jackbohlen
04-23-2011, 07:26 PM
There’s been a lot of talk about Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur as a Reanimator target recently, but a lot of people have been just talking about jamming him into existing builds. However, the fact is that Gitaxias is fundamentally different from the other good targets in the format: while all of the other targets will guarantee you the game against certain decks, Jin-Gitaxias on the 1st or 2nd turn will almost certainly hand it to you against ANY deck, but only IF you build you deck around him. If you don’t, he’s a much riskier investment compared to, say, Iona: in that extra turn before you empty their hand, control decks can deal with him, aggro decks can lay down threats (or often deal with him) and combo decks can go off. However, if you do build your deck around him, none of those decks really stand a chance.
To do this, 3 circumstances need to be met:
1. He has to come down early, i.e. before aggro decks have a chance to build up a board presence and before control decks can bring most of their answers online.
2. He has to be protected. Reanimator decks already have plenty of protection, but it needs to be the right kind. Specifically, it needs to be the sort that you can rip off the top of your deck from his draw 7 effect and then have active during the opponent’s turn (in other words, we need to forget about the discard and max out on free countermagic).
3. You have to be able to win even if your opponent does remove him (because he’s a lot easier to get rid off than Iona, Inkwell or most other Reanimator targets). The best way to do this is to ensure that you maximise your chance of drawing, in your new 7, the cards you need to reanimate another creature into play.
However, despite these issues, a 1st turn Jin is still an incredibly powerful play, and fixes a major issue Reanimator decks have had in the past: previously, if you tried to make the deck fast enough to get a fatty into play on Turn 1, you'd run into problems in that you wouldn't know what they were on and therefore would put a sub-optimal creature into play. With Jin, however, you can be pretty confident that, unless the opponent is actually able to counter your reanimation, you're basically assured of victory.
After looking at these issues, I came to the conclusion that the best home for Jin is a hybrid between Storm and Reanimator, and this is the list I came up with. It aims to win the same way all Reanimator decks do, but does it with some of the tools used by Storm decks (LED, Lotus Petal, Chrome Mox, Intuition), ensuring that it is much faster than traditional Reanimator builds without sacrificing too much in the way of consistency and protection. Unless you know you need to keep a protection-heavy hand, this deck will reanimate a creature, almost always Jin, on turn 1 or 2 like clockwork. In some ways, it's like CounterTop, in that you don't actually win early in the game, but you do set up a lock that they should find it pretty difficult to get out of.
Gitaxiator
4 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Platinum Emperion
4 Brainstorm
4 Dark Ritual
4 Entomb
4 Force of Will
4 Mental Misstep
2 Careful Study
4 Exhume
3 Intuition
4 Reanimate
4 Lion’s Eye Diamond
3 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
3 Underground Sea
2 Verdant Catacombs
So, that’s the deck. As you’ll notice, it looks very different from traditional Reanimator builds. Let’s go over the card choices:
THE CREATURES
Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur – the core (sorry) of the deck. It might seem weird to play 4 of 1 creature in a Reanimator deck, but hear me out: the only ways this deck has of getting creatures to the graveyard are Entomb, Intuition, Careful Study, Lion’s Eye Diamond and overflowing your hand. 3 of those 5 ways only work if you have one in your hand or can draw into one. I tried various other ways of getting him to the yard, but eventually decided to just bite the bullet and run 4 Jins. This vastly increases the amount of ways we have of getting one to the yard, so I think it’s a solid choice.
Iona, Shield of Emeria – too good against some decks not to maindeck. What I love about making Reanimator faster is that it increases the range of decks she’s good against: previously, the mono-colour aggro decks like Goblins and Merfolk could occasionally just lay down enough pressure early on to kill you without casting any more spells, or they could ride Aether Vial to victory. Their ways of dealing with a Turn 1 Iona are much less numerous.
