Yep, this seems like i'd be really good for our deck. Unfortunately I expect these lands to explode in price. Idk if another expensive land cycle preventing entry to the format is really what modern needed...
Made some experimental changes to the list. None of these are fixed, but they are things I want to try.
Notable cuts:
Caged Sun: Felt clunky at times. Nirkana Revenant can be reanimated, while this neeeds to be cast, which imo makes it much worse. I'll see how I fare without it.
Kokusho, the Evening Star: This one is probably not correct to cut. However, I find that I win less and less with the drain/gain loops. I my attempt to reduce the overall cmc of the deck, I'll try to exclude this for now and see how it goes. Gray Merchant of Asphodel stays, since he's a mana cheaper and a zombie.
Abhorrent Overlord: Doesn't do much on it's own. Wurmcoil Engine combos off just as well as this and is cheaper with an arguably better body.
Disciple of Bolas: Probably wrong to cut this too, but I feel that sometimes reanimating this takes up too much time. If I miss it, I'll add it back in.
Notable Inclusions:
Everflowing Chalice: Wanted a cheaper piece of ramp. Thefact that this can't produce B might be a problem, but if that ends up being the case I can still go for Coldsteel Heart or Fellwar Stone.
Dark Deal: To add to the discard sub-theme. Also this + Sangromancer would solve all the life cost problems.
Thoughtseize: I think this might end up being pretty decent. It can disrupt an expected combo, discarda big creature from an opponents hand to bring back, or worst case discard a Razaketh that got stuck in my own hand.
Rune-Scarred Demon: Great reanimation target that helps find the combo pieces I need.
Praetor's Grasp: Another piece of combo hate. Also if I need a lot of mana, this can go get me another Sol Ring. Should be pretty good.
I'd say I use it quite a bit, especially with Final Parting. Paying 3BBB and some life to play any creature from your library is pretty great.
Exhume came to mind, because I'm not really in a creature meta and I think I could get away with it pretty easily.
Sometimes I feel like I don't have enough time to actually get to Chainer, since he's quite mana intensive, which made me think about making the deck less commander dependant.
Overall I think the deck would benefit from cutting some of the expensive stuff for some cheaper options. For example I might cut Ashnod's Altar and readd Viscera Seer etc.
LOL — The good ol' "arms race". Choosing Krenko for their second deck does seem kinda Spikey. The key is: will winning quickly in always-the-same-way become boring for them at some point?
I think it will, but there's no reason not to talk it through first.
Also, I've been thinking about replacing Ashnod's Altar with something else, it just feels like making 2 is so much worse, than making B with Phyrexian Altar or literally any other Sac Outlet with Pitiless Plunderer on the board. Is that crazy?
Lastly, what are your thoughts on playing some other cheap Reanimation spells aside from Reanimate? something like Animate Dead or Victimize/Exhume? I think that might make the deck less reliant on the commander and allow me to play a stronger game if I don't have enough mana available.
Don't worry about the venting — it's frustrating. Been on both sides of that. And it's okay to have that OP deck that you whip out for one game for a quick ego-soothing/cathartic win. They definitely need some other decks.
Actually he's currently building a Krenko, Mob Boss deck, which will definitly be different. Still likely very powerful tho, as there are a ton of possible infinite combos in Krenko aswell.
Yeah, it's a little unfortunate, but we'll sort it out.
The funny thing about this whole ordeal is, that the Oona player is actually the newest(to the game) player in the group. The 2nd time we sat down to play he already had Isochron Scepter and Dramatic Reversal aswell as Paradox Engine in the deck. That was before he even knew the card Expropriate existed. I guess he's just a natural born spike.
Since then he's added various ways to create infinite mana to the deck and recently started to cut even the likes of Phyrexian Altar, because why sac your Oona tokens for mana, when you can just make infinite mana and win without needing any tokens in the first place.
Also, since Bolas's Citadel was printed recently, that's already in the deck with Top and Necro to go infinite and kill the table with Aetherflux Reservoir.....
Alright, so last night's games were pretty frustrating...
The Oona player upgraded his deck and combo'd out with infinite manan 4/6 games. I managed to stop him in one with Phyrexian Revoker and ended up winning that one. I might need some more anti combo techs....
