Today I’d like to build around this card:

This card reminds me of another very powerful card:

Both cards return the whole board to the players’ hands, but Upheaval is different in an important way. The fact that The Great Aurora allows the opponent to put their lands into play seems to negate the angle through which Upheaval is usually abused: being able to Upheaval and then place lots of mana sources or cards into play while your opponent is stuck with no permanents. But I wonder if a similar kind of effect could be created with The Great Aurora if you could guarantee you put significantly more mana into play then your opponent by playing a large amount of lands in your deck. If you were able to cast Aurora and create a situation where you have 8 lands in play to your opponents 4, and then you cast a powerful expensive card before passing the turn, would that be good? If so, what would that deck look like? Here’s the situation a deck like this would aim to achieve:

The base of this effect are these cards:

These cards are what allow for the massive mana generation needed to both cast The Great Aurora in a reasonable timeframe, and also to have mana floating when the spell is on the stack, aiding in casting whatever you draw. The other part of the deck are what you would cast after resolving The Great Aurora, and also allows for the deck to execute a ramp strategy:

Both of these cards are exactly what one is looking for in an expensive spell, in that they are both generally powerful and are also able to recover the tempo disadvantage incurred by spending earlier turns casting ramp cards. Given how a large portion of this deck would be lands and ramp cards, I would feel comfortable playing 4 of each as to ensure that between The Great Aurora and these two, you’re able to have gas when you need it. Here’s where I’d like to start as an untuned deck:

That’s 28 land. That is a lot of land. I like how Haven of the Spirit Dragon allows us to recur our finishers if our opponent has an answer, which would otherwise could be problematic with only 8 cards that win the game. One thing I realized was that scry lands can be a hinderance, as after The Great Aurora resolves you need your drawn lands to come into play untapped to cast an Ugin or Dragonlord Atarka. The reason for the black mana in our landbase is to cast our sideboard cards:

The reasoning behind the sideboard cards is that against counterspell decks, we will need a way to force our few important spells to resolve, and against aggressive decks, we need ways to ensure we can survive to cast an Ugin, Dragonlord or Hornet Queen. I suspect against aggressive decks it would be best to side out The Great Aurora, as letting our opponent draw into a flurry of burn spells could lose us the game. This deck hopefully already has a good game one against midrange decks, especially G/R Devotion (due to their lack of thoughtseize), as we have a strategy that goes over the top of what they’re doing.

So what do you think: Could this deck be a good answer to a metagame dominated by G/R Devotion? Do you think the plan of this deck is reasonably executable? What changes would you make? Share your thoughts in the comments!