[Deck] Reanimator

[Karhumies]

Update on my thoughts:

MD: the generalists
3x JGCA
1x Sphinx
1x Archon
1x Iona
1x Hexproof/Shroud slot (Inkwell seems to be the best ATM)
(1x Flex slot - Elesh Norn or a 2nd copy of another creature. Often Sphinx.)

SB: the specialists
1x Terastodon
1x Elesh Norn
1x P.Emperion / META slot
(1x META slot or 2nd copy of MD creature. Often Iona / Sphinx.)

[Sturtzilla]

Well I don't post for a few hours and there is a whole new page of material to read on this forum! It was all a pretty exciting read guys. I have to commend everyone for the ammount of thought, playtesting, and work that went into designing each build and subsequently each post. Here are my thoughts on the two issues at hand.

Creatures

We have been honing this deck to a near science at this point and here is what I have come to running for my creature base.

Maindeck
3 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
1 Blazing Archon
1 Inkwell Leviathan

Sideboard

1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Terastodon

With that said if it turns out that a 3 Brainstorm build may function better, I may add another flex slot creature in the main. I think it would be a toss up between Stormtide and another Sphinx. It would have to be a meta call though. I know where I play there is a decent amount of Merfolk, so that would make me want to lean toward the second Sphinx. I have never been a fan of Platinium Emperion or Angel in this deck. Too many times they just end up as a stalemate creature that does not bring the game home. Those are my thoughts on the creature base at the moment. My build has been functioning really well recently, so I don't see any reason to change it, unless the stats really suggest it is worth it.

Brainstorm
Brainstorm functions in many capacities in this deck.

1. Drawing to hit combo pieces or counter magic needed
2. Synergy with fecthlands to shuffle away unwanted cards
3. Hiding useful cards from discard oriented decks (It is really satisfying to Brainstorm in response to a Hymn and put your reanimation on top of your deck and have the Hymn hit the creature you were about to ditch!)
4. It pitches to FoW.

Even with all of these benefits, I have many times kept openers with a brainstorm that were one piece of off a turn 2-3 reanimation. However after I brainstormed I hit nothing useful and just shuffled everything away with a fetchland. I guess this is a better scenario than some, yet it can really mess up analysis of opening hands. I would say if whiffs for me about as often as it hits. With that said, if the math supports going to a lower count I will be trying it out.

[Garobidou]

Some more explanations on the model (as some questions arose) :

1) The models does take into account fetchs. It does take into account shuffling when you do Brainstorm then Entomb. In fact, I more or less ran every single hand and determined how to play it and how many cards you drew

2) I don't pretend the results of this model should be followed blindly. However we are a combo deck, we are supposed to combo as soon as possible and our keep or mulligan decision is based on that

3) Why did I consider a Reanimation by turn 3? For 2 main reasons :
- Because from experience in testing when you can't reanimate by T3 you're almost dead (except against Control but even there the window is very small as a resolved Jace is often bad)
- The format has shifted around 2 drops with New phyrexia. Stoneforge and Dark Confidant now define the format. For that reason Jin on T3 is extremely powerful as you're opponent will often be tapped out

On the specific point of Brainstorm

In my opinion Brainstorm is the best card in the format. However if we want to reach a "perfect" build we should try many options.

Before looking closely at the pros/cons let me give 3 ideas :

1) God hands aren't Brainstorm hands. Brainstorm is used in the "Other keepable hands" when you're looking for 1 combo piece. Brainstorm is really good when this combo piece missing is the discard outlet. Otherwise the discard outlet will give the extra draw you need to find the combo piece (on average). So Brainstorm is perfectly effective in 1/3 of the cases.

2) Instead of running cards to find combo pieces, one should just run combo pieces. I suggest one reads CalebD answers in this thread : http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...ness%29/page14

3) A Top 8 at a Scg Open is not a valid argument. But a player (Kyle Kloster) that keeps playing this deck (he certainly has 10 times more testing than all of us) and comes to the conclusion he has to run 2 Brainstorms should be taken into consideration and not rejected because no one can play less than 4 brainstorm in a Blue Legacy deck

Now looking closely at the cons you underlined about running less than 4 Brainstorms :

Con 1 : Brainstorm allows to find combo pieces. This point is dealt previously. Moreover, this is totally dealt in the numbers I'll give below as the draws from Brainstorm are taken into acount in the model

Con 2 : Brainstorm allows to find permission spells. I agree on this one as there will be no counterpart

Con 3 : Brainstorms allows to remove bad cards from hand. If your hand is full of bad cards you shouldn't have kept it (see Con 1).

