as possible??
Entomb + Reanimate
Three things not mentioned in the video that explains Cultivate's popularity.
1. Power creep is real. The cards used in commander are getting more powerful by the minute. I assume they're releasing a new set as we speak. All old players know cultivate and play it in every green deck.
2. It's not the same game all us older players used to play. All the players who came over after standard died brought their competitiveness to the format, so now everyone is trying to go off quickly and win using combos that would have got you booed off the table back in the day. Remember, original EDH = gatekeeping... So games went longer, and getting one land for one card isn't as good as two for one when playing true EDH.
3. Mana dorks are great for going off like a competitive noob that crys at bored wipes and wants to move on to the next game after their glass cannon plan fails. Build for the board wipe. Cyclonic Rift goes off: Your rocks and dorks are gone, my lands aren't. "Let's move to the next game, my board is gone and i can't do anything."
Long games with interesting interactions are the entire reason EDH exists. Whats worse than drawing a card that goes and gets two lands on turn 14? Drawing a card that gets one... Well, that or a 1/1 that taps for mana next turn.
Cool lands. Competitive noob casts armageddon 😂
@@floridaman6982 Blow up all the lands against a ramp deck with 52 lands, with self mill and graveyard land retrieval? Sure...
Kodama's Reach > Cultivate
Into the north anyone?
Here is the real question though: What ramp do I run when my commander is a 2-drop that can also ramp?
Elvish Spirit Guide if you truly wanna be on top of that ramp game
That’s probably a joke, unless it’s not
@@salubrioussnail I don't think a Mono Green All-Stars Creature based Board Control deck should run Mox Diamond/Chrome or Elvish Spirit Guide just for a shot to play Shigeki on turn 1
@@PlutoDarknight probably not lmao. I love me some Shigeki though. It’s kinda cute that they designed a channel card so that it actually works as a commander.
Sir this is my emotional support cultivate
i swear people run it just to make a stupid joke about the art
accurate. I run cultivate because i have a nice version. My ranger's path is unused... because it's not shiny enough.
I've repeatedly played people on Arena that use Reliquary Tower, but cast absolutely no card draw. It makes no sense.
But the mana base is missing the critical mana symbol needed to pay that hand! If only I had a 4th swamp!
Mana bases are not difficult to keep it so that you can something with no upside just because it has no real downside
reliquary tower is a classic noob trap. In the right archetype it's obviously good. But outside of that it's functionally useless and just hurts your colors. But everyone including myself looks at it early on and thinks "Woah, you mean I will NEVER have to ever discard to hand size again, on a LAND? THIS IS SO POWERFUL" and then it almost never gets used and you forget about it until you finally start notice it doing nothing and all those times you needed a color and only had RT in hand.
I remember when I started commander around maybe 2011ish every person I knew ran Reliquary tower and considered it a staple. I think it used to be close to 10 bucks back then too.
Instructions unclear, running a combo of 22 ramp/mana rocks
Hey, that's a good number for some decks. My Glissa deck is running roughly that many, and I have another deck that runs 26 ramp spells with a land count of 43.
And only 30 lands...
@@Qobp 38* which I've seen is a good number to always be land flooded or mans screwed
@@andresmarquez5241 depends on the curve of the deck and ramp/card draw ability.
“Play 10 ramp, several wipes, etc” drives me up a wall. When do I want to play ramp, how many cards have I seen by then, etc. determines the quantity I’ll go after.
I get that take, but I can also say that since I started building my decks from that Command Zone style baseline and THEN deviating from there, my decks just function way better.
Cultivate and Kodama’s Reach were “staples” in the early days of Pre-cons and still show up in most pre-cons which contributes to their prevalence in EDHREC stats as many popular commanders are from pre-cons which often form the start of most decks.
That said I tend not to play much 3 mana ramp these days.
Pretty much yeah.
Like, it's not the *best* card, but it is solid enough that it tends to stick around just a little bit longer as other cards get phased out.
They are good cards for casual tables that don't want efficient curve-outs and need mana-fixing for their budget manabases
Personally I’ve always prioritized Natures’s Lore and Three Visits. Early turns that untapped land can be useful. In addition, 4 mana on turn 3 is stronger than 5 mana on turn 4, ie Cultivate vs Nature’s Lore
I prefer cultivate over nature's lore, wile putting a land on the battlefield is great especially untapped I find the 1 mana more to grab another land ensuring I have a land drop next turn faaaar more beneficial in commander especially if you have a card that lets you play an extra land which every deck with green should have.
@@toedrag-releaseI find your logic on not missing a land drop favorable but that every green deck should run a “you may play an additional land” type card not as much.
@@ReactiveDeactive To each their own, I like to include a couple cards that lets me play an additional land in my green decks definitely useful with cards like Cultivate.
@@toedrag-release oh I agree to your statement definitely a good pairing. Just not consistent as that is the statement being made about cultivate. It all boils down to how you build a deck and if cultivate plus extra land plays works for you then who am I to judge as well!
I prefer Natures Lore and Farseek because it let's me remove the tapped lands from the deck, hopefully before i draw them.
"Swords to plowshares your toski"
"Oh"
Commander Mechanic had a video that talked about tailoring your ramp to your mana curve. Their video was good at explaining the math, but this video really contextualizes why you would want certain types of ramp in certain decks.
