[Primer] BRx Griselbrand Reanimator

[Jeff]

Alright my wife and I played 27 games of BR vs Eldrazi this afternoon. Here's what happened

Assemble the Legion - 0-3 on the Play, 0-4 on the Draw. My idea was bad. Sad panda

Stronghold Gambit + Wear/Tear - 2-3 on the Play, 1-3 on the draw. I routinely kept hands with discard + reanimation, but she had a leyline. I'd target her hoping to reanimate something of hers, and see nothing but Mimics and Endless Ones. I took a TKS once and eventually she found two mimics to hold it off. I got an Endbringer once and that was neat. I never got a Smasher.

4 Show and Tell + 2 Echoing Truth - 4-0 on the Play, 2-2 on the Draw. These results are flukey, she drew much more poorly here than she did earlier in the day, but on the whole I just had better ability to play around stuff. I haven't figured out what this does to the rest of my plan, and how to build a good sideboard out of the whole thing, but I greatly preferred this to either of the other approaches.

[Karhumies]

Ground Seal isn't as good here because we're playing 8 targeting effects.

Imp's Mischief would be worse than additional discard (this wouldn't be the worst thing to have in the sideboard for the matchup, either Inquisition of Kozilek or Duress?)

Against any deck using leyline of the void and big guys, keeping targeted animation in, you probably want to be able to bin their big guys with discard and then animate those big guys onto your side. Duress and IoK don't allow this.

The extra discard will be useful against counter decks and combo decks, though.

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[Zooligan]

I did watch the stream. It was good, but I don't think you saw FoW even once in 5 league matches. Even when looking at opponents hands I don't recall a single Force being revealed. I'm pretty sure I've never had that happen.

I wonder if Chancellor would have been missed more had FoW been more prevalent in the matches you played.

I'm replying to my own post :p

I was watching the second stream and DNSolver mentioned a "snide comment" about no FoW in the first stream with Erin. I hope you (Solver) were not referring to what I quoted above. If you were I just want to put it out there that in no way was i meaning to be snide or condescending at all, I was just stating what I saw. After the second stream I'm pretty well convinced that Chancellor-less Unmask is pretty good!

[DNSolver]

Well, you were correct that we didn't face Force of Will at all in the first set of matches. All I was saying by that is that we have now refuted it. I didn't really interpret it as "snide" or condescending or anything, I know you think the deck is good. Sorry if on stream it seemd I was offended. :)

Regarding Inquisition of Kozilek and Duress: No. IMO, there is no need to run anything other than Reverent Silence against Eldrazi. Just like there is no reason to run anything other than Decay against Miracles. The discard spells are being considered for the only super-sketchy matchup: Grixis Delver.

[ShiftedClock]

Hey everyone, here are a few cards I'm experimenting with for getting creatures in the yard:

Firestorm: Gets bodies in the yard at instant speed, letting you do the same trick that DNSolver talked about a few pages back.

Sickening Dreams: Doesn't target, so you can conceivably kill Leovold if the game goes long, your hand fills up, and they don't have Force... so the planets would need to align. It is also possible to kill your opponent with this after a Griselbrand activation, instead of letting them untap. Risky if you put yourself into bolt range, of course. It's great for clearing out unflipped Delvers, Peezy, Mimics, and Cavern Harpies, among others.

And as an alternate wincon:

Master of Cruelties: This card is obviously bad, but it has some good attributes. It dodges Bolt and Abrupt Decay, and kills Reality Smasher on block, for instance. Paired with 4 Collective Brutality and maybe Firestorm/Sickening Dreams in the board, there are a lot of ways to end the game if he does get through. I find myself on 5 mana with Grave Titan in hand fairly often, waiting to draw another mana source. He doesn't take over the game like Grave Titan, but it is an interesting alternative. The problem is that many decks have an endless stream of chump blockers and he has no evasion, but it's still a cute card.

[Jeff]

Regarding Inquisition of Kozilek and Duress: No. IMO, there is no need to run anything other than Reverent Silence against Eldrazi. Just like there is no reason to run anything other than Decay against Miracles. The discard spells are being considered for the only super-sketchy matchup: Grixis Delver.

Do you not find yourself having trouble with 4 Chalice 4 Thorn out of Eldrazi?

Sickening Dreams: Doesn't target, so you can conceivably kill Leovold if the game goes long, your hand fills up, and they don't have Force... so the planets would need to align. It is also possible to kill your opponent with this after a Griselbrand activation, instead of letting them untap. Risky if you put yourself into bolt range, of course. It's great for clearing out unflipped Delvers, Peezy, Mimics, and Cavern Harpies, among others.

How are you killing your opponent and not yourself with this?

