Originally Posted by owerbart
I know that Griselbrand is stronger in a UB shell. RB is good at getting the creature out fast, but they can't really protect it that well with their lack of reactive spells. UB is more susceptible to hate but we are better able to throw a wrench in our opponents' plans to give our reanimated creature enough time to close out the game.
My main point is that our primary plan (reanimating a big creature out) isn't that backbreaking anymore relative to the hoops needed to jump through to get it out of the GY. It may be cool if we get spells that let us diversify or angle of attack whilst synergizing with our MD, such as how SnS has Omniscience in addition to Emrakul/Griselbrand.
If anything the hoops just got a whole lot easier.
Griselbrand + actually drawing into things that are relevant is still backbreaking. Sure the post DRS GY hate-fest is still ongoing as people adjust to the meta, but I'm not sure we need a transformative sideboard with Gurmag Angler and Delver of Secrets.
Positioning ourselves as the slower, safer alternative to RB will do us good. Options like Collective Brutality, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy & Search for Azcanta should give us depth past the first attempt to Reanimate, something that RB struggles with.
I do agree that it seems fair decks have gotten more resilient (along with better toys like TNN or Leovold), but I've also been looking back at reanimator's history because I didn't know that much about it.
Prior to the draw engines of Jin-Gitaxias and Griselfather being printed, reanimator was basically just silver bullets with lots of redundancy + mystical tutor. And it won A LOT on just that. Since then we've lost Mystical and gained the draw engines, but lots more graveyard hate has been printed since.
I think it's worth trying higher redundancy, like 11/11/11 creature/discard/reanimate effects. In the Misstep era they didn't run Ponder because there was no space. I'm down to 2x Ponder and up to 4x Hapless Researcher and 3x Animate Dead and I'm loving it. You open with the combo more often, bust through counters like a wrecking ball, and Griselbrand builds an army (eh, more like posse) instead of fighting by himself. Something worth trying, I say!
inb4 "old builds are old for a reason..."
We still tend to get the game taken out from under us as we set up for the second reanimate. Because we are better less all-in and better able to protect our investment compared to RB, we don't need OP silver bullets. We just need disruptive creatures just big enough to close the game in the window provided by our disruption. I just wonder what form that creature would take as it seems that Griselbrand is still not enough. If only we could diversify our threat past creature beats.. Keranos is perfect (comes down as an enchantment) but it's still too slow.
Precisely! Old reanimator decks were strong because the game was effectively over once you get your fatty out. But now even getting out Griselbrand is no longer close to lights out.
We could put in a lot more disruption that can double up as discard outlets to widen the window for our threats to close out the game. Maybe its time to test Cabal Therapy.
Yes actually Hapless plays very well with Therapy since late game your Reanimates "turn on" by reanimating the Researcher and flashing back therapy. Fairly common play if you run 4x of both. I cut the Therapies sadly to make space, but I'm trying to see if I can pack it back in. I've got two Thoughtseizes main, maybe I should just grow a pair and swap for Therapies.
So on a rainy Sunday I put my money where my mouth was and traveled to SCG Philadelphia, which is actually in King of Prussia, go figure.
The list I registered:
4 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
1 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Polluted Delta
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Verdant Catacombs
4 Entomb
4 Reanimate
4 Exhume
2 Animate Dead
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Careful Study
4 Force of Will
3 Griselbrand
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Tidespout Tyrant
1 Grave Titan
2 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
2 Search for Azcanta
2 Collective Brutality
In the side:
1 Blazing Archon
1 Inkwell Leviathan
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Pithing Needle
2 Thoughtseize
2 Echoing Truth
2 Massacre
2 Show and Tell
In building the list for the brave new meta, I made a conscious decision to shunt the temptation to always go fast. Out came Lotus Petal and Daze. There was no first tun play I was afraid of, so into the sideboard went Thoughtseize. Out came Hapless Researcher and with it a piece of me, I love that card in this deck; but these are new times and I'll not be held back holding onto the past. Progress!
Slow but powerful cards were put in, Collective Brutality did Thoughtseize but better. Jace, Vryn's Prodigy did Hapless Researcher but better. Search for Azcanta made games that went long viable. It was all planning for the long game. Don't crumple at the first Surgical Extraction, get back up and try again. They show Force of Will, get back up and keep fighting. Make sure they run out of steam before you do, then the game is yours. It was a good plan.
Played 6 games and went 1-5. Plan needs work.
Beat Death and Taxes
Lost to UWR Blade, UWB Blade, Lands, UWR Miracles & Aggro Loam
So here are my thoughts...
