Against matchups like Affinity and Elves, you'll definitely want to run a sweeper. Settle is great here, but it will require that you can consistently make it to 4 mana with a board state AND not already be dead. Pyroclasm is effective, but will usually require a followup Grudge to clear a ravager trigger.
Decks along this vein also tend to include a copy of Gavony Township as a way of breaking a board stall and making the BoP a viable threat.
After that, we start getting into the "just play other creatures" argument, which starts to detract from what makes your deck YOUR deck. I'll refrain from the high ticket items since I would assume if you had Heirarch/Goyf you'd already be using them.
-3 Ajani (low value)
-2 Loxodon Smiter (very opponent dependent)
+3 Knight of the Reliquary
+2 Renegade Rallier
-2 Sunpetal Grove
+2 Wooded Foothills
With a couple more fetches, you can more consistently get triggers on Rallier to recur your threats, plus helping to pump KoR so he can turn on Rhonas when he hits the battlefield. Knight can also dig out Gavony.
New alternatives that could warrant inclusion are also Cindervines and Rhythm of the Wild. CV would replace the Grudge in the side and have game against all spell-based decks. Rhythm could be on the slow side, but you are midrange, and the idea of CoCo into two haste-d 4/4s could warrant testing here.
I'm new to playing Reanimator in legacy, and I'm still trying to parse out some of the interactions, but all the information I saw while building it only has her as a 1-of in the side, I imagine because of the diversity of decks available right now means she's not an optimal play in the main. Considering the frequency of which I was Turn-1-ing out a creature, I can see how it's an auto-win against mono colored decks and decks that splash for support but not removal. No amount of disruption is better than simply being unable to cast spells.
The card I'm having real difficulty understanding is the 2-of Grave Titan in the side. I don't see where there's any advantage to putting him into play over any of the other threats in the deck, and I really want those board spots for artifact removal.
I like Haunted and Scourge, never been a fan of Rally. I prefer Scourge myself, because it usually seems like I don't have mana+cards up on my opponent's turn for the activation. That's just my personal opinion though.
I was an early subscriber for Driven[to]Despair, and I still believe in it. To Egon's point, that is exactly the time that I want to play that card - to lock down position on the board. There really isn't that much in our 75 that does that.
@Blob, while I am personally attached to my Dredge and Burn decks, I personally think Affinity might be the most consistent/resilient deck in the format right now. It isn't affected by the hate cards that overlap other decks, it ignores Blood Moon, is faster than Breach/Scapeshift and can't be taken off colors by Ponza. Yes, the creatures are fragile but if your opponent spends all their time trying to keep them off the board, the odds still favor you overall.
So we're going "back" to printing decks that someone can walk in and buy to play at FNM that night... Does it come with a primer on how to play the deck? On how to play it against other decks in the meta? Because no matter how good your pile of cards might be, it's just a pile of cards if you don't know what to do with it. Every time someone asks where they should start, I tell them to start online, pick a deck that you like, and then learn about it and how it plays. This idea of a new player buying it at 6 and playing it competitively at 630 is about as good as dropping a soldier into a warzone without basic training.
And I know it's already been covered, but... either it's NOT going to be competitive because they won't print them with the $$$ cards included (which are usually a key component to the deck being competitive) or they aren't going to be sold for MSRP (see also, From The Vaults series). Alternatively they could print them with the $$ cards in such quantity that stores sell for MSRP... and they tank their own sales of boosters because people can get everything they want from the Pre-con.
Nothing like spending $30 to get beat by the same deck you're playing, except yours plays "budget land" that puts you a turn behind, or lacks the big finisher that's a $30 mythic. But hey, welcome to Magic! Hopefully your experience tonight taught you something other than not to buy preconstructed decks.
Just for the record I disagree with all of this. Seas is great vs Shadow and other midrange decks, which is one of the reasons we started playing it (cuts them off R and BB and hits manlands while being proactive disruption that gets around discard). Snap is the best card in our deck when we're playing from behind. That makes it one of our strongest cards vs aggro and midrange alike. He comes in against almost everybody since we're a big pile of spells opponents hate after siding and have more mana then.
See I had this thought but it hasn't been my experience. My normal meta includes at least two DS variants but I've never been able to even slow them let alone take them off a color with seas, so I stopped bringing it in against them. It usually just felt like I was gifting them a turn.
As for snap, I don't disagree about his utility but I have typically found that I never have enough mana up to effectively use him, even when I'm only running the maindeck copy. 80% of the time for me I wind up dropping him on an EOT as an extra threat for the next turn.
But again I've only been playing it for month, so my interaction with it is a relatively small sample.
