Combos Browse all Suggest
Legality
| Format | Legality |
| 1v1 Commander | Legal |
| Archenemy | Legal |
| Arena | Legal |
| Block Constructed | Legal |
| Canadian Highlander | Legal |
| Casual | Legal |
| Commander / EDH | Legal |
| Commander: Rule 0 | Legal |
| Custom | Legal |
| Duel Commander | Legal |
| Gladiator | Legal |
| Highlander | Legal |
| Historic | Legal |
| Historic Brawl | Legal |
| Legacy | Legal |
| Leviathan | Legal |
| Limited | Legal |
| Modern | Legal |
| Modern Beyond Horizons | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Pioneer | Legal |
| Planar Constructed | Legal |
| Planechase | Legal |
| Premodern | Legal |
| Quest Magic | Legal |
| Vanguard | Legal |
| Vintage | Legal |
Explosive Vegetation
Sorcery
Search your library for up to two basic land cards, put them onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle.
Gidgetimer on How Good is Atalan Jackal?
1 week ago
Explosive Vegetation isn't a staple ramp card in commander. It is possible ramp in the lowest power of battlecruiser metas or a trap to inexperienced deck builders in any other meta. Even in commander you want your ramp predominately to be 2 or less mana with limited 3 mana ramp. Even then ramp at 3 should either: ramp multiple mana; be ramping you into something specific at 5 mana; or provide exceptional fixing.
This isn't to say that I have never run Explosive Veggies. I have and have also ran Skyshroud Claim. But most of the time there is no reason to run Veggies and the use case for Claim is decks with a mana dump in the command zone.
On the topic of Wood Elves; it may not be a worse Cultivate, but unless you are abusing the ETB or have a creature cast or ETB trigger you are also getting it IS just a worse Nature's Lore/Three Visits
wallisface on How Good is Atalan Jackal?
1 week ago
DemonDragonJ I hadn't mentioned Explosive Vegetation because I'm not a commander player, so not aware of any staple ramp cards. Personally however, I'd rather be doing something much more impactful for 4 mana than just getting lands (most 4 mana cards in Modern either win you the game or create massive board-pressure, and I feel like you'd be wanting similarly big-impact cards for edh at this mana-cost).
On my off-hand comment of "Ramping for ramps-sake doesn't really solve anything." - that comment wasn't pointed at any specific ramp card, but the concept/effect as a whole. There's not a lot of point including ramp cards in a deck if it's not working towards some kind of massive payoff. Any card that is ramping you is one-less impactful card in your hand, as well as one-less turn creating presence on the board. There is for-sure a lot of decks that need ramp in order to pull of some kind of ridiculous winning-combo (i.e. Amulet-Titan, Tron), but there's also a lot of cases where people add ramp into their deck to try and solve a mana-curve problem, or some other deckbuilding issue. There's a lot of times I see people here ramping as a bandaid-to-a-bigger-problem, when they realistically should be addressing their mana-curve. I have no idea if this is the case with your deck, but a good question to ask a deck is whether the ramp is allowing you to do something obnoxious, or if its actually a juxtaposition to the decks goals.
^ off course, that entire last paragraph is veering us wildly off-topic for this thread, so feel free to ignore.
DemonDragonJ on How Good is Atalan Jackal?
2 weeks ago
wallisface, Kazierts, your points make sense, and, perhaps I can find a creature that is a better alternative than is Atalan Jackal, although I still think that it is a very interesting idea, and you also said that "ramping for the sake of ramping does not solve anything," but is that not what Cultivate does? Also, why has no one yet mentioned Explosive Vegetation? For one more mana over Cultivate, it can put two lands onto the battlefield, making it essentially a double version of Rampant Growth.
DreadKhan on Which is More Important: Total …
3 weeks ago
In my limited experience, most decks want it's 'key pieces' to be as low to the ground as possible, this is why Night's Whisper is a very good card, it works in hands where you are short of key resources (but not so short that you couldn't risk the hand), and it's still completely worth playing if you draw it fairly late in the game; drawing 2 cards is almost universally a good thing, and only paying 1B to do it means you can either play it early or play it late and follow it up with something you drew. In contrast a card like Tower of Fortunes is a trap in almost every list because you need to input a grand total of 12 mana to draw ANY cards, meaning it's a dead card until you can generate 8 mana in one turn. That makes the card a lot worse in practice, since every game has early turns and only some games go long enough for Tower to really shine.
The same is true about ramping, something like Utopia Sprawl (or Crop Rotation might fit better lol) is incredibly efficient, it can be played turn 1 in many games and if it's drawn late it's literally mana neutral, making it a 'free roll' in decks that can count on having a Forest early. In contrast Explosive Vegetation is unplayable turn 1 in almost any situation, ditto for turn 2, and you will need to have ramped to play it by turn 3. This means that if you're stuck on 2 lands something like Farseek could find you a key land but Explosive Veggies will just sit there making you feel stupid. This makes Explosive Veggies a relatively unimpressive card, and that's why you don't see as much ramp that costs more than 3 (and many Spikey players hate paying more than 2 for ramp), it plays a lot worse in hands that would otherwise be keeps, and they can actually cost you games.
