Simic Elementals Ramp

A powerful new deck inspired by Mono-Green Devotion and Ug Devotion and some thoughts on a brew's evolution

I have an awesome new deck that I am getting strong results with. If you’ve read or played the Risen Reef U Devotion lists I talk about on this blog you will see a lot familiar. The version I am currently on also has heavy inspiration from the Mono-Green devotion lists.

I got a trophy with my fourth version of the deck, but it went through a fair amount of evolution along the way. This a good example of seeing how a brew evolves giving testing and my brewing process, so I will step through it here.

Initial Inspiration

I was driven by what I wrote on Arid Archway and Three Steps Ahead in my Outlaws of Thunder Junction top cards article.

I think Spelunking + Arid Archway + land tutor has serious legs as a package. Just like with original Ravnica draft it’s kind of hard to appreciate the karoo effect until you see it in action. You just never miss a land drop, even out to double digit lands.

The core issue is that three mana counterspells just do not cut it when you are on the draw. So I think you want to pair it with ramp and creatures you want to copy rather than just counting the first and third mode.

After writing the article, I realized that I’m talking about Arid Archway enabling a powerful new ramp package and Three Steps being a powerful new card in a deck with ramp. So I started thinking how can I combine these two ideas.

Version 1- Yorion Risen Reef U Devotion

In rather expected fashion, I started with the Pioneer archetype I have played the most and won a Qualifier with. If you want to get the most out this article, I would highly recommend reading my in depth guide on U Devotion decks.

There are a couple key powerful reasons I wanted to start here. Spelunking + Risen Reef + Master of Waves is an amazing combo. The Spelunking causes your lands from Reef to come into play untapped, giving you the mana to cast another Master of Waves or Glasspool Mimic.

If you have a couple other devotion heading in, this is often enough to chain them until you draw your whole deck and play Oracle for the win. Adding Three Steps Ahead makes this combo far more reliable because at that point Three Steps acts as Master of Waves 9-12. This is probably easier explained with a picture instead of words:

Beyond the combo application Three Steps has a number of uses. The deck wants to run a few counterspells in general. Just copying either a Risen Reef or Master of Waves on its own is great. And then the deck has no looting, so the draw 2 discard 1 mode, while the least used, is still quite relevant.

And then the multikicker effect on Three Steps is huge in a ramp deck like this, which is part of what allows running the Arboreal Grazers and Fading Hope without fear of running out of value.

The Yorion, as you can imagine with all the ramp and etb effects, give you further confidence that you do not have to worry about running out of value in this deck.

The deck is kind of 50/40/10 between winning by drawing your entire deck and playing Oracle, winning from attacking with a bunch of Master of Waves tokens, and the 10% being by chipping in with Mutavaults.

Given that the deck’s primary plan is trying to win by drawing your entire deck in an 80 card deck it has one serious Achilles heal…it takes forever to play. I went 4-1 with it with my only loss being to running out of time in a match I likely would have won. And there were multiple other matches I won with only a couple minutes left.

Version 2- Version 1 but more instant speed

I was so impressed with Three Steps that I wanted to see if I could make it higher impact by adding more of an Instant speed theme to the deck with cards like Brazen Borrower and Growth Spiral.

This list went 2-3 with one of those losses being to loss of time in a match I would have won. The core issue I felt with this version is you give up a bit on efficiency to get that instant speed premium and you really felt that slowdown.

The most obvious is comparing Aether Channeler (an already marginal card in the deck) to Brazen Borrower. Aether Channeler gives you a body and bounce for 3 mana, for Brazen Borrower it is 5 total. On top of that, Aether Channeler gives you other options and an ETB for Yorion.

For plenty of decks the value of the instant speed is worth it, but so much of this decks ramp package has to operate at sorcery speed that ultimately the board impact per mana spent means more.

Growth Spiral was held back for similar reasons, but the mana for it was the bigger issue. This deck actually has a fair amount of colorless lands, most notably Arid Archway, which is the big reason we are playing these play extra land cards. Even Risen Reef is a bit awkward on the mana and that has one colorless in the cost.

Version 3- What if we ditch Yorion, so we can actually finish the games in a reasonable amount of time

This was another 4-1 with the loss having an asterisk (in one of the games in the match I lost I forgot I had sided out the Oracle and drew my entire deck in a game I could’ve easily won by waiting a turn and attack with 15+ 5/4 elemental tokens).

You did feel it occasionally not having the Yorion, but the deck did feel tighter on hitting key cards like Grazer on one and one of Spelunking or Reef on 3.

Most importantly this version succeeded in the key dimension of being way faster to play, so I will likely continue to work on this version.

