So I some how managed land a Koth of the Hammer with out any mountains in play, can I still activate his +1 for the loyalty counter with out having any legal targets?
No, because adding, or subtracting counters is the cost of activating planes walker abilities, so for the ability to be on the stack for you to respond to, the planes walker's loyalty counters would have already changed accordingly.
Yeah it did, can't believe I've over looked that deck all this time! I just fixed the deck up, and it plays amazing, can't wait to test this sucker out,thanks soo much man!
I just ran a not-so-deep search on this forum for Mono Black Reanimators, and it didn't turn up too many results so I'm going to risk creating a new thread.
I've played reanimator since I started magic...Literally way back from the Urza block when Buried Alive, Exhume and Avatar of Woe were terrorizing all my friends, any ways I got this idea from a thread over at MTGTheSource.com, with the exception that I tried out a rainbow landbase, and it works pretty fricken awesome. Here is my list, let me know what you think.
Lands/manabase:
4 City of Brass
4 Forbidden Orchard
4 Gemstone Mine
1 Swamp
4 Dark Rit
4 Lotus Petal
2 Chrome Mox
Creatures:
4 Griselbrand
1 Emrakul
Protection/Discard:
4 Unmask
4 Cabal Therapy
Cantrip/outlets/enablers:
4 Putrid Imps
4 Faithless Looting
4 Gitaxian Probe (trying out Duress for better synergy with Unmask/Cabal Therapy)
4 Entomb
Reanimation:
4 Goryo's Vengence
4 Shallow Grave
Sideboard:
4 Echoing Truth
4 Chain of Vapors
4 Blue Elemental Blast
3 hydroblast
-----------------------------------------
The deck is pretty typical of all-in combo decks, very little interaction, with the exception of discarding their disruption, and trying really hard to combo off as fast as you can.
The combo:
Dark rit ->Entomb for Griselbrand -> Goryo/Shallow Grave ->pay 14 life, draw 14 cards -> pray to Richard Garfield that you find enough free mana, and combo pieces again to put Emrakul in the grave, then respond to his trigger with instant speed reanimation and attack for 22 damage in the air while grinning like an idiot.
While this seems obnoxiously convoluted on paper, it works more often than you think, and on turn zero no less.
I enjoy synergy. And I love EXPLOSIONS!!! Having said that I will now tell you that I LOVE the way this deck feels, there is a million and one ways to do things with this list and all adding to how explosive it can be...when it wants to be that is.
I've seen some decks run as many as 4 Emrakuls main deck, I tried two at one point and even that didn't work out for me, as drawing him can sometimes be liability because if he is discarded at all though you can respond to his trigger it will still resolve causing you to lose your graveyard, and when running 8 flashback cards thats not always a good idea. So for now there can only be one!
Probe/Therapy is an amazing combo, as well as Unmask/Therapy you can wreck all kinds of havoc. But recently I've been thinking about running duress as it provides protection as well as information, and can be pitched to unmask...but then probe can draw into something that can be pitched to unmask any ways...ARGH!
The land base is working great for me, as I can freely splash anything I want, and the tokens created by orchard can just be flown over. The only reason I have, to keep it primarily black, is the deck is very tight on mana, and more often than not I find myself depending on that free cast Unmask to dump a creature, or to pull disruption before I go off.
The pros to playing this over classic reanimator is since your reanimation targets have haste you don't have to invest into counter magic to protect them, and because the protection suite also doubles as a creature outlet it opens up for some sweet sweet plays. On a whole different aspect the deck's explosive nature lets you get around land hate such as wasteland/sinkhole/rishadan ports by only playing what you need when everything is set.
Draw backs to this deck is that if karakas hits before you've gone off, the game is almost a guaranteed loss. Against burn if you can't go off within the first two turns it makes it exponentially harder to go off at all since activating Gris is just doing their work for them. Also because the protection suite is totally geared towards discard enabling a proactive approach to protecting yourself it creates a massive need to be on the play at all times, else risking havoc caused by any kind of targeted discard, or hymn. All that said I know this isn't a tier one deck, but its still soo fun to play.