While I didn't miss Daze the spell, I did miss having more than just Force of Will to dig from Griselbrand. Finding double Force was difficult in the face of Swords + Force from the other side, or more commonly Swords + Snapcaster Mage. In general Snapcaster Mage made the whole day difficult; had Swords to Plowshares, Flusterstorm, Counterspell, Pyroblast & Surgical Extraction all recurred into my face. Driving home the first instinct is to cut a Ponder and Careful Study for 2 counters, either Flusterstorm or Swan Song. Just something more so we're not totally impotent with only Sorcery speed interaction.
Game 1s all felt amazing, winning all except for Lands just wasting me out early. Even typically difficult first games like D&T and Miracles seemed blunted after you powered through their initial screen of interaction. Against the two blade decks both the losses were incredibly close, with bad variance sealing my fate. Typical twilight hours of the match when we've both exhausted our respective offenses into each other's interaction, and I have a 3~4 turn window to draw any reanimation or cantrip or in more than once instance a Grave Titan to hard cast. Instead it's lands or Iona and Griselbrand gracing my topdeck. So even once I find something purposeful, they've Pondered and Brainstormed to 5 card hands full of hate, losing to Snapcaster beats.
Lands was a slog but it always has been. More basics could have helped for maybe 1 or 2 turns before she landed double Rishadan Port or went for Ghost Quarter, at which point it stopped mattering. Miracles blind flipping successfully 4 turns in a row is still good, but I won a game there I don't think a Petal-Daze list could have by just always having a must remove creature until they ran out of removal. Play went Exhume a guy, they Swords, Reanimate a guy, they Snapcaster Swords, Collective Brutality pitching Griselbrand to kill Snapcaster & take their Brainstorm for Terminus in hand, using a flipped Jace I recast Reanimate on their Snapcaster Mage to flashback my Exhume, get Griselbrand, Force their followup. Fun.
I felt I didn't have enough have enough flight hours with either Search or Jace to accurately value them, especially since one or the other ended up getting sided out in the face of anticipated Rest in Peace from the white decks. I'm confident some number is correct, maybe not both, maybe not at the same time. Good news was that both elicited a negative response from each opponent who saw them, either eating a Spell Peirce or REB as quickly as they could or putting work in to win the game. Only once did Jace flip and then get ambushed by creatures and once did Search for Azcanta get stranded with a ScOoze keeping my graveyard civil.
Most shocking is that UB Reanimator seems to be forgotten by currently players. D&T player had me locked out with Remorseful Cleric and Karakas and cast Sanctum Prelate, figured he'd name 3 and I'd scoop with Show and Tell and Inkwell Leviathan in hand, but he names 1 and it was a simple win from there. Said he hadn't considered that card and was so conditioned from RB that he wasn't aware Reanimator played past turn 4. Aggro Loam put down 2 Leyline of the Void in the second game and acted surprised when I kept playing. Never did I not have outs to the board beyond getting Wasteland/Port locked from Lands or getting drowned in control from Miracles.
People are still overboarding for the graveyard which is painful, but it seems to be a deep autonomic response. Everybody had 4x Surgical Extractions, they just weren't sure for what. After I threw them a sacrificial Tidespout Tyrant, Griselbrand came down and they were perplexed.
So in closing I think I'll tweak the list and find room for more things to draw from Griselbrand and perhaps commit to one of the new blue toys.
As always input and questions welcome. Thanks
I super like your idea of long games and Reanimator, just consider that long game Kings are flashback cards
Find place for a Tundra or a Scrubland and add Unburial Rites (also pickable via Entomb)
Faithless Loothing also would be fantastic (impossible)
Cabal Therapy as disruption
Also, you play Snapcaster Mage color and you really like to flashback instants and Sorceries. Have you considered 2 or 3 of them? Just to add fuel to the JVP plan
-1 Animate Dead
+1 Unburial Rites
-1 Griselbrand (his S.E. will always grab your fatties. The least copy of the same you play the best)
+1 Tundra
-2 Search for Azcanta
+2 Snapcaster Mage
@pirateking i think your idea of going long is good, but not for game 1. G1 you still want to steal it away and prepare yourself for all the GY hate bombs afterwards. Glad we can now be more people on the Petal Less plan (I know you were on it from a long time ago). Ponder is probably the worst card in the entire deck, unfortunately it's a necessary evil.
Owlbart I had no issues Game 1 in any match expect Lands, which I had already conceded as an awful match up and just hoped to avoid. In building the sideboard my graveyard removal kept getting edged out until only one Faerie Macabre was left, at which point why bother. So I knew once they got Loam going I was in a bad spot. But there will be bad matchups that can never be made good, so I was trying not to focus there.
