Ramp

Overview

We define ramp as any effect that accelerates your mana either temporarily or permanently during the first 3 turns of the game. This definition includes land ramp such as Cultivate, artifact ramp (also known as “mana rocks”), creatures that can produce mana (often called “mana dorks”), cost reducers, and ritual effects like Dark Ritual.

More mana intensive or explosive effects which may grant a lot of mana over the course of the game, but do not ramp you early, are not included in this definition. Cards like Smothering Tithe, Goldspan Dragon, and Old Gnawbone are all great mana advantage engines, but should not count towards the amount of ramp in your deck.

While much of your ramp will be defined by the play pattern and strategy of your deck, we’ve found that density will remain fairly consistent across power levels with quality being the primary indicator of an increase in power.

Density

To calculate the proper amount of ramp to include during deckbuilding, we used a hypergeometric calculator to examine opening hands in commander games. A “good” opening hand was considered as having 1-2 ramp pieces. Inversely, having 0 or more than 3 ramp pieces in an opening hand was considered disadvantageous. The goal is to see 1-2 pieces of ramp by turn 2.

Based on these calculations, we would recommend that most commander decks should include 13-16 pieces of ramp. Furthermore, it is advantageous to run 13 pieces of ramp unless otherwise needed, as the marginal increase of running 16 pieces is only 1.3% percentage points (and thus not worth the opportunity cost of spending 3 card slots). The lowest amount of ramp any deck should reasonably run is 10, while the highest is 20.

If you’d like to hear further discussion on how these numbers were reached, watch this video.

Some reasons to include more than 13 pieces of ramp in your deck include:

• A deck or commander that has mana-intensive costs
• A deck with a top-heavy mana curve
• A theme or strategy that synergizes with ramping

Higher power level decks may run a slightly higher number of ramp effects in an effort to accelerate their game, as they may be willing to sacrifice card slots for additional speed.

Quality

What will vary most between power levels is the quality of your ramp effects.

• Ramp in Low-power decks may cost 2-3 mana, enter tapped, and not fix colors. This power level likely doesn’t include rituals or other effects that put your multiple turns ahead on mana.
• Ramp in Mid-power decks may cost 1-3 mana, enter untapped, fix colors efficiently, and include ritual-style effects.
• Ramp in High-power decks may cost 0-2 mana, enter untapped, fix colors efficiently, and put you multiple turns ahead on mana.