Oh, damn, I just created a thread the same minute you did. Do I need to call the mods to delete it?
The green legend looks great apart from the odd looking partner clause. Turn almost any creature you cast afterwards into a removal spell for a kicker cost of 2. And a 3/4 reach isn't that bad for 3G either.
The red one certainly isn't underpowered, but I don't think I need a 4R ramp card in red.
Firstly, remember that those actions have not been demanded by anyone (with the exception of axing Invoke Prejudice for a variety of reasons) and they are just companies making symbolic gestures based on their own ideas about what would be appropriate. Remember not to equate what they elect to do with the demands of the movements which prompt such actions. It's not any kind of 'new fascism' since it's not being imposed; it's just panicked attempts to try and garner sympathy with symbolic gestures, some of which are a positive if a minor one.
Sure, it is certainly a coincidence that WotC does this now. It's a bit naive to believe that this kind of action wasn't imposed by anyone when it's obvious that this was the case, at least indirectly. There are many examples where companies didn't comply with the pc activist Internet crowd and were ripped apart on social media for it. What WotC did is not 'a panicked attempt to try and garner sympathy' (who does panic to garner sympathy anyway?), it's a panicked attempt to avoid being the target of a witch hunt by social media activists that would most likely follow if they would leave even the tiniest room to interpret any of their cards the wrong way.
Secondly, being European, I can tell that 'gypsy' is absolutely a slur for the Roma people. It's not ridiculous just because you do not understand the reasoning. Some of those choices are arguable, for sure. But with Cleanse, for example, it's not just about 'destroy all black creatures' but also that in the context of the name of the card. You may have heard of something called 'ethnic cleansing'.
I'm European as well and I can tell you that the word gypsy may be a controverse word, but it's definitely not a racial slur. I was born in a town where a rather large population (still a minority, but more than in other parts of my country) of Roma lives and they want to be called gypsies, they even put it on their tombstones and they're proud about it. Just because some pc people want to make you believe this is the same as the n word doesn't make it true. It's not even the same as calling native Americans Indians, simply because gypsy is how these people named themselves a few hundred years ago already - it was not a name made up by other people. There are just as many people who'd be offended if you said that 'gypsy' is an insult as there are people who do think 'gypsy' is an insult. You don't need to put that word on a Magic card, but it's certainly nothing banworthy and nothing that needs to be removed after 26 years. Even more so if you look at the art of the card that depicts romanticized, idealized versions of gypsies - certainly nothing a gypsy should be offended by.
And your explanation for Cleanse is exactly what I'm talking about and why I say it's utterly ridiculous. If the word cleanse is bad because it's also used in the term 'ethnical cleansing' and if destroying black creatures, which are vampires, zombies and demons in Magic and not people with African origin or black skin color, isn't ok anymore then nothing is. And yes, that is absolutely true for the combination of these words because they have nothing at all to do with real life or racism and that is very obvious to anyone with the smallest grain of common sense left. Everything on this card makes 100% sense, the word cleanse is perfect to describe a white card that sweeps away all the foul, evil black creatures on the battlefield. If you see racism on this card then you see racism everywhere.
Then of course you have a card like Crusade. Who the hell would be offended by that? You have to be completely insane to be offended by a historic event that happened almost 1000 years ago.
Oh, and I also had to look up why Stone-Throwing Devils is offensive and of course it is just as ridiculous. It's in the same vein of 'I really, really want to find racism or cultural insensivity here when no one with common sense would see any of that' like Cleanse. I'm absolutely sure that 99.99999% of people who would see this card wouldn't see anything offensive on it or in its name if you showed it to them without any comment.
So Isochron Scepter got a reprint, where are we on that card these days?
When it was in my cube in half of the games it was a mediocre to bad card and in the other half it took over the game without giving my opponent a chance to interact with it at all. It's one of the artifacts/enchantments I cut for being unfun because sometimes you lose against them just because you don't draw a Reclamation Sage. I won't ever add it back.
Not sure if it's even allowed to discuss stuff like that here, but while browsing Legends cards on Scryfall I could possibly use for my old school Battlebox I noticed that the card Imprison got a special treatment so you could only see it after going past a 'snowflake wall' where you have to agree that it's ok to show you art that depicts racism. At first I thought this was just Scryfall being oversensitive, but it turned out it was a decision by WotC and it's the same on almost all other Magic related sites. Most major sites like Card Kingdom or TCGPlayer even refuse to sell cards that are deemed racist or cultural insensitive by WotC.
