Deck Guide: Temur Ramp in Standard

Last updated on January 13, 2023

Obosh, the Preypiercer | Illustration by Daarken

Ah yes, adventure decks. You may love them, you may hate them, but we finally have a version that’s both powerful and somewhat fair. This build of Temur Ramp revolves around using cards like Terror of the Peaks as leverage to make Genesis Ultimatum incredibly powerful.

Since we run odd-costed cards, Obosh, the Preypiercer lets the Terror deal double the damage. Pushing out an Obosh next to our beloved dragon will deal a significant amount of damage. Now think about what happens if a Beanstalk Giant hits the battlefield as well. It can be an instant knockout all by itself.

If you enjoy adventure decks, this is a fantastic BO3 deck for you to try out!

The Deck

The Strategy

The Backbone

Obosh, the Preypiercer is the deck's main backbone. Because of its companion requirement, we’re locked to playing only odd cards. Luckily all the excellent adventure cards are odd costed, so we’re in for a treat!

The 1-Drops

This deck only has one 1-drop: Edgewall Innkeeper. Since almost everything in the deck is an adventure card, the Innkeeper lets us draw whenever we cast an adventure creature. These little draws may not seem like much, but it really helps to consistently get our lands and then Genesis Ultimatum. It’s a mighty little card, and I'm happy to be playing with it again.

Lovestruck Beast could count as another 1-drop thanks to its built-in adventure to create a 1/1 human token.

The 3-Drops and Spells

First, we run four copies of Cultivate. This helps us both fetch a land and put one on the battlefield for just three mana. A very generous ramp card.

Two copies of Kazandu Mammoth. While this isn’t the deck’s main win condition, having it on the field when a Genesis Ultimatum lands helps you to push this creature to immense levels of power. Sometimes this is enough to finish the game on the spot.

We have three 3-drop adventure spells. Four copies of Brazen Borrower, four copies of Bonecrusher Giant, and four copies of Lovestruck Beast. We already discussed the Beast, but the Borrower and the Giant let us do something dirty in an Obosh deck: both let us have a solid 2-mana play on turn 2.

Their abilities function similarly, where you try to slow your opponent down long enough by either bouncing or destroying a creature. Or, sometimes, a planeswalker.

Beanstalk Giant has a 3-cost adventure built into it, so this can be considered an additional 3-mana play.

The 5-Drop

Our 5-drop slot is Terror of the Peaks. Once the Terror is on the field, the fun starts. There are many ways to KO your opponent with this card. I'll go through a few examples:

1. Have Obosh on the field and cast Genesis Ultimatum. Find Terror of the Peaks plus a bunch of other creatures. They all enter the battlefield simultaneously. The Terror deals damage equal to the power of all the creatures that entered. Obosh doubles it.
2. Hard cast Terror of the Peaks. Play Genesis Ultimatum. Again, this may one-shot your opponent.
3. Have Terror of the Peaks, cast Obosh, and then have Terror deal six damage to your opponent.

The list goes on and on. Terror of the Peaks is an insane card that was heavily underplayed when Omnath, Locus of Creation was still around. People are starting to discover the crazy levels of damage it can do in combination with the Ultimatum, though, so we'll likely keep seeing this in Standard for quite some time. There may even be a moment where this deck will have a spill-over effect to Historic.

The End of the Curve

We have a bunch of finishers. As I mentioned before, our leading finisher is Genesis Ultimatum, allowing you to put a bunch of permanents from the top onto the battlefield. We also have The Great Henge as a draw and lifegain engine providing ramp. And, of course, Beanstalk Giant, our massive endgame creature that combos nicely with Terror of the Peaks if we have a lot of land on the battlefield already.

The Lands

Our land base is pretty much built around the modal lands, making sure we can quickly fix our mana. We also have four copies of Ketria Triome to fix Temur colors and some copies of Fabled Passage, yet another source of mana fixing.

Generally, we want to pro-actively push out spells and keep on ramping, so you generally want as many untapped sources as possible and want to make sure you played your tapped Triomes during your “even” turns. Also, don't be afraid to use the Triomes as a card draw source if you’ve been ramping too much and have a lot of lands already.

Mulligan Rules

To play this deck, follow these rules:

1. Have three lands in hand, preferably covering all colors, but at the very least green
2. Have one or more three mana ramp spells
3. Optional, but great to have:

• Edgewall Innkeeper plus adventure spells as a significant draw engine
• The Great Henge in combination with Lovestruck Beast to have a turn 4 Henge on the field as a secondary draw engine

If you can combine these combos well, you'll be casting your copies of Genesis Ultimatum in rapid succession.

Sideboard Guide

Mill Matchups

We have two copies of Ox of Agonas in the sideboard. This card is great against decks that mill you, mainly Dimir rogues and the occasional mono blue mill.

Blue-Aligned Matchups

Next, we have four copies of Mystical Dispute, an extremely efficient counterspell against blue-aligned decks.

Mono Red and Dimir Rogue Matchups

Three Scorching Dragonfire to deal with mono red and Dimir rogues. This one is less useful against Gruul and mono green but can still pick off some creatures like Brushfire Elemental.

Rakdos Matchups

The Akroan War to counter Rakdos decks. These decks are still around but starting to see less and less play, so it might be time to replace these copies soon.

Minimal Planeswalker Interaction

And finally, a valuable engine card, Vivien, Monsters' Advocate. Vivien can either be super good or super bad. Use this card specifically against decks with little planeswalker interaction.

Honorable Mentions

Gilded Goose could be a solid inclusion in the deck. It allows us to get our ramp engine going much faster and can usually generate Food tokens to ramp by itself. There’s a lot of removal in the metagame now, though, so keep in mind that it'll likely get removed if you’re not careful, especially when going second.

Lotus Cobra is another one of those cards that can help to get your combos going even faster, but sadly, since we run Obosh, the Preypiercer, we'd have to rebuild the deck entirely. At which point, the whole Terror of the Peaks plus Obosh combo becomes useless. The same goes for Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, being an even-costed card.

Down the Ramp

Finale of Promise | Illustration by Jaime Jones

I love this deck. Losing Lucky Clover has nerfed adventure style decks significantly, but this version is a great workaround, taking full advantage of the power of Terror of the Peaks. It also doesn't feel too powerful or unfair since we don't run irritating cards like Ugin, the Spirit Dragon.

Regardless, it’s an enjoyable midrange strategy and feels like a janky deck yet isn't. If you enjoy adventure decks or used to play them, it's a minimal upgrade to get to this version. It does require some mythic wildcards to build, but most people should have more of those than rare wildcards anyway.

Do you like this deck? Let me know down below! I'd love to hear what type of games you’ve pulled off with it yourself. Either way, I hope you all are safe and healthy out there, and I’ll see you soon with the next guide!

PS: If you somehow haven't yet, be sure to check out our MTGA deck tracker, Arena Tutor!