[menloe]

This won't be a substantive post - just a thank you to all the regular posters here. Reading the primer and discussion on this forum convinced me to buy this deck in paper and online. I've made a couple of play mistakes (partially due to too many High Lifes) but have also managed to live the dream with enough frequency that I am very happily hooked. Looking forward to contributing after I get my shit together.

Shun the non-believers and keep spreading the gospel of T1 Griselbrand.

[potatodavid]

So a million Years ago (like 1) i played the burning reanimator version of this deck. I'm giving it another go sans the poopy combo. One piece of tech i'm bringing over from that deck though is Ruric Thar, who just shits on infect, comob and the reanimator mirror. I know Brutality can wreck their plans pretty easily now, but with Ogre they cannot attack or pump through him without taking 6 per pump. Card is worth trying as a 1x of in the sb in my opinion.

[jroharo]

Those of you on the green splash - have you tried carpet of flowers to help with the Grixis Delver matchup?

I've personally switched off the green splash and prefer the more compact white splash, though Carpet of Flowers occurred to me this weekend as a possible answer to Grixis Delver.

[TheStalk]

After making the "hate guide" I posted here a few days ago, I've decided to switch from the White splash to the Green splash, while trying to forgo Reverent Silence. I haven't been able to test yet due to being away from home and my internet connection being too shitty to finish games online. I'll post my list below along with a few thoughts that went into it. Comments and critiques are more than welcome :)

Fatties: (11)

4 Griselbrand
4 Chancellor of the Annex
1 Tidespout Tyrant
1 Sire of Insanity
1 Grave Titan

Acceleration: (8)

4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual

Reanimation spells: (12)

4 Reanimate
4 Exhume
4 Animate Dead

Other spells: (15)

4 Faithless Looting
4 Entomb
1 Thoughtseize
2 Collective Brutality
4 Unmask

Lands: (14)
4 Polluted Delta
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Badlands
2 Bayou
2 Swamp

Sideboard:

2 Thoughtseize
1 Collective Brutality
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Faerie Macabre
2 Grave Titan OR Phyrexian Obliterator
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Inkwell Leviathan
1 Blazing Archon

None of the "don't use the graveyard" sideboard solutions appeal to me. Sneak Attack is only good if your hand is stacked with fatties or you hit Griselbrand, Show and Tell can get you blown out super hard, and Gambit is good against too few decks IMO. I suppose if you're running 4 Unmask/4 Thoughtseize it might be viable, but I'm not that convinced.

I feel Collective Brutality is the best answer to spell based hate/counterspells, since it effectively advances plan A without diluting your deck. 3 in the 75 is where I'm leaning for now, but I could see 2 in Decay versions that don't need it as much for killing hate creatures and up to 4 in non-green versions.

In a nutshell, I decided to drop white for green because I realized that Abrupt Decay has way more upside than I first thought. It hits more cards than Wear//Tear (although has the glaring drawback of not hitting Leyline of the Void, which was what made me go with the white splash in the first place), and importantly never feels like a dead card, and is less scary to side into "in the dark". If you're unsure whether your opponent is bringing in Grafdigger's Cage or Surgical Extraction for instance, siding in Wear//Tear feels terrible if they don't draw artifact/enchantment hate, whereas Abrupt Decay can still hit a Delver or some other random thing or simply pitch to Unmask.

My reasoning for not running Reverent Silence is that the only common match-ups where you're expecting it are Eldrazi and Shardless BUG (and not 100% of Shardless choose Leyline as their hate), so it's a dead card in your sideboard a lot of the time, and when you need to board in 6 cards (AD + Silence) vs Eldrazi, that dilutes the deck too much for my liking. Therefore my plan is to bring in AD and fatties I can cast, and either power those out and/or discard + reanimate their own creatures (which is part of the reason I'm running an extra 2 Thoughtseize in the board, they replace CB here to give me 7 discard spells that can nail TKS/Smasher and co.)

I'll be testing both Grave Titan and Phyrexian Obliterator as my castable fatty in the side because I feel they both have very different strengths and weaknesses. In a nutshell, Obliterator is much easier to cast and still pretty hard to deal with (I doubt many opponents leave in Dismember postboard against this deck, since preboard it kills nothing), whereas Grave Titan is more difficult to cast (especially if you get Chalice'd and can't use rituals to help) but is also hard to deal with and brings an army along.

Blazing Archon is kind of win-more (although it's excellent vs Eldrazi if you don't get Leyline'd) but I had 1 free slot left, and I really don't think this deck ever wants singletons in the board that aren't creatures, so I didn't give much consideration to a lone Pithing Needle or something. Testing will tell if it should be another copy of a card that's already in the board, or something else entirely.