But for everybody else, Game 1s weren't the issue. One or two layers of countermagic was easily overcome with the build. It was post board when Surgical Snap Surgical became a bigger issue and Rest in Peace plus countermagic plus JTMS made for a very narrow window to do anything. Like I said, nothing was ever totally shut, I would get Show and Tell but never a creature, or get Abrupt Decay to turn the graveyard back on, peel one Force from their hand but never find another reanimation even after a Ponder or two. Truly at one point I think I dies with Entomb Griselbrand Griselbrand Iona and Elesh Norn in my hand after 4 turn of drawing live into just about anything but those cards. So I felt the two Blade deck matches were very winnable.
Ponder seems fine in the long build. If we're not going fast, doing something T1 is important. In game 1 it was safe to just throw out Careful Study, but once Surgical was in play, that's a risk. Land Ponder go is a safe and powerful first turn to help carve a path forward. Without Thoughtseize and Hapless Researcher, we've only got an unappealing Brainstorm T1 or the risky Entomb and Careful Study. So I'm not sure what more I could want in a T1 play then Ponder. Yeah it's a slow card, but this isn't RB Reanimator. We take is easy here.
Poron I recall back when I was playing BURG Reanimator with 8 duals how easily the Wasteland interaction was overwhelmed. Fetch a Volcanic to play Hapless, if they Waste then the Underground Sea comes
down to Reanimate. As long as the tempo was symmetrical, then color availability was all that mattered, and that was simple to do with some mindfulness. The long game plan here strikes a lot of the same chords, and your suggestion of Unburial Rites does seem viable. What I found is that against the point removal of Surgical and Faerie Macabre, overwhelming them isn't difficult. Exhume with two dudes in the yard, boom; you're done. What hurt was the sweepers. Relic and Crypt and Leyline and Rest in Peace did double duty killing the combo and shutting off the new tricks as well. While I'm in favor of new tricks, I'm not sure it's the time for the deck to be wholly subsisted from the graveyard. I'm not a fan of Show and Tell, but it opened doors otherwise out of reach, and Search for Azcanta really helped bring the copy needed closer to the top of the deck.
The point of being able to flashback (therefore Gemstone Mine and City of Brass as lands) is because to make Entomb a Vampiric Tutor is great
You need to reanimate a dude? Entomb Unburial Rites
You have in hand the 1xfattie you want to discard? Entomb Faithless Loothing
Snapcaster Mage and JVP have the ability to make everything ridicolous.
I know it’s easier said than done, but G2 and G3 you should point to this situation:
1) Graveyard with 2 dudes
2) Exhume and Entomb in hand
That’s the real set up for Griselbrand and his new 14 cards
Why do you even consider Lands as a bad MU? It has been historically almost a bye for UB reanimator.
Not bad like unwinnable, but outside of Force on Crop Rotation I didn't have any interaction. So the early Exploration into Wasteland into Loam jammed me pretty hard. Then it was 2x Sphere of Resistance and Port. So I was made to play her game, and I wasn't very good at it. I had Surgicals of my own in the side at one point, but they didn't make it into my 15 this tournament.
Why doesn't this deck run Thoughtseize? I feel like I've played against iterations with FoW+Seize+Daze, but I might be wrong. I was wondering why you were having trouble against Crop Rotation, but then I looked at your list. All you have is 4 FoW, and they probably run x4 Crop Rotations. Doesn't cutting Daze, and not running Seize, make your Grizzlebees much softer? Draw7 into Petal->1cc discard seems very strong. Why try to Jace grind when you can Duress your opponents FoW/Fluster/Pierce out of their hand t1, and just gg them t2?
Flusterstorm can't be the answer when you want to win on t2 and only have so much mana. Being able to tap-out t1 for some 1cc discard, and having 2 mana open on t2 seems like a better plan than having to try to fumble keeping U open for your Flustersotmr.
I've been playing 4 seizes (2 main 2 side) since forever, you can check my list two pages back.
@pirateking i seriously din't know what to say man, i've been playing UB with no petals for maybe a year now and I've never felt a more lopsided match in our favor than Lands. Remember that the only thing you need is to labd a tyrant and it's game over from there.
Kanti, if you gotta go fast, there are versions of Reanimator that will do that, but RB ends up being the natural conclusion to that line of thinking. They come with red shoes laced up and chili cheese dogs at the ready. There's no point in competing for pure pace of combo.
