[HOD] Ramunap Excavator - Crucible With Legs

MaximumCDawg

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In the long and storied tradition of Good Cards Growing Legs, we have a 2/3 Crucible for 2G.

Seems pretty clearly Vintage playable. Noble Fish 2.0, anyone?

enderfall

Pretty cool card. A 2/3 body for 3 isn't great, but in corner cases a Crucible that attacks is pretty good. I'd say that this is easier to remove, but these days there is the same, if not more, artifact removal instead of creature removal. Being a Naga Cleric doesn't help Cavern decks, so I hesitate to see a good fit right away. Noble Fish probably just would prefer jamming True-Name at the 3 drop spot instead of this.

thecravenone

I can't really see a deck wanting to play a harder-to-cast Crucible that dies to every piece of creature removal in the format but it's pretty cool. Is it an upgrade over Renegade Rallier?

MaximumCDawg

@thecravenone There's no comparison. Rallier recovers one land when it enters the battlefield, and then only if you have Revolt.

Crucible lets you lock out your opponents with Stripe Mine and Wasteland, and incidentally lets you fetch out lands every turn. That's what this Naga does.

I query whether this card finally makes Green Sun's Zenith make a serious dent in Vintage.

@enderfall said in [HOD] Ramunap Excavator - Crucible With Legs:

Pretty cool card. A 2/3 body for 3 isn't great, but in corner cases a Crucible that attacks is pretty good. I'd say that this is easier to remove, but these days there is the same, if not more, artifact removal instead of creature removal. Being a Naga Cleric doesn't help Cavern decks, so I hesitate to see a good fit right away. Noble Fish probably just would prefer jamming True-Name at the 3 drop spot instead of this.

Can we think of any time a Vintage-playable effect got legs and was worse? Seems to me every time they do this the effect gets better.

Dark Confidant
Magus of the Moon
Edilion of the Great Revel
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
etc etc

@MaximumCDawg said in [HOD] Ramunap Excavator - Crucible With Legs:

Noble Fish 2.0, anyone?

Me!

Brass Man

@MaximumCDawg said in [HOD] Ramunap Excavator - Crucible With Legs:

Can we think of any time a Vintage-playable effect got legs and was worse? Seems to me every time they do this the effect gets better.

Magus of the Jar? Magus of the Bazaar? Magus of the Moat? Magus of the Abyss? Magus of the Library? Magus of the Tabernacle? Magus of the Wheel? Magus of the Will?

Brass Man

I dig this card. My first thought is BUG Fish, which already occasionally runs Crucible of Worlds.

Someone suggested Green Sun's Zenith which is a nice synergy, as well.

MaximumCDawg

@Brass-Man said in [HOD] Ramunap Excavator - Crucible With Legs:

@MaximumCDawg said in [HOD] Ramunap Excavator - Crucible With Legs:

Can we think of any time a Vintage-playable effect got legs and was worse? Seems to me every time they do this the effect gets better.

Magus of the Jar? Magus of the Bazaar? Magus of the Moat? Magus of the Abyss? Magus of the Library? Magus of the Tabernacle? Magus of the Wheel? Magus of the Will?

I mean... yeah, but... some of those did not JUST grow legs, they also got material drawbacks. Abyss kills itself. Wheel and Tabernacle and Bazaar and Will all cost more.

The best counterexamples are probably Jar and Moat. With Jar, I guess the analogy is whether Tinker/Shops are so critical to Crucible that it's not good without them in the same way that Memory Jar owes much of its existence to those cards. I'm not sure that one is fair either.

But Magus of the Moat is pretty spot-on as a counterexample, I admit. (I also love Magus of the Moat!)

thecravenone

@MaximumCDawg said in [HOD] Ramunap Excavator - Crucible With Legs:

@thecravenone There's no comparison. Rallier recovers one land when it enters the battlefield, and then only if you have Revolt.

Rallier gets back one land or something else good so I think they're at least in similar slots.

@MaximumCDawg said in [HOD] Ramunap Excavator - Crucible With Legs:

Can we think of any time a Vintage-playable effect got legs and was worse? Seems to me every time they do this the effect gets better.

Dark Confidant
Magus of the Moon
Edilion of the Great Revel
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
etc etc

For what it's worth, many times these creatures are played alongside the existing card rather than replacing them. EG, Thalia 1 and Thorn, Eidelon and Pillar. (And not to go too far off but it my few games with it, I've preferred Pillar due to all the creature removal that's been around recently)

The Atog Lord

@MaximumCDawg said in [HOD] Ramunap Excavator - Crucible With Legs:

@Brass-Man said in [HOD] Ramunap Excavator - Crucible With Legs:

@MaximumCDawg said in [HOD] Ramunap Excavator - Crucible With Legs:

Can we think of any time a Vintage-playable effect got legs and was worse? Seems to me every time they do this the effect gets better.

Magus of the Jar? Magus of the Bazaar? Magus of the Moat? Magus of the Abyss? Magus of the Library? Magus of the Tabernacle? Magus of the Wheel? Magus of the Will?

