To clarify, what we would run into was less of a "play ramp cards to cast my 8 drop" approach, and more of a "cast ramp spells" to cast my midrange guys ahead of schedule.
Everything that your wrote about the decks problems is correct, but the problem I had with it wasn't so much it being dominate as it being over represented.
Thankfully, there is a gentlemen that can explain what I am trying to say better than I can.
From Ars Arcanum reviewing one of the iterations of the MODO cube.
The elephant in the room is the reanimator and ramp decks. These are the two decks that I frequently hear get called the best decks in the cube, and I paid particular attention to these decks as I analyzed the cube....Second, the ramp decks generally came in two varieties. There are green based ramp decks, which use Elves and Rampant Growth type effects to produce a significant amount of mana, and then cast something incredible like Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre. These decks were most often UG, though there were a few versions in all the other colors. The other type was mostly an artifact based ramp deck, which often ended up being mixed with the green decks or put together with a U/x control strategy, either WU or UBr. The Grixis decks had the advantage of also getting Nicol Bolas and Cruel Ultimatum.
However, the reanimator archetype exploits a major flaw in Magic players. Specifically, we have a very hard time distinguishing between things that are powerful and things that win consistently. It really feels good to put a Griselbrand into play on turns two or three and see your opponent concede. However, this only happened in 8 games out of over 500, which is why you see 2 and 6 games ending on turns 2 and 3 in the ending turn chart. In the other cases, a player would often just counter the reanimation spell. Or they would bounce or kill the big guy. While reanimator is a potentially strong strategy, it is often a trap, since players have a hard time realizing that it is actually pretty inconsistent.
Ramp decks did much better. They ended up as 20% of the field, which is the same amount as all of the control decks in the field. It is even pretty close to the number of red decks that were played in the format. Ramp decks also managed a 56% win rate. These were about evenly split between the two different versions; mostly, you just want to play accelerators and cast big things, and it didn’t really matter which version of the deck you were playing. However, these decks have a glaring weakness in that they are particularly vulnerable to counterspells. A well-built, blue-based tempo deck will often play a few powerful threats in the early game, and then they can just sit back and wait for you to play your expensive spells and counter them, leaving you without a significant board presence. Again, this deck seems better than it really is, on account of the fact that Magic players have a very hard time distinguishing between a powerful strategy and a consistent one. But it is a good potential strategy to which you should pay special attention while you are drafting.
So, thats basically what I ran into. Players (especially Timmy) couldn't distinguish between power and consistancy, and would fall into the green ramp trap. It was a good deck, capable of a postitive win rates, but it became over represented because its an archetype that feels powerful. Its all essentially non-interactive plays, from the ramp spells to the fatties that you hope will be good enough to close out the game on their own.
And I think that last sentence really describes the experience: the deck became a real presence in the meta that you couldn't ignore, but you got so tired of it week after week. When I ran 2 wildfire it was worse, because running two in a 360 list meant wildfire showed up relatively often, and actively pushed people into ramp both as wildfire defense and to enable the archetype. This was brutal on the aggro decks, who had to go lower, faster, and less interactive to compete (not unlike modo cubes mono red aggro).
The other two points that he touches upon is how interchangable the strategy is with signets, and how ramp can show up in any color combination. The latter point is probably something to keep in mind when trying to push a R/G deck, since those green ramp cards might size up better in blue or white depending on the format.
Not that I'm saying no one should run wildfire, I'm just basically typing a lot to say why I have a deep loathing for
kodama's reach and
kitchen finks.
), and are back at a regular un-powered cube, maybe then it's still possible to borrow some of this? G/R won't be the control pair, but maybe thats okay, in the same vein we can conclude that while it is possible to make blueggro work it sure does take some insane amounts of work for something people might not even be excited about. Still, there is probably still a chance to take some of the things we've talked about and just use it to make the G/R Midrange deck feel a bit more clever. Potatoes & Steak is a classic for a reason, because it's pretty consistently good as a deck (if we think grim monolith), so why not just try and make an exotic Potatoes & Steak? Throw in some gravy from far away lands and top with german sausages (yum).
