[Primer] BRx Griselbrand Reanimator

[Luklinda]

I see your point, and it may be true that constructing my SB in that way is not ideal, although you'll find that several people are running at least 1 or 2 Collective Brutality in their board (DNSolver himself had the card pegged as one of the possible solutions to the Grixis Delver match-up a few pages back) because it helps a ton in grindy match-ups without diluting plan A.

However, the question still applies even if none of those cards were in my SB and I'm simply deciding on the best configuration to run in the main deck. I provided detailed examples of reasons why I find the decision on some discard spells in certain match-ups to be difficult to make, and your response doesn't help to answer any of those questions. Also, while I may be new to the deck, that doesn't mean I was born yesterday, and perhaps that isn't your intention, but referring me to one of the oldest/most well known pieces of Magic theory on the internet comes off as a bit condescending.

Asking questions already answered in the thread primer (why run card X what is card Y good against).

Join date within a few months.

Small post count.

I also politely reference a great source of information, as you yourself say.

Calling people out as condecending when they answer your - all be it obvious and previously answered - questions is just picking a fight. Wanna sling dirt, send a pm or yell at your screen; keep it off the thread.

CB is run for its versatility; DNS runs it. We get it, we can all read the thread and the multiple mentions of this as well as the card. If you want it SB, great. If you're running it main you don't really need TS to swap to, unless you want to. Legacy is diverse and has loads of decks.

If you don't want an obvious answer, perhaps don't ask questions with obvious answers. You seem to be seeking validation for your SB not advise. End of the day do what you feel like, play price of progress if you want to - it's not condecending to point out that'd be a poor choice in this deck. This is a competitive discussion, not a please tell my idea is neat thread, I suggest social media if you're digging for "likes."

[jroharo]

Maybe I've just been unlucky, or maybe I'm not taking the right lines, but for me Unmask vs Delver has been a beating. I guess I'll just have to test some more! My feeling was the same on CB vs Death and Taxes, but I had a DnT player tell me differently and it made me question my decision. When you bring in your 3 CB, what do you take out? I'm assuming you're not going to 11 discard spells vs Delver, although that might not actually be as crazy as it sounds come to think of it haha.

I almost always keep my ratios exactly the same as my main board (11 creatures, 11 reanimation, 8 discard or "answers"). So if I'm bringing in brutality and I'm playing vs a blue deck (delver, shardless, etc.) I remove thoughtseize. If I'm bringing brutality in against a nonblue deck (D&T, Elves, etc.) I take out Unmasks.

[TheStalk]

I almost always keep my ratios exactly the same as my main board (11 creatures, 11 reanimation, 8 discard or "answers"). So if I'm bringing in brutality and I'm playing vs a blue deck (delver, shardless, etc.) I remove thoughtseize. If I'm bringing brutality in against a nonblue deck (D&T, Elves, etc.) I take out Unmasks.

Alright thanks, I'll have to test some more and see if I'm just playing Unmask wrong which leads me to get blown out more than I should then.

[itrytostorm]

How do you all feel about this (https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetyp...nimator#online) list? Getting Obliterator turn 2, hardcasted is a house when they are focused on big monsters from the gy.

[Whitefaces]

Worth keeping in mind that Obliterator dies to Fatal Push when it's released, might be an OK option at the moment though.

[itrytostorm]

Worth keeping in mind that Obliterator dies to Fatal Push when it's released, might be an OK option at the moment though.

Talking specifically for the GP this weekend.

[Zooligan]

How do you all feel about this (https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetyp...nimator#online) list? Getting Obliterator turn 2, hardcasted is a house when they are focused on big monsters from the gy.

That's the list from Erin Campbell's (Oestrus) stream I mentioned above. No Chancellor or SSG or Collective Brutality. Watch the streams for good gameplay and discussion between Erin and DNSolver.

[vieko]

That's the list from Erin Campbell's (Oestrus) stream I mentioned above. No Chancellor or SSG or Collective Brutality. Watch the streams for good gameplay and discussion between Erin and DNSolver.

