This looks really solid actually...only thought is there isn't much top end post explorer. I would look to add in green Sun's Zenith plus scavenging ooze and some bigger gsz threat. Scooze helps make sure oath doesn't become a liability. I would cut some faerie Macabre.
Cool Idea Trousers!
I like the idea of Veteran Explorer with Assassin's Trophy. I'd probably want to squeeze in a couple of the Horror of the wastes in there, just to turn on the Oath's a little more naturally and to have a big finisher worked in as well, Arch fiend is good, but the 2 mana cycling is very clunky early on.
I like the Explorer idea a lot, i'm going to try it in my mono black style list, since it's so mana hungry anyway. I'll cut the Fulminators down and focus on hand disruption rather than land.
@Kinda:
GSZ with Shardless, seems like a bit of a non bo.
I've settled on running a BW version of this deck, with Gerrard's Verdict and Vindicate. I think Verdict card is really good but I'm willing to be proven wrong. It seems like it's pretty much hymms 5-8. I honestly just want an excuse to use my scrublands that have been sitting in my binder forever.
Also, I saw this guy in another thread and I think he's bonkers, particularly in the MonoB List - Plague Spitter. Against DNT and Goblins, he demands an answer if you Dark Ritual him out. He puts down a nasty clock and if we get a sac outlet for him we can extend his range pretty heavily. He's not bad turn three either, as Thalia doesn't catch him.
Thoughts? I'll try to put together a list this weekend, but I've got papers to right
I didn't realize people were onto this. I had been working on this list in secrecy for a while, but I might as well post the list here. Mind you, my list was before Ravnica 3 so I did not have access to Mausoleum Secrets yet. The goal here is to share my insights and combine it with what you guys have made. It's very much a sketch/draft that I've been trying to improve, so if it looks janky that's because I wouldn't normally have shared it in public.
OG
[20 land]
1 x Marsh Flats
4 x Polluted Delta
4 x Flooded Strand
1 x Scrubland
2 x Underground Sea
2 x Tundra
1 x Tropical Island
1 x Bayou
1 x Plains
1 x Volrath’s Stronghold
1 x Island
1 x Swamp
[16 Control]
3 Force of Will
3 Cabal Therapy
1 Abrupt Decay
4 Brainstorm
1 Intuition
4 Oath of Ghouls
[10 Graveyard Dominance]
2 Faerie Macabre
4 Street Wraith
4 Remorseful Cleric
[14 Utility Creatures]
1 Fulminator Mage
2 Nimble Obstructionist
2 Fleshbag Marauder / Shriekmaw / Night Incarnate
4 Baleful Strix
1 Yuriko, The Tiger's Shadow
1 Liliana, Heretical Healer
1 Kami of False Hope
1 Ghost-Lit Warder
1 Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed
[Sideboard]
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Ground Seal
1 Bitterblossom
1 Orzhov Pontiff
1 Fulminator Mage
2 Mausoleum Wanderer
1 Dust to Dust
1 Ghost-lit Redeemer
1 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
2 Mistcaller
1 Meddling Mage
Findings and limitations
What I like about ReAnimator's list is that it is very focused. The list above here is a bit scattered, but it does have very powerful interactions. I wanted to squeeze in 4 Stifles, Fulminator Mages and 2 Nimble Obstructionist but could not find the room for it. The rationale behind this was that now that DRS is gone, multicolor manabases will rely even more heavily on fetchland manabases, so stifle becomes much stronger. I perhaps have dedicated too many slots toward creature hate, but I am not sure. The Kami of False Hope plan is solid, and having a creature planeswalker that returns via oath of ghouls is also great. I'm also very happy with Bitterblossom and Night Incarnate (though not at the same time ! :P)
Single Card Explanations
Liliana, Heretical Healer / Liliana, Defiant Necromanceris the best Liliana for this deck. You can get her back with Oath of Ghouls repeatedly, and she even leaves a Zombie body that you can sack or block with. Having recursive planeswalkers is crazy.
Kami of False Hope could be replaced for Spore Frog if you go more heavily for green. I suggest at least one of either because it shuts down decks completely.
Remorseful Reverend Auto-enables Oath of Ghouls in a way that Faerie Macabre and Street Wraith can't, and it can kill a Delver too (but it costs mana!)
Night Incarnate gives you a catch all sweeper against both Young Pyromancer and Monastery Mentor and stronger creatures
Nimble Obstructionist lets you stifle things (Dark Depths) without the opponent being able to counter it. It ALSO draws a card when you cycle it for the Stifle. It's a 3/1 flying flash body that you can use to chump or kill creatures. I view this as a competitor to Vendilion Clique.