Platinum Emperion – I wanted one more maindeck Reanimate target, and went with Platinum Emperion because of all the life-loss going on in this deck – without him, I was pretty weak to all-in burn strategies, because they could often just deal enough damage to you to finish you off with lucky top decks once you get a Jin on the field, particularly if you’ve given them a helping hand by paying 10 life to cast Reanimate.
THE BUSINESS
Reanimate – obvious card is obvious. Admittedly, you’re always going to be losing a LOT of life with this card, but at least this deck lets you do that before that life loss matters too much.
Exhume – probably the best card in the deck, and certainly much better than Reanimate. The extra mana isn’t much when you’re packing so much acceleration, but the fact that it doesn’t target and the lack of life-loss are both pretty big deals.
THE ENABLERS
Careful Study – not quite as good in this deck as in regular Reanimator because of the heavy black focus you need to take advantage of Dark Ritual, but still good as a 2-of. I might try to make room for more of these.
Intuition – was Infernal Tutors because of the interaction with LED, but replaced them with Intuitions when it became obvious that the extra mana wasn't going to hurt as much as being unable to use it as an Entomb (because you'd have to get rid of your hand before you played IT, so you wouldn't have a reanimate effect in there). Still interacts with LED though, as you can cast this to tutor up an Exhume, then sac LED to get rid of a fatty in your hand.
Brainstorm – the best blue spell in legacy, obviously this deck’s going to play it. It’s also the reason for all the fetchlands.
Entomb – the card that makes all forms of Reanimator work.
THE PROTECTION
Force of Will – buys you time if you have a slow hand. Lets you protect your key spells. Lets you tap out to reanimate Jin, then still have protection up (because you drew it with his ability) on their turn.
Mental Misstep – soon to be one of the best cards in Legacy, without a doubt. Here, it lets you do many of the same things that Force of Will does, but without costing a card. I wouldn’t feel comfortable with this sort of deck if they weren’t going to print MM. Most Reanimator decks play Forces, maybe Daze and discard to protect their combo. By playing purely free counterspells, you ensure that you’ll be able to protect your Jin even on the first few turns. The other great thing about them is that it’s a pretty safe turn one play to just draw and discard a Jin-Gitaxias, knowing that if they have any game-winning combo or annoying piece of disruption (usually Thoughtseize or Duress), you can just counter it without needing to play any mana sources. It protects your Reanimates against other MMs, and your Exhumes against Spell Snares. It protects Jin from StP and other 1 mana removal spells. It buys you time against CounterTop by keeping Top off the table. It does everything you want out of a free spell.
THE ACCELERATION
Dark Ritual – vital for strong openers. Let’s you make very strong 1st turn plys. It also sometimes gives you a weird level of protection, because it lets you play Entomb AND Reanimate on the same turn, meaning that your opponent has to have two counters to stop you. A lot of people don’t like it in 2 colour decks, but most of your blue spells you never actually want to cast mana for.
Lion’s Eye Diamond – inspiration taken from ANT and Dredge. The LEDs in this deck have two major interactions with your other cards. Firstly, they let you Intuition for a Reanimate or an Exhume and then cast it. Secondly, they let you cast Exhume and then discard your hand, pitching a Jin, Iona or Stormtide and then bring it back (this trick works because Exhume doesn’t target, so
unfortunately you can’t do it with Reanimate). A lot of your most explosive openings will involve either this or Dark Ritual.
Chrome Mox and Lotus Petal – gives you the mana to make very strong opening plays, while also letting you cut down on lands, helping ensure fast starts.
LANDS – fetches help with Brainstorm, basic Swamps give protection against Wasteland. You don’t ever really need a basic Island in this deck, but it’s probably worth it anyway. I don’t know, I just feel safer knowing that all my lands will find me black mana. You can run so few lands because of the artifact mana, and because you’re looking for Turn 1 or Turn 2 ‘wins’.
So, that’s the deck. As you can see, it’s an interesting hybrid of Reanimator and Storm that can lock down the game ridiculously early but can also play a long(ish) game, countering key threats and choosing its moment to strike. Now, there’s a pretty major question to answer about it:
Why play this deck over traditional Reanimator or ANT?
