There are two basic types of Reanimator deck shells that are proven to work in the Block Constructed format. The first is the basic aggro Reanimator shell, which involves Gathan Raiders and Looter Il-Kor backed by Bridge from Below, Body Double, and Dread Return. Akroma, Angel of Wrath and Bogardan Hellkite are the two main reanimation targets in just about every Reanimator build seen thus far. The reasons are pretty obvious, but in case you need a quick refresher from last week’s article.
… Akroma is effectively a six-point burn spell on her first swing, and she can only be stopped by Damnation or by searching up an Isolation. Although Hellkite isn’t quite as awesome as Akroma, the five damage you can throw in their face will offset much of the damage Tendrils will do, assuming they even have it to kill the Hellkite.
The big reason to consider playing this sort of build has to be Bridge from Below, as it raises the power of the normal aggro elements so much. Gathan Raiders, Mogg War Marshal, and Looter il-Kor aren’t going to scare anyone on their own, but backed by Bridge and Dread Return, people will loathe the option of killing them off. Of course, a few 2/2 Zombies may not seem like a big deal considering the size of the average W/G creature, but the idea is that your opponent has to effectively double up efforts just to get through to life points.
The biggest thing to learn with this type of Reanimator is when to hold back men to conserve life and creatures versus swinging in and getting a few extra points of damage in when trying to race with Hellkite and Akroma. Many times against G/W people will play overly defensive and end up in a losing situation, against either a Mystic Enforcer with a +1/+1 graft counter on it or Griffin Guide enhanced Tarmogoyf. Even though you have huge flyers, they can still only do so much in the face of their own flying idiots.
Sometimes dealing 5-6 damage via Looter instead of sacking ASAP or trading a few early hits is the crucial point you need to hit… you must deal damage to win. Once you get used to dealing damage normally with your 1/1 dorks (something normal Reanimator plans never really did) instead of holding back all the time, you’ll probably start performing well against Red and G/W decks. Of course, if you wanted to be really aggressive, you take the Canali approach and use a full set of Raiders and Tarmogoyf.
As found in BDM’s article from a few weeks back, Canali’s deck is interesting because it combines Bridge with two of the more mana efficient beaters in the format, along with the traditional Reanimator elements. On one hand I love it, because the entire deck is basically just playing the cheapest huge beatdown guys available, and the Reanimator enablers allow for a cycling engine through the deck. On the other hand, the manabase is quite bad, even though at its heart the deck is base-Blue with a bit of Green for the only cards you truly need to hardcast. The problem stems from the fact that many times you’d be helped by being able to hardcast something like Dread Return, and the fact that if an enabler dies early, the deck can easily stall on land due to the low number.
In one sense, the Reanimator strategy is simply an extension of using undercosted men to beatdown, but it also gives the deck actual reach. Not only do you gain the ability to deal 5-6 on the same turn you played one of these huge guys, but you also have the ability to create a new army from Bridge, which isn’t defined purely by how much mana the deck has. That’s something no other deck in the format can do, in fact the only thing that can create an army out of thin air so fast is Wild Pair Slivers using Whitemane Lion.
Speaking of Bridge from Below, people tend to under or overestimate the impact the card has. They freak out and stop trying to kill the enablers unless they’re about to die, trying to find a way to let their own man die. Red decks will even go out of their way to burn off one of their own guys, just so they don’t have to deal with zombies… even though many times letting them continue to cycle is just worse. Or we get the extreme opposite, where they’ll keep throwing men into tokens over and over, and ignore the Bridge, despite the couple of extra turns it usually buys.
For playing defense and being Dread Return sacrifice bait, the two most popular options seem to be Mogg War Marshal and Skirk Ridge Exhumer. The Marshall is a bit of an obvious inclusion, if you have the space and are willing to devote a couple of land slots to Red. Remember, at the core, Bridge decks are basically Blue with splashes of Black and whatever else you want. Also, unlike the Mono-Red decks, Reanimator doesn’t exactly mind holding the guy until turn 4 or 5 (typically). Exhumer is a bit more of a metagame call. Against G/W, the men are too big for Festering Goblin tokens to do anything, but as far as U/G goes… well, it makes morphs rather uncomfortable blocking, and it can allow for much more defensive power.
The frame of the deck, if running Bridge from Below, is going to most likely look something like this.
Cards you’ll see in nearly every aggressive list:
4 Looter Il-Kor
4 Bonded Fetch
3-4 Gathan Raiders
3 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
3 Bogardan Hellkite
3-4 Body Double
4 Dread Return
4 Bridge from Below
Cards that people debate the numbers too
Tarmogoyf
Mogg War Marshal
Skirk Ridge Exhumer
Magus of the Bazaar
These tend to range from a full set to being completely excluded, but typically at least one of the defensive cards gets included, and Magus of the Bazaar tends to go into more control-oriented versions.
