Don't forget that the satyr being a creature means grisly salvage and CwtG will now dredge for another dredge card. Chaining like that will be huge in this deck methinks.
People really need to start reading this card better. It returns all creatures from graveyard to hand, effectively killing Nighthowler, making Jarad a 2/2 and turning Nemesis to 6CC.
...at which point you discard them all back to the yard via the troll and swing for the lulz. I've been testing it to hilarious effect.
This set is a total money grab for wizards. It use to be rewarding that I had managed to collect and play with some of the more expensive cards since I started playing about when ravnica first came out. Whats disapointing is that all that collecting and hard money spent is about to go out the window. Now I know that last statement is a little over dramtic, but if it was all about getting the card pool more available they would not create limited reprint supply and higher purchase price to boot. It's also clear that the reserve list that will not be reprinted is a true slap in the face to every new customer in the last ten years. If it's all about supply and demand how do I get to play legacy without selling my car? The thing that sucks is that they created Mythic Rares for one reason periord. Wizards only wants to make cards that truley hold their value when it's connected to the current product they are pushing.
My bother over the years has always looked down on me for collecting magic by saying that the cards are just plain cardboard and that Wizards provides worthless paper for my hard earned income. I use to argue that magic could be a decent investment and that some cards would pay for themselves over the years because I was smart and lucky enough to have played the game going back about ten years. I will never delude myself like this again. These cards are now an offical bad investment longterm and they feel closer to my brother's explanition then mine. Don't get me completly wrong, I can and suspect that I will still have fun playing magic for years to come, but I don't trust the game as a good way to make any type of long term investment anymore. Wizards is about the money grab and I spent 10 years thinking differently. You live and you learn, I just hope my future lessons are not as expensive as this one.
Just do what I do...win drafts, trade off overhyped standard cards that you win at a premium within the first couple weeks of release for legacy staples on the reserved list, then laugh as your cards continue to climb in value while those standard cards plummet shortly thereafter. If its not on the reserved list it's going to be reprinted....the money is in the p9s, duals, FoW, etc...not thoughtseize and doubling season.
Balustrade spy should be in the wishboard so you have more creatures to sacrifice (useful for double narc hands). It also increases the chances you can use LED to activate any of the 4 md informers' ability.
Stephen referenced me in his eternal-central article and I wanted to share my latest list [below]. I'll appreciate any feedback I get.
Most of the card choices should be obvious so I'll highlight some of the more debatable ones. The major difference between this iteration and what I had before is the reduction of dead cards: no bridge from below, sutured ghoul kill, and 2 cabal therapies. Chancellor of the annex is in the main deck instead of pact of negation due to it being versatile and thus useful in every matchup. Pact of negation is a dead card against swamp.dec since it can't stop t1 thoughtseize/DRS. There's only 3 LEDs because without living wish, it's by far the worst mana source in the deck. For the sb, all of my protection cards are free. The weakest card is definitely desecration demon but it's a necessity to punish opponents who mulligan into hate while acting as a backup plan if they land DRS/RiP/etc. Living wish into desecration demon has a good chance of getting there if they mulled down to 4 to find their leyline of the void/crypt/spellbomb.
Here is my boarding plan below:
Blue decks: -3 LED, -1 chancellor of the annex, +4 pact of the negation
Black decks (on the draw): -3 LED, +3 leyline of sanctity
Combo decks with targeted kill (on the draw): -3 LED, -1 chancellor of the annex, +4 leyline of sanctity
Combo decks with targeted kill (on the play): -3 chancellor of the annex, +3 leyline of sanctity
Miscellaneous: none
While on the draw against blue and black decks, this leaves us with 7 free disruption spells post-board. However, we can simply outrace any hate coming out of swamp.dec for game 3 by reverting back to the main deck configuration. The main benefit of playing chancellor is that it improves our BUG matchup. Though they have access to spell pierce, DRS, and thoughtseize, they won't be able to play all of them due to mana. Chancellor negates all of those cards t1 and leaves FoW and surgical extraction (post-board) as their only outs. I would follow the "blue deck" boarding guide against BUG decks simply because counters scare me more than discard. They are most likely going to board into more counters anyways.
Please let me know if you have any questions or want further explanations.
I've run into more issues with not having that one extra mana to cast spy after going to the wishboard than I have with informer. I also strongly prefer my spies maindeck for the same reason you prefer them in the wishboard: another creature to sac.
Chancellor of the annex is cute if you have it in your opening hand...but if you don't then you're guaranteed drawing dead. If it's turn 2+ I'd MUCH rather rip a negation off the top than a chancellor.
Sutured ghoul+dragon breath is strictly worse than the azami+maniac win con . Why would you want to go to a combat phase and introduce even more variance when you can simply win in the phase before it?
Latest changes to my list: -1 Grim Monolith +1 LED maindeck. Also, Undercity Informer is the correct choice in the wishboard. Not sure what I'm going to put in the extra slot in the wishboard that this change frees up, but I'm open to suggestions.