Now for a technical question. Slight of Hand. Don't get me wrong, I get why it's good. But I consistently feel like it's not good enough, and it's almost always one of the first things I board out in every game. I read a bunch of the work done around SoH vs Opt, and I get that SoH guarantees you the better of two cards, where Opt only lets you decide on the first of the two.. but I feel like I would much prefer to have Opt up and use it to dig for an answer or as an EOT cantrip after holding up counters for the opponents turn. I just don't see how it's really helpful outside of being a sorcery in the bin for Goyf. So is it just the way I play that makes it feel like it's out of place being included here?
Also, do you bring in Spreading Seas against anything other than tron? Is it worth bringing in against multicolored decks? Judgement call perhaps?
Also, when does Snapcaster Mage come in? When you don't need three Paths?
Maybe sideboarding is something I'll have to get used to here
When you say multicolor, it really depends on the aggression level. Deaths shadow? Not so much. Anything that doesn't play blue? Yes, especially if it's 3 color because now they have to slow their tempo or eat another shock. Most things with man lands. Burn (even mono) because they run land-light. It can do good work in a lot of situations.
I don't run the second snap, but it's value is directly dependent on your opponent. Not great on aggro, but good against mid-range and combo when you can hold mana up on turn 3 or 4.
So I built this for when I don't feel like playing dredge, and it's both a lot of fun to play and a lot of fun to hear people exclaim "what are you playing?!"
Last event I played in this weekend was a 21 man event at a convention in Detroit.
Decklist is the same as posted at the top of this page, except I swapped a sacred foundry for the temple garden and an ancient ziggurat for one fetch, and a meddling mage for the sideboard snapcaster. Also playing a noble heriarch in place of goyf 4 cuz I don't own one.
R1 : company of some kind?
I would never find out, t1 deliver flips immediately. He plays birds of paradise. His next move is a courser of kruphix that gets countered and that's the end of that game.
Game two went pretty much the same way, except he plays a ramunap excavator that I topdeck a bolt for. Turn 3 he tries to play Thalia and I counter with disrupting shoal and roll in with deliver-nacatl-mandrill.
1-0
R2 : Izzet breach-control.
Hadn't seen this one before in my meta back home. I learned that remand makes Mandrills feel bad, and that in a deck with few ways out of blood moon, spreading seas on your own lands can be effective.
I don't remember much detail at this point other than that. I won be driving him to 6 with bolt and chart a course in hand, and finding a second bolt with the chart.
2-0
R3 : Rakdos vampire tribal
I hate when I lose to decks that seem too new to be a threat, but g1 I misplayed bad. Land selection off my fetches left me without white and I would die with 3 PtE in hand. G2 I would lose to a long series of kill spells followed by a whip of erebos when I stopped drawing gas and decided I needed to see 14 lands this game.
2-1
R4 : U/R storm
G1 win by 1-drop committee. Baral on t2 eats a bolt and a pierce stops his manamorphose cold.
G2 turns out if you can only storm to 11 but have empty the Warren's, it's still pretty good.
G3 I lose by getting caught up in the moment. Storm keeps a 1 lander with combo in hand, if he gets a land off slight, but he misses. He finds a 2nd land on t3 and plays Baral. I take him to 4, and on his draw step I path Baral. He responds by comboing off, and it isn't until this morning I realize he can't cast his finishers on draw step. Ugh. Keep focused or you'll literally beat yourself.
2-2
R5 : another Izzet breach-control.
I would get him low both games, but this matchup requires the right amount of gas and counters and my luck had run out apparently. By turns 4 and 5 I was drawing dead, and he was just backing up his breach-emrakul with cheaper counters.
2-3
I borrowed the ziggurat and meddling mage ideas from the 5c humans running around, but a single zig doesn't do much work. I'll probably out the temple garden back in for it. I had taken the garden out because of the number of times I wanted a r/w land at fnm and never wanted the garden.. until yesterday when I wanted that garden like 3 times. That would figure, right?
The mage I picked because it gives me a way to slow down E-tron and prison, both of which are popular in my normal meta. Here they filled the role of bolt magnet.
Ok, so I'm going to base this fear on that captured twitter message from Forsythe, but if we're going to errata damage spells to be "any target" but it doesn't include land - does that mean that Creeping Tar Pit can only be stopped with land destruction?
This fear is completely unfounded.
As stated in Aaron Forsythe's later tweet. "Any target" will mean "creature, player or planeswalker". It does not mean the target has to be a "non-land".
When Creeping Tar Pit (or any other man-land) is animated, then it becomes a CREATURE that is also a land. So will be a valid target, just like always.
