Interesting discussion.

Clearly, at the core of Ramp's power is Ulamog, and the inevitability he offers with From Beyond. But what makes the deck so difficult to counter is that Moss has a 50%+ (53% on the play, 57% on the draw) chance of being in hand on turn four and setting back whatever the opposing deck is trying to do. A lot of decks can also do powerful things, and may be able to race Ramp if they weren't down a land because Ramp had to run Natural Connection or something instead of Moss. It's the combination of "incredibly powerful late-game" with "seriously disruptive on the way there" that makes Ramp too strong.

Also worth noting is how control-proof the RG ramp late game is. Ulamog, Desolation Twin and Oblivion Sower have powerful on-cast triggers, hedging against permission, and Gaea's Revenge straight up can't be countered. Ulamog, Desolation Twin, Gaea's Revenge and Omanth all also resist one-for-one removal. And the whole deck is packed with card advantage.

Thanks, I laughed hard at that

Well... IMHO, all the statements about cards in this sub-forum should be addressed as "Duels Only" meaning that when we say "this is OP" we mean strictly "for our pool or our meta". Moss is **** in any paper format but in our (slow and restricted) pool it works entirely different.

And yes, it kills fun for me too. One of the reasons I rarely run 3-colored decks now and never try 4+ colors.

Every format has a card that people like to complain about. It's always the same type of complaints too.

1. CARD is ruining the meta, if it wasn't for it people would play more interesting decks

2. CARD is an easy win for noobs and scrubs, real pros shouldn't play it

and the classical counterclaim

3. CARD is the best tech to win, only pros play it and if you lose to it, you're a scrub

This simple pattern has proven to guarantee "entertaining" arguments (complaining, whining, trolling) from set rotation to set rotation in Standard, from ban change to ban change in Modern, etc. I'm glad Duels has its own version.

But seriously, don't you agree this whole thing is getting kind of stale?

I agree GFTL.

As much as I'm an accomplice in this too, it does feel like after long periods of silence we get a thread title of either "...Moss is bad and you all suck" or "...Moss is OP and should be banned". It is stale it is boring.

Me, Rabble, Beast and others say: This is the single most unfun and unhealthy thing in the game, you should feel bad for stifling deck variance.

DJ, Fel, Mjack and others say: You just don't construct good decks, Moss is laughably bad, get good.

No one's stance has changed (bar Beast who used to call me a scrub until the Moss plague hit Xbone ), and these posts just seem to exist to spark an argument. Come April I request a new CoC ruling for this sub forum. Moss topics be deleted on sight.

Gideon reproach is ok if 4 toughness and many 5 drops have 5 toughness. Bone splinter? I love that card. You have to build around it and is very effective. Roil spout? Give me another turn to draw land. The other blue card that effectively does the same thing and can scry but I cannot remember the name. The red burn that does 4 damage? (again can't remember name) You have quite a few options there. Oh and I didn't mention any of the counter spells.

I have far more problem with Gideon than acid moss. Every competitive deck I build I have to think of ways to handle a Gideon. The current card pool doesn't allow too many ways to handle a planeswalker.

Yeah I never understood why moss was never mentioned at all during origins but bam B4Z hit and it was the big thing. Not saying that I get B4Z with big Eldrazi made ramp much more compelling but ramp was not born out of B4Z but it seems moss hate was.

Anyway I was caught up in it too and very consciously decided not to run ramp and in particular moss in the iOS tournament, maybe to my cost. No surprises the top 2 out of that were ramp with of course moss as part of that.

I don't think folks have an issue with cards that help you ramp, the issue is a card that screws up your land, and yes it dissuades you from running 4 and 5 colour. Agree that is a bad thing. Just look at Magic 2015 where 5 colour builds were decent and competitive, yes I know the power level was much higher but the meta top tier was not so one sided.

Gaea's Revenge cannot be countered.

I think Brutal Expulsion was in mind while writing down counterspells

The problem there is immediately you're in U/R and waiting for 4 mana to cast it (if they've most you and are casting turn 5 Gaea's in Mjack's example you're still on 3 mana). Additionally, you would need to be running White or Black as well in a control deck for our pool, so you're playing into the hands of Moss AGAIN in order to have a rounded Control package. All so we can have the one card that can effectively Remand Gaea's for a turn, and by and large it isn't worth it.

I think once BFZ came in, the extra big creatures, green battle lands and sweepers (particularly radiant flames and planar outbursts) all made moss much more powerful - you've got those additional benefits from it that it didn't have in origins. Plus possibly shutting down parts of the 3,4,5 colour decks!

I don't really think Moss will be a problem. It wasn't a problem during Origins season. I think the card people most complained about back then was Evolutionary Leap. Remember how worked up people got over evolpea? I look forward to seeing what the Duels Most Hated Card Of The Season (tm) will be, come April. I think it unlikely that Moss will be that card.

Next Moss? Whatever the next top deck's most obnoxious common is I guess.

I think Kozilek will become potentially more frustrating than Ulamog. I can see it now, "GG can't cast a thing stupid discard-counter always up!" I mean going up to 7 cards, being unable to counterspell-war it (providing it has the cmc card needed for the spell of course). It might as well read "hexproof and indestructible" in our pool.