After looking up reasons I found out that Imprison - which just shows a black guy who is imprisoned in a rather uncomfortable way, but which has no signs of racism at all unless you think a black guy who is imprisoned is automatially racist just because the person is black and not white or some kind of alien - isn't even the only card that was banned. Apart from the obvious card (Invoke Prejudice) there are ridiculous cards like Pradesh Gypsies, Stone-Throwing Devils or Crusade on the list as well. The funniest (or scariest) of them all is probably Cleanse, which was removed because...it is mass removal that removes black creatures. They just can't be serious.
I mean, what the hell? To me this feels like a new kind of fascism. It's not much different from the idea of degenerate art they had 80 years ago. Sure, they have reasons. But they had reasons that made just as much sense back then as well. Personally I was scared when I saw this. How do you feel about it?
Oh, and if it's not allowed to discuss this (for whatever reasons, you never know these days...) please remove.
PS The only good thing about it is that I own a few copies of most of these cards and the price increased quite a lot, so hey.
PPS Imprison art was done by Christopher Rush. I'm willing to take any Black Lotus you don't want in your collection anymore because it was painted by a racist. And of course because it has the word 'black' in it and you need to sacrifice it, which is obviously racism in its purest form. Also take Alpha Lightning Bolts.
PPPS It's even more funny that they blur/hide a card like Pradesh Gypsies even though it doesn't show anything offensive and was only banned for its name, which you already know and which you can still see and read if you look the card up.
For 3 mana it's not even worth a card. For 5 mana you get a crappy version of Grizzly Fate without Threshold and Flashback. For 7 mana you finally get something that is not terrible, but that is still worse than Trostani's Summoner or the quality green 7 drops (Pelakka Wurm, Plated Crusher etc) we have. It doesn't offer enough in the 3-5 mana range to make up for the lack of power in the 7 mana range and 9+ mana doesn't happen often enough even in green.
I assume this card may be playable in commander if you can somehow generate 9+ mana quickly (I don't play commander, so I may be completely wrong about it), but in CU/be it's just bad.
I agree about Deep Analysis. 4 cmc sorcery speed is sooo slow, you can hardly ever justify doing that in most games. If you loot the card into the graveyard it's quite decent, but still - you get a bad version of Night's Whisper if you had another card you didn't really need that you could have discarded. And 3 life isn't nothing, sometimes it is a tough decision in the late game when you need cards the most. It's definitely on my cut list.
Yavimaya Elder is decent value and I'd still play it if it was 2G instead of 1GG. But the double green killed it for me, even though green has less problems with cc cards than other colors. It's just not good enough to justify a cc cost and like already mentioned cc cost on a card where one of the main advantages is that it fixes your mana is bad. Llanowar Visionary is a much better card - it gives you value and ramp immediately and it even has a small chance to fix your mana as well.
Completely disagree about Regrowth, which I still consider first pickable in a weak pack. It's a Demonic Tutor that is weaker in the early game and, at least sometimes, better in the late game. Combined with green self-mill effects (and there are plenty of those) it's even better. Can't imagine I'll ever cut this.
One card I personally dislike is Sentinel of the Eternal Watch. I can't say it has aged badly, from my pov it was always overrated. It's a 6 cmc creature you can remove at sorcery speed without it ever doing something. And even if it stays it doesn't end the game quickly, it's just a decent creature with a good ability. If your removal is depowered/more conditional ymmv, but I've been looking or a replacement for a while now. If they ever print a decent card in the 6+ cmc range or if I run out of other cards I can cut in white it will be gone.
Black now has access to three blood artist payoffs for creatures dying, red has spiteful prankster (and hissing iguanaur for people who play strictly worse versions of cards), but what does white have?
Oh, and I run Sylvok Lifestaff since the first iteration of my cube and never saw the need to remove it. It's a pretty good card in any token deck that isn't super aggressive and of course it's great in a sacrifice deck as well.
Carrion Feeder is just a decent card in any aggressive deck with creatures.
I had Viscera Seer in my cube for a while to support the sacrifice deck, but the only thing it has going for it is that the sacrifice ability is free. Which isn't enough to warrant an inclusion in most decks.