Obliterator is a great alternate plan vs. Delvers / Alluren / D&T / Jund (all those fair decks). You should land it early to make the most of it so mulligan accordingly. I played it last night and won me a game vs. a KotR deck... sooner or later they'll have to block or else. I'm testing the following SB next with the Chancellor-less stock MB (4 of everything + toolkit fatties + Jins or Sires):

SIDEBOARD
3-4 Phyrexian Obliterator
3 Reverent Silence
3 Abrupt Decay
2-3 Blood Moon (on the play most likely)
2 Faerie Macabre
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite

FEW NOTES:
- I like Elesh against Alluren and Elves
- Thinking a mix of ( Obliterators + Moons ) = bag full of sadness for fair / greedy decks :)
- 2 Faeries might be too low for the current MTGO meta


My 2 cents and the best of luck to my fellow degenerates spreading the gospel this weekend!

[jroharo]

Alright thanks, I'll have to test some more and see if I'm just playing Unmask wrong which leads me to get blown out more than I should then.

I typically sandbag my unmasks until the turn i'm going off UNLESS i'm playing against a deck that plays cards that can hose me beforehand(Rest in Peace, Grafdigger's Cage, Deathrite Shaman if i don't have Brutalities or won't be fast enough, etc.).

[TheStalk]

I typically sandbag my unmasks until the turn i'm going off UNLESS i'm playing against a deck that plays cards that can hose me beforehand(Rest in Peace, Grafdigger's Cage, Deathrite Shaman if i don't have Brutalities or won't be fast enough, etc.).

Thanks for the tip! I think the main problem I've had is that, since the deck is very all-in and doesn't always rebuild well, trading my 2 cards (Unmask +1) for their two cards (FoW + 1) left me with a hand that does nothing, and left them to just go: land, Delver/Shaman, and then beat me to death while holding up countermagic. I'm having some issues with my internet connection at the moment, so that's been hindering my testing quite a bit, hopefully that gets better and my results get better as well as I get in more reps with the deck.

[TokenMaster]

Thanks for the tip! I think the main problem I've had is that, since the deck is very all-in and doesn't always rebuild well, trading my 2 cards (Unmask +1) for their two cards (FoW + 1) left me with a hand that does nothing, and left them to just go: land, Delver/Shaman, and then beat me to death while holding up countermagic. I'm having some issues with my internet connection at the moment, so that's been hindering my testing quite a bit, hopefully that gets better and my results get better as well as I get in more reps with the deck.

You want to set yourself up to have discard + a reanimation on turn 1-2, and mulligan if you can't. The deck wins by forcing your opponent to have all those answers ready on turn 1-2.

[TheStalk]

You want to set yourself up to have discard + a reanimation on turn 1-2, and mulligan if you can't. The deck wins by forcing your opponent to have all those answers ready on turn 1-2.

Maybe that's the source of the problem then. I'm finding it hard to mulligan hands such as:

Unmask, Griselbrand, Dark Ritual, Reanimate, land + 2 other cards (which aren't more discard spells). Here I can pitch my Ritual to Unmask and try for turn 1 Griselbrand, but if Unmask gets Force'd I'm pretty far behind. Perhaps these hands are traps and I need to mulligan more aggressively to find combo + protection rather than just a naked combo and cross my fingers.

[TokenMaster]

Maybe that's the source of the problem then. I'm finding it hard to mulligan hands such as:

Unmask, Griselbrand, Dark Ritual, Reanimate, land + 2 other cards (which aren't more discard spells). Here I can pitch my Ritual to Unmask and try for turn 1 Griselbrand, but if Unmask gets Force'd I'm pretty far behind. Perhaps these hands are traps and I need to mulligan more aggressively to find combo + protection rather than just a naked combo and cross my fingers.