I mean... yeah, but... some of those did not JUST grow legs, they also got material drawbacks. Abyss kills itself. Wheel and Tabernacle and Bazaar and Will all cost more.

The best counterexamples are probably Jar and Moat. With Jar, I guess the analogy is whether Tinker/Shops are so critical to Crucible that it's not good without them in the same way that Memory Jar owes much of its existence to those cards. I'm not sure that one is fair either.

But Magus of the Moat is pretty spot-on as a counterexample, I admit. (I also love Magus of the Moat!)

Magus of the Moat was in Brian Kelly's Championship sideboard.

Brass Man

@The-Atog-Lord Magus of the Moat definitely has some advantages over Moat – and I really like it in Brian's list – but not enough that you see more Moats than Maguses in general. For the purposes of this thread, I think it's true that "adding legs doesn't ALWAYS make an effect better."

I think the differences are largely explored in vintage. Attacking and blocking is awesome, but it's easier to kill creatures than it is to kill artifacts (usually, depends on the matchup). Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon is often a tossup, I think.

As for this card, I think you would still rather have Crucible in a matchup like Landstill, where you really want Crucible to stick around, and they have lots of creature removal ... but the marginal advantage of a body against decks where Crucible isn't as key (e.g. Mentor), means that the card is more maindeckable than Crucible is. Tutorability by Green Sun's Zenith or other cards is another dynamic that isn't true about Magus of the Moon/Moat, so that's pretty interesting, too

Brass Man

@thecravenone said in [HOD] Ramunap Excavator - Crucible With Legs:

Rallier gets back one land or something else good so I think they're at least in similar slots.

Rallier also puts the land right into play which acts as ramp and/or lets you immediately Strip something the turn you play it, even if you already played a land. That said, I wouldn't play Rallier if I was ONLY planning on returning lands with it (I'd want to build around it a little more). Still, I'm not interested in Rallier enough to bother testing it, but I'm definitely interested in seeing this card in action. I think that while they could both be run in the same deck, that sort of deck doesn't feel strong to me right now, and some lists that could use Excavator but not Rallier feel like they have a lot more potential to me

Serracollector

This makes the bicycle lands look a lot more interesting.

This card is pretty good against Thalia if she were ever an issue for a non-Oath green deck

Topical_Island

@desolutionist Could this card be great with Thalia?

Griselbrother

Minus points for creativity, but man this card is so good for GW hatebears. Now they just need to print Null Rod on legs.

@Topical_Island said in [HOD] Ramunap Excavator - Crucible With Legs:

@desolutionist Could this card be great with Thalia?

I don't play Thalia... but I mean if they have a Thalia, I can prevent her from attacking and make my land drops every turn to just cast my spells despite her resistance

Uvatha

It is not uncommon to run two different creature types in a Cavern of Souls deck. I would want to try it in a Human-Cleric build. I think it looks strong enough to justify to test in a build a build like that with 4x Wasteland, 1x Strip Mine and then 2-4x Qhost Quarter, but only testing will tell if it is strong enough of course.

Many of the White Wheenie decks I have been playing you would name Cleric anyway if you had a Leonin Relic-Warder on hand along with various humans that were also Clerics in addition to Humans.

The list of Clerics that have seen regular play is decent, and most are humans (and all white if you want to go White-Green):

Containment Priest
Leonin Relic-Warder
Sanctum Prelate
Leonin Arbiter
True Beliver
Fiend Hunter

And even more see fringe play, also with a lot of humans among them (also White):

Preacher
Glowrider
War Priest of Thune
Grand Abolisher
Selfless Spirit
Mother of Runes,
Ethersworn canonist

And some not all White:

Sin Collector
High Priest of Penance
Geist of Saint Traft
Harsh Mentor

Hrishi

It's "easier" to remove than Crucible, but being a creature has some advantages too I suppose? Green Sun's Zenith seems interesting and it plays nice with Thorn effects. This is far from my type of card (:D) but I'm sure it's at least fringe-playable.

I sent a friend a Cleric Tribal deck a few weeks ago after realizing that Daru Spiritualist can't die to Walking Ballista activations. It ran Vizier of the Menagerie at the top end, as well as the infinite life combo of Daru Spiritualist, Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim and Shaman en-Kor (all Clerics). Here's a rough maindeck based on what I had:

3 Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim
3 Containment Priest
4 Daru Spiritualist
2 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Harsh Mentor
4 Leonin Arbiter
4 Shaman en-Kor
3 Geist of Saint Traft
3 Ramunap Excavator
2 Vizier of the Menagerie

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk

1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire

4 Cavern of Souls
4 City of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Mana Confluence
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland

There are very obvious problems with the deck, such as how little it chooses to disrupt the opponent. The original list had Starlit Sanctum in place of Wasteland, but a swap was made in order to include Ramunap Excavator. In the end, playing up the Ghost Quarter/Leonin Arbiter package that is used in Modern with Ramunap Excavator (and fewer colors) may be a much better starting point. However, very few decks in Vintage can deal with infinite life, so every Cleric that comes along is something I always take a second look at.