I didn't play Vampiric Rites for a long time, but I recently added it back as support for the slower, more grindy version of the sacrifice deck. There are now enough Blood Artist variants and sac outlets that the deck works both in WB and RB. I am hopeful that the card will work out well enough in that type of deck when you have lots of creatures that are good for sacrificing and additional upside from Blood Artist variants, but I wouldn't run it in a random midrange deck.
Obviously the deck is weak to removal, but haste (Lightning Mauler, Goblin Motivator, Reckless Charge or creatures that naturally have haste) helps a lot with that, especially in game 1. It's a fun deck and, at least theoretically, the fastest deck in my cube.
But overall Temur Battle Rage is a very narrow card of course since only few creatures have 4 power on their own. And especially in red alone that doesn't happen often.
I had Juniper Order Ranger in my cube mainly for this combo for a while before Good-Fortune Unicorn came out. It's a three color combo (even though you only need to splash for white) and with Demonic Tutor, Worldly Tutor, newer cards like Adventurous Impulse or Grapple with the Past and reanimation spells or Regrowth effects it's not completely unreliable. But ultimately it's a joke deck you draft once in 100 drafts, and that only if you know exactly what to look for.
Right now I still have enough cards to run the combo. No Juniper Order Ranger, but Good-Fortune Unicorn and Renata, Called to the Hunt, which is better. But also no Viscera Seer, instead most sac outlets cost mana, which is slightly worse. Though a Thoughtpicker Witch or even Vampiric Rites should end the game quickly as well if combined with Kitchen Finks/Good-Fortune Unicorn), but your opponent still has a turn or two to remove a combo piece, though he will most likely be far behind already at that point.
But ultimately it's super hard to get the deck together as in my cube you need Kitchen Finks, Murderous Redcap, Good-Fortune Unicorn and Renata, Called to the Hunt all at once plus at least 2-3 sac outlets, plus a bunch of card that help finding the cards you need plus mana fixing to get a three color deck to work properly. It can work out, but in a real draft you can easily end up with a train wreck of a deck if you end up with a few parts missing.
Interesting. I guess I didn't consider that the top end threats aren't as game-ending in peasant; maybe that's the check on the archetype I was looking for to reassure me that adding it wouldn't be too strong. So from a cursory glace at your list, you basically recommend running all the lowest cmc reanimation spells?
Absolutely. No one runs Zombify because it's just not worth running. It's bad in reanimator and it's bad outside of reanimator. Animate Dead and Reanimate aren't overpowered, they're just good spells. In Peasant Reanimate is even pretty bad in reanimator since the life loss hurts a lot if you can't win immediately and a turn 1 reanimation is practically impossible. I like it more in aggro, but of course I take it for reanimator as well since there aren't many options.
First of all in CU/be you rarely get to reanimate a creature before turn 3 and you can't attack with it before turn 4. That's plenty of time for an aggro deck to attack you or for a midrange deck to build up defenses. Secondly the big creatures in peasant are not Inkwell Leviathan or Griselbrand, instead we have Pelakka Wurm or Trostani's Summoner. Certainly creatures that are hard to deal with, but nothing that will end the game on the spot.
From my pov reanimator is one of the weaker archetypes in peasant. It is fragile and inconsistent since you need a discard outlet, a fatty and a reanimation spell early in the game all at once. And then you haven't won the game, you just have everything you need for a chance to win the game. If I replaced Animate Dead with Zombify the archetype would be gone from my cube as it would be impossible to win with it.
The problem you have may be that reanimator is the only true combo archetype there is in peasant and if everything works perfectly right a reanimator deck can end the game as early as turn 4, which is faster than an aggro deck, which needs at least 5 turns usually. But that's just the way combo decks work. And from my experience this kind of very early win only happens very, very rarely. If you don't like combo decks get rid of reanimator, but don't remove it because it's op as that's clearly not the case.
I like to compare Oketra's Attendant to Custodi Squire. Squire gives you a better version of Raise Dead (is there a card that returns a creature, artifact or enchantment? Too lazy to look it up) and a 3/3 flyer for 4W, Oketra's Attendant gives you a random card for 2 and then a 3/3 flyer for 3WW. Now of course with Attendant you can get the random card earlier and you have at least the option to play two 3/3 flyers late in the game instead, but does that make up for the loss of speed and quality? Not from my pov.
Often you don't have the mana to cycle Attendant early and with a late Raise Dead+ you will almost always get something that is equal or better than a 3/3 flyer out of the yard. And that is of course more mana efficient as well. On top of that you have a WW cost, which can sometimes be a problem even on a 5 mana card. The only small advantage it has is that it's better against counterspells. But on the other hand Squire has the also small advantage that it can be abused with blink/bounce spells.