Because free counterspells are just so much better than discard effects, and because you can effectively end the game before fast combo decks get the chance to go off and before control decks like CounterTop have time to get their disruption engines online. Basically, this deck takes some of the strongest counterspells in Legacy and finds a way to maximise their utility. Also, if you enjoy decks that can be as fast as Belcher but also involve a lot of decision making, this is a pretty good choice. However, unlike Belcher and ANT, this deck doesn't win with long spell chains but with one big but inexpensive spell, which makes it much easier to win through counters, since you often have enough gas to just be able to cast backup Reanimates or Exhumes should your first one get countered. A final, but pretty important, point to make is that this is a combo deck that can win WITHOUT resolving a one mana spell – yep, you have built in Mental Misstep protection.
I have yet to finalise a sideboard, but I think it will look something like this:
4 Show and Tell
3 Iona, Shield of Emeria
4 Misdirection
1 Terastodon
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
2 Stormtide Leviathan
The Show and Tells let you dodge graveyard hate – they’re a bit slower, and take longer to set up, but that doesn’t matter too much because your opponent needs to slow down their own game-plan to use their hate. The Ionas are there because of how many matchups there are where you just want to cast one and end the game on the spot. The Misdirections are necessary for decks packed with removal, because against them you want to be sure that on your first Jin draw you get enough protection to keep him safe. Terastodon seems like he’d be pretty useful somewhere, as does Sphinx – both of them just add a bit of flexibility to your game-plan. Stormtide Leviathan provides some insurance against non-merfolk aggro strategies like Goblins or Affinity, because if you mulligan deeply, they can sometimes vomit enough creatures onto the board to be able to win through a Gitaxias.
So, that’s the deck. I feel that this has a real shot at being a competitive deck – I’ve playtested it a bit, and found that it has a very strong, very fast and very resilient game-plan. It definitely has a few vulnerabilities, but they’re very different from the vulnerabilities of traditional Reanimator decks or Storm decks. Please let me know if you have any ideas about it - personally, I'm trying to find space for more Careful Studies (which have been outperforming my expectations) and for a Gitaxian Probe or two - knowing what pace of game to play from Turn 1 for free would be a huge benefit to this deck.
EDIT: replaced the Infernal Tutors with Intuitions - the extra mana wasn't proving as big a deal as being unable to use it as an Entomb.
To do this, 3 circumstances need to be met:
1. He has to come down early, i.e. before aggro decks have a chance to build up a board presence and before control decks can bring most of their answers online.
2. He has to be protected. Reanimator decks already have plenty of protection, but it needs to be the right kind. Specifically, it needs to be the sort that you can rip off the top of your deck from his draw 7 effect and then have active during the opponent’s turn (in other words, we need to forget about the discard and max out on free countermagic).
3. You have to be able to win even if your opponent does remove him (because he’s a lot easier to get rid off than Iona, Inkwell or most other Reanimator targets). The best way to do this is to ensure that you maximise your chance of drawing, in your new 7, the cards you need to reanimate another creature into play.
However, despite these issues, a 1st turn Jin is still an incredibly powerful play, and fixes a major issue Reanimator decks have had in the past: previously, if you tried to make the deck fast enough to get a fatty into play on Turn 1, you'd run into problems in that you wouldn't know what they were on and therefore would put a sub-optimal creature into play. With Jin, however, you can be pretty confident that, unless the opponent is actually able to counter your reanimation, you're basically assured of victory.
After looking at these issues, I came to the conclusion that the best home for Jin is a hybrid between Storm and Reanimator, and this is the list I came up with. It aims to win the same way all Reanimator decks do, but does it with some of the tools used by Storm decks (LED, Lotus Petal, Chrome Mox, Intuition), ensuring that it is much faster than traditional Reanimator builds without sacrificing too much in the way of consistency and protection. Unless you know you need to keep a protection-heavy hand, this deck will reanimate a creature, almost always Jin, on turn 1 or 2 like clockwork. In some ways, it's like CounterTop, in that you don't actually win early in the game, but you do set up a lock that they should find it pretty difficult to get out of.