Hope that makes sense to you a little bit better.
Oh, there it is. I misread that the prior person was talking about bolting a manland before it was animated, and Forsythe saying "you can't bolt a land" context is important.
Ok, so I'm going to base this fear on that captured twitter message from Forsythe, but if we're going to errata damage spells to be "any target" but it doesn't include land - does that mean that Creeping Tar Pit can only be stopped with land destruction?
I think the change is necessary as things like Leyline of Sanctity currently protects Planeswalkers as well as the player, but it seems like turning damage spells into "nonland target" would cause a whole new box of problems to be opened.
With scarab feast lurking around the corner. I would declare this deck not valuable anymore
Its worse then surgical extraction (which is colorless) and Rest in Peace) so I don't think so.
Its like saying affinity isnt viable because they made a new naturalize. As long as its worse then the other options you shouldnt be worried. Id rather someone use this then use extraction.
Agreed, I would much prefer they take their "up to" 3 cards from the grave than go ripping a piece out of the deck entirely, or having to play around RIP (or the expectation of).
I really don't expect to see Scarab Feast start showing up in sideboards as anything other than a budget replacement. Surgical extraction is just so much better and, realistically, Extirpate does the same thing without the ability to cast it on life. Scarab is really only better on the technical end if they can grab multiple pieces, and even then it's really only better against US. Odds are people will stick with the hate that works well on multiple decks.
It's going to depend on the list you're running. In my case, I'll be swapping a Fetid Pool and a Canyon Slough for the Steam Vent and a Blood Crypt.
Realistically though, anyone who is applying them as being "slow" as it applies to this deck is thinking about it wrong. The intent isn't for these to be played as a mana source, they're there to be cycled.
We lack instant speed draw triggers. If you want to try to dredge our critters out on their turn, usually the best we can do is get a Neonate down and crack it when they pass their main phase. With one of these in hand, you could pass your turn two, cycle to dredge on their turn, then slam down whatever turn 3 play(s) you have available. ( this makes assumptions about what you did on turn 1 )
But how does R\B Reanimator deal With Leyline of the void?
By going the hard way an switching to hardcasting their fatties! T1 - Badlands T2 - Swamp, Dark Rit, Dark Rit, Sire of Insanity
Seriously though, there is always discussion with decks that risk folding to certain kinds of hate. It really all depends on the player. In modern dredge, many builds choose to run only artifact hate, knowing they will likely fold to RIP/Leyline, but also knowing that those are very specific hate cards that many decks won't bother to pack. We gamble on the fact that if you choose to mull hard into your hate, we will have the card advantage early on to ride the bad beatdown plan while you try to recover the 2,3,4 cards you mulled away.
Or, sometimes you just fold because that's the risk you run.
and requires (at the very least) a live creature, and 7-8 non black mana or DCM/CC/FoW+blue discard in hand
In a format where games can end anywhere from Turn 0 to turn 3 consistently, this would require at least turn 4 or 5 even with the nut-draw and no hand disruption coming in.
Why would you be required to select the primordial as a new target before Divert even resolves?
I realize now this is where I was making my error in the order of operations.
if DRS reponds to Divert, he does so without knowing what target Reanimate is bring Divert-ed to, and then Divert makes Reanimate take any valid target.
if DRS wants to fizzle the Reanimate, he has to respond to the Reanimate, post-Divert.
Not sure how this would be considered "super value," as all of the cards sporting embalm so far have them costing more to basically "avoid counterspell" it is mechanically similar to unearth, with the main difference being that you pay more for a permanent token (vs original CMC) as opposed to less for a one-and-done from unearth.
I do not discount your concern about what kind of power embalms in the rare/mythic slots might carry until we see them in print, but looking at the two spoiled so far, a 2/2 that can absorb an extra attacker for 3cmc and a 3/2 Vigilant for 5cmc that dies to shock/fatal push/hallowed moonlight can hardly be called "super value."
Decks along this vein also tend to include a copy of Gavony Township as a way of breaking a board stall and making the BoP a viable threat.
After that, we start getting into the "just play other creatures" argument, which starts to detract from what makes your deck YOUR deck. I'll refrain from the high ticket items since I would assume if you had Heirarch/Goyf you'd already be using them.
-3 Ajani (low value)
-2 Loxodon Smiter (very opponent dependent)
+3 Knight of the Reliquary
+2 Renegade Rallier
-2 Sunpetal Grove
+2 Wooded Foothills
With a couple more fetches, you can more consistently get triggers on Rallier to recur your threats, plus helping to pump KoR so he can turn on Rhonas when he hits the battlefield. Knight can also dig out Gavony.