Con 4 : Brainstorm allows to fight Discard. I agree however one should look at it more closely. If you're on the draw, Brainstorm won't do anythin against a T1 Thoughtseize. If you're On the play, you should have a better T1 to play and use your mana to play it : you won't hold Brainstorm with Hapless in hand, Careful + Creature, ...

Con 5 : Brainstorm allows to find our hate / anti-hate. Our hate on G1 is called Permission spells (so for this see Con 2). On G2-3, Brainstorms will obviously come in (see my previous)

Con 6 : stats are flowed as opponent interacts and we have variance towards creatures. On a G1 I know that my opponent will interact but I don't know how. As I am the combo player, I will do my best to put the pressure and follow my gameplan. So looking at optimizing the initial hands isn't pointless or biaised.
About creatures, this point is why I play 4 jin (to reduce variance).

Conclusion : I suggest we should do massive testings with the "Brainstormless" builds. Then we will compare and conclude. But it isn't that easy.
Now what you're looking for : the results.

Results

Builds Rank #1 to #25


Builds Rank #26 to #50


Builds Rank #51 to #75


Builds Rank #76 to #100


Builds Rank #101 to #125


Builds Rank #126 to #150


Builds Rank #151 to #175


Builds Rank #176 to #200


Builds Rank #200 to #207

[wcm8]

Fantastic work, and somewhat surprising results.

Regarding the land base... Should it be 2 basics, 4 seas, 4 darkslick shores, 8 fetch? Or less shores since we are wanting to cast daze and avoid a wasteland blow out? The only issue with fetches is the possibilty of opposing stifles -- though stifle is probably the least of our worries against a deck that's running them.

And what is the optimal 9th creature? A second Iona, or a second Sphinx? Or possibly a different option?

Then the sideboard issue comes up... Just like dredge, stomping an opponent game 1 is the easy part. Where do we look to optimize our chances against the control matchup, since thats typically going to be the most challenging.

[Clark Kant]

Excellent question about Darkslick Shores. There do not seem to be too many disadvantages to playing it.

Fantastic work Garobidou. Thank you for taking on such an enormous task and crunching all the numbers.

P.S: I don't think it is ever a good decision to pass on going first to slightly increase your goldfish percentage. Because you are also effectively giving your opponent one extra turn by doing so.

The numbers are very clear and I think a lot of people should sleeve up Build #2 to try out. It's statistically near identical to build #1 but allows us to play 2 Brainstorm rather than just one, which does have value postboard. So taking sideboard anti-hate into account, Build #2 is almost certainly a stronger choice than Build #1.

Build #3 is also very tempting for me personally since it's close to my current build, and happens to have the highest win percentage of any build when you are on the play.

And there is still nothing neccesarily wrong with continuing to run a 3-4 Brainstorm build.

Every 0.1% drop in goldfish percentage corresponds to a 1 out of every 1000 games you play difference in whether you can combo off by turn 3 or not.

Every 1% drop in goldfish percentage corresponds to a 1 out of every 100 games you play whether you can combo off by turn 3 or not.

That might be compensated for by having a slightly better chance of finding your anti-hate postboard.

So for example, there's a chance I might continue to play Build #29, since it's pretty much identical to my current build. Doing so will cost me a one game out of every 500 games I play, which I think I am okay with.

Of note, the highest build with 4 Brainstorm is a 1% drop from the top ranked build. That's a fairly significant drop off.

And I agree that the precise configuration of any particular tournament winning build is irrevelant. Because even if the build was suboptimal, it wouldn't have made a big difference statistically. Just because a certain configuration won, does not mean that it is the most optimal configuration that could've been played. It usually isn't. Playskill and luck are always a much bigger factor in what ends up winning and what doesn't.

Thanks again Garobidou.

Based on your new data, here is my current list...

