[Primer] BRx Griselbrand Reanimator

[.dk]

Wow, I also just noticed in your quote that I made a typo in that post. case = cast. 2.5 years later. I guess I'll fix it. :)

[splorf]

I would find it very difficult to justify running Doomsday without access to blue Cantrips. Probe and Top alone are essentially required to draw into your pile. And assuming you want to run Tendrils, then you need at least 2 LED's as well. You could replace Ideas Unbound with Infernal Contract/Cruel Bargain, but you're SO vulnerable to aggressive clocks at that point. So now you're at 4 Doomsday, 4 Top, 4 Probe, 1 Infernal Contract, 2 LED - with only 1 slot available. So you're out of luck on Shelldock + Emrakul, unless you're planning to run one of those maindeck. Not to mention that you need another blue source to be able to activate Shelldock Isle (Lotus Petal is fine, but only non-land sources seems risky).

At any rate, even for Tin Fins, I really don't think Doomsday is the best transformation. Some version of a Mentor transformation is - if you're looking to switch gears, I would look there first myself.

/edit:

I suppose you could run Doomsday, Helm, Top, Grapeshot. But I still would wager that Mentor is better. Doomsday is still vulnerable to Flusterstorm and Spell Pierce, just like your maindeck plan is. Surgical is also not kind if they Surgical you in response to the first spell you cast post-Doomsday. Mentor gets around all of that.

The man plan was also in the pipeline, but it seems nobody seriously tried so far, since not everyone is splashing white. I gave it a chance some weeks ago, but wasn't able to collect xp with it, because Mentor didn't show up during my matches. Some data here would be appreciable.

Edit:

Wow, I also just noticed in your quote that I made a typo in that post. case = cast. 2.5 years later. I guess I'll fix it. :)

You're welcome &-)

[Karhumies]

The man plan was also in the pipeline, but it seems nobody seriously tried so far, since not everyone is splashing white.

Personally, I would be interested in hearing opinions about Sin Prodder and Chandra, Torch of Defiance which have recently popped up in red stompy lists in transformational "man-plan" SBs. At least in my eyes, they both seem like excellent draw engines for Brx colors.

[splorf]

Personally, I would be interested in hearing opinions about Sin Prodder and Chandra, Torch of Defiance which have recently popped up in red stompy lists in transformational "man-plan" SBs. At least in my eyes, they both seem like excellent draw engines for Brx colors.

I think they have a natural home in those lists because of some synergies, but I doubt this applies on BR. Our mana is too clunky for RR and Sin Prodder will most likely backfire more often than not. To trash our mana for 0-1 life is not the highest price to pay for our opponents.

[TokenMaster]

The man plan was also in the pipeline, but it seems nobody seriously tried so far, since not everyone is splashing white. I gave it a chance some weeks ago, but wasn't able to collect xp with it, because Mentor didn't show up during my matches. Some data here would be appreciable.

Not a significant event but I tried at my LGS twice and found it was a rather fast clock when opponents aren't on a particularly proactive gameplan.(Mentor absolutely wrecks if the opponent mulligans aggressively to look for graveyard hate)

Against Deathrite Shaman an unchecked Mentor, or even a couple of stray tokens can force the Shaman off the board. The drawback is that it's still weak to grixis delver if delver comes out early with enough gas behind it and terminus is still rough to deal with, although it becomes easier if the opponent also boarded out some number of Swords to Plowshares. It's also fairly vulnerable to Wasteland if we're trying to bring it out without acceleration. An early Wasteland that just sits there can pressure us out of playing red spells if we're waiting on playing Mentor and don't run basic mountains.

I'd like more data on this plan as well but while I'm a fan of mentor I definitely don't think it's good for every local environment.

[Kobra_D]

I am breaking some responses into two posts in case people only care about 1 or the other:

I have found moderate success with Sneak Attack as the transform, with rituals and lotus petals, T1 is still plausible which is kind of cool. But it just gets better later into the game.

I find opponents will usually needle griselbrand, so Sneak attack can go unchecked at least the first time along with me keeping in all the fatties that I wanted to play in the first play. Downside is that Iona is significantly worse.

The last reason why I would advocate for Sneak is that it does not require a new color, so there is still the option to splash for other SB options.

Something like Doomsday checks off a lot of similar boxes but the win is completely different, where here the win con is the same from g1-g3 and so feels more consistent, at least when I am piloting it.

If anyone is active on cockatrice I wouldn't mind jamming in a bunch of games with the various SB options against the standard gauntlet of decks out there. My name is Mark_D1.