A sideboard or even maindeck silver bullet Bitterblossom would make a great target for Mausoleum Secrets
Ghost-Lit Redeemer provides a steady stream of 4 life per turn against burn, making it improbable that they will ever be able to burn you out effectively
Ghost-Lit Warder is expensive, but helps lock your opponent out even against control decks, because it cannot be countered back except with a Stifle
Ground Seal is important for this deck in the sideboard. Remorseful Reverend targets an opponent, not a graveyard, so you can still exile your opponent's GY with Ground Seal on the table. Oath of Ghouls will still work because it does not target.
Volrath's Stronghold is to this deck what Academy Ruins is to artifact decks. It also combines nicely with Yuriko, The Tiger's Shadow as you can put to top a Street Wraith to deal 5 extra damage, draw it, then cycle it to draw an other card. Stronghold with Liliana Heretical Healer is also nice (slow but nice).
The maybe stuff
The list I posted is still kind of chaotic, which is why it wasn't released yet. Some of the cards I was considering include (bare with me, this may get janky. I consider cards very loosely because I bias toward inclusion out of FOMO / fear of oversight):
Palace Jailer - Easy to keep the monarch and dominate the board. Sacrificing and replaying Palace Jailer can help you lock out many creatures. Especially good against Show and Tell I think.
Nevermaker - Nice way to lock out an opponent
Caustic Caterpillar - Disenchant on a stick in green.
Qasali Pridemage - Catches enchantments and artifacts, but difficult colors
Wispmare - Goes to the graveyard immediately and efficiently beats enchantments. Only play if you have an enchantress player in your meta I guess.
Ronom Unicorn - Only catches enchantments, probably better to run Abrupt Decay or Abrupt Decay 2.0
Anafenza, the Foremost - Good combination of graveyard hate and beatstick
Tragic Poet - Way to get back OG, can be done with Xiao-Dun
Oversold Cemetery - Oath of Ghouls No 5/6, now that there is an efficient tutor, no longer a consideration
Linessa, Zephyr Mage - I really wanted to try this out, it is the most powerful thing I could find that I would want to do with Oath of Ghouls. It combos great with Intuition.
Oriss, Samite Guardian - Not as powerful as Linessa, but great for locking out storm decks (if you can survive until then). Didn't go for it.
Burrenton Forge-Tender
Journey to Eternity / Atzal, Cave of Eternity - Only makes sense with reanimator creatures, and then reanimate is better, since OG already puts them back in your hand
Athreos, God of Passage - Speeds up recursion, but only from play.. it actually kills Gurmag Anglers if you can animate it, the slots in your deck are too precious to spend on Athreos though.
Vexing Devil - If only it weren't red, I'd probably try it out
Vampire Hexmage - Shoots planeswalkers. Good silver bullet in metas with Arena Rector Nicfit lists. Other uses include disrupting cards like Chalice of the Void and Aether Vial, but those have a much lower impact. You could consider running a singleton Dark Depths with access to so many Mausoleum Secrets. Also, 2/1 first strike is actually not that bad!
Gift of Immortality - Allows you to chain certain cards like Fulminator Mage or Mausoleum Wanderer in each players turn.
Diabolic Intent - Obsolete with Mausoleum Secrets
Glen Elendra Archmage - Late game control over non-creatures. The deck can deal with creatures easily, but spells can be difficult.
Blessed Alliance
Last edited by bruizar; 10-06-2018 at 03:39 AM.
@Bruizar
So many cool ideas!
Night incarnate is a very cool find. I've been liking Minister of Pain well enough and Arch fiend has been OK, but maybe this guy can take the place of one of those or maybe the toxic deluge i have in my list. I'll definitely pick some of them up and give it a go.
Strix is so synergistic in so many ways, but my biggest apprehension with blue is that once you go down that path the need to have an Oath Based draw engine gets greatly diminished. So much of what i am trying to accomplish, is to see if i could build a reasonable draw engine that can be semi competitive without needing blue. But like so many things in Legacy, you often get to a point where you run out of good reasons to not just put blue in a deck, cause it's just better. Your idea does keep the concept focused on the engines rather than just cutting things for ponders etc. It reminds me a lot of the BUG Food chain lists, pre banning.