...you aren't the guy who demolished the sad/strange mono black zombie are you?
In round 1? Yup that was me. At least I think he was playing zombies...it was mono black but he didn't really get a chance to play enough cards for me to understand what the deck was lol
I agree with just about everything he wrote except for living wish i dismissed it a few pages ago, for being too slow, maybe i will have to take another look at it with my rebalanced mana base.
I like how he and i both play a miser's lion's eye diamond
I pretty much agree with his list as well. I ran the wish-less version at Pax East on Friday and switched to a living wish build about 5 minutes after the tournament ended. Couldn't be happier with it. I'm running 2 Grim Monolith instead of Chancellor of the tangle # 3 and 4, but other than that my list is the same as above. Chancellor is great in a lot of circumstances, but drawing into it is always terrible.
Also, one more important thing, he lost the first game in that round due to not having odious trow/deathrite shaman mainboard to fetch with a summoner's pact to imprint in a chrome mox. I don't think we can afford this... It should be an auto-include...
He could've put the ritual he topdecked under the mox for his black then gone off that turn...I'm pretty sure he lost that game due to letting a blue combo deck dig up Force instead of trying to go off ASAP. He was dead to force either way, he should've gone for it. That and not bringing back his Undercity Informers when the angel hit play had me yelling at the tv quite a bit.
Quick question: I have less than 20 cards in my library and play Shelldock Isle and use its Hideaway ability on Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. When I use the Isle's ability the following turn to play Emrakul, will it count as being cast (giving me an extra turn) or will it just enter play without triggering that effect? Thanks for the clarification!
Quick history: I played from Unlimited through Mercadian Masques before taking an epically long hiatus until the day that Innistrad was pre-released. I've always been a fan of reanimator decks (hence my choice of legacy deck) and when it became apparent that everyone was playing this newfangled EDH thing that showed up in my absence from the game, I decided to hop in and build my first deck...this is it. I went with Grimgrin since I love zombies, they have a whole ton of lords available, and his sac ability dovetailed with my love of reanimation.
Notable Combos:
Grimgrin + Rooftop Storm + Gravecrawler: Infinite +1/+1 counters on Grimgrin
Grimgrin + Rooftop Storm + Gravecrawler + Vengeful Dead: Infinite damage to the rest of the table
Grimgrin + Rooftop Storm + Gravecrawler + Noxious Ghoul: Infinite -1/-1 to all non-zombies
Grimgrin + Mikaeus + Skinrender + Rooftop Storm: infinite +1/+1 counters on grimgrin
Necropotence + Venser's Journal: Obscene amounts of life and card draw
I'm a big fan of multiplayer games and I've found that in this current version that I generally have enough threats to not only stall any potential attacks against myself, but also to combo out for an instant win out of nowhere. I generally aim to just keep pushing into the red zone with threats that just won't go away, but the degenerate combos are great to have since I inevitably play with people who use decks that are pretty much combo centric. Being able to combo out faster than they can is a definite advantage.
In any event, please leave any comments or suggestions you happen to have, particularly about potentially better card choices. My next step is to upgrade some tutors to demonic and vampiric, but aside from those obvious choices I'd love to hear some ideas that I probably haven't thought of. Thanks for reading!
Daily MTGO tournaments. They can be some indicator of a deck's success, but the field they encounter is generally narrower than, say, an SCG open. I give them about as much weight as an FNM, which is to say not much.
Hopefully we'll have a kill spell handy to pick her off if they do steal her, but I don't think the potential for an opponent to steal Gisela is a reason not to play her. Having Elesh, Rune-Scarred, Frosty, Wurmcoil, etc stolen from us is often just as devastating in terms of a tempo shift.
...at which point you discard them all back to the yard via the troll and swing for the lulz. I've been testing it to hilarious effect.
This. I won 2 out of my 3 prereleases that I attended and it was lights out as soon as Abhorrent Overlord hit the table every time I played him.
Auras trigger heroic as well since they target, so they don't need to print them, per se, but they will.
Just do what I do...win drafts, trade off overhyped standard cards that you win at a premium within the first couple weeks of release for legacy staples on the reserved list, then laugh as your cards continue to climb in value while those standard cards plummet shortly thereafter. If its not on the reserved list it's going to be reprinted....the money is in the p9s, duals, FoW, etc...not thoughtseize and doubling season.
I've run into more issues with not having that one extra mana to cast spy after going to the wishboard than I have with informer. I also strongly prefer my spies maindeck for the same reason you prefer them in the wishboard: another creature to sac.
Chancellor of the annex is cute if you have it in your opening hand...but if you don't then you're guaranteed drawing dead. If it's turn 2+ I'd MUCH rather rip a negation off the top than a chancellor.
Sutured ghoul+dragon breath is strictly worse than the azami+maniac win con . Why would you want to go to a combat phase and introduce even more variance when you can simply win in the phase before it?
