Selesnya Ramp – Alchemy Deck Guide

Hey all. Strickles here with another Alchemy deck guide, this time featuring a fun ramp deck that can take over the late game and end the game in just one or two turns. 

The Alchemy meta is pretty diverse right now, with a mix of aggro, other big mana decks, Heist, and midrange. So, a bit of everything. What this deck is good at is building up a big board turn after turn, forcing the opponent to answer it or fall behind again and again.

As most opponents can’t do this, we have the mid to late game locked down most of the time. While aggro decks can be tough, we have access to go removal and even sweepers in the sideboard.

Alright, enough build up, let’s dive right in.

Key Cards and Gameplan

Like all good ramp decks we start on turn one with Llanowar Elves. Llanowar Elves help us get our ramp on early, but also helps us pay for our big spells later on, including casting our landfall cards on turn four and then deploying a land right away to trigger their effects.

Our best follow up to turn one Llanowar Elves is our three mana ramp, either Overlord of the Hauntwoods or Clifftop Lookout. These spells help us accelerate to our four and five drops, but mostly we just want to get as much mana into play as possible so that we can use our other cards to keep ramping.

At four mana we have Blossoming Tortoise, another way to ramp, milling us and returning a land to play. Blossoming Tortoise is part of this deck because it makes our lands activate for one less, but also because it gives us more ways to hit multiple instances of landfall in a turn.

This matters for our other four drops: Felidar Retreat and Mythweaver Poq. Felidar Retreat is a powerful enchantment reprinted in Foundations. Whenever a land enters, we can either make a 2/2 cat, or pump up our whole team and give them vigilance. After developing a board and making a few cats, we will want a turn with multiple instances of landfall to pump up our whole team several times to force through lethal.

Mythweaver Poq also helps with this, as the first time one or more lands enter under our control each turn, he conjures a copy into play, thus triggering landfall a second time.

Genesis Wave is our ultimate payoff though. We do want to cast it for a minimum of X=5, as all of our permanents cost five or less, but of course the bigger the better. Not only will this put good permanents into play, but it will usually put several lands into play, triggering landfall two or three times, giving our whole team a big boost to power. Genesis Wave is great at closing out the game, but also great once we have a lot of mana and need to develop our board.

Filling out the deck, we have Vivien Reid, a powerful planeswalker that can find us more threats or land drops, and also take out opposing enchantments, artifacts, or fliers. Unfortunately, she can’t find Felidar Retreat or Genesis Wave, but I think she is still a worthy inclusion as a source of card advantage, especially since she can help us hit a land drop every turn.

Scavenging Ooze gives us main deck graveyard hate and another mana sink later in the game. This is definitely the flex slot in the deck, and you could absolutely play more removal spells or a different creature in this spot.

Get Lost is our removal spell of choice, as it also hits enchantments which are very prevalent in the format right now. We also have one Omenpath Journey, just as a way to have guaranteed land drops every turn, but this is also a flex slot.

Our lands are varied, partially to support Omenpath Journey but also because when we hit a lot of lands with Genesis Wave we want them to do more than just be lands.

Restless Prairie and Soulstone Sanctuary give us more threats in our land base. I recommend thinking through your turn completely in the mid to late game, as you may want to activate your creature land before playing a land for turn when you have Felidar Retreat in play, to also put a counter on the creature land.

Fountainport gives us a way to make fish tokens or make treasure tokens to cast a bigger Genesis Wave, and again you can make the token before playing your land for turn if you are planning on pumping up your creatures with that land drop. Fountainport is also great for sacrificing the cat tokens Felidar Retreat makes to find more action, or in desperate times, the land token made by Overlord of the Hauntwoods.

Demolition Field can answer opposing creature lands or just mess with the colors our opponent has access to, and more importantly is a way for us to trigger Felidar Retreat or Mythweaver Poq on our opponent’s turn.

Fabled Passage is great for making two lands drops in a turn, and as Mythweaver Poq only triggers once each turn you can wait to crack it until your opponent’s turn to conjure another land into play.

Lush Portico and Temple of Plenty help us find what we need. Temple of Plenty is only included to help meet the requirements of Omenpath Journey, so if you choose to cut that, then just play four Lush Portico, as the surveil is better with Blossoming Tortoise if we find an extra land we don’t want.

Sideboard

Our sideboard gives us some great options to compete with the top strategies in the format.

Authority of the Consulshelps slow down aggro decks like Boros Mice, helping us slow things down so we can ramp up and then deploy our removal spells or sweepers.

Day of Judgment helps us keep aggro boards clear, and at four mana we can deploy it before starting to go off with Felidar Retreat or Mythweaver Poq.

Pawpatch Formation is just one of the best sideboard cards in the format because of how flexible it is and how popular enchantments are in the format. Being able to answer enchantments and fliers with the backup plan of drawing a card and making a food.

Parting Gust is great against Heist, getting back our heisted creatures, but also just good against aggro decks. Exiling a buffed up mouse to give them a 1/1 fish is totally worth it if it keeps us alive.

Lastly we have Soul-Guide Lantern for more graveyard exile. We don’t want Rest in Peace since we have our own graveyard synergies, and Scavenging Ooze can be a bit slow against certain graveyard strategies.

Wrapping Up

Alchemy is a lot of fun right now. There are so many viable strategies, and no overly dominant deck. There is still tons of room for innovation and unexplored synergies and builds of decks. If you are getting bored with Standard, or just want a less defined format where you can really play anything, give Alchemy a try.

As always, I hope this deck guide was interesting and gave you a new idea to try. There is a ton of powerful ramp in the format and lots of options to do something different than what I’ve put together here, so if you are a fan of big mana decks, start looking over the cards legal in the format and you’ll find all kinds of goodies.

I’ll be back later this week with an update to the Alchemy tier lists, so until then, best of luck in all of your matches.