// Lands
4 [A] Underground Sea
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
4 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
1 [UNH] Island
1 [UNH] Swamp

// Creatures
3 [NPH] Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
2 [ARB] Sphinx of the Steel Wind
1 [ZEN] Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 [CNF] Inkwell Leviathan
1 [RAV] Blazing Archon
2 [JU] Hapless Researcher

// Spells
4 [FNM] Reanimate
4 [US] Exhume
3 [B] Animate Dead
4 [OD] Entomb
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [NPH] Mental Misstep
3 [NE] Daze
4 [OD] Careful Study
2 [FNM] Brainstorm

// Sideboard
SB: 3 Misdirection - Vs. Removal heavy, counter heavy and discard heavy decks etc.
SB: 3 Pithing Needle - Vs. Tormod's Crypt, Relic of Progenitus, Karakas, Painter, Belcher, Helm, Top, Jace etc.
SB: 2 Null Rod - Vs. Tormod's Crypt, Relice of Progenitus, Painter, Belcher, Helm, Top etc.
SB: 2 Echoing Truth - Vs. Leyline of the Void etc.
SB: 2 Show and Tell - Vs. Leyline of the Void etc.
SB: 1 Stormtide Leviathan/Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite - Both are excellent options against Elves, Goblin, Zoo and other non-Merfolk aggro decks.
SB: 1 Terastadon - An all around answer to janky cards like Ensnaring Bridge and Noetic Scales that you don't have a great answer to.
SB: 1 Platinum Emporium - Seems essential versus Burn and Tendrils Combo.

Do you think four answers to Leyline of the Void postboard is enough? It's an exceedingly popular card.

[Karhumies]

Thanks Garobidou for the work you have put into those numbers!

I would still like to remind you all of the importance of creature selection. The figures assume all creatures are identical / equally valuable. Since this is not true in real life due to diversity in stuff (eg. opposing strategies), we need to consider whether the additional MD creature slots can pull their own weight when "randomly animated" (e.g. Hapless -> Reanimate). This calls for a balance between consistency (= having multiple copies of the best targets) and variety (= having at least some MD out against most popular decks for which the best general targets are not as useful).

I guess what I attempt to do is to give a fair warning: Having a sub-par creature in a "random animation" type of opening hand turns it from god hand to a game loss against specific opponents; something which can screw up some of the math involved in the table.


To conclude with a practical tip, I suggest either 2nd Iona or 4th Jin (for consistency) or 1st Elesh Norn (for variance) as the 9th MD creature. Some other options can be successfully reasoned, but they need to be considered/justified before just slapping them in. SB is still the best place for meta/specialist stuff. Think of it this way: experimental SB creatures which fail do not affect G1 performance and you don't need to side them in if you suddenly realize they don't work or the meta deck is not present; but experimental MD creatures which fail turn easily into game losses.

[Clark Kant]

Here is my question, there are three sideboard slots for utility creatures.

However, there are four excellent creatures vying for these slots...

SB: 1 Stormtide Leviathan - Due to it's very fast clock, this is excellent against every noncombo deck in the format with the exception of Merfolk. Even against combo and Merfolk, it's still unblockable and capable of racing.

SB: 1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite - Excellent option against Elves, Goblin, Zoo and Merfolk aggro decks. Has a huge advantage in that it tremendously sets tribal decks back, even if they manage to remove it.

SB: 1 Terastadon - An all around answer to hate like Ensnaring Bridge and Noetic Scales that you don't have a great answer to.

SB: 1 Platinum Emporium - Seems absolutely essential versus Burn and Tendrils Combo and solid vs Belcher as well. But I would love to see a more indepth analysis on which matchups you would side him in against.

Of those four, which three creatures are the best options? There is some overlap in functionality between Stormtide and Elesh Norn. So should one of these two get the boot, even though they both have such incredibly strong abilities (8/8 unblockable Blazing Archon)/effects (Permanent Infest cripples tribal aggro)?

Edit: On second thought, I see very few disadvantages to replacing the 2nd Sphinx of Steel Wind with a Stormtide Leviathan in the preceding list. Can you guys think of any, other than vs. Merfolk? If not, I think that's probably the optimal choice.

[KevinTrudeau]

Looks like a large portion of the deck will be reprinted in a new Premium Deck dubbed 'Graveborn', due out in November for $35 MSRP. There's no explicit confirmation, but there is a strong hint of Entomb seeing a reprint:

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazin...ily/arcana/737

Awful timing for me, as I just traded for a set of Entombs today, each valued at around $27 :(.

I'm not a huge fan of Platinum Emperion. There are a lot of situations where you reanimate it, and you end up losing; Burn can just Smash to Smithereens it for example, it does nothing against Hive Mind or Emrakul, and Tendrils combo can just bounce it or destroy it with a card from their Wishboard. Obviously, those types of useless situations can happen with any target, but I feel it would be more so with Emperion. I like its synergy with Reanimate, but I think Emperion is one combat-oriented ability away (trample would have been nice) from making the cut; I'd rather play a second Iona than Emperion.