Also, Prof's recent videos about mana base and ramp got me thinking about these topics a lot more. 3+ CMC ramp is practically unplayable now in most decks, due to how fast MTG has become and the prevalence of good 1-2 CMC options.
Once I started to apply all of this my decks suddenly became a lot more playable, and the high playrate of Cultivate now seems insane to me.
The secret is that 3cmc ramp was never good. There was an article + stuff I know I wrote myself at mtgSalvation going back to 2007 about 2cmc ramp in the format. 80%+ of the 2cmc ramp predates the year 2007. Arcane Signant is a famous card and all, but Signants are from Ravnica in 2005; Talisman AR from Mirrodin block two blocks before that; Three Visits is a 90s Portal functional reprint of the even older Nature's Lore and so forth.
It kinda makes me angry how many people (The Command Zone) began to act like they discovered the value of 2cmc ramp in about 2019/2020 and tried to take credit for the discovery when so many pinned and shared content predated them by over a decade back then.
This being said I recently saw one of his videos for the first time and his decks seem actually appalingly bad
@@franslair2199Which one? If it's prof he most does heavy budget stuff from what I've seen
@@notapplicable6985 commander mechanic. He had a light-paws build that's got like 30 creatures in it
@@PaulGaither Yup. I remember being resoundingly mocked in my local pods back in 2011/2012 for running Ravnica signets plus the Lordwyn/Shadowmoor filter lands in my Zur commander deck. "Magical scenario" I was told, to expect that they'd line up just how I need them. To this day I include those filter lands in any tri-color deck that has more than a couple of important cards with double or more pips of the same color.
I think that personally my deckbuilding got so much better when I started to look at ramp spells in the context of bridging the early turns to my commander/pivotal turns, instead of generic cards that up my mana. so like you mentioned, I love cultivate and Kodama when i want to cast my 5 mana commander. it fixes my colors, ramps me for one and ensures I have the last land I need the next turn. on the opposite end of the spectrum, I went back to the very first draft of my tovolar list and realized how ridiculous it was for me to run cultivate with a 3 mana commander.
It really depends. I'd still run cultivate/kodama if I want to be set up for later turns playing multiple spells (including card draw). Ignoring the mid/late game is kinda silly.
I have a deck that has an interesting problem when putting this advice to use. It only really has 1 mana spike at 3, but the commander is Beledros Witherbloom, a 7 drop that fuels my aristocrat plays with the ability to untap lands and generate plenty of pests. Would Cultivate and Kodama's reach be bad in my deck if they greatly help towards getting my commander out faster without risking too much since I have multiple cards that would just kill my own mana dorks or destroy my own artifacts if I played them?
There probably is a good reason to run a combination of the two.
The dorks can be dropped t1 -> into a t3 cultivate/kodama on a very good opening hand, your other 3mana spikes, and at the very least they are aristocrat fodder to your sacrifice outlets if drawn off the top.
Cultivate and Kodama on the other hand get you closer to 7 mana by a land etb and a land in hand (lands being important for your commander).
I'd recommend goldfishing your deck to see what combination plays the best for you.
Try:
Bird of Paradise, Boreal Druid, Elvish Mystic, Fyndhorn Elves, etc for the dork ramp
Rampant Growth, Cultivate, Kodama's reach, Skyshroud Claim, etc (4 mana ramp card that gets you to 7 on turn 5 if you hit all land drops) for the land ramp
Primal Druid, Viridian Emissary, Phyrexian Tower, The Golden Throne, Crowded Crypt, DawnTreader Elk, Growth Spasm(land + sac fodder) and Sakura-Tibe Elder these care about being sacrificed/ creatures dying.
Same here but instead of cultivate kodamas reach, put land ramp on creature so it can turn on your aristocrat build (one more card with grim haruspex, one more creature to sacrifice for one more drain with blood artist, etc.) The examples for those kind of creatures are wood elves (probably the best), sakura tribe elder, farhaven elve, elvish rejuvenator, yavimaya granger, topiary stomper, yavimaya dryad, etc. Ask me for more, I'm the creature synergy guy ahahaha
I second the suggestion of creature-based ramp, that sounds great in aristocrats sounds great if you need more on 3. That’s not to say that Cultivate/Kodama’s reach are bad-if you’re ramping to 7 the extra land might come in handy sometimes, but it’s certainly worth considering how that stacks up in comparison to the benefit of having an extra 1/1.
IMO in any 2 color deck with green, Nature's Lore & Three Visits, then Skyshroud Claim should come in first for sorcery-speed ramp since if you have any duals w/ the Forest type these automatically get you exactly the lands you need and get them untaped.
Each of these costs less than sticker cost on net, so the first two should act like 1 mana dorks or 2 mana rocks that make the colors you need, and the second acts like a 4 mana rock that makes 2 of your colors.
That plus dorks / land ramp creatures should be enough ramp - green should never need to run rocks unless its an artifact-centric green deck, which as far as I know Beledros isn't. Wood Elves is probably the best land ramp creature since it gets an untapped Forest as well. So it acts more like a 2 mana rock.
Culling the weak is an incredible ramp card in black. With a dark ritual, a 1 drop, a forest and swamp you can get Beladros out on turn 2. Elves of deep shadow is a great golgari mana dork. Blood pet could be useful to invest one mana on one turn to use it later on a later turn.
Sir this is my emotional support cultivate
Counterpoint, the LotR Cultivate has dogs on it which makes it better
I noticed this when I built Polukranos Reborn/Ruin Engine. I was loading it with a bevy of 2 drop ramp because that's the "bread and butter" and what I'm used to doing by default. It got bottlenecked.
