It's early this year that we're on a cottage trip when Richard (Newby Boo) gets us cooking this deck. The vision came to him in a daze as he reefed on his Magic smoke pen on the front proch. He entered the room in a puff of smoke and inspiration as he begged the question "do you think we can play Colossal Dreadmaw?'' It was that vision, that idea, nay, that dream that led us down this path of greatness. We sifted through the jankier options such as Imperiosaur, Grazing Whiptail, and Drowsing Tyrannodon. The deck was functional and fun but it was missing more dinos. With a heavy heart we set the deck aside and waited for a new hope. Lost Caverns of Ixalan was announced and we waited in anticipation for spoiler season. Well, now we're here with new dinos and with a list that we believe is worth sharing. We present to you, Yoshi Ramp.
(Full Deck List on Moxfield)
Pauper has a lot of fat Dinosaurs for us to utulize. Annoyed Altisaur is the best ramp payoff in the format and adds a lot of legitimacy to the deck. Colossal Dreadmaw is an interesting card to evaluate. It has no ETB and dies to a lot of Pauper removal such as Journey to Nowhere and Cast Down. That being said, it will dominate and close out the game if it lives. A 6/6 trampler is actually one of the most powerful things you can do if it dpesn't die. Cascading into it is extremely powerful if your opponent is out of answers. It is a little scary to run this over something like a Boarding Party in a world with Snuff Out and Counterspell, but I think we can live with that. Tyrranax Atrocity was the only remotely playable dinosaur we saw for a while and it's alright. A 4/4 haste puts the beats on people, and it's decent to cascade into. We were really hoping for a more impactful dinosaur in the 5 drop slot from this set, but for now we have to sick with the Atrocity.
Fortunately for us new toys did arrive. The 4 drop slot for this deck was in dire strates. Imperiosaur is prehistoric garbage and we needed something better than main deck Grazing Whiptail. Pathfinding Axejaw is perfectly reasonable to me. I went over my thoughts during the Honorable Mentions portion of our set review, but I do think this is a better Sarulf's Packmate and is a powerful T2 play. The explore trigger is a solid way to mill away redunant copies of Utopia Sprawl and Arbor Elf. A 5/4 on T2 is nothing to scoff at and adding more ETB's to cascade into has a net positive on the deck as a whole.
Nurturing Bristleback is a little less exciting, but I think this card has its place in the deck. Ramping this out is powerful enough even though it is lacking keywords. Forestcycling 2 is far worse than forestcycling 1, but I think the cost of an inefficent land cycler is worth the power it and flexibility it adds to the deck.
A lot of the power and functionailty comes from this ramp package. A mainstay in any Ponza build, or ramp deck that isn't Tron based. The obvious benefit is that we can use this to power out our most expensive threats, but I love this package because it lets us jump to 4 mana on T2. This opens us up to Pathfinding Axejaw and Acid-Moss, or our flex slot Knight of the Stampede. The deck functions similar to Gruul Ponza with less copies of actually Ponza effects. This also means that we can suffer the same inconsistency problems as Ponza when we don't draw the right blend of ramp and bombs. Llanowar Visionary helps bridge this gap of giving us access to ramp even if we don't draw the nuts.
We take a lot from Gruul Ponza. Slamming some staples into your brew is a strategy I use when I can, but in this case a lot of the core cards of Ponza can be sprinkled in here. We went over Acid-Moss earlier, but I just want to express how broken this card is. Jumping to 4 mana on T4 with Elf and Sprawl is always the motive, but using this to blow up a land and ramp us to five mana on T2 is crazy. This sequence is what makes Ponza feel unstoppable with a good draw. This also leads to T3 Dreadmaws or Altisaur if we play another land. Avenging Hunter was a card I wrestled with including for a while, but Richard insisted that it's too good to pass up. Two copies is as manay as I could justify as it doesn't get found off of Commune with Dinosaurs. Generous Ent is also a miss on Commune, but the upside of cutting lands for this, and having another powerful card to cascade into is so good.
Commune with Dinosaurs is the main reason we're running Dinosaur tribal. Finding lands or bombs helps to smooth out those wrinkles that ramp decks tend to have. It does require the most work from a deck builder's perspective. It's what stops us from slamming the full play set of Avenging Hunter and our other dinosaur payoffs in Knight of the Stampede. My hope is that this gets better the more Dinosaurs we get because this has the potential to be one of the best cards in the deck. A quick note, Knight of the Stampede was a Matt innovation and is explosive if we untap with it. You could add a second copy if you trim both copies of Avenging Hunter for this and a fourth copy of Tyrranax Atrocity.
Sideboarding We went for a streamlined Sideboard plan. Deglamer and Masked Vandal for Affinity. Nylea's Disciple for Burn and Relic of Progenitus for Terror decks. Ram Through help us smash small creature decks and it is nice to have some interaction for decks like Walls Combo.
Going forward we have some other versions of the deck that we'd like to try. Gruul is an option if we want cards like Skred or Fiery Cannonade, but these do clash with Commune with Dinosaurs. That is reason we stuck with Mono-Green build. Seismic Monstrosaur is another reason to try Red. We could cut Avenging Hunter for more Knight of the Stampede and experiment with more dinos. Right now we're pretty satisfied with the build and want to run it through some leagues.
Yoshi Ramp is a bet deck that we've been excited to improve upon with Lost Caverns of Ixalan. We hope you enjoyed the list as much as we do. We have plenty to cook with for the new set so if you like what we're doing then please browse the site for more content, and you can subscribe to our YouTube channel to catch us using these decks in Leagues. You can also subscribe to our newsletter to get notified when a new deck drops. We have a Discord, something, something, call to actions, just explore the site. Thanks so much for reading and for joining the Fellowship!
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