On the other hand, Painful Quandary did pretty well everytime I drew it. Oppression on the other hand likes to hide at the bottom of my deck, so I can't talk about that one yet. I only drew t once and it got Windfalled away.
Other stuff: Sculpting Steel can copy a rock. Some decks also run Burnished Hart. Jet Medallion is usually used in storm decks that are casting a lot, which isn't usually Chainer's way.
Most of these I've already considered. I like Fellwar Stone a ton in general, but I'm not sure if mana rocks that add 1 manan are enough for this deck, they feel like a little raindroplet on the hot stone that is Chainer's thrist for BBB.
Coalition Relic is cool too, I ran that before I added Extraplanar Lens to the deck. In particular I like how you can use it to get to Chianer with only 3 lands in play. However, I've since learned that casting Chainer without mana up to reanimate the same turn cycle is usually a bad idea.
The tapped rocks have always felt weird to me. I never tried them, so I might be wrong on this, but they do seem kinda bad. Also again, just 1 mana might not be enough.
Thran Dynamo and Worn Powerstone I think produce way too much colorless mana. The deck is so B hungry, I sometimes find it diffucult to use even my Sol Ring mana effectively.
I like the flexibility on Everflowing Chalice, but again I woory that it might not help much since it only produces colorless mana.
EDIT: Also I used to like Burnished Hart, until people started to kill that thing way to often before I could crack it. It's actually terrible to play a 3 mana 2/2 that does nothing
God-Eternal Bontu might have a use as a sac outlet and card draw. It can be dumped and revived by Chainer. Then if exiled by Chainer's effect, it will just go back to the top of your deck. This can work as an emergency with Chainer in response to some kinds of removal to sac whatever you're going to lose and draw off of them.
Since it can sac any other permanent excess lands or permanents you no longer need can be draw fodder later on.
I like the idea, but I'm afraid it wouldn't work out well in practice.
Let's compare it to another card that sacrifices and draws cards Disciple of Bolas. Disciple only needs to sac 1 creature, will ususally draw a lot more cards and tends to be life cost neutral at least.
God-Eternal Bontu on the other hand needs more than 1 sacrifice to be good enough. This also means it's less loopable, since it'll take up so many more resources than Disciple. It has a higher cmc and it's body is not good enough to justify the drop-off in draw power. Additionally, I don't think there is such a thing as excess lands in this deck. I've never played a more mana hungy deck ever before.
So the only thing that's really good about it is it's way to avoid exile. That would be really awesome, but I'm afraid the card just isn't good powerful enough for this to tip the scales in its favor.
On the note of this deck being extra mana hungry, I'm currently on the lookout for fitting ramp pieces. I guess the important number we'd want to hit is 8, since that allows us to cast Chainer, Dementia Master and reanimate something the same turn.
If anyone has some suggestions, I'd love to hear about them!
Stronghold has a low opportunity cost. Are there times it mattered that it wasn't a Swamp? I don't often activate it myself until the late game but since there's such a small risk associated with running it that I think it's fine.
Cutting Seer for Feeder is a mistake, in my opinion. Scry 1 is a much, much better ability than a measly +1/+1 counter. Being able to dig for answers or a win condition is great, especially with Overlord.
There were tons of times where it mattered that it didn't double up with one of the mana doublers.
I agree that Carrion Feeder is worse, but he's a 1 mana Zombie, I need a few of those if I want to win super easily with Razaketh, the Foulblooded and Gravecrawler. I don't actually need to dig for a wincon if i get to reanimate Raza and have a body to tutor up Gravecrawler, which tutors up a 1 mana zombie. Then I get to replay the Crawler and can tutor for any combo I want. I just need mana to do it. Or not even that if I were to add things like Lake of the Dead and some more Rituals.
Alright, here's the updated list. I did a little bit of online testing and it turns out that re-adding Razaketh, the Foulblooded gave the deck a much needed way to close out a game quickly (usually with a Gravecrawler loop).
I cut Cabal Stronghold. It felt like I never activated ti, even if I had a few Swamps out, mostly, because once you have a mana doubler for your Swamps this becomes a lot worse.