Forgetting that most of my commanders are at 4, and Polukranos is at 3, then flips at 6. I traded out all my 2 drop ramp for 1 and 4 drop ramp. So I could hit Polukranos on turn 2, ramp again on turn 3 with an explosive vegetation or something similar... in order to flip Polukranos as early as turn 4.
I'm interested in what your ramp package looks like; polukranos reborn is my highest win-percentage, favorite, and most consistent commander and I am *always* looking for ways to improve the deck's functionality, in any way that I can. I was wondering if you have a decklist, and/or, a "ramp package" including anything that makes you mana-positive 🤗
I have to disagree with you on this one. Cos for hands tribal Kodama's Reach and Cultivate are the only acceptable ramp. Lol. I totally agree though, people get used to something long enough they don't really look at it until it's presented to them.
I didn't even go past 30 seconds of this video to side with you and say YES... STOP PLAYING CULTIVATE. Cultivate and others are really only good in landfall/lands matters decks. Even if you are in mono green, the elvish dorks are a million percent better. Cultivate, if you play it on curve, you spent THREE mana (borderline too much for ramping these days) for a TAPPED land and one in your hand--you've already played a land this turn and so now the newly found land in hand will most likely be discarded at the end step. Three mana for a tapped land and and oversized hand and your turn is over...
Furthermore, why is green so bad at doing what it does best? Most ramp via land comes in TAPPED.... WHY?! This is green's strong suit, and they come in tapped? No, we have Three Visits and Harrow and the likes that have them come in untapped or are an instant that can be done before your turn. But mostly a feels bad as a whole as even land ramping at all pulls lands from the deck and messes with your land/flooding/bricking ratios. It's incredibly bad card design. Green is a great color, but man...
This video is especially interesting to me. I recently brewed a Mazzy Aura deck where I wanted as much interactions and stuff as Auras. So I ended up with fertile ground, utopia sprawl and so on for ramp and Kenriths transformation and Darksteel Mutation as removal and it really get my gears grinding when I really brew all by myself
I love that your channel is basically just "idk, maybe think for yourself"
There's so much homogeny in the most varied format, it's really quite pathetic. I've played Emmara for years, and looking at others' lists makes me gawk how little thought has gone into any of the picks.
Glad you're pushing back against the influx of lame decks.
Cultivate feels fantastic in landfall decks, then again the goal there is to create more and more triggers so it’s actually a pretty good spell specifically in that context.
Harrow, Roiling Regrowth, Entish Restoration, and Springbloom Druid are all superior at generating landfall triggers at 3 mana.
Agreed. One of the best things you can do to improve Cultivate is to make the "put...the other [land] into your hand" part more impactful. A landfall deck would *love* to put an extra land into their hand. That's straight gas if they have landfall engines on board. Plus the archetype encourages a lot of ramp, making it easier to fit in ramp card and paying more mana for them. Even if Cultivate is "ramp piece #14", well I may very well be running 14 ramp in a landfall deck.
@@Icameron259 Why would I not run all of them?
@@Icameron259 Timing specific triggers can matter. In a vacuum they're more efficient but in context of 100 singleton landfall they're all comparable spells with minor ups and downs to each other. Harrow is the only objectively superior of the 3cmc ramps due to the untapped entry at instant speed.
This is very good advice. I run all creature based ramp in my sidisi deck, and I tried to stay away from mana dorks in favor of things like wood elves or sakura tribe elder that are less vulnerable, but before now i hadn't considered any of the things you bring up. Maybe i can do better than just looking at what the card type is
Wait did my question on tovolar spark this video? Because thats cool. My main opinion for tovolar (and toski by extension since they do similar things) is burgeoning. Burgeoning is a very powerful ramp card getting potentially 3 more lands by the time its your next turn on play. But its main weakness is that you quickly run out of lands to play. Tovolar and toski solve that problem by simply drawing lots more lands. It fits neatly as a turn one play as well which is always welcome in a fast deck (tho honestly for my tovolar decklist im most excited by a turn one village messenger. Play lotus petal tovolar get card from moonrise intruder)
The general direction i have started thinking for the deck is very fast mana. Lotus petal and chrome mox (drawing lots of cards means less lukely to care about it costing a card) to get a body and follow it up with tovolar the next turn as quickly as possible
Yup, thanks for the inspiration! I’m a big fan of commanders that let you design your deck in a very streamlined way by fully solving one of the deck’s problems.
I don't think cultivate and kodama's reach are overplayed or anything. They get 2 cards from your library for 3 mana. Are they particularly useful in most game plans outside of landfall? No, not generally. But what they do is increase the chance of you pulling a card off the top that you're actually going to play.
I still think it's better to play ramp that benefits your playstyle though. Kami of whispered hopes is a prime example for +1/+1 counter decks. It's a hardened scales effect on a body that taps for mana based on its power so it progressively becomes more useful as the game goes on rather than becoming redundant as the game goes on. I'll find tapping kami for 4 mana exponentially more useful on turn 7 than I will tapping elvish mystic for 1 green on the same turn.
as a yugioh player, i needed to hear this SO BADLY! im not used to juggling both mana and card advantage so, this really gives me an insight on how to factor in mana better
This video < me playing decks that pop off around turn 5-6 but need to ramp hard in the early game
There’s a gigantic elephant in the room; namely rituals and mana engines like Smothering Tithe. Might be an interesting idea for a future video.