I'll post a list of where i'm at currently in a day or two with the Veteran Explorer shell, i've been digging it. I've just been super busy and haven't had a lot of magic time.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
I think you can get away cutting blue, white and/or green are more important. There's not too many targets for FoW anyway, and although Brainstorm is amazing, going more heavily on black gives you some pretty sweet options too. As long as you can overload on hand disruption, I think the deck will have some game, because it is so easy to control the board with all that recursion of removal. In that regard, liliana, heretical healer shines even more because it is a persistent source of discard.
What am I missing here rules wise?
If we look at Dark Depth's "trigger" here:
"When Dark Depths has no ice counters on it, sacrifice it. If you do, create a legendary 20/20 black Avatar creature token with flying and indestructible named Marit Lage."
Note two things, right off the bat. One, the ability is what is called a State Trigger:
Which means that Dark Depths triggers any time State Based Actions are applied if the condition (no Ice Counters) is true.Originally Posted by Comprehensive Rules
The second is that that whole trigger is one paragraph. That means that the entire thing is the trigger. So, were you to Stifle it, the entire ability is countered, meaning they cannot sacrifice it at all. There is no "time" between them sacrificing Dark Depths and getting the token, nor are there distinct triggers differentiating between sacrificing the land and getting the token. It is all, in terms of the game, one action. If the sacrifice it, they get a token; if they don't, they won't get a token. There is no way for them to sacrifice it and not get a token via Stifle.
So, these two facts together mean that if you Stifle the trigger, literally nothing will happen in the game except that instance of the Dark Depths trigger will leave the stack. As soon as any player gets Priority, the State Trigger of Dark Depths is once again true and so will be put on the stack again.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
I think this has obvious synergy with Contamination.
I'm not sure that's true. You need easy to cast cheap creatures to play and sac each turn to keep a contamination going. Most of the creatures you are going to run in an engine like this are not going to be castable every turn cause of the high CC, also you need your engine up and running to keep Contamination alive, so if your deck is already working why do you need this? Running things like Bloodghast and Bitter Blossom which work on their own are much more reasonable for a Contamination lock than something like Oath that requires lots of extra pieces to get up and running.
I’m finally able to make it out to play for once, so I’m going to give this a go:
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Oath of Ghouls
4 Assassin’s Trophy
2 Thoughtseize
2 Collective Brutality
3 Mausoleum Secrets
4 Veteran Explorer
4 Horror of the Broken Lands
4 Street Wraith
4 Faerie Macabre
2 Plaguecrafter
1 Minister of Pain
1 Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed
1 Night Incarnate
1 Fulminator Mage
1 Archfiend of Ilfinir
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Marsh Flats
3 Bayou
1 Phyrexian Tower
2 Forest
6 Swamp
Not sure on the sideboard yet but this is what I have so far:
SB
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Choke
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Fatal Push
2 Fulminator Mage
1 Night Incarnate
2 surgicals
2 Pithing Needle
I want to try a 1 of Songs of the Damned just for a tutorable mana boost. Archfiend is a great finisher but his cycling is meh and the Minister and Night Incarnate do a more reliable job of being a sweeper, so that’s probably what I’ll cut for it.
I think this is more than enough Sacrifice outlets for Explorer, Therpies, plague Crafters and Collectives and a Tower.
Bumping this thread with a new version. Giving Kaya a shot
Ghouls n Ghosts
[ 21 land ]
4 x Marsh Flats
3 x Windswept Heath
4 x Scrubland
2x Bayou
1 x Plains
1 x Swamp
4 x Wasteland
1 x Volrath’s Stronghold
1 x Karakas
[ 19 Spells ]
1x Collective Brutality
1x Chains of Mephistopheles
4x Thoughtseize
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
1x Fatal Push / Abrupt Decay
2x Swords to Plowshares
3x Mausoleum Secrets
4x Oath of Ghouls
[ 11 Graveyard ]
3x Faerie Macabre
4x Street Wraith
4x Remorseful Cleric
[ 6 Utility Creatures ]
3x Plaguecrafter
1x Kami of False Hope
1x Fulminator Mage
1x Night Incarnate
[ 3 Planeswalkers ]
1 Liliana, Heretical Healer / Liliana, Defiant Necromancer
2 Kaya, Orzhov Usurper
[ Sideboard ]
1 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
2 Containment Priest
2 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Ground Seal
1 Choke
2 Abrupt Decay / Assassin's Trophy
1 Caustic Caterpillar / Qasali Pridemage / Knight of Autumn
1 Ghost-lit Redeemer
1 Bitterblossom
1 Massacre
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Pernicious Deed
1 Sylvan Library
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Anafenza, the Foremost
1 Slaughter Pact
1 infernal Reckoning
1 Fatal Push
EDIT: I'm very pleased with the current list and will try it out in a tournament soon. The only problem I have is the lack of 1 drops.