As for Elesh Norn vs. Stormtide Leviathan for the anti-creature slot in the board, Elesh Norn wins handily for me. Dredge literally can't do anything once she hits play, and she's quite good in matchups you wouldn't necessarily expect, like Welder MUD (takes out Welder and Metalworker). Plus, she turns your Hapless Researchers into blue Wild Nacatls, which isn't super amazing, but is just really cool. In my mind, Elesh Norn is very close to being playable in the maindeck, but unfortunately, she is just a 4/7 against a lot of decks.

So, I think a general list for sideboard utility creatures, as of now at least, would be:

1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1x Terastodon
1x Iona, Shield of Emeria

[theBloody]

I don't think they reprint entomb because they simple didn't said it. "Entombs" was there used as a verb, so it don't have to refer to a card. There are many ways to "entomb" something.

Question: if you reanimate Platinum Emperion, did you lose life? I thought yes, but two things confuse me. You guys with term "low life", but more this.

...so I Entomb Platinum Angel, Reanimate it, and proceed to win at -6 life.

Thanks:-)

[Sturtzilla]

@ Garobidou

First of all, I would like to say thanks to Garobidou for the awesome work he has put into optimizing this deck. Moreover I really appreciate the fact that you are sharing this information with the rest of us. Now I have been testing a 2 Brainstorm build for a few days with mixed results. Currently I am working on site at a National Lab and do not have my actual cards with me. Therefore I have been using MWS. My results have been okay. I am not sure if it is an artifact of the shuffling mechanism or just bad luck, but I have had some pretty good (turn 2-3 dudes) and pretty bad hands (openers with 5 lands or no lands) with the build. I know these happen but the frequency of the poor hands was a bit crazy. So with the information that you have provided, I will get back to testing and hope I get some better e-shuffles tonight. I will post my results in a few days on what I have come up with. I think I will be testing builds 1-3. Thanks again!

@ KevinTrudeau

Looks like a large portion of the deck will be reprinted in a new Premium Deck dubbed 'Graveborn', due out in November for $35 MSRP. There's no explicit confirmation, but there is a strong hint of Entomb seeing a reprint.

This is really exciting! I have been wishing that there were foil Exhumes for a good bit of time. Looks like they are finally getting around to it.

@ KevinTrudeau and Clark Kant

I'm not a huge fan of Platinum Emperion. There are a lot of situations where you reanimate it, and you end up losing; Burn can just Smash to Smithereens it for example, it does nothing against Hive Mind or Emrakul, and Tendrils combo can just bounce it or destroy it with a card from their Wishboard. Obviously, those types of useless situations can happen with any target, but I feel it would be more so with Emperion. I like its synergy with Reanimate, but I think Emperion is one combat-oriented ability away (trample would have been nice) from making the cut; I'd rather play a second Iona than Emperion.

I have to agree. Sure it is cute that you don't lose life when you reanimate after he is in play, but that seems poor when you can't use FoW or Fetchs after. Better question (and sorry Clark Kant, I am not trying to tear you down): Why not just find Jin or Iona against either Burn or Tendrils? Jin forces burn to kill you on their 3rd-4th (depending if you are on the play or draw) turn. I have played burn for a good bit and sure turn three kills are possible but really unlikely. You are more looking toward a turn 4-5 kill. And this would be in the case of a good hand and a tuned build. You could even be helping them out 9-10 points but with either option they shouldn't come out on top. With Jin you will have a hand with some counter magic, which should help keep you alive. Then at the end of turn they get to go to topdeck mode. With Iona they are just done. You call red and it should be game over right there. You should get basically the same blowout if you are playing a Tendrils deck. With Jin you force them to go off regardless if they are ready or not. There is a guy who plays TES at the store I play at. He whiffs nearly everytime I get Jin. And even if he would have enough I have a counterspell for him to hit the key play (last tutor or Ad Naseuam). Moreover in this situation you should have some counters to stop the key spells. Iona depending on the build pick a color (black is probably a good call). This will stop infernal tutoring, dark rits, cabal rits, ill-gotten gains, and tendrils. I really think we already have some really good main deck answers to both of these types of decks. Actually against TES, Elesh is a better sideboard option because she takes out all of the Empty the Warrens tokens. I really just don't think Platinium Emperion is worth a slot in this deck. In situations where he would shine, we have other options. He is a stalemate card and just doesn't pack emough punch for my liking.