There is one basic thing edh players need to undertand about Cultivate and Kodama's Reach. If your commander is 3cmc/4cmc and you want it out as early as possible, never play 3 mana ramp spells, never. Play the two mana ones, the mana dorks, the enchantments, but never 3cmc spells that ramps you. I know that, in lower power level tables, "loosing" a turn 2 (if you ramp on turn 1) or 3 on cultivate is not bad, it's OK actually, but playing always Sol Ring, a mana dork or Wild Growth on turn one; or a Farseek/Nature's lore, etc... On turn two is far more important and efficient.
I often tell to people, it depends.
Why play things like Kodama's reach in a poison counter deck... when "Expand the sphere" exists? sure, its one more mana... but top decked in the late game, it can be an out of the blue win-con.
Why play Cultivate in a landfall deck, when "entish restoration" potentially gives you more landfall triggers?
It's about floor and ceilings of a given card in the context of your list.
As he said this, "what are you ramping for?" is an important question. Stick to your lanes, do what your deck want to do.
So no kodamas reach or cultivate in aesi according to this?
Praise the snail
People play the same cards over and over again because they don't want to spend energy searching for more options. Most players dont consider ramping as part of the "deck's fun", hence they dont care and always play the same ones
The reason I'm willing to play more mana inefficient spells that grab lands is because faster forms of acceleration often can make you more of a target, and mass removal of enchantments artifacts and creatures is very common among my play group, so dorks, rocks and mana boosting enchantments make you more vulnerable to getting set back when the inevitable boardwipes occur.
sounds like your meta has lots of answers and no efficient threats. Greed can outpace durdling if you're fast enough.
@@Interrobang212 Greed is easily punished tho.
Interaction is a thing and I sincerely believe that lands are a much safer option when it comes to mana. It much harder if not straight out "Taboo" at most table to destroy people's lands.
I'll do it as part of a win-con if I have to, but I'll usually refrain from that out of courtesy to my casual friends... *most* of the times anyways.
There is also the fact that cards like blasphemous act card destroy entire boards for the low-low cost of one red mana... your 3 1 mana-dorks are not so ... "efficient" no more.
@@Interrobang212 Lots of boardwipes in decks does not mean no efficient threats.
The justification for why you value land ramp is fair. But not in the afore mentioned example.
2cmc ramp gets you toski out a turn earlier, which replaces the 'land draw' of the cultivate example.
@@TheSpectralFX Board wipes are what, 2 cards in most decks? I put them on better have it. Playing a lot of board wipes is just not a great proactive way to build. The best boardwipes either are all encompassing or are grossly cheap, like blasphemous act or toxic deluge.
Name 3 cards that do the same thing for less or equal mana cost, that aren't creatures.
Cultivate isn't a bad card. It is sometimes overrated, but that doesn't mean the card isn't useful or good for its use.
He didn't say that it was bad though. He was merely saying it is thrown into decks without thought more than the opposite. Every thing has it's time and place.
6:10 No love for Elvish Mystic?
I'm glad to see someone knows about the "2 female elves" mana dork that is Fyndhorn Elves.
Idk if this is a hot take or not but I don’t find Counterspell to be that good. There are much better counters for 2 mana that are either less color intensive or have additional bonus effects. Sometimes both.
This can be true if you're strapped on blue sources. I added Delay to a deck recently and have been enjoying it pretty well.
I don't play green. My ramp choices are limited already. 😅
I have a Sarkhan soul aflame deck that runs basically no ramp at all because you want to either tap out for a dragon or leave up all your mana for tricks and counter magic every turn
I hate edhrec. I use it still to look at commanders sorted by colors, but thats it
My anecdotal evidence agrees with your analysis. Cultivate was awful in my Chatterfang deck where it sat in my hand because I'd rather cast my commander and then make tokens. On the other hand, it made my Reaper King deck functional where 5 colours as fast as possible is the goal.
Can we try to approach this from another angle of point? The big reason to play cultivate is that while it's a colorfix, it's also 2 lands for 3cmc. Not 1 _land_ for 2cmc. Big difference.
Also, 3cmc with single-color bip is fantastic from a typical ramping point in EDH. This means we have all the stupid nut lines from ultra-fast mana rocks (ie. sol ring, mana crypt so on). So in the end it's more like turn 2 ramp to turn 3 drops. Consider these lines:
Turn1 Turn2 Turn3
Land + Mana crypt + Cultivate 5cmc Commander/Hand dump
Land + Sol ring (+ 2cmc rock) 5cmc Commander/Hand dump or Cultivate 7cmc Commander/Hand dump
Land + Mana dork (or similar) 3cmc Commander or Cultivate 5cmc Commander/Hand dump
Etc. surely there are more lines with lotus petals and so on.
In contrast, if you play something like rampant growth, you are missing the extra value and you are probably better off playing 2cmc mana rock unless you are on landfall. Maybe there are more nuances, but in general, if you play rocks and want to supplement that with extra ramp, personally I would probably play cultivate and its twin if you are aiming for 7+ cmc clonking fridge beatdown.
Edit.
But yes, the main point of the video is that people should think about how to build their ramp packets in their decks, which I totally agree with.
Another thing to add would be the synergy to be had between turn 1: 1 mana-ramp into turn 2: 3 mana-ramp Turn 3: ... Turn 4: Win the game.