Just my .02
In round 1? Yup that was me. At least I think he was playing zombies...it was mono black but he didn't really get a chance to play enough cards for me to understand what the deck was lol
I pretty much agree with his list as well. I ran the wish-less version at Pax East on Friday and switched to a living wish build about 5 minutes after the tournament ended. Couldn't be happier with it. I'm running 2 Grim Monolith instead of Chancellor of the tangle # 3 and 4, but other than that my list is the same as above. Chancellor is great in a lot of circumstances, but drawing into it is always terrible.
He could've put the ritual he topdecked under the mox for his black then gone off that turn...I'm pretty sure he lost that game due to letting a blue combo deck dig up Force instead of trying to go off ASAP. He was dead to force either way, he should've gone for it. That and not bringing back his Undercity Informers when the angel hit play had me yelling at the tv quite a bit.
1x Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
Creatures (Zombies)
1x Cemetery Reaper
1x Diregraf Captain
1x Lord of the Undead
1x Death Baron
1x Zombie Master
1x Undead Warchief
1x Vengeful Dead
1x Noxious Ghoul
1x Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
1x Phyrexian Delver
1x Havengul Lich
1x Gravespawn Sovereign
1x Corpse Connoisseur
1x Gravedigger
1x Bone Dancer
1x Geth, Lord of the Vault
1x Gravecrawler
1x Fleshbag Marauder
1x Soulless One
1x Unbreathing Horde
1x Graveborn Muse
1x Vengeful Pharaoh
1x Skinrender
1x Helldozer
Creatures (Non-Zombies)
1x Vampire Hexmage
1x Reassembling Skeleton
1x Sheoldred, Whispering One
1x Rune-Scarred Demon
1x Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
1x It That Betrays
1x Caged Sun
1x Sol Ring
1x Mimic Vat
1x Whispersilk Cloak
1x Nim Deathmantle
1x Venser's Journal
1x Swiftfoot Boots
1x Door of Destinies
1x Temporal Aperture
Enchantments
1x Ancestral Knowledge
1x Phyrexian Arena
1x Animate Dead
1x Necropotence
1x Call to the Grave
1x Dance of the Dead
1x Diabolic Servitude
1x Grave Pact
1x Rooftop Storm
1x Endless Ranks of the Dead
Instants
1x Entomb
1x Betrayal of Flesh
1x Lim-Dul's Vault
Sorceries
1x Reanimate
1x Yawgmoth's Will
1x Diabolic Tutor
1x Rise from the Grave
1x Beseech the Queen
1x Disturbed Burial
1x Increasing Ambition
1x Army of the Damned
1x Buried Alive
1x Ancestral Vision
1x Drain Power
1x Dark Depths
1x Unholy Grotto
1x Volrath's Stronghold
1x Strip Mine
1x Wasteland
1x Grixis Panorama
1x Esper Panorama
1x City of Brass
1x Gemstone Mine
1x Command Tower
1x Salt Marsh
1x Drowned Catacomb
1x Darkslick Shores
1x Underground River
1x Creeping Tar Pit
1x Darkwater Catacombs
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Lake of the Dead
1x Bojuka Bog
1x Ebon Stronghold
14x Swamp
2x Island
Quick history: I played from Unlimited through Mercadian Masques before taking an epically long hiatus until the day that Innistrad was pre-released. I've always been a fan of reanimator decks (hence my choice of legacy deck) and when it became apparent that everyone was playing this newfangled EDH thing that showed up in my absence from the game, I decided to hop in and build my first deck...this is it. I went with Grimgrin since I love zombies, they have a whole ton of lords available, and his sac ability dovetailed with my love of reanimation.
Notable Combos:
Grimgrin + Rooftop Storm + Gravecrawler: Infinite +1/+1 counters on Grimgrin
Grimgrin + Rooftop Storm + Gravecrawler + Vengeful Dead: Infinite damage to the rest of the table
Grimgrin + Rooftop Storm + Gravecrawler + Noxious Ghoul: Infinite -1/-1 to all non-zombies
Grimgrin + Mikaeus + Skinrender + Rooftop Storm: infinite +1/+1 counters on grimgrin
Necropotence + Venser's Journal: Obscene amounts of life and card draw
I'm a big fan of multiplayer games and I've found that in this current version that I generally have enough threats to not only stall any potential attacks against myself, but also to combo out for an instant win out of nowhere. I generally aim to just keep pushing into the red zone with threats that just won't go away, but the degenerate combos are great to have since I inevitably play with people who use decks that are pretty much combo centric. Being able to combo out faster than they can is a definite advantage.
In any event, please leave any comments or suggestions you happen to have, particularly about potentially better card choices. My next step is to upgrade some tutors to demonic and vampiric, but aside from those obvious choices I'd love to hear some ideas that I probably haven't thought of. Thanks for reading!
Daily MTGO tournaments. They can be some indicator of a deck's success, but the field they encounter is generally narrower than, say, an SCG open. I give them about as much weight as an FNM, which is to say not much.