Reanimating Reanimator

On October 9th I posted about trying out a Reanimator deck:

I started to get interested in net-decking a UB reanimator deck when my best friend pointed me at his Grixis reanimator deck on his Untapped profile. This deck is massively different from anything I've tried before, including trying to run with three colours, but my friend is really smart and good at MtG so I copied his deck list into Arena and spent my stored up wildcards to craft the necessary cards. (Lucky for me I already had three Drakuseth cards in my collection because "hey big dragon!".)
It was quite a mind bender at first, trying to figure out what to discard, when to surveil, how to survive, what lands I needed when, etc but after 12 games in regular play I felt I had gotten the knack of it, so I'm going to try this deck out in Standard Ranked to see if it can help propel me higher than Gold.

But things didn't work out and I ended up going with Mono-black deck to get to platinum:

Last week I talked about how I was going to use my friend's Grixis Reanimator deck to try and climb the standard ranked ladder. It started out ok and I climbed into high silver but then stalled and fell a little. Basically, in many game I had a lot of trouble making all the moving pieces get into the right place before I died: Bond of Revival in hand, Drakuseth or Agent of Treachery in the graveyard, mana to cast it... and even if all the pieces were ready one kill spell or counter spell could spell my ruin. Don't get me wrong; when it works, it works really really well at turning games around, but lacking any life gain or ways to handle big creatures while I set up was severely hurting me. I tried some minor modifications but didn't really help the major weakness: just too slow to get going most of the time.

Since I made the goal last week I've been experimenting with new decks and really trying to find that sweet spot with a Reanimator deck focusing around my favourite dragon Drakuseth, and his constant companion Agent of Treachery.

This deck is where we left off. I had exchanged the Merchant of the Vale for the Murderous Rider for the kill/lifegain combo in hopes of giving me more time to get the Drakuseth/Bond of Revival going, but it made little difference.

 This deck goes straight Blue Black so no chance on casting Drakuseth right from the hand as a last resort, but beefs up with more creatures like Fae of Wishes, Brazen Borrower, Tomebound Lich, and the Doom Whisperer. This deck could survive longer with all the creatures while searching and discarding to set up the reanimating coup de grace, but I found it too slow at times and limited in discard ability. The Fae of Wishes seemed like a good idea but more often than not was too slow to fetch anything useful from the sideboard (usually Unmoored Ego).

 This was my attempt to speed up the setup by adding two Discovery cards which Surveils 2 and then draws a card.

The Doom Whisperer is nice with the built in pay 2 life to surveil 2, as well as being a threat as a 6/6 Trample-Flyer (sometimes reanimating him from the graveyard was game winning enough), but I felt he was competing with Drakuseth too much and exchanged him out for our favourite prankster, Rankle. He can attack two turns sooner than Doom Whipsy because he has haste, gives me an option to discard a card if he hits the other player, and can force a creature sacrifice. I also traded out some creatures for Cry of the Carnarium to give me from respite from small creatures overwhelming me early. In the end, though, these decks still seemed too slow to get to where I needed to be: reanimating Darkuseth to sweep the field and force the enemy to concede.

Some other decks I looked at included this one that went back to spells to hold the enemy off and left out Agent of Treachery altogether.

And this one that used Niv-Mizzet to push to the goal as a card draw / discard as well as big creature. Very interesting was that Bond of Insight spell which puts 4 cards in the graveyard and then lets me take two Sorcery/Instant cards to my hand from the graveyard.

I didn't have the wildcards to make those decks happen though but I took some of the ideas and combined them to create this current deck:

It looks more like where I started with the Ritual of Soot and Legion's End cards, very useful for surviving the early game along with Cry of the Carnarium, but with added Bond of Insight and Connive/Concoct cards. The former helps with the setup of the graveyard and finding Bond of Revival, while the latter either helps me survive by stealing a creature, or can be used like a slower Bond of Revival reanimation when I need it. After all, Agent of Treachery's big pay off is simply entering the battlefield.


I've got the Tomebound Lich as a possible replacement for the Merchant of the Vale as a creature with draw and discard functionality in the sideboard. I really liked this creature for the defensive ability of the deathtouch, but didn't like how I was forced to draw and discard when he enters the battlefield and attacks. Sometimes I'm happy with my cards, you know? So we will see how it goes from here first.

This current iteration is 3-1 in four quick play games, not enough for a strong indication of how well its working but I'm hopeful. We will see how it goes.