What those 2 "irrelevant" cards are can be pretty important. A good third of your deck being one of those cards gives you alternative plays. This is also where you have to play the numbers a little and decide if you want to just keep and hope you draw into more relevant stuff, but with how this deck manages its resources the first mulligan doesn't hurt us as much as it does other decks either.

[Ingo]

Maybe that's the source of the problem then. I'm finding it hard to mulligan hands such as:

Unmask, Griselbrand, Dark Ritual, Reanimate, land + 2 other cards (which aren't more discard spells). Here I can pitch my Ritual to Unmask and try for turn 1 Griselbrand, but if Unmask gets Force'd I'm pretty far behind. Perhaps these hands are traps and I need to mulligan more aggressively to find combo + protection rather than just a naked combo and cross my fingers.

I'd certainly keep that hand. Even if the Unmask gets forced, you still have a reasonable chance to draw into the next discard outlet soon (Thoughtseize, Unmask, Looting or Entomb, or a chance of 15/53 the next turn if you were on the play). Not a good scenario, but certainly not lost either.

EDIT: comparing to Belcher, having a crucial piece Fow'ed here will probably cost you the game, or at the very least be at far worse odds than 15/53 the next turn.

[TheStalk]

What those 2 "irrelevant" cards are can be pretty important. A good third of your deck being one of those cards gives you alternative plays. This is also where you have to play the numbers a little and decide if you want to just keep and hope you draw into more relevant stuff, but with how this deck manages its resources the first mulligan doesn't hurt us as much as it does other decks either.

Yeah obviously, though this is not a hand I recorded from a game or anything, I just made it up for the example. Having a faithless looting or an entomb in that spot clearly gives you better options, but I really meant 2 cards which, in this particular situation, would be blanks, say a Petal and another land.

I'm a spreadsheet kind of guy (you can find my hate card spreadsheet a few pages back), so your numbers thing might just be something I need to actually put to paper, rather than guess-timate while I'm playing. Knowing more exactly what my odds are of hitting a card that makes this hand much better by waiting on a draw step or two could be the difference between Griselbranding people to death rather than getting Delver'd on the way back.

I'd certainly keep that hand. Even if the Unmask gets forced, you still have a reasonable chance to draw into the next discard outlet soon (Thoughtseize, Unmask, Looting or Entomb, or a chance of 15/53 the next turn if you were on the play). Not a good scenario, but certainly not lost either.

EDIT: comparing to Belcher, having a crucial piece Fow'ed here will probably cost you the game, or at the very least be at far worse odds than 15/53 the next turn.

I have been keeping them, now I'm debating whether I should. I'll definitely have to run a number crunch sometime this week for more scenarios (since you've already provided for this one). It could also be that "going for it" is statistically the right play, but feels so bad when you land on your face that I'm "favoring" those results in my memory, which makes them seem like they happen more often than they actually do. I've been recording my playtest results (y'know, spreadsheet kind of guy) but not always the way I win/lose (which seems a bit tedious, but might be a necessary evil).

[ANRoebuck]

Why BR Reanimator over UB Reanimator?

Besides price differential, there are other reasons to pick Badlands over Underground Sea. This deck has different matchups across the board, some of which are very appealing. Miracles decks in general can struggle to beat this deck unless they can assemble a quick Counterbalance with a Force of Will or unless they have Surgical Extraction in their sideboard. Nonblue decks need to pack lots of hate cards that come down on turn 1 in order to have a chance against this deck - there's no guarantee that a turn 2 [/CARDS]Rest in Peace[/CARDS] will cut it. While being able to counter hate cards is great, and is one of the appealing features of blue cards, having more action in the deck is better in some matchups. This deck arguably has the best topdeck potential in the format.

Would anybody care to elaborate on this? I enjoyed the primer overall (thanks for putting it together, DNSolver) but found this segment in particular a bit weak / lacking in information. For context - I've yet to play BR Reanimator but have plenty of experience with TinFins and some with UB. To me it seems like lots of people are playing BR all of a sudden, even though none of the cards for it are particularly new, and the questions I can't seem to answer are "why now?" and "why this version?"

