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Bant Company won the week one Open of new Standard, and with week two in the books people are sick of the deck already. The deck is capable of generating so much card advantage in such an efficient way that it's tough to construct a deck with an especially positive matchup. The best way to crush the deck is to go way over the top, though week one nobody had a good list for ramp. With Joshua Dickerson's win in the Columbus Open, it's looking like he found it.
Gruul Ramp
I would think that Ruin in Their Wake would be a spell that you'd want in this deck, in part to ensure early access to red mana, but Dickerson didn't see this as a big concern. This deck runs a scant four red sources, with only Oath of Nissa to potentially dig for them or Explosive Vegetation and Nissa's Renewal to guarantee a Mountain. I imagine that this makes casting Kozilek's Return on turn three quite difficult.
Other than the slow approach to finding red mana, this deck doesn't feature any spells that we're not used to seeing in ramp decks. The deck's inability to find red quickly looks like it will be punishing against humans decks, though the Bant Company matchup is definitely positive. Dickerson pulled off a win in a Top 8 with five Bant CoCo decks, after all.
I expect that ramp will be one of the decks that players turn towards to win in a field of Bant and Human Aggro for the Pro Tour. The big spells enable the deck to go way over the top of Bant while Kozilek's Return and sideboard removal spells slow the Human decks down enough to be manageable. World Breaker has been steadily trending downward since it initially found a home in these ramp decks when Oath of the Gatewatch launched, and if this deck puts up Pro Tour results it could easily double up next weekend.