Reaching for Platinum

Last week I posted about the Mono-Black mid-range deck I got from the Arena Boys at Channel Fireball and how it started to lift me from Silver to Gold in Standard Ranked Best of One games.

After the shocking 9-1 start to rocket out of Silver last week the win rate settled to a still impressive ~75% as I climbed through Gold 4 and was well on my way to Platinum on the weekend... or so I thought.

I was three wins into Gold 1, only two wins from Platinum on Sunday and then I went 2-2. Just a hiccough I thought. Then for the last three days I went 5-10, a dismal 33% win rate. I was frustrated. I thought this deck was going to get me to my goal of Platinum this season but it looked like that was not to be. I started looking at other options, deck from the Mythic Championship and other decks on Channel Fireball posts, but most of them required a lot of Rare and Mythic Rare cards I didn't have, and didn't have the wildcards for crafting them as I spent quite a few on this current deck.

Why did the win rate change so suddenly? I'm not sure. Maybe it was the ban announcement on Field of the Dead to cripple Golos/Field of the Dead decks so a bunch of people abandoned those decks for more aggro focused decks and Simic food decks? Or maybe I was just facing higher caliber players at this level now? Or was it a combination of bad luck and bad play from becoming tilted?

Last night I logged in deciding to accept that Gold 1 might be the high water mark for me this season (it was still a personal best after all) and just enjoy playing while I planned for next season's climb. I won 1... and lost 2. Then won 3 in a row... and lost 1. That put me two wins in on Gold 1. Then I won the next 4, including a 14 minute slugfest against a UBW planeswalker control deck! YES! Platinum 4 baby!

Platinum!

Needless to say I'm pleased as punch and ready for next season to improve on this season. Here are some stats and final thoughts on this Mono Black Midrange deck.

The final win rate was 63% (50 wins, 29 losses) and had a statistical advantage going first. The best match ups were anything that was aggro based creatures: mono red, mono black, knights tribal, mono blue mill decks and things in a similar vein.

The worst match-ups were decks that had a better long range plan than I did, or could get the pieces into place before I could get my best combos going. Going against Simic Food was a nightmare as they weathered any early or mid game push fairly soundly and had an endgame that was just punishing.

My deck had two main win conditions. The first was the Arya + Dread Presence combo that levels incidental damage through swamps and creatures entering the battlefield, especially when Arya could recycle the recurring Gutterbones and Sanitarium Skeletons. This win condition worked well in slow games where the opponent didn't have a lot of removal and/or big creatures.

The second win condition was basically beat-down from Cavalier of Night on the ground and Rankle in the air. Since they both had built in removal it worked really well against decks that needed creatures, and worked best in games that were moving faster.

And if I managed to get  both win conditions going at the same time, it was game over for my opponent.

However, that being said, the struggles I've had this past few days have demonstrated a weakness to this deck. Both win conditions need multiple pieces to be in place to pull it off: Arya or Dread Presence is not enough on their own to complete the deed usually, nor can Rankle or the Cavalier overwhelm the opponent by themselves. And one piece from each is usually insufficient as well: Rankle and Arya are both competing for sacrifices for their effects for example, and one or the other is negated somehow.

The upshot of this weakness is that if the cards don't cooperate this deck needs time to get rolling and the decks it is weakest against are decks that also need time to get rolling but have a bigger long range payoff. The 50% win rate versus the Golos-FotD deck is a microcosm of this issue: I needed to get the engine rolling and win before they could start creating fields of zombies.

So this feels like a hybrid mid-range / aggro deck. It needs to win before the long game. I think this is why it works very well against aggro decks: it has the wherewithal to survive the initial blitz quite well and dominate in the mid to late game. And useless against Simic Food where the long game engine was far more powerful and resilient.

In summary: decent deck, I'll keep it around as my gold standard that I compare other decks too for the time being (or should I say, platinum standard?).

Drafting Disappointment

Last night I got together with friends to do an actual Throne of Eldraine Limited Draft! I was so excited! Here's how we did it: there was four of us, we each go four packs (not three as per usual), opened one, draft a card, pass around. After four rounds we had ~56 cards to make a 40 card deck (basic lands free of course). Then we played each other in a Best of 3 match.

After all the games were played, we will put all the rares and alternate art cards back in a pool and take turns picking them with the winner picking first, second going second, etc.

I have never drafted with real people so it was a very different experience compared to drafting against 7 Arena bots. For one thing, with only 3 other people the cards wheeling around a lot faster, and there was definitely a feeling of what the other people were picking that I did not feel online.