Last edited by bruizar; 02-12-2019 at 02:42 PM.
You don't like Veteran Explorer + Cabal Therapy in your 1cc spot?
If you need a 1 drop in a Junk deck with a creature engine... Birds of Paradise? People have forgotten about that card since DRS made it obsolete, but green midrange decks want to get ahead on mana.
I'm leaning towards Mirri's Guile for the one drop. Something that helps with consistency. Explorer is a different plan imo. I feel like this deck plays more like pox than like nicfit.
If I get to play Tuesday, thinking of running oath again. Would need to buy/borrow hymn and plague. Suggestions?
4 hymn to tourach
4 collective brutality
4 cabal therapy
2 phyrexian arena
2 sylvan library
3 oath of ghouls
3 death's shadow
3 Green sun's zenith
1 varolz, the scar-striped
1 birds of paradise
1 veteran Explorer
1 reclamation sage
1 dryad arbor
1 kalonian hydra
1 scavenging ooze
3 plaguecrafter
4 faerie macabre
4 dark ritual
4 ghost quarter
3 verdant catacombs
3 Marsh flats
2 overgrown tomb
1 godless shrine
1 forest
4 swamp
1 phyrexian Tower
SB:
3 fulminator mage
3 natural order
1 tireless tacker
1 gaddock teeg
1 terrastodon
1 progenitus
3 abrupt decay
2 minister of pain
How did it go? It is a diff direction than I would go for but curious to learn about your experience
I couldn't find plaguecrafter unfortunately so cut them for one minister of pain (list was 62). - 1 godless shrine +1 llanowar wastes. In the sb - 1 teeg - 2 minister +1 spore frog +2 engineered plague.
Went 2-2, deck felt strong though! Beat lands and high tide. Lost a very close g3 vs bug control to my own arena with a 15/15 varolz on the table. Lost bad to eldrazi, matchup seems horrible...plaguecrafter would have helped though.
I picked up two street wraith, no clue why I wasn't running them. Need to find 2/3 plague crafter.
IMHO you're a little more focused on the Rock plan than the Oath plan. I guess the main question is whether Oath of Ghouls actually provides that much value in this deck? You don't have *that* many ways to put creatures in your own 'yard in the early game other than Street Wraith and Faerie Macabre. In the fair match-ups, Hymns and Collective Brutality (as creature kill) are going to tend to fill your opponent's graveyard with creatures potentially triggering Oath for them. Having to discarding and recur Faerie Macabre to keep opponent off Oath feels weak to me. (Ooze seems great though!)
Maybe Oath would work better as a sideboard plan against removal heavy decks like Grixis Control? I think saw something somewhere about RB Goblins running the card in the board specifically for the Grixis match-up. Sylvan Library and Phyrexian Arena are already insanely good vs Grixis Control though and it's possible you could outgrind Grixis with two copies of each and zero Oaths.
I've been playing around with an Esper cycling build with the aim of getting value out of a turn two Oath. No idea if it's remotely viable, but I figure it's worth running Force if we're planning to durdle hard and Plow seems like the right removal spell for an Oath of Ghouls deck.
4 Flooded Strand
2 Marsh Flats
2 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
1 Scrubland
2 Island
1 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Bojuka Bog
4 Oath of Ghouls
2 Astral Slide
4 Curator of Mysteries
2 Architects of Will
2 Street Wraith
1 Archfiend of Ifnir
2 Mausoleum Wanderer
3 Stitcher's Supplier
3 Baleful Strix
2 Plaguecrafter
1 Aethersnipe
1 Fulminator Mage
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Cabal Therapy
SB:
3 Faerie Macabre
2 Flusterstorm
2 Disenchant
2 Meddling Mage
1 Ghost-Lit Redeemer
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Invasive Surgery
1 Null Rod
1 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
1 Plague Mare
Stitcher seems a bit weak, but should help to dig for the silver bullets -- Aethersnipe, Plaguecrafter and Fulminator -- while helping to keep our graveyard more stocked than opponent's. Love the idea of Night Incarnate, but it kills most of my guys and not sure what to cut to cram it in. (Maybe -1 Astral Slide, +1 Night Incarnate?)
I picked up a playset of Mausoleum Secrets in paper, but I think it might be too low-impact in this kind of grindy deck. It really sucks that it can only fetch black cards. I might try it in a mono-black Helm/Leyline Painter/Grindstone deck though :P.
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