In contrast though there are 'value cards' (usually MV 4-6), these aren't necessarily going to win the game by themselves but these are important in metas that don't expect anyone to win too early. These types of cards can cost more mana because they're doing a lot, but most deck builders quickly realize you can only include so many of this type of card, specifically because they WILL clog your early hands. These types of cards drive up your average MV, most people like something in the 2.5-3.5 range (most prefer lower fwiw). It's worth noting that spells that cost 7-10 mana are often WAY more powerful, but most of these aren't necessary to win games, and due to their sky high MV these are even worse about clogging your hand. People are generally fine with Expropriate from a power level perspective, even if many find it boring, but I think a plurality of decks that are power level 7 and up eschew big mana stuff because they don't need it, if you can win with Rite of the Raging Storm then you don't need Expropriate. In cEDH people actually skew even lower on MVs, especially Ad Nauseam lists, and it turns out it's very possible to win games using almost nothing but MV 2 and under stuff, and unsurprisingly these incredibly fast and low to the ground win cons are the most powerful.
Ultimately the less resources you need to put into an effect the better that effect. It's equally true that all things being equal doing the exact same thing a turn earlier is MUCH better, and it keeps getting better each turn sooner (in an exponential manner). The complication for me is that cards aren't very equal, and it's actually possible to build decks that assiduously ignore all of the conventions I mentioned here (my Pavel Maliki deck has 17 5 drops and an average MV of 4.20, while my Sunastian Falconer deck has a gobsmacking MV of 5.35, both are functional decks IMHO) if you simply run better cards that have relatively high MVs, and run enough of them that you will consistently have one or more to choose from. The Pavel deck happily runs some stuff like Omen of Fire that can be completely dead because the deck can usually afford to have dead cards and still be a threat, and the Sunastian deck runs some pretty derpy 'big' creatures, many aren't even cost effective, it just doesn't matter because if you have enough huge creatures it doesn't matter if you paid extra for them, they're still huge creatures that will stomp the opponent into gravy! In effect both decks win the games they win via scale, Pavel tends to have a lot of cards that trade for multiple cards, and Sunastian's effects are often so bulky that they just go right over other decks.
Even in 1v1 some of my weird Legacy decks sneak in some pretty high MV cards, and often these cards can steal games when I'm in topdeck mode (in Legacy anything over MV 2 is considered 'really high' fwiw), even if they cost me a few when I draw terribly and have 5 3 drops in my first 9 cards and I scoop. Ball Lightning is a really bad card by many metrics, but if you playtest a Burn deck in throw one or two in they WILL steal the odd game due to card efficiency (Burn's biggest problem has always been running out of Bolts).
RockIV on Gruul commander deck: mana ramp …
3 months ago
thnks alot for the advice legendofa, but if i add the 1-mana guys, what should i take out? maybe Sylvan Ranger, Explosive Vegetation, and two more cards, to have at least four.
legendofa on Gruul commander deck: mana ramp …
3 months ago
I think you should add in the 1-mana Elves. You don't have very many options on turn 1 right now, and the potential card advantage you get from deck thinning with Thirsting Roots and similar cards isn't very meaningful. Cultivate is good, but Explosive Vegetation is probably a little too expensive. Your deck has a lot of high mana costs, so I would recommend ramping aggressively on turns 1-3 so you can start getting your big creatures out on turn 4. This also means that cards that put lands into play like Farhaven Elf are going to be more useful than cards that put lands into your hand like Sylvan Ranger.
RockIV on Gruul commander deck: mana ramp …
3 months ago
hi everyone, latley i been playing commander with my friends every weekend. i been using my gruul commander deck, that i build recently. im having a lot of fun and getting very good results, but im thinking that i can optimize my mana ramp.
So i want to know what do you guys think.
thats the deck : Clans Savagery :Beasts ,giants and dragons!
in this moment im using cards like Goblin Anarchomancer, Nightshade Dryad, Sylvan Caryatid, Zhur-Taa Druid, as my mana dorks, i also have Somberwald Sage that is a little more expensive in mana, but give me 3.
i also use cards like Farhaven Elf and Sylvan Ranger as my mana tutors among others.
i have also spells like Rampant Growth, Cultivate and Explosive Vegetation to help me.
my doubt came because i have cards like Llanowar Elves, Elvish Mystic and many others that are 1 mana, mana dorks, but i didnt add them to the deck. and also mana dorks and tutor that are more mana expensive like Wood Elves or Ondu Giant that didnt make it to the deck (i also have alot of gruul mana rocks, but i didnt add them because of my commanders hability)
i didnt want to add more mana tutoring spells like Migration Path, because my commander Ruric Thar, the Unbowed will punish me if i have more non creature spells.
i think that, i may optimize my mana ramp if i add the Llanowar Elves like creatures ,but i feel that i will make the mana ramp slower, if i take out cards like Cultivate, Thirsting Roots and Explosive Vegetation even if they arent creatures (because they take mana out of my deck and i will have less chance to draw mana). I also think that the 3 mana or 4 mana tutoring options that i have will make the deck slower.
what do you guys think? thnks everyone for reading :)
Coward_Token on Duskmourn
4 months ago
Late realization but Bello, Bard of the Brambles will probably work well with Impending creatures, since I imagine a lot of them will have an MV over 4.
You can do stuff like
T3 Bello
T4 Overlord of the Hauntwoods, make a land on ETB, then make another on attack.
Not quite like a three-mana Explosive Vegetation since you can't cast it on-curve, but still pretty good.