Not that anyone said Oketra's Attendant is better than Custodi Squire, but I think both cards are similar enough and the difference between them in terms of quality is quite big. Personally I don't need a bad version of Custodi Squire in my cube, which is why I never considered Oketra's Attendant. It may be good enough for a 720 cube though.
I think I'd rather have Serra Angel over Radiant Archangel the majority of the time. You need another flying creature for them to be even, and then 2 for the archangel to outpace Serra Angel. But if you already have 2 flying creatures in play you are often times already winning and the Archangel becomes win more. You absolutely can't play Archangel in random white decks without many fliers, because as a 3/3 it's pretty garbage. Whereas, I can see playing Serra Angel in many random white decks and still being decent.
There are so many flying creatures and so many token cards with flying in white, it's not hard to get 2-3 flyers with Radiant, Archangel out even in a random deck. In my cube about one third of the creatures (including token producers) have flying in my white section and I don't think my cube has more flyers than most other CU/bes. And it's not my experience that you're winning anyway just because you have two flyers out. Combined with blue in a skies deck it's just sooo much better than Serra Angel and in a lot of regular white decks that want a 5 cmc creature it's at least equal or better.
And like Calibretto said, it works with your opponent's creatures as well, which means it gets better if your opponent has flyers to block your own flyers, which is a huge benefit.
There are white decks where Serra Angel is better for sure, but the majority of time? Not in my experience. And the ceiling for Radiant, Archangel is insane - a single Spectral Procession (which will certainly not make you win the game immediately) will turn this into a 6/6 vigilance flyer for 5 mana, and when your opponent has a Serendib Efreet and a Cloudkin Seer out? Ouch, it's an 8/8 flyer with vigilance. Your opponent better has a Go for the Throat ready when that happens or he is done. I'm not even talking about the best case with a full Battle Screech or Lingering Souls combined with a few flyers on your opponent's side.
While the number of decks where you can play it may be more limited it is just far better in the decks where you can play it. And it's not like Serra Angel is a card I'm desperate for anyway, so I'd rather have one that is great in 50% of white midrange decks than one that is always just meh/card #23 in 100% of midrange decks. And that's coming from someone who loves old cards, especially from the 93/94 era and who wouldn't think twice about adding a nice CE/IE Serra Angel to his cube if it was good enough.
Hello everyone. I'm pretty new to peasant, so I'd love to get your opinion on Patron of the Valiant compared to other white 5cmc creatures in a 720 card cube.
In a random flyers deck Patron of the Valiant is just a bad Serra Angel, which is a very mediocre card in CU/be already. If it was in my cube I'd almost always find 23 better cards to put into a flyer deck. The only deck where it can shine is a dedicated +1/+1 counters deck, and that hardly warrants wasting a a slot on it as even in such a deck you don't always have a bunch of creatures with counters on them when you play it.
You already run Elite Scaleguard, which also works in other decks and which is much better than Patron if you already have 2-3 creatures with counters on them.
From your list Cloudgoat Ranger is a staple people only cut if they want to reduce power level. Elite Scaleguard is very good and a no-brainer if you have any kind of +1/+1 counters theme in your cube. Don't have much experience with Syr Alin, the Lion's Claw yet, but he's ok I guess. I run Belfry Spirit mainly for the sacrifice theme in Orzhov I have running, but I could see it getting cut eventually. Serra Angel, like already mentioned, is a mediocre card and an easy cut if you need room. I'm not a fan of Oketra's Attendant either. Totem-Guide Hartebeest may be a pet card of yours, but you have 7 auras out of 107 white cards and 18 auras out of 720 total cards in your cube. Even if you end up with two auras in a deck this is hardly a great card and often you won't even get that. I wouldn't play it.
Notable omissions in your cube would be Custodi Squire, which is great value, and Radiant, Archangel (if you don't mind running online uncommons), which is great support for white tokens and flyers and a better alternative to Serra Angel.
The green legend looks great apart from the odd looking partner clause. Turn almost any creature you cast afterwards into a removal spell for a kicker cost of 2. And a 3/4 reach isn't that bad for 3G either.
The red one certainly isn't underpowered, but I don't think I need a 4R ramp card in red.
EDIT: Deleted it.