And the rest of the deck typically includes some amount of Snapback, Careful Consideration, and Chromatic Star. Those are the most typical additions, and they give you the base of an aggressive build.
Notes for playing:
Snapback is usually fine to use on your own creatures, especially when the opponent is trying to use it to save himself. Remember, once damage goes on the stack you can bounce your man and Isolation falls off, meaning the damage isn’t prevented. I’ve even used this trick to win in board positions where I was behind, simply because they didn’t realize I could use their own combat trick as evasion to break a stalemate. The trick really isn’t that hard to see, but people forget about it all the time.
Body Double can copy creatures in either graveyard. Mimicking a Mystic Enforcer or Korlash, Heir to Blackblade is sometimes going to just be better than whatever you got on your side. Another “duh” play for most, but people will slip sometimes.
Unless you know exactly what the opponent is playing, stay away from keeping two land hands with Looter. Against non-control decks, I’ve seen plenty games of testing where the Looter dies and suddenly the deck stalls out, either because it can’t drop Fetch to start discarding and buying time or it can’t get to reanimation mana in time.
Another variation on this type of aggressive Reanimator was first noted by Nick Eisel and was recently played to a Top 8 finish at the Roanoke PTQ about three weeks ago. The main differences are the use of Greater Gargadon and Akroma, Angel of Fury instead of her hasted counterpart, as the deck can easily pump the Red Akroma. You’ll notice the much heavier Red component in the deck, which allows for the hasted Akroma’s fiery counterpart to kill in a one or two turn span. Gargs allows to deck to abuse Bridge from Below even more, and make a further mockery of Tendrils. The best part is that unlike the normal Mono-Red deck, the extra copies can simply be discarded and possibly reanimated later.
This version actually focuses on abusing the aspects of Bridge from Below and playing more of a mid-range beatdown game than the pure aggression you see in the Canali build. Akroma and Gargadon, with the more stable manabase, give it options against decks like U/G and co., even in the face of bounce and Cancel.
You can read more about Nick’s build here.
The second major deck shell would be the slower more controlling variation, somewhat like the deck Tiago Chan wrote about in a recent article. Many of the same cards are played, but the key difference comes from the removal of Bridge from Below. Instead, it runs additional control cards like Cancel, Psychotic Episode, Delay, etc. This variation can also afford to run spells like Damnation if it wishes… this is because it typically runs 11-14 enablers, so it can let a few die. In addition, the lack of Bridge means there’s no ramifications when the opponent’s creatures are killed off, allowing for a more varied board plan, as well as spot removal like Dark Withering, and Exhumer abuse.
The other possibility open to this type of controlling shell is that it can reduce the number of reanimation targets and spells due to number and strength of draw/discard spells. For example, with Magus of the Bazaar and Careful Consideration you’ll see far more cards on average than with just the eight normal cyclers. So dropping Hellkite and Akroma down to a 3/2 split, or going with only 6-7 reanimation spells, is worthwhile. This is especially true if you want to play this version like a control deck with a different type of finisher. Typically, you’ll see it played almost like a control-combo deck, due to the amount of set-up and turns where you can clear the way for Body Double and then deal 5-10 Hellkite damage.
Otherwise, the main benefits to running such a control build is to take advantage of the Madness removal/discard spells, and the possibility to run a limited morph selection in the maindeck to compliment the sideboard Pickles plan. Or it can just run the Wrath to clear the way for your men… either way, it gives you some significantly different options than the aggro builds.
Why play with Reanimator decks?
For the aggressive build, the major selling point is Bridge from Below so you can play a long game against Teachings decks. Tendrils of Corruption hurts a lot less when you can keep coming back over the top with 6-12 damage every other turn and still have men left even after a Damnation. Unlike your typical big man midrange deck, this type of Reanimator build can have you kill the same Dragon two to three times within just a few turns. Simply put, Bridge from Below is even more amazing when the opponent has a very narrow answer for which they need to search.
Even decks like U/G Aggro/Pickles can have major problems beating this type of plan. Usually when the board stalemates, it comes down to who can draw more men, or who can make one of their own even bigger and badder than anyone on the other side. In this case, if you get stuck against a huge Tarmogoyf (or a Shapeshifter imitating Gathan Raiders), you can simply exchange your side for a dragon. The disgusting turns you can pull off with this deck to break a stalemate are truly awesome.
As long as you’re willing to put up with the manabase, the deck can do a lot of damage in the current PTQ field. The downside this build tends to fare the worst against G/W and G/U/w, due to a lack of guys that can really play defense and the mana deficiencies. Sometimes the deck can simply overwhelm and pound the opponent into dust, but other times it ends up in a brawl against creatures that Hellkite can’t kill off, and the mana hamstrings what kind of tricks you can do with Dread Return and hard-casting the creatures themselves.
