[Deck] Reanimator

[Jon Stewart]

Before people freak out, I am pretty sure ppl need to test A)Lim-Dul's Vault, B) Personal Tutor, and C) Sensei's Divining Top in the spot that was Mystical Tutor.

I would definately add Intuition to that list. It's really an underestimated card. Has been fantastic in testing.

As for those suggestions...

Personal Tutor can't tutor up Entomb. And Entomb is the only way you have to tutor the ideal creature for the matchup into your yard, so it's pretty important to be able to tutor up as you run only four ways to do it in the deck.

Top isn't a tutor, this deck needs a tutor.

And as for Lim Dul's Vault, don't see a deck like Reanimator running it. Mystical Tutor was horrible card disadvantage. The fact that it was 1cc made up for it by gaining tempo.

But the second you make it two color and 2cc, card disadvantage tutors lose their viability imo.

The most popular tutored card with M. Tutor was Entomb.

So compare Lim Dul's Vault to Intuition.

Vault into Entomb, cost three mana, and nets you -1 card disadvantage to get one Iona into the yard.

Intuition costs three mana, doesn't create any card disadvantage, and either dumps both an Iona and a Inkwell Leviathan into the yard and puts another Iona in your hand, or dumps 2 Iona's into your yard and puts an Inkwell Leviathan into your yard that you can pitch to FoW.

But more importantly, Intuition can grab you a FoW or Daze or Stifle at instant speed and put it directly into your hand, in response to a Yixlid Jailer for example.

If speed is what you're worried about, just make room for Dark Ritual in the deck. You will still be able to combo off turn one if you have both combo pieces, or on turn two if you have intution. So it would be just as fast or faster than Mystical Tutor was.

I do expect the deck to see less play. But I also expect a lot of the hate to die down.

Practically my entire meta is either maindecking or sideboarding Faierie Macabre right now. I expect that to go away. I expect Fairie Macabre to disappear for the most part and get replaced with Crypts and Relics which Null Rod stops. And thus I actually expect this deck would perform better in my meta, not worse.

As for being able to tutor up antihate. Yes, you can't tutor up one of silver bullets like you could with Mystical Tutor. But on the other hand, you can now tutor up anti-hate permanents, which is actually a pretty big deal. Permanents actually stick around for the duration of the whole game.

You can tutor up cards like Null Rod which shuts down the bulk of the hate this deck can expect to face now that everyone and their grandmother won't be maindecking Fairie Macabre.

I personally think the slightly slower more controllish path is the way to go.

But if you want to go pure aggro, maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing to start from the build in the OP and work off of that. The build was clearly based on a lot of testing and was pretty aggressive. It's actually far more consistent in letting you combo off by turn two than the preban builds of the deck. It just had to become more focused on black and sacrifice FoW in order to make this happen.

Obviously the build in the OP is outdated and the deck should play Ionas, and Thoughtseizes over Oona's Prowlers and what not, but just in terms of strategy, it could work...

Here's my quick and dirty take on that deck...

Spells:
4x Daze
4x Reanimate
4x Exhume
4x Animate Dead
4x Entomb
4x Thoughtseize
4x Careful Study
4x Brainstorm
3x Ponder/Breakthrough

Creatures
4x Iona
2x Sphinx of the Steel Wind
1x Inkwell Leviathan
1x Blazing Archon

Lands:
4x Underground Sea
4x Verdant Catacombs
4x Polluted Delta
3x Bloodstained Mire
1x Swamp
1x Island

There, 12 Reanimates, 12 Creatures (Counting Entomb), 12 Discard Outlets (Counting Entomb & Thoughtseize), 8 Disruption Spells AND 11 Cantrips . That should make the deck pretty damn consistent if nothing else.

If the deck plays Breakthrough though, it should probably make room for Dark Ritual as well.