Bant Ramp in Standard

For a while, I had been struggling to find a deck I liked in Standard. Mono-Red Aggro, UW Control, Jeskai Fires, and Temur Reclamation are all cool in their own way, and each has a consistent game plan. I don’t mind playing one of them in a big tournament — in fact, I brought UW to DreamHack Anaheim just a few weeks ago.

But my favorite decks to play in Magic are those that don’t go into every game with the same set plan. I have the most fun when I can change up my strategy and catch my opponent off-guard, and if I’m playing Arena at home or going to FNM, I want to have fun. I tried some decks that seemed to suit my playstyle, but they kept losing to Mono-Red, UW and Jeskai’s super-powerful game plans.

Then, I found Bant.

Bant Ramp by Crokeyz

1 Dream Trawler
3 Elspeth Conquers Death
4 Growth Spiral
2 Hydroid Krasis
3 Knight of Autumn
2 Mystical Dispute
2 Narset, Parter of Veils
4 Nissa, Who Shakes the World
2 Shatter the Sky
2 Tamiyo, Collector of Tales
4 Teferi, Time Raveler
3 Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath
4 Breeding Pool
1 Castle Vantress
2 Fabled Passage
3 Forest
4 Hallowed Fountain
1 Island
1 Plains
4 Temple Garden
2 Temple of Enlightenment
4 Temple of Mystery
2 Temple of Plenty

Sideboard:
4 Aether Gust
3 Dovin’s Veto
2 Mystical Dispute
1 Heliod’s Intervention
1 Agent of Treachery
4 Devout Decree

When these Bant decks started popping up, UW Control was the best deck at the time, making up half of the Top 16 at DreamHack Anaheim. The plan Crokeyz leaned toward — with only one Dream Trawler and reactive cards like Knight of Autumn and Narset — is to play a similar game to UW Control, but go bigger with Nissa and Hydroid Krasis. This deck isn’t good at being aggressive, but it is good at grinding the opponent out. The mana base and the overall game plan may be less consistent, but this deck does several things that should theoretically improve the UW Control match-up.

Bant Ramp, by petomartinez

3 Arboreal Grazer
3 Dream Trawler
3 Elspeth Conquers Death
4 Growth Spiral
4 Hydroid Krasis
4 Nissa, Who Shakes the World
3 Shatter the Sky
4 Teferi, Time Raveler
3 Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath
4 Breeding Pool
1 Fabled Passage
5 Forest
4 Hallowed Fountain
1 Island
1 Plains
4 Temple Garden
3 Temple of Enlightenment
4 Temple of Mystery
2 Temple of Plenty

Sideboard:
3 Aether Gust
4 Devout Decree
2 Dovin’s Veto
2 Lovestruck Beast
4 Mystical Dispute

petomartinez’s deck has controlling elements like Shatter the Sky, but it’s also more effective at playing an aggressive game. This makes me want to lean harder into an aggressive angle: mana dorks, casting Nissa and Aether Gust in the same turn cycle, threats that let you turn on the jets and end the game if they resolve. This is a near-perfect fit for how I like to play Magic.

Regardless of how I’m building my Bant deck, I want to punch holes in UW’s plans. As I see it, their biggest vulnerabilities are:

1. Their win conditions
2. An overreliance on counterspells (despite the fact that Teferi, Time Raveler is the most important card in the mirror).

The UW mirror tends to play out with a sort of mutually assured destruction in mind. Both players have so few relevant permanents that simply resolving a threat (potentially with Mystical Dispute or Dovin’s Veto up) can be devastating. Bant skirts this issue by playing a higher density of threats; you don’t care as much if your opponent counters a spell or resolves their own threat when you have more threats or answers coming. Plus, if you and your UW opponent both have Teferi in play, chances are they’ll have far more dead cards than you do. The cheap counterspells in petomartinez’s sideboard may seem counterintuitive for this reason, but Dispute and Veto are both too good to pass up in the match-up.

However, this reliance on Dispute and Veto post-board was something I wanted to avoid, if possible. I found myself drawn toward a Bant strategy that was even more aggressive than petomartinez’s build.

Bant Ramp, by Felix Sloo

3 Arboreal Grazer
4 Dream Trawler
4 Elspeth Conquers Death
4 Hydroid Krasis
3 Maraleaf Pixie
4 Nissa, Who Shakes the World
4 Paradise Druid
4 Teferi, Time Raveler
3 Voracious Hydra
4 Breeding Pool
6 Forest
4 Hallowed Fountain
1 Island
4 Temple Garden
4 Temple of Enlightenment
2 Temple of Mystery
2 Temple of Plenty

Sideboard:
4 Aether Gust
4 Destiny Spinner
3 Devout Decree
2 Return to Nature
2 Thrashing Brontodon

The first change I made was to replace Growth Spiral with more mana-accelerating creatures. Arboreal Grazer might not draw a card, but it is relevant in combat, and it lets you play Teferi on turn two. Growth Spiral is better if you’re planning on playing Shatter the Sky, but I’m playing aggressively enough that I’d consider cutting Shatter altogether. I also included Maraleaf Pixie, which is effective at pressuring Planeswalkers.

The trickiest piece of the puzzle was figuring out what to replace Shatter with. My friend Nick Prince suggested Voracious Hydra, which would give the deck a way to remove early creatures while helping me play a proactive game.

Playing a slow game and leaving up mana doesn’t always work with this build, and it’s easy to get punished if the opponent sticks a Trawler. In an ideal game, I’m putting creatures on the board so I can use them to make my Nissas and Dream Trawlers win the game more often. I saw someone on ladder playing Destiny Spinner in Bant a while ago, and it seemed like a great way to pressure UW’s Planeswalkers and life total.

In general, Bant decks have a strong match-up against other decks with Teferi, like UW and Jeskai Fires. Replacing Bant’s controlling elements with aggressive ones should help in those match-ups; we have so many threats that there’s little risk of being ground out by a Castle Ardenvale. Bant should also do well against Temur Clover, as Brazen Borrower and Bonecrusher Giant line up awkwardly against Nissa when their life total is under pressure. However, ramp strategies can struggle against Jund Sacrifice; they can play a controlling game more effectively and don’t care that much about minimal pressure on their life total.

Conclusion

The aggro and control decks in the format are obviously very powerful. While there’s something to be said for taking a different angle, decks like UW, Mono-Red and Jeskai can overpower many decks that try to play a different game. Given their good results, it seems likely that players like Crokeyz and petomartinez found a deck that can beat UW Control while effectively minimizing the downsides. But maybe I really did find a combination of cards that works. At the very least, I have a pretty good deck that lets me play Magic the way I want to, so I can win and have fun. That’s more valuable to me than any amount of practice with UW would be.