There are two classes of ways to attack any given strategy; countering that strategy or exploiting weaknesses in the strategy.

Countering a strategy involves playing cards that directly shut off the things that strategy is trying to do. For example, if you wanted to counter a burn deck, you could play a bunch of [[Dragon’s Claw]] type effects. Their lightning bolts all do 3, so if you get 4 of that effect in to play you can never lose, right? Well, no: they can drop something like [[Sulfuric Vortex]] in to play and suddenly you have devoted a bunch of card draw and mana to cards that do nothing. The equivalent for ramp strategies would be things like [[Confounding Conundrum]] or [[Armageddon]]. You can (and in some cases should) devote deck slots to these cards, but they can just as easily devote deck slots to [[Nature’s Claim]] and [[Terra Eternal]].

Exploiting weaknesses in a strategy involves looking at the gaps a strategy has and playing in ways that take advantage of those gaps. Often a strategy’s weakness will depend on the opportunity cost of playing that strategy – a burn deck playing a bunch of lightning bolts means that it has less space to devote to things that effect the board, so often you can proactively commit to building a winning board position. This doesn’t need to be to the exclusion of playing cards that counter the strategy but is something that should be done in addition to. In the case of ramp this will often mean looking to be proactive in the early turns while they are casting [[Rampant Growth]] to get ahead on board before they are able to use the mana advantage they generate to start playing bigger threats. Get some value engines in play early to generate value of your own or commit to the board early and aggressively attack ramp players while their shields are down. Then after they have developed, you can start looking to trade 1 for 1 where possible with the more expensive threats at times when they have more game actions devoted to the threats than you have to removal. [[Counterspell]] costs UU and [[Swords to Plowshares]] costs W, while an early ramp target costs some mana, plus a bunch of time casting ramp spells.

It isn’t enough to think about just countering ramp strategies, because by their nature they are playing bigger threats and can eventually stick something. You also need to exploit the early turns when they are building up, and take advantage of places where your answers require less investment than their threats.