Sure, it is certainly a coincidence that WotC does this now. It's a bit naive to believe that this kind of action wasn't imposed by anyone when it's obvious that this was the case, at least indirectly. There are many examples where companies didn't comply with the pc activist Internet crowd and were ripped apart on social media for it. What WotC did is not 'a panicked attempt to try and garner sympathy' (who does panic to garner sympathy anyway?), it's a panicked attempt to avoid being the target of a witch hunt by social media activists that would most likely follow if they would leave even the tiniest room to interpret any of their cards the wrong way.
I'm European as well and I can tell you that the word gypsy may be a controverse word, but it's definitely not a racial slur. I was born in a town where a rather large population (still a minority, but more than in other parts of my country) of Roma lives and they want to be called gypsies, they even put it on their tombstones and they're proud about it. Just because some pc people want to make you believe this is the same as the n word doesn't make it true. It's not even the same as calling native Americans Indians, simply because gypsy is how these people named themselves a few hundred years ago already - it was not a name made up by other people. There are just as many people who'd be offended if you said that 'gypsy' is an insult as there are people who do think 'gypsy' is an insult. You don't need to put that word on a Magic card, but it's certainly nothing banworthy and nothing that needs to be removed after 26 years. Even more so if you look at the art of the card that depicts romanticized, idealized versions of gypsies - certainly nothing a gypsy should be offended by.
And your explanation for Cleanse is exactly what I'm talking about and why I say it's utterly ridiculous. If the word cleanse is bad because it's also used in the term 'ethnical cleansing' and if destroying black creatures, which are vampires, zombies and demons in Magic and not people with African origin or black skin color, isn't ok anymore then nothing is. And yes, that is absolutely true for the combination of these words because they have nothing at all to do with real life or racism and that is very obvious to anyone with the smallest grain of common sense left. Everything on this card makes 100% sense, the word cleanse is perfect to describe a white card that sweeps away all the foul, evil black creatures on the battlefield. If you see racism on this card then you see racism everywhere.
Then of course you have a card like Crusade. Who the hell would be offended by that? You have to be completely insane to be offended by a historic event that happened almost 1000 years ago.
Oh, and I also had to look up why Stone-Throwing Devils is offensive and of course it is just as ridiculous. It's in the same vein of 'I really, really want to find racism or cultural insensivity here when no one with common sense would see any of that' like Cleanse. I'm absolutely sure that 99.99999% of people who would see this card wouldn't see anything offensive on it or in its name if you showed it to them without any comment.
When it was in my cube in half of the games it was a mediocre to bad card and in the other half it took over the game without giving my opponent a chance to interact with it at all. It's one of the artifacts/enchantments I cut for being unfun because sometimes you lose against them just because you don't draw a Reclamation Sage. I won't ever add it back.
After looking up reasons I found out that Imprison - which just shows a black guy who is imprisoned in a rather uncomfortable way, but which has no signs of racism at all unless you think a black guy who is imprisoned is automatially racist just because the person is black and not white or some kind of alien - isn't even the only card that was banned. Apart from the obvious card (Invoke Prejudice) there are ridiculous cards like Pradesh Gypsies, Stone-Throwing Devils or Crusade on the list as well. The funniest (or scariest) of them all is probably Cleanse, which was removed because...it is mass removal that removes black creatures. They just can't be serious.
I mean, what the hell? To me this feels like a new kind of fascism. It's not much different from the idea of degenerate art they had 80 years ago. Sure, they have reasons. But they had reasons that made just as much sense back then as well. Personally I was scared when I saw this. How do you feel about it?
Oh, and if it's not allowed to discuss this (for whatever reasons, you never know these days...) please remove.
PS The only good thing about it is that I own a few copies of most of these cards and the price increased quite a lot, so hey.
PPS Imprison art was done by Christopher Rush. I'm willing to take any Black Lotus you don't want in your collection anymore because it was painted by a racist. And of course because it has the word 'black' in it and you need to sacrifice it, which is obviously racism in its purest form. Also take Alpha Lightning Bolts.
PPPS It's even more funny that they blur/hide a card like Pradesh Gypsies even though it doesn't show anything offensive and was only banned for its name, which you already know and which you can still see and read if you look the card up.