Worth keeping in mind that Obliterator dies to Fatal Push when it's released, might be an OK option at the moment though.

Why do people keep posting "dies to Push" as if it's a reason not to play something? Fatal Push kills zero creatures that don't already die to Swords to Plowshares.

[Whitefaces]

Why do people keep posting "dies to Push" as if it's a reason not to play something? Fatal Push kills zero creatures that don't already die to Swords to Plowshares.

Que? I didn't say it's a reason not to play it? Just worth keeping in mind as the card will probably see a fair amount of play. When adopting a SB strategy like this, you don't want said strategy to be weak to a card that is seeing play to put it simply. Keep in mind what decks are playing StP too, you wouldn't board Obliterator in vs Miracles, but probably would vs decks that will adopt Push. Decay and Bolt decks mostly.

[TheStalk]

Que? I didn't say it's a reason not to play it? Just worth keeping in mind as the card will probably see a fair amount of play. When adopting a SB strategy like this, you don't want said strategy to be weak to a card that is seeing play to put it simply. Keep in mind what decks are playing StP too, you wouldn't board Obliterator in vs Miracles, but probably would vs decks that will adopt Push. Decay and Bolt decks mostly.

This is all true, except that if your opponent doesn't know you're on Obliterator post-board, he'll likely cut all the Push from his deck because it kills 0 creatures from the main, whereas decks with STP will always have them. Even if it gets brought back in g3, I'm pretty ok with my opponent have really narrow cards in his deck. Also, STP is a 4-of in all the decks that play it, I may be wrong here but I doubt Push will be more than a 2-of in most decks.

Would anybody care to elaborate on this? I enjoyed the primer overall (thanks for putting it together, DNSolver) but found this segment in particular a bit weak / lacking in information. For context - I've yet to play BR Reanimator but have plenty of experience with TinFins and some with UB. To me it seems like lots of people are playing BR all of a sudden, even though none of the cards for it are particularly new, and the questions I can't seem to answer are "why now?" and "why this version?"

If you really want to boil it down to 1 reason, I'd say that reason is Dark Ritual. The two decks do mostly the same things, UB has cantrips to find its pieces, where BR just has more redundancy, UB uses counterspells to protect its combo, BR uses discard. These things all have advantages and disadvantages, but in the grand scheme of things they pretty much even out. The big difference is that, thanks to having Dark Ritual, BR has WAY MORE potential hands that can yield a turn-1 monster. In UB, a turn 1 hand HAS to contain 1 Petal if you're using Reanimate, or 2 if you're using Exhume/Animate Dead, plus at least 1 land and some way to bin a fatty. Also the nature of having cantrips instead of more combo pieces naturally lends itself to spending 1 turn setting up your hand and then going off on turn 2. If you could fit DR into UB Reanimator without completely messing it up, there would probably be much less incentive to play this version. My 0.02$

EDIT: added reply to second quote rather than double posting.

[Whitefaces]

This is all true, except that if your opponent doesn't know you're on Obliterator post-board, he'll likely cut all the Push from his deck because it kills 0 creatures from the main, whereas decks with STP will always have them. Even if it gets brought back in g3, I'm pretty ok with my opponent have really narrow cards in his deck. Also, STP is a 4-of in all the decks that play it, I may be wrong here but I doubt Push will be more than a 2-of in most decks.

True true, and I think you're right about Push being a 2-of kind of card too. I was more bringing it up as something to keep in mind rather than a damning reason to not play Obliterator.

[bcoutlander]

Just a quick update from GP Louisville, I went 9-6 playing BR Raanimator. Some quick highlights:

1-5 vs blue decks

5-0 vs. mono-color decks

And losing to DNSolver round 8 in 3 games and it was a crazy loss with mulling down to 3 cards in game 3. All I can say is he was drawing hot that game.

Hopefully, I'll get some time tomorrow for a bit longer summary.


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