Moss Ramp has a good chance at still being relevant come april. The decision to nerf the aggressively costed midrange/control goodstuff cards that typically dominate the paper meta is very deliberate on Wizards' part and not likely to be revised IMO. And those are just the cards that would make Ramp irrelevant.

Also, complaints about the top ranking decks are business as usual, but I think this is still different. Nobody was clamoring for a Thopter Spy Network ban last season.

@BBB,

It's not "laughably bad". Most of the value just comes from fetching a cinder glade, not the part people complain about. If Wastes becomes a thing in the next set, it will probably be bad.

Kozilek is going to draw 5-7. That's going to be bonkers.

@other thing,

Read the quoted post. At 3 mana you are holding up a Celestial Flare for Gaea. This is not considered realistic to have all the time as well as a decent counterspell.

@above,

This is where I would compare the game to Hearthstone, where a lot of people have the mentality "please nerf it so I don't have to deal with it anymore" about anything that isn't op, but is in every deck, such as piloted shredder. I would put moss in the same cat. Annoying as heck when it's good but not that broken. The real problem for control is that in 30 games I've never actually had a control deck win because they sat there and removed my stuff (unless mirror counts).

yeah, IMO that goes back of what I said about WotC purposefully nerfing the kind of cards that would normally dominate the meta.

I honestly think the reasoning went something like "this is intended for beginners, beginners hate control and love big green things". And they kinda went overboard... Now people are complaining about BigGreenThings.dec and the absence of efficient answers to it.

Whilst I find moss truly annoying, I honestly hate/fear exile cards more as stuff like thought-knot can specifically remove good and important stuff more permanently. The fact that this is a format where the rarity restriction can be very frustrating as your rares and mythics are removed from hand with no way of recovering is most likely gooing to be just as frustrating and annoying as moss.

@mjack

Moss does go some way to increasing the power level vs aggro. A Ramp deck running Canopy Vistas needn't actually use White cards, but have them as an easy 3rd colour for Radiant Flames. Being able to wipe for 3 without stretching a mana base further is HUGE vs Thopters, and transforms what should be a massively punishable turn off for the Thopter deck, into a wipe of all Chiefs, Engineers, everything outside of Aggregate. It's almost reminiscent of the b/s standard pulled with "Dark Jeskai" or "Esper Green" until rotation. Except instead of a whole wealth of 4 color deck types, we have one 2-3 color deck that can splash with anything labeled "forest" to boost its defences/advantage with no real loss in efficiency. As I recall from earlier in this thread, this should echo your sentiment regarding Mardu decks. Expect instead of paper standard where all whacky combinations of mana bases are fair game, we have one fat kid hogging all the goodies.

For those who feel UlaMoss won't be a problem once the expansions hits, consider the following deck, where every card but Kozilek and Nissa is confirmed (and those two are pretty safe bets).

3 x Jaddi Offshoot
4 x Gatecreeper Vine
4 x Nissa's Pilgrimage
1 x Nissa, Vastwood Seer
1 x Nissa, Voice of Zendikar
3 x Titan's Presence
2 x Pulse of Murasa
4 x Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
2 x From Beyond
2 x Thought-Knot Seer
2 x Outland Colossus
2 x Reality Smasher
2 x Nissa's Renewal
1 x Greenwarden of Murasa
1 x Oblivion Sower
1 x Ruin Processor
1 x Kozilek, the Great Distortion
1 x Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger

4 x Evolving Wilds
4 x Wastes
2 x Rogue's Passage
13 x Forest


That deck has eight sources of life gain, six early brick walls against aggressive decks in Thought-Knot Seer, Oblivion Smasher and Outland Colossus, and some of the best removal in the game with 3x Titan's Presence backed up by eight good colorless creatures.

It has powerful inevitability with Ulamog, Kozilek and From Beyond to tutor for them. It's very well positioned to protect Nissa, Voice of Zendikar and play to ultimate her. It's also very well positioned to ultimate Nissa, Vastwood Seer. Even if she dies, it's easy to return her.

It's got a potentially powerful Pulse of Murasa -> Greenwarden -> Pulse of Murasa loop. Greenwarden and Pulse also give three different ways to recur any non-exiled creature that might be needed again - and there are some darn good ones. It's got six different ways to exile to turn on the life-gain cast trigger on Ruin Processor. It's got a solid chance at cleanly answering opposing Ulamogs with Titan's Presence revealing Ulamog or Kozilek. It's got early chump blockers that also protect the winning conditions from Fleshbag. Ulamog and Kozilek have potentially game winning on-cast triggers, so permission is of limited use against it.

And with Moss and Thought-Knot Seer, it has six disruptive turn four plays that could seriously set back whatever the opposing deck's game plan may be. There's a 70% chance at least one of those two cards will be in-hand on turn four. What realistically beats this? Consistently?

Damn Randomname...you just created a nightmare scenario even my bias anti-Moss ravings would never dare conceive. That looks terrifying!