Gitaxiator
4 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Platinum Emperion
4 Brainstorm
4 Dark Ritual
4 Entomb
4 Force of Will
4 Mental Misstep
2 Careful Study
4 Exhume
3 Intuition
4 Reanimate
4 Lion’s Eye Diamond
3 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
3 Underground Sea
2 Verdant Catacombs
So, that’s the deck. As you’ll notice, it looks very different from traditional Reanimator builds. Let’s go over the card choices:
THE CREATURES
Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur – the core (sorry) of the deck. It might seem weird to play 4 of 1 creature in a Reanimator deck, but hear me out: the only ways this deck has of getting creatures to the graveyard are Entomb, Intuition, Careful Study, Lion’s Eye Diamond and overflowing your hand. 3 of those 5 ways only work if you have one in your hand or can draw into one. I tried various other ways of getting him to the yard, but eventually decided to just bite the bullet and run 4 Jins. This vastly increases the amount of ways we have of getting one to the yard, so I think it’s a solid choice.
Iona, Shield of Emeria – too good against some decks not to maindeck. What I love about making Reanimator faster is that it increases the range of decks she’s good against: previously, the mono-colour aggro decks like Goblins and Merfolk could occasionally just lay down enough pressure early on to kill you without casting any more spells, or they could ride Aether Vial to victory. Their ways of dealing with a Turn 1 Iona are much less numerous.
Platinum Emperion – I wanted one more maindeck Reanimate target, and went with Platinum Emperion because of all the life-loss going on in this deck – without him, I was pretty weak to all-in burn strategies, because they could often just deal enough damage to you to finish you off with lucky top decks once you get a Jin on the field, particularly if you’ve given them a helping hand by paying 10 life to cast Reanimate.
THE BUSINESS
Reanimate – obvious card is obvious. Admittedly, you’re always going to be losing a LOT of life with this card, but at least this deck lets you do that before that life loss matters too much.
Exhume – probably the best card in the deck, and certainly much better than Reanimate. The extra mana isn’t much when you’re packing so much acceleration, but the fact that it doesn’t target and the lack of life-loss are both pretty big deals.
THE ENABLERS
Careful Study – not quite as good in this deck as in regular Reanimator because of the heavy black focus you need to take advantage of Dark Ritual, but still good as a 2-of. I might try to make room for more of these.
Intuition – was Infernal Tutors because of the interaction with LED, but replaced them with Intuitions when it became obvious that the extra mana wasn't going to hurt as much as being unable to use it as an Entomb (because you'd have to get rid of your hand before you played IT, so you wouldn't have a reanimate effect in there). Still interacts with LED though, as you can cast this to tutor up an Exhume, then sac LED to get rid of a fatty in your hand.
Brainstorm – the best blue spell in legacy, obviously this deck’s going to play it. It’s also the reason for all the fetchlands.
Entomb – the card that makes all forms of Reanimator work.
THE PROTECTION
Force of Will – buys you time if you have a slow hand. Lets you protect your key spells. Lets you tap out to reanimate Jin, then still have protection up (because you drew it with his ability) on their turn.
Mental Misstep – soon to be one of the best cards in Legacy, without a doubt. Here, it lets you do many of the same things that Force of Will does, but without costing a card. I wouldn’t feel comfortable with this sort of deck if they weren’t going to print MM. Most Reanimator decks play Forces, maybe Daze and discard to protect their combo. By playing purely free counterspells, you ensure that you’ll be able to protect your Jin even on the first few turns. The other great thing about them is that it’s a pretty safe turn one play to just draw and discard a Jin-Gitaxias, knowing that if they have any game-winning combo or annoying piece of disruption (usually Thoughtseize or Duress), you can just counter it without needing to play any mana sources. It protects your Reanimates against other MMs, and your Exhumes against Spell Snares. It protects Jin from StP and other 1 mana removal spells. It buys you time against CounterTop by keeping Top off the table. It does everything you want out of a free spell.