For control decks in general though, the deck is just going to rip though many defenses and ignore Tendrils and Damnation to the point where it becomes a race to get their own finisher down to play defense. Obviously if the finisher happens to be Korlash, that’s going to happen much sooner than later, and it’ll stall Tarmogoyf and Raiders progress in racing. In addition, the maindeck Extirpate they’re probably running means you won’t be able to rely on Bridge or Hellkite alone to trip them up. On the upshot of things, they’re deck is wide-open to getting hit by Snapback to clear the ground and then taking double digit damage in one shot. Many times you’ll set-up for this one turn of damage and put them in the position where they need to clear the board with Damnation ASAP and just hope you can’t reanimate anything to kill them with.
As an aside…
The reason I’m loathing to say if these matches are favorable / unfavorable / chicken pot pie is because a lot of it is going to be based on exactly how prepared the Teachings player is and how well he adapts. For this deck especially, since in a single match at a PTQ you’ll score wins simply because they didn’t fully comprehend what the deck could do.
Read practically any two articles online and you’ll see people disagree about how two decks do against one another. Even in a relatively simple match like B/U/w against G/W, you’ll have highly ranked players siding with either deck. I like to think I test with pretty competent opponents, but I’m not going to hold my results above anyone else’s here.
And back to the article.
Wild Pair decks… you’ll just try to race, but honestly, unless you have Psychotic Episode in the deck, it’s a crapshoot. The big issue is that once the board gets gummed up, your fatties won’t be able to swing in anymore, thanks to Telekinetic Sliver, so you have to rely on reanimating a Hellkite and them not having the ability to find Mystic Snake or Venser.
Meanwhile, the control variations of the Reanimator deck tend to fall on hard times against the Teachings decks, because they have fewer dangerous creatures with which to bait them, and the wrong colored Akroma for the match. The lack of Bridge also means the control player is free to throw an early Damnation purely against the enablers without any backlash. If they have Cancel, you might as well just scoop it up game 1 and move onto board, where you actually have threats that can come in before they can search up an answer to ruin you.
On the plus side of things, U/G decks and Wild Pair tend to be a bit better, since you’ll actually be able to run counters or discard to preemptively strike against bounce. Against U/G you know bounce is coming, it’s just thinking about when it’ll hit your guy and which variety it is. Pongify is another annoying sideboard card that can invalidate part of your plans if you aren’t prepared to bring the same creature back multiple times. And sometimes it simply isn’t plausible to do so in the time frame necessary before you get overwhelmed.
Since each build is better in certain metagames, you need to do some guesstimation on the amount of a given deck showing up. Although each deck contains many of the same broken elements, you need to weigh the balance of the deck’s support spells and mana against the matches you deem problematic.
Metagame thoughts
It seems like people are starting to slide away from Goyf decks and more towards U/G tempo builds resembling De Rosa’s deck from Grand Prix: Montreal. Perhaps this is in response to the supposed influx of control players and control variations, or maybe it’s because people simply want to play something more interesting than the G/W mirror. WW seems to be getting better in this type of metagame, although the increase in bounce and Temporal Isolation make Griffin Guide a riskier proposition as time goes by.
U/G Aggro is the closest thing to a Fish deck there is in the current metagame, making it a bit of a popular choice among those who could successfully play aggro-control in other formats. The fact that the format has basically pushed swarm aggro out of the format, like WW and Mono-Red, means the door has been opened for it to basically take over as the aggro deck to play.
In addition, it seems like plenty of fringe decks like U/W tempo, R/U/(b) control, and more three-color aggro decks have been beginning to show up in Top 8s (or finishing just a win out). This is a little different from the first two weeks of the season or so, where almost every Top 8 was filled with Teachings, Mono-Red, W/G/(r) Goyf, or Reanimator. General answers are slowly being replaced by narrow and focused cards, because in Block there’s a small enough number of archetypes that it’s pretty much a viable plan. So if you’ve got a deck that isn’t quite the norm, despite all the talk about Teachings being the best deck around, you now have a bit more room to maneuver in the metagame since its quite possible they aren’t prepared for you in any significant way.
Also for the first time in a long while, I’m going to openly ask readers to e-mail or PM information about the PTQs they’re attending. Heck, if you want, go ahead and post it in the forums. I’m sure some of the people would love to hear a little bit more about what’s doing well. I’d certainly love to hear about:
Where you played.
What you played.
How you did.
How the field looked.
The Top 8 decks/players or number of participants (if possible).
I always get a few e-mails from readers asking for help, or mentioning how they did previously… and honestly. that stuff either helps me find more out about the “general” metagame and people’s thoughts behind bringing certain decks. So send me what information ya got, and I’ll be back next week.
Josh Silvestri
Team Reflection
Email me at: joshDOTsilvestriATgmailDOTcom