For 3 mana it's not even worth a card. For 5 mana you get a crappy version of Grizzly Fate without Threshold and Flashback. For 7 mana you finally get something that is not terrible, but that is still worse than Trostani's Summoner or the quality green 7 drops (Pelakka Wurm, Plated Crusher etc) we have. It doesn't offer enough in the 3-5 mana range to make up for the lack of power in the 7 mana range and 9+ mana doesn't happen often enough even in green.
I assume this card may be playable in commander if you can somehow generate 9+ mana quickly (I don't play commander, so I may be completely wrong about it), but in CU/be it's just bad.
Yavimaya Elder is decent value and I'd still play it if it was 2G instead of 1GG. But the double green killed it for me, even though green has less problems with cc cards than other colors. It's just not good enough to justify a cc cost and like already mentioned cc cost on a card where one of the main advantages is that it fixes your mana is bad. Llanowar Visionary is a much better card - it gives you value and ramp immediately and it even has a small chance to fix your mana as well.
Completely disagree about Regrowth, which I still consider first pickable in a weak pack. It's a Demonic Tutor that is weaker in the early game and, at least sometimes, better in the late game. Combined with green self-mill effects (and there are plenty of those) it's even better. Can't imagine I'll ever cut this.
One card I personally dislike is Sentinel of the Eternal Watch. I can't say it has aged badly, from my pov it was always overrated. It's a 6 cmc creature you can remove at sorcery speed without it ever doing something. And even if it stays it doesn't end the game quickly, it's just a decent creature with a good ability. If your removal is depowered/more conditional ymmv, but I've been looking or a replacement for a while now. If they ever print a decent card in the 6+ cmc range or if I run out of other cards I can cut in white it will be gone.
Black has access to four Blood Artists (Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, Bastion of Remembrance and Falkenrath Noble).
White has all the great token cards, including cards like Promise of Bunrei and Belfry Spirit, which work exceptionally well in a sacrifice deck. And you get a good selection of cards in the Orzhov section, like Maw of the Obzedat, Hidden Stockpile, Corpse Knight (I play the misprint as if it was the real card), Cruel Celebrant and of course Lingering Souls.
Oh, and I run Sylvok Lifestaff since the first iteration of my cube and never saw the need to remove it. It's a pretty good card in any token deck that isn't super aggressive and of course it's great in a sacrifice deck as well.
I had Viscera Seer in my cube for a while to support the sacrifice deck, but the only thing it has going for it is that the sacrifice ability is free. Which isn't enough to warrant an inclusion in most decks.
I didn't play Vampiric Rites for a long time, but I recently added it back as support for the slower, more grindy version of the sacrifice deck. There are now enough Blood Artist variants and sac outlets that the deck works both in WB and RB. I am hopeful that the card will work out well enough in that type of deck when you have lots of creatures that are good for sacrificing and additional upside from Blood Artist variants, but I wouldn't run it in a random midrange deck.
Obviously the deck is weak to removal, but haste (Lightning Mauler, Goblin Motivator, Reckless Charge or creatures that naturally have haste) helps a lot with that, especially in game 1. It's a fun deck and, at least theoretically, the fastest deck in my cube.
But overall Temur Battle Rage is a very narrow card of course since only few creatures have 4 power on their own. And especially in red alone that doesn't happen often.
Right now I still have enough cards to run the combo. No Juniper Order Ranger, but Good-Fortune Unicorn and Renata, Called to the Hunt, which is better. But also no Viscera Seer, instead most sac outlets cost mana, which is slightly worse. Though a Thoughtpicker Witch or even Vampiric Rites should end the game quickly as well if combined with Kitchen Finks/Good-Fortune Unicorn), but your opponent still has a turn or two to remove a combo piece, though he will most likely be far behind already at that point.
But ultimately it's super hard to get the deck together as in my cube you need Kitchen Finks, Murderous Redcap, Good-Fortune Unicorn and Renata, Called to the Hunt all at once plus at least 2-3 sac outlets, plus a bunch of card that help finding the cards you need plus mana fixing to get a three color deck to work properly. It can work out, but in a real draft you can easily end up with a train wreck of a deck if you end up with a few parts missing.
Absolutely. No one runs Zombify because it's just not worth running. It's bad in reanimator and it's bad outside of reanimator. Animate Dead and Reanimate aren't overpowered, they're just good spells. In Peasant Reanimate is even pretty bad in reanimator since the life loss hurts a lot if you can't win immediately and a turn 1 reanimation is practically impossible. I like it more in aggro, but of course I take it for reanimator as well since there aren't many options.