THE ACCELERATION
Dark Ritual – vital for strong openers. Let’s you make very strong 1st turn plys. It also sometimes gives you a weird level of protection, because it lets you play Entomb AND Reanimate on the same turn, meaning that your opponent has to have two counters to stop you. A lot of people don’t like it in 2 colour decks, but most of your blue spells you never actually want to cast mana for.
Lion’s Eye Diamond – inspiration taken from ANT and Dredge. The LEDs in this deck have two major interactions with your other cards. Firstly, they let you Intuition for a Reanimate or an Exhume and then cast it. Secondly, they let you cast Exhume and then discard your hand, pitching a Jin, Iona or Stormtide and then bring it back (this trick works because Exhume doesn’t target, so
unfortunately you can’t do it with Reanimate). A lot of your most explosive openings will involve either this or Dark Ritual.
Chrome Mox and Lotus Petal – gives you the mana to make very strong opening plays, while also letting you cut down on lands, helping ensure fast starts.
LANDS – fetches help with Brainstorm, basic Swamps give protection against Wasteland. You don’t ever really need a basic Island in this deck, but it’s probably worth it anyway. I don’t know, I just feel safer knowing that all my lands will find me black mana. You can run so few lands because of the artifact mana, and because you’re looking for Turn 1 or Turn 2 ‘wins’.
So, that’s the deck. As you can see, it’s an interesting hybrid of Reanimator and Storm that can lock down the game ridiculously early but can also play a long(ish) game, countering key threats and choosing its moment to strike. Now, there’s a pretty major question to answer about it:
Why play this deck over traditional Reanimator or ANT?
Because free counterspells are just so much better than discard effects, and because you can effectively end the game before fast combo decks get the chance to go off and before control decks like CounterTop have time to get their disruption engines online. Basically, this deck takes some of the strongest counterspells in Legacy and finds a way to maximise their utility. Also, if you enjoy decks that can be as fast as Belcher but also involve a lot of decision making, this is a pretty good choice. However, unlike Belcher and ANT, this deck doesn't win with long spell chains but with one big but inexpensive spell, which makes it much easier to win through counters, since you often have enough gas to just be able to cast backup Reanimates or Exhumes should your first one get countered. A final, but pretty important, point to make is that this is a combo deck that can win WITHOUT resolving a one mana spell – yep, you have built in Mental Misstep protection.
I have yet to finalise a sideboard, but I think it will look something like this:
4 Show and Tell
3 Iona, Shield of Emeria
4 Misdirection
1 Terastodon
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
2 Stormtide Leviathan
The Show and Tells let you dodge graveyard hate – they’re a bit slower, and take longer to set up, but that doesn’t matter too much because your opponent needs to slow down their own game-plan to use their hate. The Ionas are there because of how many matchups there are where you just want to cast one and end the game on the spot. The Misdirections are necessary for decks packed with removal, because against them you want to be sure that on your first Jin draw you get enough protection to keep him safe. Terastodon seems like he’d be pretty useful somewhere, as does Sphinx – both of them just add a bit of flexibility to your game-plan. Stormtide Leviathan provides some insurance against non-merfolk aggro strategies like Goblins or Affinity, because if you mulligan deeply, they can sometimes vomit enough creatures onto the board to be able to win through a Gitaxias.
So, that’s the deck. I feel that this has a real shot at being a competitive deck – I’ve playtested it a bit, and found that it has a very strong, very fast and very resilient game-plan. It definitely has a few vulnerabilities, but they’re very different from the vulnerabilities of traditional Reanimator decks or Storm decks. Please let me know if you have any ideas about it - personally, I'm trying to find space for more Careful Studies (which have been outperforming my expectations) and for a Gitaxian Probe or two - knowing what pace of game to play from Turn 1 for free would be a huge benefit to this deck.
EDIT: replaced the Infernal Tutors with Intuitions - the extra mana wasn't proving as big a deal as being unable to use it as an Entomb.