Welcome to the Ramos Storm deck! This version of the deck is a budget shell with choice upgrades that I already had from my pool of cards. For the original deck I built this list off of, go to this reddit link: https://www.reddit.com/r/BudgetBrews/comments/9hw1ws/ramos_charmstorm/
NOTE: This deck is NOT a tier 1 deck and does take time to set up. If your meta requires that you play a deck that wins consistently by turn 6, I would recommend picking a faster deck. That being said, this is the most fun deck I have ever played due to its versatility between control and storm, as well as the interesting possibilities of storming off.
This deck is basically a deck designed to control the board until we can go off with Ramos. Play Ramos/Eye on one turn, then the next turn, you can try for the win. Or you can wait until you have 9+ mana to combo.
The game plan of this deck is to start off by ramping hard with lots of land ramp. I haven't focused on upgrading the mana base because I want this to be relatively budget, so I have lots of cards like
Rampant Growth
to get to 6 or more lands. If you want to upgrade, I would recommend putting in
Birds of Paradise
,
Kiora's Follower
, and other sorts of multi-color access. I actually have these cards so I will probably slot in this type of mana ramp to see how well it does.
Once we ramp, we draw or wheel into a decent hand that can allow us to start wiping the board and removing key pieces from our opponents. Because the Ramos Storming takes a large initial investment (and because this budget version is slower than an optimized list), it is important to have these clears and removal for stopping our opponents. How much you include and what type (creature, artifact, enchantment, etc) is meta-dependent.
If you have made it to turn 6, you should have at least 8-10 lands, which means you can start the Ramos storm. Now here is where it gets tricky. Ramos requires 5 counters to get started, so you usually need 2 spells to get there, unless you hit a
Jund Charm
or have
Hardened Scales
effects. This means you will need 9+ mana, 6 for Ramos and 3+ mana for spells. You can choose to play Ramos on a different turn than the combo turn in order to split up mana investment, but this leaves him up to removal. Learn when to do this to maximize efficiency. Also, pulling out Ramos and not using him to storm sometimes can convince opponents that Ramos might not be the biggest threat. If you can use Ramos for value, it can be fine, but I would attempt to storm most of the time.
Once Ramos is out and has 5 counters, use his MANA ability (can't be responded to) to generate the 10 mana. Be VERY careful of how you spend it. I get screwed all the time on this, missing the colors to keep storming. Know your color distribution and what to leave up. Once you have 10 mana, play big value spells like
Rishkar's Expertise
. After this, you should have little trouble chaining spells with the blinking cards, which allow you to activate Ramos's ability twice because he enters as a new permanent. Then, drop the Aetherflux and beam everyone.
Another way to win, while higher in mana investment, is almost 100% guaranteed to win, unlike the finnicky storm element. This combo is
Eye of the Storm
+
Brass's Bounty
+ any draw spell. Once again, best to split up the cost, with Eye on one turn, then brass's, getting mana, into draw, getting more treasures and cards, into another spell, netting lots of mana and card draw, getting the win from there.
Overall, the deck is really fun, and I would recommend it. This deck leaves a lot of room for improvements, as I don't have a solid manabase (Like fetches/shocks) or ramp (Birds, Mana Vault, etc.), but if you upgrade this budget deck into a consistent and predictable deck, it can win much more, even though it takes some of the fun out. Thanks for reading!
*f-pre*