[Sandoz]

Great work, Garobidou. I take my hat off to that! Very helpful. It offers a range of new insights to me.
Did you develop and execute the model manually via an Excel-Sheet? Or did you develop a program for it?

If you don’t mind, I got one further question on your model.
You wrote, that the model takes into account fetchs. How many fetch-lands did you assume? Or, was it solely meant with regard to the shuffling effect of Entomb?

Thanks again! And sorry, if I missed the information on the fetch-assumptions in your previous posts.

[Karhumies]

I agree with Sturtzilla: based on my play experience, Iona is the best target vs Burn and Jin is the best target vs Tendrils combo. The secondary choice in either case is Sphinx, because lifelinking even once for 6 can make you win the game in either MU. Also, prot. red is really useful vs. Burn as it pretty much negates their whole SB. Needless to say, Sphinx gets even better if the red deck is RDW rather than bure Burn, meaning that he has included some ceatures in the build e.g. MD Keldon Marauders or SB Stingscourger.

@ theBloody: Reanimate is resolved in order, one sentence at a time, like other cards in MtG. The key thing is the location of the periods. First sentence: "Put target creature card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control." At this point, P.Emperion is put on the battlefield and his static ability becomes active. Then happens the second sentence: "You lose life equal to its converted mana cost." This is prevented by the static effect. Side note: P.Emperion also allows to play Toughtseize without life loss, because the life loss is not an additional cost. Life loss is the last part of the effect.

@ KevinTrudeau: I believe that as the 8th MD target, 2nd Sphinx is a better general target than 1st S.Leviathan. But if you are planning to run a build with 7 MD creatures incl. 1x Sphinx, with a second Sphinx in the SB, in that case I would consider replacing the SB Sphinx with a S.Leviathan.

My reasoning: Sphinx is typically never removed from MD to SB, because he is such a good general overall target. I am more often sideboarding out Inkwell (if no targeted removal) or Archon (if no creatures to prevent from attacking). Yes, we need a general target for the SB to fill out this kind of MD slot in the case we do not have a specific creature to answer that specific opponent. Yes, in the past this role was filled by 2nd Sphinx from the SB. But that was back in the time when Terastodon was MD due to a lack of better targets, ie. Jin-G was not yet printed (3 Iona -> 3 JinG + 1 Iona = -1 MD slot, which is Terastodon). Because of this change, I would recommend transfering the SB Sphinx into something that can absolutely crush particular matchups (e.g. Elesh Norn vs Dredge). Depending on the meta, the Archon-like S.Leviathan may be a really good choice.

[theBloody]

Karhumies: Thank you very much. Good to know.

[Karhumies]

What do you think of these two scenarios for deckbuilding:

1) Less MD creatures (let's guesstimate: 7). When sideboarding, exchanges less useful MD creatures to more useful SB creatures, while keeping the creature count within the 60 the same for G2.

2) More MD creatures (let's guesstimate: 9). When sideboarding, makes G2 creature count in the 60 smaller (not all removed targets are replaced with SB creatures, although some might be) to get room for non-creature utility cards for G2.

This is very much related to the Brainstorm discussion, but I think the phenomenom can be discussed more widely/generally as a deckbuilding principle than just 1 card.

1)
+ The worst target in any MU in G1 is the 7th best target
- Less G1 god hands because the utility is in, replacing the extra creatures
+/- Takes up an equal number of SB slots as the other option (let's guesstimate: 3 creatures)

2)
+ More G1 god hands because the creatures are in, replacing the utility
- The worst target in any MU in G1 is the 9th best target
+/- Takes up an equal number of SB slots as the other option (let's guesstimate: 2 utility + 1 creature)


The "correct" (= better statistical win%) answer should probably depend on the tournament size, and whether the meta can be estimated to some extent, or not at all. But for all I know, the statistical difference between the "correct" and "incorrect" answer may be so small that it eventually comes down to personal choice.

Which option would you have as your personal choice, and on what basis?

[nyoro]

What's up with all these ridiculous only 2x bstorm list?

[Sturtzilla]

What's up with all these ridiculous only 2x bstorm list?

Reading the last say, 3 pages of this forum would have brought you up to speed on that. I will enlighten you. Consider this situation: you have are one card away from having a perfect reanimation hand, yet you have a Brainstorm. You keep your subpar opener to find that you brainstorm whiffs on finding you what you need. In this situation you would flounder in topdeck mode hoping to draw the last piece before your opponent kills you. The fact is this happens all too often in Reanimator. And this problem we intend to remedy. Oh! I almost forgot, we have proposed 1x Brainstorm lists running around too... watch out for those!