From my pov reanimator is one of the weaker archetypes in peasant. It is fragile and inconsistent since you need a discard outlet, a fatty and a reanimation spell early in the game all at once. And then you haven't won the game, you just have everything you need for a chance to win the game. If I replaced Animate Dead with Zombify the archetype would be gone from my cube as it would be impossible to win with it.
The problem you have may be that reanimator is the only true combo archetype there is in peasant and if everything works perfectly right a reanimator deck can end the game as early as turn 4, which is faster than an aggro deck, which needs at least 5 turns usually. But that's just the way combo decks work. And from my experience this kind of very early win only happens very, very rarely. If you don't like combo decks get rid of reanimator, but don't remove it because it's op as that's clearly not the case.
Often you don't have the mana to cycle Attendant early and with a late Raise Dead+ you will almost always get something that is equal or better than a 3/3 flyer out of the yard. And that is of course more mana efficient as well. On top of that you have a WW cost, which can sometimes be a problem even on a 5 mana card. The only small advantage it has is that it's better against counterspells. But on the other hand Squire has the also small advantage that it can be abused with blink/bounce spells.
Not that anyone said Oketra's Attendant is better than Custodi Squire, but I think both cards are similar enough and the difference between them in terms of quality is quite big. Personally I don't need a bad version of Custodi Squire in my cube, which is why I never considered Oketra's Attendant. It may be good enough for a 720 cube though.
There are so many flying creatures and so many token cards with flying in white, it's not hard to get 2-3 flyers with Radiant, Archangel out even in a random deck. In my cube about one third of the creatures (including token producers) have flying in my white section and I don't think my cube has more flyers than most other CU/bes. And it's not my experience that you're winning anyway just because you have two flyers out. Combined with blue in a skies deck it's just sooo much better than Serra Angel and in a lot of regular white decks that want a 5 cmc creature it's at least equal or better.
And like Calibretto said, it works with your opponent's creatures as well, which means it gets better if your opponent has flyers to block your own flyers, which is a huge benefit.
There are white decks where Serra Angel is better for sure, but the majority of time? Not in my experience. And the ceiling for Radiant, Archangel is insane - a single Spectral Procession (which will certainly not make you win the game immediately) will turn this into a 6/6 vigilance flyer for 5 mana, and when your opponent has a Serendib Efreet and a Cloudkin Seer out? Ouch, it's an 8/8 flyer with vigilance. Your opponent better has a Go for the Throat ready when that happens or he is done. I'm not even talking about the best case with a full Battle Screech or Lingering Souls combined with a few flyers on your opponent's side.
While the number of decks where you can play it may be more limited it is just far better in the decks where you can play it. And it's not like Serra Angel is a card I'm desperate for anyway, so I'd rather have one that is great in 50% of white midrange decks than one that is always just meh/card #23 in 100% of midrange decks. And that's coming from someone who loves old cards, especially from the 93/94 era and who wouldn't think twice about adding a nice CE/IE Serra Angel to his cube if it was good enough.
In a random flyers deck Patron of the Valiant is just a bad Serra Angel, which is a very mediocre card in CU/be already. If it was in my cube I'd almost always find 23 better cards to put into a flyer deck. The only deck where it can shine is a dedicated +1/+1 counters deck, and that hardly warrants wasting a a slot on it as even in such a deck you don't always have a bunch of creatures with counters on them when you play it.
You already run Elite Scaleguard, which also works in other decks and which is much better than Patron if you already have 2-3 creatures with counters on them.
From your list Cloudgoat Ranger is a staple people only cut if they want to reduce power level. Elite Scaleguard is very good and a no-brainer if you have any kind of +1/+1 counters theme in your cube. Don't have much experience with Syr Alin, the Lion's Claw yet, but he's ok I guess. I run Belfry Spirit mainly for the sacrifice theme in Orzhov I have running, but I could see it getting cut eventually. Serra Angel, like already mentioned, is a mediocre card and an easy cut if you need room. I'm not a fan of Oketra's Attendant either. Totem-Guide Hartebeest may be a pet card of yours, but you have 7 auras out of 107 white cards and 18 auras out of 720 total cards in your cube. Even if you end up with two auras in a deck this is hardly a great card and often you won't even get that. I wouldn't play it.
Notable omissions in your cube would be Custodi Squire, which is great value, and Radiant, Archangel (if you don't mind running online uncommons), which is great support for white tokens and flyers and a better alternative to Serra Angel.