A LOT of people don't understand that.
It's not a CEDH list, its just consistent. I learn from Constructed 60 card that consistency is easily weaponized, and a lot of my casual commander friends don't understand the RAW POWER of having differently named cards that does the EXACT same thing.
It makes for so consistent decks that one ought to respect those spells.
Also, bolt the birds, I don't care about decorum at a multiplayer table, if you have a turn 1 sol ring game and I can vandalblast the thing before it gets out of hands? bet.
The hitting the land after is really good, because you didn't really ramp if you don't hit your next land drop
It is better to play the best 1 mana dorks alongside all the best 2 mana rocks to take advantage of strong turn 1 hands. Mana crypt/sol ring and a land can easily lead to rock+dork since the rock can then tap for the dork. Cultivate just ends your turn regardless of what else you have, and if you have a better play turn 1 it gets worse as you already ramped to playmakers
@@Aaron0000014 160$ vs 0.75$
@@camoking3609 Every card is 75 cents if you play proxies
I wish you would have commented on "play extra lands per turn" kinds of ramp as well, because I've found that an Exploration usually feels way more powerful than any other ramp spell if you're playing a deck that's good at drawing lots of cards, while spells like Cultivate feel better in decks that don't draw as much.
My Kaervek the Merciless deck is probably my most thoughtfully built deck wity regards to yhe manabase. He's a 7 mana commander and the deck does very little if he isn't on board.
The game plan is to get him out on turn 4, so the build uses nothing that goes over 3 mana ramp and really wants rituals that can really pump him out as early as possible
I probably need to tweak the deck more, as turn 5 is usually when he's out but it's definitely the only deck I have where I've very carefully chosen what ramp I use
"a healthy 33 lands" without a hint of irony.
Do you manaweave before or something?
Heres a better reccomendation than different ramp: play lands. ramp is completely and utterly pointless if you intend to miss landdrops starting turn 4.
Ive never understood the fad for edhrec users to play 33 lands in all their decks (from 3 mana fast decks to 9 mana 5 color goodstuff)
I tried 35 lands in a 3-colour Jund elf deck and eventually cut a card for another forest, during my test-drawing / goldfishing I kept seeing opening hands without a forest, or 1 forest but none of my 1 CMC mana elves.
That deck does not run Cultivate or Kodama's Reach as I have so many mana elves, but I do have a Gaea's Bounty to get my duals or shocks to secure my other 2 colours.
In my experience 33 is okay if you can avoid color issues and have a curve that’s heavily 1-3 mana and/or includes a lot of low cost filtering, which a lower-curved toski deck will satisfy generally since it can play commander on curve in order to ensure draws for land drops. For what it’s worth, I run 41 and 43 lands in my two most ramp-heavy decks, so we’re on the same page about that much.
I do really enjoy Cultivate and Kodama's Reach in Wort the Raidmother.
If it's early then it can help setup turns to get Wort out easier but Wort can copy spells like crazy and Kodama's Reach and Cultivate grabs 4 cards out of the deck, normally deck thinning in EDH has a very miniscule gain but with a spell grabbing that many cards out of the deck then the actual gain of thinning starts becoming way more noticeable.
Yep, deck thinning in Wort is a very real thing.
I especially love when I get to double cast Boundless realms - usually means I’ll be killed before my next turn or spend 10 minutes copying spells until everyone is dead.
I’ve played with a budget wort deck and I feel like I would never want that many lands to hand, since that means I might end up with a situation where I don’t have enough lands to ramp out and I have less mana than I would otherwise. I also feel like the deck thinning is probably still neglible, but the list I’ve played is running 7+ tormenting voice effects so I could see things feeling worse if those filtering slots were dedicated to some dumb techy bullshit enchantments or whatever cards most commander players run lol
@@salubrioussnail the tormenting voice effects is another thing I have that I enjoy doing with her.
The absolute worst case is those extra lands are just used for land drops, best case it becomes fuel for things like pirate's pillage, reckless windfall, big score, or even the miniscule tormenting voice.
only 64 of the 4165 Karador Ghost Cheiftain decks on EDHREC are running Primal Growth
makes me sad as it's one of the cards I most want in my opener
Ironically this video made me realise I would be better running Cultivates instead of Llanowar elves in a deck I'm currently building...
I am theorycrafting a 5 colour deck who's entire gimmick is that I run as many creature lands and double-sided land and other bad card lands as possible
What kind of ramp would you reccomend for me? Ramp is itself its own reward here as it gives me mana to activate my land creature abilities
You’re overly simplistic. What you’re saying only applies to ramping to cast your commander. What if a Toski deck wants to get to a high amount of mana to cast big spells that Toski will help them draw?
The argument is that Toski as a commander incentivizes getting a wide board of low cost creatures, and that gameplan is helped more by getting toski out soon and putting your hand on the table so you can draw more cards. Cultivate comes down a turn later and gives you a card that you probably don’t really need. If your toski deck is filled with 5-7 mana beaters, cultivate is probably a good fit. Snail isn’t saying cultivate is bad, just that people don’t always consider if staples are actually the best card for the deck.
The argument is that Toski as a commander incentivizes getting a wide board of low cost creatures, and that gameplan is helped more by getting toski out soon and putting your hand on the table so you can draw more cards. Cultivate comes down a turn later and gives you a card that you probably don’t really need. If your toski deck is filled with 5-7 mana beaters, cultivate is probably a good fit. Snail isn’t saying cultivate is bad, just that people don’t always consider if staples are actually the best card for the deck.