While brainstorm has many uses and is an extremely powerful card, many times it falls short of what we desire it to do in this deck. With that in mind, Garobidou has generated some data regarding the varying builds that will statistically have the most reanimates by turn 3. The data actually suggests that by playing fewer Brainstorms and more combo pieces and land, you increase your odds of having a fast dude that will hopefully win you the game.

I have to say that I was a skeptic at first. I have been testing the build labeled number one with the highest probability and it has been quite favorable. I think right now the percentages are ~70% turn 2 reanimates, ~20% turn 3 reanimates, and ~10% post turn three. Now this data is from simple gold-fishing, which I have been tracking and logging in Excel. I am working on comparing the top three listed builds and will hopefully have some sort of data analysis to share in a few days. The take home message at this point is that this approach works. ~90% of my draws I have had turn 2-3 dudes... seems really good. But granted this is a limited number of testing. I will keep logging until I have some higher numbers say 50-100 games played with each deck which I will share.

[Clark Kant]

So, given a maindeck creature base of this...

3 [NPH] Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
1 [ARB] Sphinx of the Steel Wind
1 [ZEN] Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 [CNF] Inkwell Leviathan
1 [RAV] Blazing Archon
1 a Flexslot that would otherwise be in the sideboard (Currently trying Stormtide Leviathan)

...do you guys think this is an optimal sideboard?

// Sideboard
SB: 3 Misdirection
SB: 3 Pithing Needle
SB: 2 Null Rod
SB: 2 Echoing Truth
SB: 2 Show and Tell
SB: 1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
SB: 2nd Sphinx/1st Stormtide Leviathan (One is maindecked in the flex slot and the second one is put here in the board)
SB: 1st Terastadon/2nd Iona/4th Jin-Gitaxis

Assuming that you have 4 slots to play with, and one of them is allocated to Elesh Norn, how would you distribute the remaining three between a Stormtide Leviathan, a Terdastodon, a 2nd Sphinx, a 2nd Iona, or a 4th Jin-Gitaxis?

[Clark Kant]

Also, one huge advantage to playing either Build #1 (9 creatures maindeck) or Build #10 (10 creatures maindeck) is that it (especially Build #10) makes Show and Tell from the sideboard a hell of a lot stronger while also freeing up creature slots in the board. You would have the room to run 3-4 Show and Tell in the board and make the deck extremely resilient to graveyard hate. Playing that many maindeck creatures (including 4 Jin-Gitaxis) also make Jin-Gitaxis stronger and more consistent.

I think that's something worth exploring.

[Garobidou]

What's up with all these ridiculous only 2x bstorm list?

Stupid post. If we spend time on crunching numbers and developing arguments, you should at least read them. If you don't understand them, that's another story. Otherwise don't expect to get answered with anything else than contempt.

@Sandoz
- I developed a program on Visual Basics to do that
- You're totally correct, I did not give the assumption regarding the fetchs! :) Fetchs = Other lands - 4 (namely the Undergroud sea). I did not want to add a variable as it already took ages to run. So the assumption is in favor of Brainstorm

@Sturtzilla
I'm happy your results are so far favorable. I'm looking foraward to having your entire testing results

@Sideboarding options

- Creatures are often way less powerful G2 : the whole draw/discard god hand strategy is killed by a T1 Tormod's / Relic (whether it resolves or not). And be sure our opponent will mulligan to find his hate

- We can fight hate in 2 different ways :
1. Keep the same gameplan as G1 (reanimate as fast as possible) and fight their hate by having Needle/Rod come in
2. Get into a more controllish game and dodge their hate by our new reanimate spells, namely Show and Tell
- In both cases, Brainstorm has to come in as it perfectly fits the playstyle (searching anti-hate in case 1., filtering/reaching 3 Lands in case 2.)

- I'm testing Build #2 and my current sideboard is :
2 Brainstorm
3 Show and Tell
3 Pithing Needle
1 Misdirection
1 Thoughtseize
1 Duress
2 Sphinx of the steel wind
1 Iona
1 Terastodon
(my MD creatures are : 4 Jin, 1 Sphinx, 1 Iona, 1 Inkwell, 1 Archon)

- If we want to talk about sideboarding properly, I suggest we discuss how to side in / out in each match up

[(nameless one)]

On the main, why is it Iona is only used as a 1-of?

What about a 2/2 JTCA/Iona Split. I am still aware that Iona can single-handedly blow out mono-colored decks.