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Hello everyone! Back in spoiler season there were a lot of cards to be excited about, but the most hyped cards were certainly the planeswalkers. In particular though, one planeswalker generated more fervor and excitement about Magic than I’ve seen in quite awhile, it even become a trending topic on Twitter. What walker generated that much hype?
Poor Tamiyo got… Mechanized? Eviled? Brainwashed? Phyrexified? Whatever you want it call it, she got got and a lot of players expressed their anguish as Tamiyo was (understandably) their favorite walker within the story.
Now I’m not much of an MTG Lore buff, so when I saw Tamiyo I was much more interested in how good it was. I’ll abridge that conversation to Tamiyo is clearly good, but if you want to see my complete thoughts, you can check out my preliminary review below.
With that, I figured the best shell to put Tamiyo was a Ramp shell as the ability to lock down annoying permanents added interaction to a deck that was desperately lacking in it. Using the few cards we had spoiled so far, this was my first take on how to approach the deck.
Creatures (19)
Instants (3)
Sorceries (4)
Artifacts (4)
Lands (22)
60 Cards
$146.62
A very classic Ramp shell with rampers, mid game bridges, and the late game payoffs with Storm the Festival topping off the curve. Time passed, we got the rest of the spoilers, but despite a lot of players talking about how to best use the other 3 walkers, Tamiyo was left out in the cold. Maybe it’s the lest exciting of all of them, but I’m still surprised about how little conversation I saw about Tamiyo in a game play perspective. With little else than my own thoughts to go on, I decided to try out my shell to see how Tamiyo, and by extension, Simic Ramp felt.
After a good amount of testing, I was expecting the deck to be solid and Tamiyo to be good, but I’m happy to say I clearly underestimated both Simic and Tamiyo. I’m not positive I would hail this as an easy Tier 1 archetype, but the power level of the deck felt high and could mostly keep up with the aggro decks largely present on Bo1 ladder. With some tuning, here’s the current build I’ve been playing.
Creatures (14)
Instants (4)
Sorceries (4)
Artifacts (4)
Enchantments (4)
Lands (22)
60 Cards
$243.44
With any good Ramp deck, how you’re producing extra mana is the most important part of the deck. Before Kamigawa, we had a range of really good and really middling options. Tangled Florahedron was always one of the best ramp creatures as it can be a 2 mana dork (which is the standard nowadays), but could also be a land giving it substantially more versatility.
The issue was the other rampers though; you had to pick between Prosperous Innkeeper which only gave you one mana at the benefit of not needing to survive or Lotus Cobra which needed to both survive and have another get played to do anything. Neither were exciting options, but Prosperous Innkeeper generally won out as getting your mana dork killed was always disastrous. Thankfully, Kaigawa provided us with a ramper that is much more on the Tangled Florahedron side.
Careful Cultivation, on its face, is not a particularly good card. You can enchant a creature or artifact to get minor boosts and make it into a ramper, but that effect would be wildly unplayable in Standard and even suspect in most Limited environments. However, we don’t have interest in the normal card so much as the channel ability! It’s pretty innocuous, 1G to make a mana dork, but it’s been absolutely excellent. It’s really hard for the opponent to know whether or not you have acceleration when you just leave 2 mana open on turn 2 which can easily lead them to play sub-optimally. Do they hold up removal in anticipation for a mana dork that may not be there or just deploy threats? Most of the time, they’re going to choose the latter option which is correct, but will let you keep your dork for at least a turn. I know I’m hyping up keeping a dork alive for just a turn which may seem silly, but in this deck, it can absolutely make all the difference.
For this ramp deck in particular, the power is definitely the curve. Having 10 two mana rampers and a potential 12 four mana follow ups is what makes this deck so good, especially when the 4 drops are so good. Esika's Chariot, as everyone knows by now, is an absolute back breaker for any deck. Getting to play it on turn 3 and attack on turn 4 is the absolute nightmare scenario for most decks, and if you manage to follow up with a turn 4 Wrenn and Seven, generally a concession follows very soon after.
Next up, we have our pseudo four mana planeswalker with Tamiyo, Compleated Sage who, as expected, has been quite good. Locking down attackers for a few turns then suddenly going for the ultimate ability has been a common and really powerful play pattern with Tamiyo. However, there was an aspect of Tamiyo I missed the first time around. I liked the minus ability as being able to more or less reanimate something was a nice ability that Simic doesn’t generally have access to. What I missed about it (or more accurately glossed over), was that it makes it a TOKEN. What card likes tokens?
