[Free Article] R&D Reanimator, and Hitting 100

[voltron00x]

[NOTE: Full disclosure, the bulk of this article is a Vintage article. However, the back half is a look at my 20 favorite articles out of my first 100 for StarCityGames.com; a large number of them are Legacy articles. And, it made me realize that much of my writing has been warmly received by folks on The Source. So, I wanted to take a moment and thank you guys for the support, and the positive feedback, over the past several years. Much appreciated.]

Split article this week! *

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/21151_The_Long_And_Winding_Road_RD_Reanimator_And_Hitting_100.html

First up, a new deck Brad Granberry and I have been working on for a few weeks now: *Vintage Reanimator! *It's actually a sweet deck, capable of some pretty ridiculous plays, and a bit different than anything else being played in Vintage at the moment. *Obviously I love it because it combines my love for cheating giant fatties into play with my love of abusing the Graveyard. *(If that sentence makes me sound like a necrophiliac who loves fat chicks, its unintentional.) *

Moving quickly onward - I go through the thought process and design of the deck, which I think is useful for people who like to brew, and present a list based on my experience in the 2/12 Blue Bell tournament. *Note that the Chains of Mephistopheles in the sideboard are an untested plan against Gush, Gush being the only deck to beat me at Blue Bell; those slots are sort of floater slots at the moment. *I'm leaning towards testing 2 REB and 1 Volcanic Island in the Sideboard (switching the fetches around to be 4 Delta, 1 Misty, 1 Tarn) instead, b/c this deck hates seeing Jace resolve. *Another option to combat Jace (and Shops, and maybe even Dredge) is to squeeze another Terastodon into the sideboard. *

Anyway, check it out, and sleeve up the deck, its a blast. Also, to echo something Sperling says in his article this week, Steel Sabotage is the bees knees guys, it really is. With two in my hand on the play against Sam Berse's MUD deck at Blue Bell, I felt like I couldn't lose.

The second part is a recap of my 20 favorite articles out of my first 100. *Hard to believe its already been over two years and 100 articles, but here we are...

Enjoy!

[Aggro_zombies]

Congrats on hitting one hundred! You're only slightly less than twenty years away from being the oldest living human, so keep at it! Stay spry!

[GGoober]

Grats on 100 articles, I mean 100 good articles :)

[menace13]

Congrats on your centennial. I always look forward to and read all your articles.

I would think your G1 against Dredge, Storm and Jace are increased than with Oath alone.

Might be that a version of the deck is viable again as it has recently put up a few top 8s.
The 5k list(Putrid into Animate Dead seems good against Merf and Gobs).
Reanimator recently won Eternal Party Legacy event in Japan(200+ players), the coverage site is on the Animator thread here, but the deck lists aren't up yet.

[Plague Sliver]

The 20 articles are great. It was especially helpful for me to see a retrospective on the progression of Zoo over the last few years.

[GGoober]

Matt that Vintage Reanimator's a beast. My friend pieced it up and tested last night. It has huge improvements over regular Oath in the fact that you no longer have to focus too much on resolving Oath to win. You can naturally still go via Oath, but the reanimation path is actually a turn faster (requiring 2 cards, Oath also technically requires 2 cards if your opponent has no creatures). It was hard to sideboard against this deck as well since you have to worry both on the Oath path and the GY path. Nature's Claim no longer beats this list :P

[Killane]

Damn. Thought I was done buying expensive playsets for a while after getting my LEDs last week. Now I have to save up for Entombs. This list is AWESOME.

Damn.

[voltron00x]

Thanks guys.

I'd suggest forgetting the 2x Chains of Mephistopheles in the SB. Instead, just play a Terastodon and one other floater for whatever you're worried about. Right now I'm using Dispel, b/c its good against Dredge and Gush. The Don helps beat Jace decks, its great against Shops, and its also strong against Gush. It lets you side into a model that has 2x Don, Iona, and a Tinker target, so your oath is 75% to hit a relevant creature.

That floater slot could be another Workshop card, a card for Fish, whatever you need for the meta, basically.

If you want to try brewing the deck further, Matt Sperling suggested trying a Tolarian Winds, or Crop Rotation and 1x Bazaar. Crop Rot is super spicy, since it lets you find Orchard OR Bazaar for either plan. The only problem is, how do you make it fit?