[Kobra_D]

Why wouldn't Reanimator want Swords to Plowshares? Back when UB Reanimator was all the rage, it was common to run a couple Echoing Truths and kill spells. Swords is the granddaddy of all the kill spells. Regarding Path, if you're bringing in removal, it's to hedge against games going later and more grindy. In those scenarios, giving your opponent a land is disastrous. Extra life usually means nothing but sometimes can mean an extra attack step. Path always means you ramp them to deploy more threats, disruption, etc.

Echoing truths is a better catch all as it doesn't hit only creatures. That is the one place StP doesn't shine. Granted it is still fine, it wouldn't be the reason for me to splash a color here. The mentor plan is the reason why I would splash white therefore also boarding in path. If that were the case then I am already going to take more combat steps than typical since Griselbrad and Iona clock faster than any pile of monk tokens usually do (this isn't always true but true enough for a lot of cases).

So, if I have gone through a transformative SB plan, the extra mana a deck has to cast threats/hate is not huge IMO, but the extra turn or two that they may have would be disastrous. Especially if they are using the extra mana to cast grave hate effectively timewalking themselves.

If we go by the current DTB (along with the ones that just dropped) to compare to:

Miracles- Runs plenty of basics sure, but they probably don't have a creature we care to hit (except maybe their mentor). The land does make entreat 1 better but they will also just wait if they are really setting up entreat. Does force a shuffle after they've been topping a bunch assuming that CB is not also in play. But I'm still probably not boarding this in anyways.

BUG- Some lists do not run any basics which means PtE becomes free. The boost in mana does mean something as it could be an extra early thoughtseize, but otherwise, an extra combat step for them could also be disastrous as they may be able to beat us down efficiently enough. Once they have 3 mana it doesn't matter as deluge at any point wipes the whole mentor plan.

Sneak and Show- If we are Swords-ing a creature here then the mana problem is effectively irrelevant as they have show and telled or snuck something in already. Granted they will have a ton of basics to fetch for and might even open up a brainstorm for them that they had otherwise tapped out but I think that is more acceptable. Giving an extra turn here might mean our own death as untap->sneak->emrakul can send us back to the stone age and untap->sneak->emrakul-Griselbrand just means game.

Decks that just came off of DTB:
Death and Taxes- I may want a StP here, but the extra combat that they receive is also relevant I could consider this 50/50 on my decision.

Infect- I can never see a reason to give them an extra untap step as it is way too easy for them to attack for 10 out of nowhere. Although swords in general wouldn't be soo bad, this deck is resilient enough that it is not unreasonable for them to reload within a game.

Eldrazi- I haven't played against them in a while, so maybe things have changes but they previously had no basics. Chalice on 1 makes a lot of this particular consideration moot.

BR Reanimator- Who cares, we have both sat down to do awesome stuff, why not ID and go split a bag of chips with our newly found bretheren. Realistically, the StP might be better here, I would rather a reanimator player having 1 more turn rather than 1 more mana.

So from all my considerations I would agree that StP is a premium removal spell, as PtE is also great. However, neither does anything that a T1 7/7 doesn't handle nicely. Post board I am so worried about dealing with hate first that my considerations are going that as opposed to spot removal. Not to mention that there is a lot of good removal in black for the majority of what might be an issue otherwise (push, brutality, disfigure, deathmark all come to mind).

Swords is fine in a lot of other match ups but I think specifically here with what the metagame is, PtE is where I want to be.

[Zooligan]

Hey, so I see a BR Reanimator list 5-0'd a league online. Does this mean Animate Dead is de-bugged?

[Zifbox]

Hey, so I see a BR Reanimator list 5-0'd a league online. Does this mean Animate Dead is de-bugged?

The Feb 23rd Bug Blog showed it as being fixed.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...bruary-23-2017

I'm thinking of picking this deck up on MtGO... question though. Ignoring price for the moment, which version of this deck is better equipped for the current metagame? BU or RB?

[Zooligan]

The Feb 23rd Bug Blog showed it as being fixed.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...bruary-23-2017

I'm thinking of picking this deck up on MtGO... question though. Ignoring price for the moment, which version of this deck is better equipped for the current metagame? BU or RB?

Yeah, that's a pretty hot debate right now. I think more people would say UB with FoW and SnS right now, but I'm not certain.

[Jeff]

Honestly my answer would be neither, but if I had to pick it'd probably be UB.

RB exploited a hole in the metagame: The most popular graveyard hate was slow but resilient: Rest in Peace, Deathrite Shaman, Relic of Progenitus. People were not prepared for a Reanimator deck that could consistently reanimate a threat on turn 1 or 2 with disruption. Now, though, everyone is playing surgical extraction like crazy. Even the white decks are giving up on RIP and playing Surgical. Faerie Macabre is at least mildly popular to get around Chancellor. Storm is playing graveyard hate for the first time in recent memory.