Have you ever had an Esika's Chariot copy itself? I have and it is amazing. I’ll admit this doesn’t have a ton of applications in the deck nor has it come up terribly often, but copying Kazandu Mammoth or Quandrix Cultivator over a Cat token is far from irrelevant.
Speaking of Quandrix Cultivator, it rounds out our four drops for the deck. Sure, it is significantly less exciting than the other 4 drops, but it’s always a generally solid card. A 3/4 that gives you an untapped land is a great mid game bridge, helps you get to your expensive spells, and lets you double spell much more easily. Furthermore, turn 2 ramper into Quandrix Cultivator, Fading Hope, untap and Storm the Festival is a disgusting curve that happens often enough to make this inclusion tenable.
Although I gave a lot of attention to the four drops, the top end of our curve deserves a lot of attention as well. Wrenn and Seven is an absolute monster of a walker and works extremely well with this deck in general. Plus ability to find channel lands and fuel Tamiyo, a minus to instantly win with Esika's Chariot, and two other abilities I rarely touch but have utility? Sign me up! Then finally, we can try and cheat in multiple insane cards at the same time with our top end of Storm the Festival! With Divide by Zero gone and counterspells at an all time low, I’ve been resolving significantly more Storms and it very rarely disappoints.
All in all, this deck is an absolute blast, feels very strong, and would likely translate just as well into Bo3 with access to blue for counterspells.
POTENTIAL INCLUSIONS AND NOTABLE EXCLUSIONS
Jwari Disruption
I’m a big fan of MDFCs and of Jwari Disruption in general, but I feel that it doesn’t make too much sense in this deck. We’re tapping out most turns and by the time we aren’t, it’s likely the late game where Jwari isn’t that good anyway.
Malevolent Hermit
Amazing sideboard card that could see main deck play, but seems unnecessary in the current metagame.
Grafted Identity
An old inclusion in Simic Ramp decks. It works rather well with Storm the Festival as it circumvents the cast trigger which is pretty nifty. Definite consideration for a 1-2 of play.
Neverwinter Dryad
I’m on the perpetual fence about this card. It’s very good if you get it turn 1, but it sucks later, but all mana dorks generally suck later, so I never know how to feel about it. If you want to jam 4 over the Lotus Cobra and something else, you have my blessing.
Azusa's Many Journeys
I’ll admit I haven’t’ tested this card yet mostly as I forgot it existed until I began writing the article. I feel like this would be the weakest of all the rampers (aka worse than Lotus Cobra), but I’m definitely not positive on that. Both this and Cobra require another land to be good, but Journey requires it immediately with the tradeoff of being functionally unkillable. I think trying these over Lotus Cobra would be a reasonable experiment.
Prosperous Innkeeper
I personally like the more risky ramp creatures more as I feel removal isn’t as common right now, but if you’re a big Innkeeper fan, go ahead.
Field Trip
It would seem obvious to play Field Trip in this deck as having access to the Lesson board in Bo1 is valuable, but I’ve been pretty unimpressed by Field Trip in most Ramp lists. I used to play this back in Standard 2022, but I quickly replaced them for Divide by Zero which is obviously no longer an option. If this was a more traditional ramp strategy looking to play 7+ drops I would likely play this, but between commonly skipping 3 mana most games and not having too much top end, so this loses a lot of value.
Primal Adversary
I’m always privy to playing 1-2 copies of this as it’s decent in the late game, but not blocking well is pretty killer. Pretty easy pass, but not crazy to include.
Colossal Skyturtle
If we were playing a more traditional Ramp deck, this would likely make the cut .
Koma, Cosmos Serpent
Same logic as Turtle, but this would likely be our main win condition.
TIPS AND TRICKS
- I use Fading Hope rather aggressively as you can generally out value your opponent’s threats if you reach the midgame.
- Don’t be afraid to play Tangled Florahedron out as a land if you have multiple rampers. I think I end up playing Florahedron as a land more often than I do as a creature.
- Although 99% of the time we’re using Careful Cultivation for the channel ability, don’t discount the ability to give one of your creatures reach. It has saved me from a few Goldspan Dragon!
- There’s a lot of different tokens in this deck so make sure you’re being flexible in what you’re targeting with Esika's Chariot.
- I mentioned it before, but the land from Quandrix Cultivator comes into play untapped, plan your turns around that.
- Sometimes not making the Treefolk off Wrenn and Seven is correct if you believe they can just kill the token then kill Wrenn. 6 loyalty is a lot of loyalty to work through and the ultimate is very powerful if you can get to it!