@@cartermills124 you basically just made my exact point, but worse.
It is 2024. The game has changed a lot since about 2019 or thereabouts. It isn't even power creep, it is a power Zurg rush. "Everything" is a wall of text and an Avengers level threat. The game was different for 25 years before that.
It used to be okay to play a mana dork on turn one and a Kodama's Reach on turn two to fix fix your off green colors while setting up a turn three with five mana and likely all three of your colors to start playing most anything in your deck.
That just isn't Magic or Commander anymore. Not even at casual tables.
I think Cultivate is heralded as a "must run" as the initial commander decks all had more expensive 3 color commanders with splashy effects (for the most part) so not only was it good at fixing mana, but it effortlessly fit into the curve of the deck
I first made this realization when building a Wise Mothman deck… I realized after having a Cultivate and Kodama’s Reach and testing a few times, my 4th turn always left me casting my commander, and then doing nothing with 2 lands untapped.
So, take out the 3 mana ramps for the “worse” 2 mana ramps like Rampant Growth, and suddenly my turn 3 is always my commander, and I probably play a 5 mana card to set up an early synergy, start getting some +1 counters on 2 of my creatures that love counters, and there we go. Massively improved the flow and feel of my deck, despite playing cards I thought were “worse” than others.
Something I'm curious about, that oddly wasn't talked about, is the relevance/utility of the ramp spells. As in, I usually might run reach/cultivate but depending on curve (or sometimes regardless of curve) I'll run ramp that fogs or ramp that's attached to removal or ramp that has other modes. Usually it costs more upfront but has the benefit of not being a dead draw.
Additionally, alongside that same core idea, preferring ramp that doesn't specify 'basic land' goes a long way as well. Especially in multicolor decks. Being able to Skyshroud Claim for example and find g/r and g/u land sources for example is huge.
Some of my favorite ramp is land ramp. Land cards that ramp you or filter lands for you via land cycling (special mention the 2+ cycles of cards that can be cycled for land but equally are not a dead draw). For example, Myriad Landscape or my personal favorite Krosan Verge (which let's you not only ramp as a playable landslot but also can get nonbasic forest/plains so it's color fixing is huge in 3+ color decks with g/w
I tend to value flexibility over efficiency. In my 5 color control deck, I run things like Growth Spasm (makes a token blocker just in case I need it, or something to bargain), Road / Ruin (extra removal), Spring / Mind (card draw), Migration Path (cantrip), and Titania's Command (lots of modes). I usually don't have to worry about outpacing my opponents since I can just board wipe if they get too far ahead. I also draw a lot of cards, so stuff like Urban Evolution, Growth Spiral, and Eureka Moment can actually ramp me (or save me from a big swing if I have Glacial Chasm in hand)
There's a Portal 3 kingdom card called Overwhelming Forces. 6BB destroy all your opponents creatures and drawva card for each one you destroy.
@@joebaumgart1146 that's more expensive than my entire deck combined. Haha. I'm good with Farewell, Hour of Revelation, and the rest of my board wipes that can hit everything.
@@joebaumgart1146 card is not that good ngl. It is target opponent, so it is immediately way worse in EDH than any other boardwipe, but it is also 8 mana which is pretty nuts. Flexibility is far more valuable for removal than anything. It would be better to play toxic deluge, damnation, or any random 6 cost card would be better.
another thing to take into consideration is what your commander is, i feel like, if my commander is a plainswalker, i would rather have solum, sakura or burnished hart has ramp, who can also serve as protection to my commander insted of ramp spells
This is so true this is why I find my decks perform way stronger and way more efficient because I don't net deck or build a lot of decks that others would.
Try getting on Scryfall and just checking out some really weird cards . Also get really excited about those really odd cards that nobody seems interested in sometimes they are crazy. Sometimes they suck.
Also play Smoke y'all it's a cool card
A good way I found to know how much Ramp you need is to goldfish. So let's say you're uninterrupted and you can play a regular game (not counting on Sol Ring) and you get all your combo pieces which would let you win the game, there. For example.
* On my Yarok deck I'll play a Mana Dork on turn 1
*Turn 2 I play A mana rock or signet. (I'll use the mana usually on either a 2 cmc ramp spell or tutor
*Turn 3 I play either Birthing Pod or Vannifar
*Turn 4 Ill play Yarok. Then use vannifars effect to go for Peregrine Drake by chaining the untappers that ETB and you know the rest. Infinite mana with either Eternal Witness or Archaomancer and a victimze or ghostly flicker.
So for a consistent Win turn 4/5 win I need 2-3 mana accelerants. The components are the Mana Dork and the signet/talisman. So I would suggest 20 ramp for a deck with that power. It's just a bit slow for CEDH territorry but consistent enough to put up a decent threat by turn 5. So I usually use about 7 mana dorks and 10-12 rocks (talismans, signets,fellwar stone and of course arcane) or cards like rampant growth and farseek.
This usually assures me a turn 2 double spell and a turn 3 engine set up so Yarok comes out and immediately provide value. I might delay it a turn if I don't have the follow up play. So yeah. I suggest 18-20. Ramp spells if you're setting up the wincon on turns 4-5)(Uninterrupted)
In my Nikya deck, she is the ramp, I spend my first four turn dropping whatever dumb enchantments were in my oppning hand before doubling my lands.