So then I ask, what then does UB have? I say: Consistency. Resolve. Determination.
Something that doesn't spend 4-5 cards only to eat a Force or Will and cry into their sideboard for game 2.
It's not the first reanimation that wins the game, it's the one that sticks that does.
To answer your questions directly, the list I registered represented a conscious effort to slow the game down for more powerful effects.
T1 Thoughtseize into T2 Entomb/Reanimate with Daze/Fow backup is good, god willing it always will be. But Thoughtseize makes for a shitty topdeck, and Daze is awful almost right away.
So why not T1 Ponder, T2 Collective Brutality escalated, T3 Reanimate with a much better likelihood of seeing a FoW. Because Collective Brutality is the real deal. I used it to kill Baleful Strix that was trying to chump Griselbrand, I nabbed cards, I drained for the game win, and escalation helped every time.
I haven't totally lost my mind, Thoughtseize is in the side and they did come in, but cards never seen have low impact on the game. It was just one match, so I won't hold it as the mean example of all Lands matches.
Owerbart, I'm aware how the match should play out. She had good hands of Wasteland/Port to keep me from Entombing and Reanimating in the same turn without eating a Crop Rotate for long enough, and a Ghost Quarter didn't help along the way. Game 2 yeah it went easy, Griselbrand hits, she plays Maze of Ith, I draw into a Pithing Needle naming Maze of Ith, keep on hitting. Game 3 it was Diamond into Exploration into Sphere of Resistance. Wasteland made an appearance along with a second Sphere. So yeah, I got Tidespout Tyrant out despite, but it wasn't exactly game over from there. I had an Instant and she had Loam, until I didn't have an Instant and well, she still had Loam. So it was chump or die.
I don't consider Lands a bad matchup or an unfavorable matchup or an unwinnable matchup. But I also don't consider it a bye. It's a slog, an unfun slog through the worst non-spells ever printed that we have hardly any way to interact with. It's everything wrong with the D&T matchup, expect I don't get to cast Massacre.
My original comment was that in most games I played we were hugely favored game 1 and after sideboard we each had things to bring in. So it's kinda equal going forward. But Lands has all the garbage game 1, plus they get to bring in more garbage from the sideboard, while we're still trying to jam the same plan.
But again, I'm not trying to extol my list as perfect. It was an extreme swing towards one direction to try an evaluate cards in a new format. I think there's something in there to work with, but as I said, it was lacking in interactions that I'm aiming to address in future lists.
1) What BU has over BR is access to Show and Tell and Arcane Artisan post SB to go around grave hate (other than Containment Priest, but Arcane Artisan goes around that as well). That and FoW to better combat opposing turn 1 combo decks.
2) BU builds running MD Careful Study, MD Chancellor of the Annex, MD Lotus Petal and SB Force of Will can and will match the BR builds for speed in game 1. The cost is losing Faithless Looting's flashback, which Careful Study does not have. The benefit is SB FoW, SB SnT, SB bounce, SB Arcane Artisan access. Essentially you are playing with BR speed with an actually relevant sideboard.
There are 2 major versions of BU animator. 1 favors speed, 1 favors consistency. BR only has the speed version. IMO the BU speed version is better than the BR speed version ever was thanks to better SB cards (all blue).
@pirateking i would argue that thoughtseize is a bad topdeck, since most of the time if you arrived a topdeck situation it means that you haven't pushed every shield and seize helps in that department. Also helps sometimes to use it as a way to get the fatty in the bin. Post board sieze is even better where you can discard snapcasters and reanimate them, or forcing your oppo to cast their containment priests.
Almost surely unplayable and useless because a Griselbrand is already enough, yet....
Howdy all!
New to the deck - so very obvious question I suppose - what set of creatures would you recommend in current meta? I'm toying with UBg version - just got kicked in the balls today by infect (too fast) and d&t :P
Also what do you think of Stormtide Leviathan nowadays?
Thanks in advance :)
Griselbrand in multiples.
After that you have the choice of:
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Tidespout Tyrant
Iona, Shield of Emeria
Grave Titan
Keranos, God of Storms
Inkwell Leviathan
Ashen Rider
Blazing Archon
Archetype of Endurance
Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
Sphinx of the Steel Wind
Empyrial Archangel
Regarding Stormtide Leviathan, what application are you imagining? Islands in addition to their other type doesn't stop your opponent's from executing their game plan. It won't stop Emrakul from wiping your board like Blazing Archon would. Inkwell Leviathan hits just as hard but is harder to remove. And in general Griselbrand is best.
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