Welcome to the world of Supernatural Deserts
The world of mono-green is a naturalized world filled with creatures. Deep in the multiverse is a plane of vastly different deserts that rumble with supernatural strength. The unusual amount of noncreature spells in this plane of Green mana makes this place supernatural, filled with dinosaurs, planeswalkers, and treacherous, unrelenting lands. With tireless synergy and persistence, the plane of Supernatural Deserts positions cards like Ramunap Excavator, Wayward Swordtooth, and Nissa, Vital Force in places they have not yet been in Standard.
Deck Overview
This is a combo-ramp deck. Our overall goal is to get to turns 7 and beyond, because the idea is that this deck can out-muscle any midrange deck in Standard. Mostly every game will start with a mana dork on turn 2. After, depending on your hand, you will either be looking to set up a ramp strategy or a combo strategy. First, let's talk:
Combo
Wayward Swordtooth and Ramunap Excavator. If you have both of these in your starting hand with a mana dork, you are in good shape. You can either start filtering your deck of basics with Evolving Wilds, have recurring removal with Grasping Dunes, recurring buffs with Hashep Oasis, or keep an infinite chump blocker with Hostile Desert. If you draw this combo in the late game, you can utilize the lands in your already-filled graveyard as well as the lands on your deck. If you draw this combo in the early game, it is best to use it for:
Ramp
The Swordtooth and the Excavator bring a very serious element of ramp to the deck. Together with an Evolving Wilds, these cards are backbreaking in terms of land advantage. And by itself, Ramunap Excavator will bring value to the lands you throw in your graveyard, where the Swordtooth will help you get down your 28 lands and 9 mana dorks even faster than normal. This is the first--and largest--part of the engine. There is a smaller engine, and it gives us:
Card Draw
There are only 5 cards in the mainboard that help move this part of the engine along. While the Excavator provides a smaller form of card advantage by bringing your lands back, Lifecrafter's Bestiary and Nissa, Vital Force sneakily steal the game for our deck. The Bestiary is a card that feels indispensable to the deck, but we can't afford more than 2 slots for them. If this card comes down on or before turn 3, you are looking at an entire game of card filtering and extra card draw. Nissa comes down as a versatile threat that usually brings a hasty 5/5 with her. However, 90% of the time the goal with Nissa is to untap with her once so we can get the emblem. More often than not we are able to to have multiple lands ends the battlefield per turn, and with Nissa's emblem we are able to generate game-ending amounts of card advantage. Cascading Cataracts has nice synergy with Nissa's +1 ability, as it has indestructible.
If we get Nissa's emblem (which I would say happens about 60% of the time she goes down) we can outright win the game with mana dorks, Hashep Oasis, Hostile Desert, and the Excavator. But we won't always get the emblem, which is why we have:
Ramp Payoffs
Sandwurm Convergence as a 3-of, Zacama, Primal Calamity as a 1-of, Verdant Sun's Avatar as a 1-of, with Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar benefitting from all the ramp as a 1-of.
The addition of Llanowar Elves to Standard has impacted this deck a great deal. This deck is capable of powerful turn 3's and 4's now. Nissa on turn 3 into Sandwurm Convergence on turn 4 is a sequence that happens a nonzero amount of times. Hour of Promise on turn 3 can also be back breaking, allowing us to turn on Wayward Swordtooth and grab the exact lands we want. Verdant Sun's Avatar having a card slot is what surprises most people, but I found myself sideboarding him into almost all the matches I played so I felt a mainboard copy was warranted. It has been overwhelmingly the right call as he tends to come down after most of our opponent's removal has been spent and starts gaining a ridiculous amount of life. That big green dino is our ace in the hole game 1 against aggro.
Notes
In case it wasn't obvious, Zacama and Nicol Bolas are cast and utilized with Cascading Cataracts. This deck was initially created for World Shaper. After this deck took its form, World Shaper was relegated to the sideboard and eventually cut altogether. I have been playing this deck for 5 months now and its just a lot of fun to play.
General Match-ups
Control is our most fun matchup. Play the deck patiently and more often than not the Supernatural Deserts are more resilient than most control decks.
Aggro on the ground is very manageable for us game 1 and gets better post-board, but flying aggro variants are challenging to beat on game 1.
Midrange combo decks feel evenly matched. We will have an edge if they are also looking to ramp, but counters, artifacts, gift, and tokens decks tend to be fair match-ups.
Midrange creatures can be challenging depending on if our opponent can set up first. We're usually sweating a bit if Ghalta comes down on turn 4 or 5
Sideboarding
Pretty simple here. Life Goes On is extremely effective against any aggro deck. Shapers' Sanctuary will come in for Lifecrafter's Bestiary against aggro decks. Heroic Intervention is boarded in the least, but it just flat out wins the game against certain control decks and decks that rely on sweepers. Intervention is also a good way to protect Nissa. Naturalize is so useful in this meta that it was tough for me to take it out of the mainboard. While Naturalize doesn't make our deck work any better, it has a surprising amount of targets in Standard. Plummet is great for obvious reasons. Waker of the Wilds comes in against control and is an all-star in that match-up. A 2nd Verdant Sun's Avatar comes in against aggro and the life gain he provides is an essential boost for us there. Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar just wins certain games and feels essential to the deck, initially this 2nd copy was in the main but he is not as good against lower to the ground strategies.
In conclusion
This is a home-brewed deck that has surprised me with its competitiveness and extremely-well reception from the community. It was initially conceived to give World Shaper a home, but ended up being a home for Ramunap Excavator instead. It is one of the most fun Standard decks I've ever played and has the potential to feel absolutely broken at times. I hope you all enjoy it!