In my Lucea deck, she needs to come down on turn 3, so I play anything that costs 2 & makes a color. Also Iceberg.
In my OG Krenko deck, I have exactly 3 5+ drops, so I don't even have ramp slots, Sol Ring is a "Humor land" (With Gobblin Burrows & Rogue's Passage) whereas Battle Hymn, Brightstone Ritual, & Skirk are wincons.
In my Niv Parun deck, turn number dosen't really matter, but I'm hungry for colors & utility lands, so 3-4 cost is ok, but it has to make colors (Love you Corrupted Grafstone😘).
3:44 I have no way to prove this, I swear its true: I clicked on this vid thinking "I use Cultivate in my Gimbal deck. I hope this vid helps me decide to keep it in." This is a divine omen right here.
That’s funny, I totally just grabbed a random 5 drop commander in those colors!
People in the comments talking about how 3-4cmc rocks are bad compared to 2cmc rocks, meanwhile I'm out here playing Sauron with half of my 15 rocks being 3-4.
Sometimes it's just rough as hell playing high cost commanders in colors without 'proper' ramp. I think I'll keep running my Relic of Sauron and my Everflowing Chalice kicked 2-3 times.
The biggest problem with mana curve that I have noted. Especially after playing enough commander, is that getting your commander out once for 3 mana does not means it’s the most efficient play if you minimize your ramp for that consistency. In all likelihood, if you commander is a king pin. You will need 1-2 extra mana to keep him alive and have haste if you need to deal combat damage. In that case ramp big before your command is played is the viable option in 90% of commander decks.
Unless your kingpin commander is cmc 1-2 you have no downside from ramping to 5/6 or even 9-11 mana by turn 3. Especially if you drop a quick card draw engine or general card draw to keep up tempo
This is such a great video, and I have seen it absolutely abused lately. I'm not sure how people point to this and say "Putting Rampant Growth in a 3CMC commander decks or Cultivate in a 4CMC commander deck is wrong" after you put so much thought and nuance into this explanation, but internet gonna internet I guess.
Anyway, this is super helpful. While I don't run green often, I do get to see this at work in a lot of my decks. I have a Clavileno deck that absolutely wants to curve out into an attacking Vampire + Clavileno by turn 3, so the ramp it looks for is stuff that gives it additional value and late-game reach, and some ritual effects that give it explosive openings and cash in on its inherent card advantage later on. On the other hand, Stella Lee also costs 3, but she really wants to come down and either threaten interaction, or just immediately double-spell to trigger her impulse draw. And she's heavily incentivized to hold onto some cheap cards so she can double/triple spell later on, meaning holding back an Abrade or Bitter Reunion for later turns becomes extra cards.
Cultivate is still pretty great, I would take any 2-3 cmc land ramp over a mana rock or mana dork unless I have strong enough artifact/creature synergies to justify playing ramp that dies to any board clear. I feel like the importance of resiliency in ramp spells was underplayed in this video; since mld is stigmatized in EDH, you want to play land ramp whenever possible; burnished hart, solemn, and myriad landscape are the first cards I add to any non-green deck. Nature’s lore, three visits, rampant growth, farseek, into the north, and sky shroud claim are some of the most powerful spells that can be played at non-CEDH table.
Cultivate is a very solid card in certain decks, your deck either needs to be shaving lands (which can make these risky at 3 mana, so you'd need lots of 1 and 2 mana options) or care a lot about that bonus land in hand, either because you need a ton of fixing (and run a lot of Basics) or because you're in Landfall, in such a deck Cultivate is a VERY good spell. I don't run it in every deck by any means, but fetchlands are still too expensive, and I don't like ETB tapped lands beyond a certain point, meaning plenty of Basics even in 5 colour decks. Cultivate doesn't go in every deck, but it's not a bad card IMHO, there are only so many 1 and 2 mana land ramp effects available, and getting a land into hand is a huge upside in plenty of decks. I think in non-landfall decks that draw a lot of cards you're probably better off running another land.
IMHO the most neglected Green land ramp is Crop Rotation, the ability to find any land and have it potentially enter untapped (meaning the spell is usually 'free', if not mana positive), the only downside is that you need pretty strong lands to generate value off it right away, but it feels incredible to Rotation out a Temple of the False God (I don't have any Ancient Tombs due to the value to dollar ratio, but you can Crop Rotation a Forest turn 1 into a Ancient Tomb into a Talisman or Signet, useful right up to cEDH IMHO) and be mana positive on your 1 mana ramp, it's like Sol Ring at home in my Tatyova deck, because I don't run artifact ramp in that deck.
Every deck that wants to heavily build around its commander should be using ramp primarily for getting its commander out fast, unless the commander actively encourages big spells or ramp like Runadi or a legend with landfall. I’ve never really been a fan of cultivate as most of my edh decks are one or two colors.
When I built my Lazav, Dimir Mastermind deck that wanted to get him out and keep him out, my ramp consists of blood pet, Pentad prism, silver myr, and other cards that help me play my 4-mana commander with no generic pips on turn 3. Obviously because of that, the deck doesn’t run sol ring. Why would it want to?