I started off drafting a blue rare, Midnight Clock, not because I wanted it but mainly because I was afraid of what my friend Andrew could do with it. Bad start already. Then I settled into Green and White cards for the first pack and a half but at Pack 3 I was faced with a Murderous Rider and had a couple decent black cards already so I starting snapping up black cards. The question because was I going Green White, Green Black, or Black White?

Then I drew Wintermoor Commander followed by Resolute Rider, I knew I had found my signpost. Black White Knights it is!

My deck was basically aggro based on Knight tribal synergies and recurring them from the graveyard using Barrow Witches and Forever Young, and a smattering of removal from In a Tower and Bake Into A Pie. I felt pretty good overall.

Boy, was I mistaken.

My first match was against Ben who was sporting an artifact/food deck, splashing in Grumgully who made his creatures bigger. First game did not go well, but second game I got my enchantments going and beat him down before he setup. In the tiebreaker, I was pushing hard but a Cauldron Familiar gave him enough life to hold on and win with 1 life point left. I probably screwed that up by attacking aggressively at the end when a slower approach might have been better, but it was that kind of night.

Next match was against Aaron and his Black Blue flyers/control deck. First game he easily beat me with more fliers in the air than I could stop, second game I got more creatures going but he still tied me up and beat me. We had time for a third match and this time my enchantment combo showed up in full force and I beat him down.

Finally I faced Andrew who had defeated Aaron and Ben in the previous rounds. He was sporting a White Red aggro knights deck with lots of combat tricks. First game my deck was doing what it was supposed to with lots of recurring knights but he had the mythic rare Outlaw's Merriment was just insane. Every upkeep, he just gets a new creature. Life, for free. I was able to get him down to four life but he kept getting the Clerics with lifelink and just boosted his health back up to 12. Eventually he just overwhelmed me.

How is that a card?!?!

Next game I never got going as my deck just gave up and he rolled over me.

At the end of the night I was offically 1-6 and by far the bottom of the ranking. Very disappointing.

We put the rares and alternate art back in the middle and picked them in the order of Andrew, Ben, Aaron, and me. I ended up with Clackbridge Troll, Resolute Rider, Lochmere Seprent, and alternate art Foulmire Knight.

Back In Black

Last week I talked about how I was going to use my friend's Grixis Reanimator deck to try and climb the standard ranked ladder. It started out ok and I climbed into high silver but then stalled and fell a little. Basically, in many game I had a lot of trouble making all the moving pieces get into the right place before I died: Bond of Revival in hand, Drakuseth or Agent of Treachery in the graveyard, mana to cast it... and even if all the pieces were ready one kill spell or counter spell could spell my ruin. Don't get me wrong; when it works, it works really really well at turning games around, but lacking any life gain or ways to handle big creatures while I set up was severely hurting me. I tried some minor modifications but didn't really help the major weakness: just too slow to get going most of the time.

So I went back to the drawing board and in my RSS feed I saw this article titled Mono-Black Midrange on Channel Fireball website. Well that had my attention! I had previously made use of mono-black deck in my Dreadhorde Invasion deck which I enjoyed even if it failed to succeed like I wanted at the higher ranks so I read it with keen interest.

One of the problems of trying new decks is having the cards to make them in Arena; a deck that has a lot of rares or mythic rares that your collection is missing can be very costly to craft with wildcards, especially if the deck turns out to not work like you wanted. Crafting the missing pieces of the Grixis Reanimator deck was not too bad since I already had the three Drakuseth cards, but there were some other decks I had interest in (a Golgari and a Blue-Black reanamator deck) that would have been expensive to craft just to try out.

But this mono-Black deck in the article leaned heavily on rares and mythics I already had for the most part: Murderous Rider, Cavalier of Night, Dread Presence were all features of my Dreadhorde Invasion deck, and Liliana Dreadhorde General was a card I had from an earlier Zombie tribal deck. The only rare cards I needed to actually craft were a few copies of the perennial Gutterbones that is a feature of many black decks anyways, and the new Throne of Eldraine card Rankle, Master of Pranks.

So I put together this deck in Arena, crafted the missing cards once more, and tested it out in quick play matches to string together 6 wins and 1 loss. I was very pleased needless to say. It felt a lot like my Dreadhorde Invasion deck with the removal but was more solid on the ground with more win conditions. I could either go with the straight up beat down with creatures led by the Cavalier of Night and Rankle, kill them through incidental damage from Ayara, First of Lochthwain and Dread Presence, or curve into Liliana which almost never hits the board without swinging it in my favour.