But before that I had inspiration that went in a slightly different direction. I was trying to think if it made sense to add a couple Golos to the top end here in place of Gadwick and one of the Blue Sun’s. Which then led to me thinking, “well, if I’m thinking Golos, why wouldn’t I play Cavalier of Thorns which is an elemental and lines up well against Phoenix”. Which led me to:

Version 4- What if I used the Cavalier of Storms + Storm the Festival combination from Mono-G Devotion

I was confident going in, since my prior three leagues I had two 4-1’s with asterisks that could have easily been trophies and this was the league that finally got me my trophy.

Here’s the Goldfish link to the deck

The primary wincon here changes from Oracle to a flipped Ulvenwald Oddity (taking a page from the post Karn ban Mono-Green Devotion lists).

This deck is more color intensive and leans more Green than the prior versions, so I had to cut most of the Mutavaults (which also miss the Master of Waves). But the higher green concentration allowed running Lair of the Hydra. So between Halls and Lair large creature lands becomes an alternative win method.

Three Steps Ahead and Arid Archway (the original brewing inspirations here) both work great with Cavalier of Thorns.

Cavalier is also such a good blocker that I did not feel the deck needed Blue Sun’s to deal with creatures (I’m also running Blanchwood Prowler here which helps as a chump blocker). Cutting Blue Sun’s allowed me have more of the deck lean into synergies.

Another key idea here is that I already wanted to try adding Hedge Maze or Temple of Mystery to help with selection as I am chaining off Risen Reef draws. I realized Hedge Maze being a Forest means that it pairs well with Nissa Who Shakes the World. I am only running one Nissa Who Shakes the World, but thanks to Storm the Festival the she shows up a decent amount.

Being back on Yorion, I was worried about the time it takes to play the deck. Time was tight in one match and I would have lost on time if it went to game 3, but overall the deck was meaningfully faster than the Versions 1 and 2 above.

The biggest weakness is I did not love the Ulvenwald Oddity win plan. It is a bit fragile and this deck does not generate quite as much mana as Mono-G devotion so the 11 mana to cast and transform is not trivial. The biggest issue however is that Oddity vulnerable to getting milled.

So I think the main work here is tightening up the wincon. I suspect the best option is Fae of Wishes, but I am not sure what the wishboard would look like (so if anyone has suggestions please let me know!)

I could also add Oracle into the mix here as well as the deck does get through a lot of cards.

Beyond that there is room to tweak the numbers, the board, and the mana. Aftermath Analyst and Master of Waves are definite cuts, but likely some room for other cuts.

I could also consider adding another color. Like adding Black for Honest Rutstein and some removal, but overall I am skeptical if I can make the mana work for a third color.

Positioning wise the deck is strong for similar reasons that Niv has been seeing a resurgence, where it has a ton of value and can go over the top of any midrange decks. This deck has the added benefit of beating Niv thanks to the counterspells.

Some Brewing Lessons from these brews

Results have so far been strong with these decks and I am excited to play and refine them further. I think there are some good overall brewing lessons here:

Write down or say out loud your brewing thoughts- These decks all owe their origin to me writing up my thoughts on Arid Archway and Three Steps in my top OTJ cards article.

Ideas in your head tend to be vague, half formed thoughts. Something magical happens when you formally articulate a thought by writing it down or saying it out loud. When you do that it becomes something real that is easier for your brain to make new connections with.

Brewing is a process of continuous iteration- You can see in the decks above, while all having a common thread, they are significantly different from each other. Version 1 and 2 are the most similar and even those are 7 cards different.

You have an idea, test it, see what you learned, think on it for awhile, and then try something new based on what you learned. Eventually you triangulate on the thing that feels like the best version.

Remember successful cards and packages and keep an eye out for new contexts for them- Here I started with the Risen Reef/Master of Waves decks I had had success with in the past as a potential home for the Arid Archway, Spelunking, Arboreal Grazer, Three Steps package I wanted to try.

In Version 4, I’m adding in elements from the Mono-G Devotion decks. A deck that not long ago, before the Karn banning, was the best deck in the format, so it is reasonable to think that elements of that deck could be strong in a different context.

Always ask “What If”/Be Willing to Change Anything- I went into this deck with it being a Risen Reef + Master of Waves combo deck. A combo I love and have had success with. I think Master of Waves is well positioned in a lot of ways with Red decks like Phoenix and the Slickshot decks out there and being able to win through Amalia after it combos.

And despite that I am now fully cutting Master of Waves in favor of Cavalier and Storm the Festival. I wasn’t sure they would be better up front, but you need to challenge your assumptions and try different things to see what works.