New alternatives that could warrant inclusion are also Cindervines and Rhythm of the Wild. CV would replace the Grudge in the side and have game against all spell-based decks. Rhythm could be on the slow side, but you are midrange, and the idea of CoCo into two haste-d 4/4s could warrant testing here.
The card I'm having real difficulty understanding is the 2-of Grave Titan in the side. I don't see where there's any advantage to putting him into play over any of the other threats in the deck, and I really want those board spots for artifact removal.
I was an early subscriber for Driven[to]Despair, and I still believe in it. To Egon's point, that is exactly the time that I want to play that card - to lock down position on the board. There really isn't that much in our 75 that does that.
@Blob, while I am personally attached to my Dredge and Burn decks, I personally think Affinity might be the most consistent/resilient deck in the format right now. It isn't affected by the hate cards that overlap other decks, it ignores Blood Moon, is faster than Breach/Scapeshift and can't be taken off colors by Ponza. Yes, the creatures are fragile but if your opponent spends all their time trying to keep them off the board, the odds still favor you overall.
So we're going "back" to printing decks that someone can walk in and buy to play at FNM that night... Does it come with a primer on how to play the deck? On how to play it against other decks in the meta? Because no matter how good your pile of cards might be, it's just a pile of cards if you don't know what to do with it. Every time someone asks where they should start, I tell them to start online, pick a deck that you like, and then learn about it and how it plays. This idea of a new player buying it at 6 and playing it competitively at 630 is about as good as dropping a soldier into a warzone without basic training.
And I know it's already been covered, but... either it's NOT going to be competitive because they won't print them with the $$$ cards included (which are usually a key component to the deck being competitive) or they aren't going to be sold for MSRP (see also, From The Vaults series). Alternatively they could print them with the $$ cards in such quantity that stores sell for MSRP... and they tank their own sales of boosters because people can get everything they want from the Pre-con.
Nothing like spending $30 to get beat by the same deck you're playing, except yours plays "budget land" that puts you a turn behind, or lacks the big finisher that's a $30 mythic. But hey, welcome to Magic! Hopefully your experience tonight taught you something other than not to buy preconstructed decks.
See I had this thought but it hasn't been my experience. My normal meta includes at least two DS variants but I've never been able to even slow them let alone take them off a color with seas, so I stopped bringing it in against them. It usually just felt like I was gifting them a turn.
As for snap, I don't disagree about his utility but I have typically found that I never have enough mana up to effectively use him, even when I'm only running the maindeck copy. 80% of the time for me I wind up dropping him on an EOT as an extra threat for the next turn.
But again I've only been playing it for month, so my interaction with it is a relatively small sample.
Now for a technical question. Slight of Hand. Don't get me wrong, I get why it's good. But I consistently feel like it's not good enough, and it's almost always one of the first things I board out in every game. I read a bunch of the work done around SoH vs Opt, and I get that SoH guarantees you the better of two cards, where Opt only lets you decide on the first of the two.. but I feel like I would much prefer to have Opt up and use it to dig for an answer or as an EOT cantrip after holding up counters for the opponents turn. I just don't see how it's really helpful outside of being a sorcery in the bin for Goyf. So is it just the way I play that makes it feel like it's out of place being included here?
When you say multicolor, it really depends on the aggression level. Deaths shadow? Not so much. Anything that doesn't play blue? Yes, especially if it's 3 color because now they have to slow their tempo or eat another shock. Most things with man lands. Burn (even mono) because they run land-light. It can do good work in a lot of situations.
I don't run the second snap, but it's value is directly dependent on your opponent. Not great on aggro, but good against mid-range and combo when you can hold mana up on turn 3 or 4.
Last event I played in this weekend was a 21 man event at a convention in Detroit.
Decklist is the same as posted at the top of this page, except I swapped a sacred foundry for the temple garden and an ancient ziggurat for one fetch, and a meddling mage for the sideboard snapcaster. Also playing a noble heriarch in place of goyf 4 cuz I don't own one.
R1 : company of some kind?
I would never find out, t1 deliver flips immediately. He plays birds of paradise. His next move is a courser of kruphix that gets countered and that's the end of that game.
Game two went pretty much the same way, except he plays a ramunap excavator that I topdeck a bolt for. Turn 3 he tries to play Thalia and I counter with disrupting shoal and roll in with deliver-nacatl-mandrill.
1-0
R2 : Izzet breach-control.
Hadn't seen this one before in my meta back home. I learned that remand makes Mandrills feel bad, and that in a deck with few ways out of blood moon, spreading seas on your own lands can be effective.