The side board is pretty much up in the air, I feel pretty strongly about switching the discard package for bounce, as for the remaining seven slot I just filled it with red hate since I hadn't really sat down and thought of anything else yet. Feel free to tear the board apart.
shoebaka - I think its a good idea to just run mono red burn, with basic lands, it keeps things from getting complicated, since the splash usually doesn't ad enough umph for the money, or the life spent on fetches. Besides you open yourself up to wastelands if you run duals, and stifle if you run fetches, as well as giving their removal a target with lavamancer or bob(totally ripped that off of the primer, but I tested it, and it was definitely right) so for me simplicity has been truly consistent.
I've played reanimator since I started magic...Literally way back from the Urza block when Buried Alive, Exhume and Avatar of Woe were terrorizing all my friends, any ways I got this idea from a thread over at MTGTheSource.com, with the exception that I tried out a rainbow landbase, and it works pretty fricken awesome. Here is my list, let me know what you think.
Lands/manabase:
4 City of Brass
4 Forbidden Orchard
4 Gemstone Mine
1 Swamp
4 Dark Rit
4 Lotus Petal
2 Chrome Mox
Creatures:
4 Griselbrand
1 Emrakul
Protection/Discard:
4 Unmask
4 Cabal Therapy
Cantrip/outlets/enablers:
4 Putrid Imps
4 Faithless Looting
4 Gitaxian Probe (trying out Duress for better synergy with Unmask/Cabal Therapy)
4 Entomb
Reanimation:
4 Goryo's Vengence
4 Shallow Grave
Sideboard:
4 Echoing Truth
4 Chain of Vapors
4 Blue Elemental Blast
3 hydroblast
-----------------------------------------
The deck is pretty typical of all-in combo decks, very little interaction, with the exception of discarding their disruption, and trying really hard to combo off as fast as you can.
The combo:
Dark rit ->Entomb for Griselbrand -> Goryo/Shallow Grave ->pay 14 life, draw 14 cards -> pray to Richard Garfield that you find enough free mana, and combo pieces again to put Emrakul in the grave, then respond to his trigger with instant speed reanimation and attack for 22 damage in the air while grinning like an idiot.
While this seems obnoxiously convoluted on paper, it works more often than you think, and on turn zero no less.
I enjoy synergy. And I love EXPLOSIONS!!! Having said that I will now tell you that I LOVE the way this deck feels, there is a million and one ways to do things with this list and all adding to how explosive it can be...when it wants to be that is.
I've seen some decks run as many as 4 Emrakuls main deck, I tried two at one point and even that didn't work out for me, as drawing him can sometimes be liability because if he is discarded at all though you can respond to his trigger it will still resolve causing you to lose your graveyard, and when running 8 flashback cards thats not always a good idea. So for now there can only be one!
Probe/Therapy is an amazing combo, as well as Unmask/Therapy you can wreck all kinds of havoc. But recently I've been thinking about running duress as it provides protection as well as information, and can be pitched to unmask...but then probe can draw into something that can be pitched to unmask any ways...ARGH!
The land base is working great for me, as I can freely splash anything I want, and the tokens created by orchard can just be flown over. The only reason I have, to keep it primarily black, is the deck is very tight on mana, and more often than not I find myself depending on that free cast Unmask to dump a creature, or to pull disruption before I go off.
The pros to playing this over classic reanimator is since your reanimation targets have haste you don't have to invest into counter magic to protect them, and because the protection suite also doubles as a creature outlet it opens up for some sweet sweet plays. On a whole different aspect the deck's explosive nature lets you get around land hate such as wasteland/sinkhole/rishadan ports by only playing what you need when everything is set.
Draw backs to this deck is that if karakas hits before you've gone off, the game is almost a guaranteed loss. Against burn if you can't go off within the first two turns it makes it exponentially harder to go off at all since activating Gris is just doing their work for them. Also because the protection suite is totally geared towards discard enabling a proactive approach to protecting yourself it creates a massive need to be on the play at all times, else risking havoc caused by any kind of targeted discard, or hymn. All that said I know this isn't a tier one deck, but its still soo fun to play.
The side board is pretty much up in the air, I feel pretty strongly about switching the discard package for bounce, as for the remaining seven slot I just filled it with red hate since I hadn't really sat down and thought of anything else yet. Feel free to tear the board apart.
Any input appreciated!!!