Pool of players around me is huge on diversity, but if i play pure green or green with only one additional color in decks like Tovolar, Toski ... every elf ball deck - There be every time this line of ramp - Wild Growth ; Utopia Sprawl ; Three Visits ; Rampant Growth ; Kodama's Reach ; Cultivate - Pros = some recursive cards , suported by mana rocks, faster road go on more mana with draw, mean i go wider in leser time and also i cut near to 10 lands from average count of lands around 37 = so i gain posible speed and fev slots for additional smal creatures.
The most useless question in any game system is "What does your Deck/army/character want to do?"
If you're looking for advice, you probably can't answer that question effectively, and if you can answer it, you're probably beyond the point of needing advice, just obscure recommendations.
That out of the way, ramp is a topic that people should really think about more.
Toski and Tovolor don't need cultivate, but not because they are low mana and draw cards, but because you want to establish your board before playing them to get value from them. They want other permanents on the board before them to get value out of their triggered abilities.
Cultivate is perfectly fine in a deck that doesn't really want to play other permanents before their commander because it's a "whenever you play x" value engine. Things like Miirym, Go-Shintai, etc.
In a deck like Niv-Mizzet Parun, you want as much ramp as you can get (that will actually accelerate your niv), but in a deck like Raffine, you probably don't want to be playing any mana negative ramp at all because you want as many creatures as possible to get played before raffine comes out.
You'll want to line your curve up with your ramp, but not necessarily in any order, that's just what you'll want to do to have an effective deck. I think that looking at what kind of game actions you want to be making for your strategy in the first 1-4 turns is more critical to what kind of ramp you want in your deck (and your land count) than what your curve looks like.
But ultimately all of these factors feed into each other, and It's why cEDH decks run 28 lands but you should probably run 38.
I'm someone who proudly proclaims Cultivate as my favorite card ever printed in Magic. I can see objectively that it is showing its age compared to the days when Kaalia and Riku were the new hotness, however, if you think I should cut it from my decks: feel free to pry it from my cold, dead hands!
But, yeah, great points and video!
Great discussion, with clear examples of places people are slamming their “ramp staples” without thinking. I used to auto include Cultivate in any green deck, but currently it’s only in a couple of landfall decks with 5 drop commanders (Maja and Yarok, Yarok draws a ton eventually but occasionally needs the early drops and fixing) and in Lucea Kane, where I haven’t bothered with improving the land or ramp package very much. But your points are good and suggest that Lucea might be better off with a Talisman. I think I’m gonna make that swap, it makes it easier to hit Lucea on turn 3, and a smaller tempo hit to just drop down in the midgame. That deck cares more about ramping and fixing on 2 than about the difference between land and artifact ramp, but not enough that I’m gonna buy a Birds of Paradise for it. Skyshroud Claim is nice for hitting the really big mana I eventually wanna see in that deck, but it might be better off as a talisman also. I’d rather ramp before Lucea comes down than waste a turn later, and the triome and one shock land don’t add that much.
I’ve taken the mentality of “what does it offer to the deck” into more consideration in the last few years. I found out spells like cultivate are amazing in a Field of the Dead strategy because they can help you get your (non-)snow basics to help get your lands with different names going, AND hit more land drops to trigger field.
I normally don’t like cultivate for how much it costs, otherwise
I very much agree with a lot of your points, but I also wanna quickly play devil's advocate here in regards to Cultivate.
Consistency: Cultivate makes decks more consistent by allowing them to hit land drops, acquire their colors, and curve out while ramping in a single spell.
Card advantage: Getting both a signets worth of mana while also getting a land in hand is innate card advantage that every deck benefits from.
Low cost ramp: Same cost as a sphere, not terribly out of the way even for the decks that would have better turn 3 alternatives.
Super Cheap: Consistently sees reprints despite its popularity.
Overall is it optimal for every deck/strategy? Of course not, however, can every single deck benefit from this card being included? Almost always. I'd even say it's better than say signet because sometimes signet gets played as your missing land drop for the turn (gross) or you play signet only to miss your land drop next turn. (also gross)
Conclusion: Due to it's low cost (both real & in game), the built in card advantage, and the consistency it provides both for hitting land drops (which is very important) while also acquiring a player their colors, I'd argue that while Cultivate can be replaced depending on the deck/strategy, that it is very much a card deserving of its praise from the community.
Want to shout out one of my favorite ramp spells - Search for Tomorrow. Suspending on turn 1 give you 4 mana on turn 3, same as a signet. And there are very few 1 cmc ramp spells that aren’t mana dorks.
This suggests over-ramping is bad. It doesn't take into consideration that decks don't always curve out. Sometimes you play a 2 cost and a 3 cost on turn 5 rather than a 5 drop. Sure, if you have a super high density of 3 drops, this is important. But I find that all of my decks are mana greedy and will always find ways to spend extra mana, so this isn't much of an issue.
This video is a better argument than most on playing different ramp cards but there is one thing I want to bring up.
Lower MV doesn't actually mean you don't want ramp, decks with a lower curve in EDH often do want to spend just as much mana as the higher curve decks but that mana will be spent on multiple small spells instead of just one big one. So yeah a deck may not want to play a 5 drop on turn 4 but it might want to play a 2 drop and a 3 drop.
Tovalar and Toski especially as they both draw cards so you'll always have plenty of spells to play with that extra mana.
I will only play 3-mana ramp if it somehow synergizes with the deck. E.g. Relic of Legends in a deck fully of legendary creatures (not just the commander). If the deck cares about creatures a lot, stuff like wood elves is also cool. But it obviously depends on the manacost of the commander and even if it's cheap, when I want to actually cast it.