So I took the deck into Standard Ranked and let loose the dogs of war... only to lose horribly to a defensive green deck that built up mana to a ten mana Finale of Devastation. I wish I had a screenshot of all the creatures with double digit power and toughness. Egads.

Nevertheless I persisted and won the next 9 games in a row.

Wait, what? Holy shit! Seriously, 9 wins in a row.

This deck (that I've called Liliana's Night) has propelled me into the first rank of gold and shows no signs of stopping yet. Now some of those 9 wins were extremely close and due to luck but I'm ok with that. At least the deck is working to put me into those positions right now.

We'll see if the trend continues as I've yet to face a serious control deck and only one poor representative of Red Deck Wins.

Waiting for Eldraine (Ranked Limited Draft that is...)

As I wait for the Ranked Limited Draft format of Throne of Eldraine I've been looking at expanding my horizons as a Magic the Gathering player.

When I came back to the game after decades away I pretty much picked up the style of play that I left off at: a range of creature power levels, some spells, some removal. Basically what is know nowadays as a mid-range deck that hopes to survive the early onset of aggro decks and overpower spell heavy/control decks. This style eventually evolved into my Dreadhorde Rising mono-black which at the end of the day is just a mid-range deck.

With the Standard card rotation and getting to gold rank two "seasons" in a row I decided I needed to branch out and explore different, more exotic, deck types. As a bonus Arena gave me a bunch of decks as part of the renewal event which included ten pre-built decks of the 5 colour pairings. I took this gift as an opportunity to try out some decks I had not really explored in the past.

I played some Dimir UB control, Selensya GW tokens, Azorius UW control, Izzet UR spells matter, etc. I really found myself drawn to the Selensya token deck that went wide with numerous creatures first and then went tall with spells that boosted all of them at once. "I don't care if you have a 7/7, my seven 1/1s are now all 3/3 and linklink." Its a great feeling.

I started to get interested in net-decking a UB reanimator deck when my best friend pointed me at his Grixis reanimator deck on his Untapped profile. This deck is massively different from anything I've tried before, including trying to run with three colours, but my friend is really smart and good at MtG so I copied his deck list into Arena and spent my stored up wildcards to craft the necessary cards. (Lucky for me I already had three Drakuseth cards in my collection because "hey big dragon!".)

It was quite a mind bender at first, trying to figure out what to discard, when to surveil, how to survive, what lands I needed when, etc but after 12 games in regular play I felt I had gotten the knack of it, so I'm going to try this deck out in Standard Ranked to see if it can help propel me higher than Gold.

Wish me luck!

Throne of Eldraine and My Mono Black Dreadhorde Invasion Deck

Disclaimer: I'm a filthy casual.

I know my Mono Black Dreadhorde deck is not super competitive and will not take me high in the ladder rankings. I don't care. It gets me to Gold tier and that is fine with me. If you want to give me some advice on how to improve it, that would be great. If you comment to tell me why I'm stupid save your breath.

Now, on to the post.

With Throne of Eldraine cards available in Magic Arena I scoured through them and found some good replacements for the cards rotating out that I talked about last time.

One of my favourites is Murderous Rider. Not only is it a better Murder with its ability to target planeswalkers, its also a 2/3 creature with lifelink that I can cast later which helps get that 2 life back that I lost in casting the Swift End adventure. The flexibility is amazing and an awesome replacement for Ravenous Chupacabra.

Another great replacement has been Bake Into A Pie which not only gets rid of a creature but gives me a food token I can sacrifice for life later. Its not quite as efficient as Vraska's Contempt but works well nonetheless.

I'm still looking for a good replacement for the Reassmebling Skeleton as the Sanitarium Skeleton is so mana intensive to get back on the battlefield. I've considered Gutterbones as he requires one less mana but requires I do damage to the opponent and can only bring him back on my turn.

Currently my deck is using 3 x Cavalier of Night which is a card I love but I've been questioning its place in this deck as I have fewer cards I care to sacrifice for his Enters the Battlefield effect since the Reassembling Skeleton and Ravenous Chupacabra are gone. But his lifelink and ability to bring someone small back from the dead when he dies is so handy.

Anyways, here's my current incarnation:

Click for full size.

In case you can't tell, the goal is to get that Zombie army rolling and once its 6+ power just let it attack every turn. Love me some Dreadhorde Invasion!