I don't remember much detail at this point other than that. I won be driving him to 6 with bolt and chart a course in hand, and finding a second bolt with the chart.
2-0
R3 : Rakdos vampire tribal
I hate when I lose to decks that seem too new to be a threat, but g1 I misplayed bad. Land selection off my fetches left me without white and I would die with 3 PtE in hand. G2 I would lose to a long series of kill spells followed by a whip of erebos when I stopped drawing gas and decided I needed to see 14 lands this game.
2-1
R4 : U/R storm
G1 win by 1-drop committee. Baral on t2 eats a bolt and a pierce stops his manamorphose cold.
G2 turns out if you can only storm to 11 but have empty the Warren's, it's still pretty good.
G3 I lose by getting caught up in the moment. Storm keeps a 1 lander with combo in hand, if he gets a land off slight, but he misses. He finds a 2nd land on t3 and plays Baral. I take him to 4, and on his draw step I path Baral. He responds by comboing off, and it isn't until this morning I realize he can't cast his finishers on draw step. Ugh. Keep focused or you'll literally beat yourself.
2-2
R5 : another Izzet breach-control.
I would get him low both games, but this matchup requires the right amount of gas and counters and my luck had run out apparently. By turns 4 and 5 I was drawing dead, and he was just backing up his breach-emrakul with cheaper counters.
2-3
I borrowed the ziggurat and meddling mage ideas from the 5c humans running around, but a single zig doesn't do much work. I'll probably out the temple garden back in for it. I had taken the garden out because of the number of times I wanted a r/w land at fnm and never wanted the garden.. until yesterday when I wanted that garden like 3 times. That would figure, right?
The mage I picked because it gives me a way to slow down E-tron and prison, both of which are popular in my normal meta. Here they filled the role of bolt magnet.
Oh, there it is. I misread that the prior person was talking about bolting a manland before it was animated, and Forsythe saying "you can't bolt a land" context is important.
I think the change is necessary as things like Leyline of Sanctity currently protects Planeswalkers as well as the player, but it seems like turning damage spells into "nonland target" would cause a whole new box of problems to be opened.
Agreed, I would much prefer they take their "up to" 3 cards from the grave than go ripping a piece out of the deck entirely, or having to play around RIP (or the expectation of).
I really don't expect to see Scarab Feast start showing up in sideboards as anything other than a budget replacement. Surgical extraction is just so much better and, realistically, Extirpate does the same thing without the ability to cast it on life. Scarab is really only better on the technical end if they can grab multiple pieces, and even then it's really only better against US. Odds are people will stick with the hate that works well on multiple decks.
Realistically though, anyone who is applying them as being "slow" as it applies to this deck is thinking about it wrong. The intent isn't for these to be played as a mana source, they're there to be cycled.
We lack instant speed draw triggers. If you want to try to dredge our critters out on their turn, usually the best we can do is get a Neonate down and crack it when they pass their main phase. With one of these in hand, you could pass your turn two, cycle to dredge on their turn, then slam down whatever turn 3 play(s) you have available. ( this makes assumptions about what you did on turn 1 )
By going the hard way an switching to hardcasting their fatties! T1 - Badlands T2 - Swamp, Dark Rit, Dark Rit, Sire of Insanity
Seriously though, there is always discussion with decks that risk folding to certain kinds of hate. It really all depends on the player. In modern dredge, many builds choose to run only artifact hate, knowing they will likely fold to RIP/Leyline, but also knowing that those are very specific hate cards that many decks won't bother to pack. We gamble on the fact that if you choose to mull hard into your hate, we will have the card advantage early on to ride the bad beatdown plan while you try to recover the 2,3,4 cards you mulled away.
Or, sometimes you just fold because that's the risk you run.
This combo is
In a format where games can end anywhere from Turn 0 to turn 3 consistently, this would require at least turn 4 or 5 even with the nut-draw and no hand disruption coming in.
I realize now this is where I was making my error in the order of operations.
if DRS reponds to Divert, he does so without knowing what target Reanimate is bring Divert-ed to, and then Divert makes Reanimate take any valid target.
if DRS wants to fizzle the Reanimate, he has to respond to the Reanimate, post-Divert.
Got it. Sorry for the confusion.
I do not discount your concern about what kind of power embalms in the rare/mythic slots might carry until we see them in print, but looking at the two spoiled so far, a 2/2 that can absorb an extra attacker for 3cmc and a 3/2 Vigilant for 5cmc that dies to shock/fatal push/hallowed moonlight can hardly be called "super value."