Anyhow, sorry for the wall of text, but hopefully someone finds this useful or interesting, or demolishes all my thought process and shows me the way :p

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Ummm, afaik Dismember kills Sire of Insanity...

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[Zooligan]

If you go green how about Golgari Charm instead of Rev Silence to kill Leyline of the Void and still pitch to Unmask and still have some utility against other-than-leyline cards? You could even use it to regenerate your Sire if someone Dismembers it :p

[Karhumies]

An alternative to Abrupt Decay as a sb "catch-all" some people seem to have forgotten about: Chaos Warp

- Cmc 3
- Can be countered
- Chance of bringing back a hate permanent
- Chance of bringing back a non hate permanent we lose to
- Does not hate multiple problem permanents (e.g. 2x Leyline of the Void) at once like Reverent Silence or Echoing Truth would
- Cornercase blue elemental blast / Misdirection target

+ Does not require green splash
+ Hits 1x Leyline of the Void
+ Good with "sol lands" build
+ Cornercase of hitting our own petal/land before declare blockers (or our creature in response to StoP/other) and hoping for the best
+ Cornercase hits Jace, TMS / Sower of Temptation / other 4+ mana permanent
+ Cheap in monetary terms

I am not saying this is the best sideboard card ever. But I am saying that for some specific small and semi-known local metagames with non green splash builds of the deck, this can be an excellent 2-3x sb card. Personally, I have had great success with it against Dredge and Eldrazi in my small local metagame without feeling that the card is completely dead in other MUs, which is what I have historically felt with Reverent Silence.

[DNSolver]

Golgari Charm is an interesting idea for anti-Leyline tech. I probably still prefer Reverent Silence because you can still combo turn 1/2 by killing Leyline on turn 1 with just a fetchland. Cool idea though, thanks for suggesting.

Golgari Charm does not save a creature from Dismember. Look up rules for regeneration.

[Zooligan]

Oh, right. Because it "gets -5/-5 until end of turn" making it's toughness 0 or less.

[TheStalk]

Ummm, afaik Dismember kills Sire of Insanity...

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True, blanked on that for a minute apparently, and come to think about it so does Tidespout. But these creatures are 1-of, not everyone plays them, and realistically unless you kill him with those cards specifically, when sideboarding the creature your opponent is thinking about is Griselbrand (or whichever common toolbox creature hoses their deck the hardest). Maybe I'm wrong and people leave Dismember in, and I'd love someone who actually plays them to chip in with their thoughts, but it's pretty narrow in its usefulness and I tend do think it would get cut.

[TheStalk]

So a million Years ago (like 1) i played the burning reanimator version of this deck. I'm giving it another go sans the poopy combo. One piece of tech i'm bringing over from that deck though is Ruric Thar, who just shits on infect, comob and the reanimator mirror. I know Brutality can wreck their plans pretty easily now, but with Ogre they cannot attack or pump through him without taking 6 per pump. Card is worth trying as a 1x of in the sb in my opinion.

Seems sweet, but is it really better than Iona? Iona on green vs Infect, on black vs Reanimator, etc. It kind of fills the same role, but more efficiently, and is already a lock for the sb anyway. Just my 0.02$

[Secretly.A.Bee]

If you go green how about Golgari Charm instead of Rev Silence to kill Leyline of the Void and still pitch to Unmask and still have some utility against other-than-leyline cards? You could even use it to regenerate your Sire if someone Dismembers it :p

Umm... Afaik you cannot regenerate creatures from -x/-x effects...killin' it tonight.

[akwing00]

Hey everyone, I'm both new to this deck and legacy in general. Was wondering if the unmask version of this deck was overall better than the version with SSG as I haven't seen that version with collective brutality put up any results on goldfish or mtgtop8.

[KnightJay96]

Firstly, congratulations on getting involved in the best format in magic!

Was wondering if the unmask version of this deck was overall better than the version with SSG as I haven't seen that version with collective brutality put up any results on goldfish or mtgtop8.

The version with SSG always had Unmasks in it, and never ran collective's other than in the sideboard. I've personally tried the SSG version of the deck. I am not a huge fan of it particularly because that version runs a 1 of mountain that is an absolutely abysmal card when you've got the turn 1 in hand but can't do it because of the mountain.

I believe the consensus here is always run Unmask. It's like our force of will.

My current list for reference: https://deckstats.net/deck-12019928-...61f77f232.html

I need collective brutalities in my meta because of the increase of DRS. I believe DNSolver runs straight 4 Thoughtseize. I'm not running chancellor now because the fact its a terrible creature to reanimate.

I haven't tried out Phyrexian Obliterator yet against Delver, I hope its good. DNSolver, thoughts on it?