The proper response to this is one of two things: Play a slower and more resilient graveyard strategy that can beat a single surgical extraction (most UB lists, some Dredge lists), or don't play graveyard decks at all until people get tired of taking up 2 or 3 sideboard slots with surgicals that don't come in anymore. After that it'll be time to bring back RB.

This deck is always going to be a meta call. If people are prepared for it, you don't want to be playing it. But if people aren't prepared for it, you'll crush them. Don't sell the pieces, but don't get committed to sleeving it up every week either.

[marshalltj]

Some coverage from a recent event BR took first at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwVO9HW56QU

List here:
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=14900&d=289911&f=LE

[Zifbox]

I did indeed take the plunge and liquidated my modern stuff to build this on MtGO, and I'm having a blast! My list is based on those that have 5-0'd leagues recently, with Wear // Tear in the side.

Adjusting the creature package for games 2-3 is easy, but I'm not feeling confident with how I sideboard my spells - or rather, what I'm taking out. Here's what I usually trim:

1 Chrome Mox if it's a slower matchup where I'm more likely to take a few draws into land.
1 Faithless Looting if I brought in Collective Brutality
1 Unmask if I expect a grindy game where I can't afford the card disadvantage
1 Animate Dead, being the worst of our reanimation spells, if I can't think of anything else to cut
4 Exhume in the mirror
1 creature, going down to 9

I kinda just wing it every time and don't have much of a plan. I'm hoping I could get some advice.

[DNSolver]

Two Griselbranders did well in the Legacy Challenge this past weekend. One got top 8 and one got top 16.

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles...ier-2017-03-13

[Doneval]

Two Griselbranders did well in the Legacy Challenge this past weekend. One got top 8 and one got top 16.

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles...ier-2017-03-13

Great to see that. Also, I thought the UB one was very interesting. It's basically the same as the BR Reanimator but with a blue sideboard plan, and ditching the Faithless Looting in favor of a Careful Study. I hate to give up the flashback ability of looting, but going two color only is very tempting (and blue is my favored sideboard alt plan anyway).

Any thoughts on that build? Anyone really missing looting enough to stick to 3 colors?

[Jeff]

Great to see that. Also, I thought the UB one was very interesting. It's basically the same as the BR Reanimator but with a blue sideboard plan, and ditching the Faithless Looting in favor of a Careful Study. I hate to give up the flashback ability of looting, but going two color only is very tempting (and blue is my favored sideboard alt plan anyway).

Any thoughts on that build? Anyone really missing looting enough to stick to 3 colors?

I also prefer the blue sideboard plan, I just never found that running both underground and badlands actually ended up costing me much of anything.

[DXpt]

Well, the Show&Tell/Ancient Tomb sideboard plan was around from the beginning. If I remember correctly even Todd Anderson played it at some SCG event about half a year ago. Don't know anybody who stuck to it long term though, everybody I knew just ended up playing BR in the end.

[Zooligan]

Shouldn't BU run at least a couple Echoing Truth in the board?

[Ziveeman]

Placed 5th in a 60 person Legacy event yesterday.

Creatures - 10
4 Chancellor of the Annex
4 Griselbrand
1 Tidespout Tyrant
1 Sire of Insanity

Spells - 38
4 Dark Ritual
4 Entomb
4 Faithless Looting
4 Reanimate
4 Animate Dead
4 Thoughtseize
4 Exhume
4 Unmask
4 Lotus Petal
2 Chrome Mox

Lands - 12
4 Bloodstained Mire
3 Marsh Flats
2 Swamp
2 Badlands
1 Scrubland

Sideboard
3 Wear // Tear
3 Collective Brutality
1 Pithing Needle
2 Faerie Macabre
2 Massacre
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Blazing Archon
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Grave Titan

Round 1 - Dredge - WIN 2-0
Round 2 - Goblins - WIN 2-1
Round 3 - Death and Taxes - WIN 2-0
Round 4 - Eldrazi - Scooped to my brother 0-2
Round 5 - 12Post 2-0
Round 6 - Bant DeathBlade - WIN 2-1
Top 8 - Dragon Stompy - LOSE 1-2

[marshalltj]

There's been some discussion in a BR Reanimator Discord group about sideboarding that I thought was an interesting point to bring up. Namely, general rules to follow. Obviously it can be matchup dependent, but there was some basic ideas I wanted to cover and get people's thoughts on.

I've always stuck to the plan of taking out pro-active spells (TS, Unmask) for the reactive ones (Wear // Tear, AD etc), as to not dilute the combo or the speed.

Someone brought up that on the draw, they sideboard out their speed cards (so some combo of rituals / petals) for the reactive spells to protect the combo better. I thought that was a pretty good point worth being brought up, as I haven't seen a ton of discussion around cutting the "core" cards like ritual / petal for sideboard slots.