Carrion Feeder replaces Viscera Seer. This is a zombie, which is the only reason why I made this change. I don't think both of their abilities are all that relevant, but a sac outlet on a creature is nice.
Oppression & Painful Quandary have been decent so far, not 100% sold on them yet (small sample size), but I think I like them.
Final Parting replaces Corpse Connoisseur. While this is a spell and replaces a zombie, I think it's super powerful for this deck. The ability to get any big creature we happen to need into the grave AND tutor up Reanimate is crazy good.
Despark and Kaya's Ghostform didn’t show up in my hand the entire evening last Wednesday, and I didn’t feel the need to spend a tutor on them. If, and when, you’ll know
What became rather clear, however, is how this deck struggles against decks that can say ‘I Win’ with a sorcery or instant. Opponent resolved Selvala's Stampede, allowing him to put a few permanents into play, which happened to be some planeswalkers and a Doubling Season, ulting them, and winning on the spot. We can only hope for a U player to be present, and being able to say ‘No’. Which wasn’t the case. Do you have similar experiences? Do you have a gameplan against such situations?
Yeah, we have difficulty interacting with these kind of things. I guess our best shot to deal with them is either discard from the black side or tax effects from the white side, both with the goal to prevent them from casting those kind of spells entirely.
Btw guys, on the note of Razaketh, the Foulblooded, which Rituals aside from the obvious Dark Ritual do you think will yield the most mana on average?
Cabal Ritual is always a bit worse than the OG one. However getting to Threshold should be pretty easy in this deck.
Culling the Weak seems pretty good, but it does take up a creature that could aswell be sacreficed to Raza. Assuming a Gravecrawler loop, this is almost as good as a Dark Ritual, giving BBBB but taking away B to bring the Gravecrawler back again.
Songs of the Damned has a super high ceiling, but it could also be terrible if the graveyard is not all that filled up. Has anone here played with this before? How much mana did it give on average?
Rain of Filth This one seems crazy powerful aswell. However, this is likely dead until the turn you actually try to win. It will also criple us if the combo we're going for is disrupted.
Lake of the Dead is also an option I guess. It has the advantage of being usefull at other stages of the game aswell. However it kinda seems like this is significantly worse than a basic Swamp if we're not planning to go off relatively soon, as it does put us a land behind.
Lion's Eye Diamond should be mentioned too I guess, Would be pretty sweet here, but I don't think I can afford one of these
Culling the Weak + Gravecrawler + a zombie to enable GC is 3 objects to do Dark Ritual. And you can only sacrifice once anyway (see Oracle text of Culling).
Lake of the Dead is "cute", but I don't think it works for a longer game where you're trying to impose attrition on your opponents.
You already could figure out how much to expect from Songs of the Damned by how big your graveyard is allowed to get before somebody exiles it. If you can get Threshold without drawing graveyard hate, would you be able to get 2-4 B from Songs?
Bog Witch would be okay if she lives. There's also Soldevi Adnate but it also has to live to tap plus have a subject with a decent CMC (or haste). Sacrifice is the one-shot Instant version Soldevi Adnate (Burnt Offering unfortunately can't be used if you go by the Oracle text because of the R in the text).
Tokens + Phyrexian Altar/Ashnod's Altar/sac+Pitiless Plunderer are good — I use two of these with Pawn of Ulamog and Sifter of Skulls in mine. Sacrificing creatures to Phyrexian Altar and then using some of the mana to Living Death and repeat that if possible can make a lot of mana (especially with XHD bringing back LD, though there are other ways). As you can see (especially if you've seen my list), I favor a more combo-engine approach.
The more combo centirc approach might actually be the way to go. If we do the math, we get 13 reanimations with Chainer from 40 life, which would leave us at 1. Ofc that's not a realistic scenario, since we'll cast a Night's Whisper or a Necropotence here and there, which will reduce the ammount.
It's also almost certain that we'll take at least some ammount of cmobat damage. Not even taking into account out more life taxing cards like Reanimate, I think it's safe to say we won't get more than 6-7 reanimations (assuming no life-gain shenannigans) at best per game. That might not be enough to just win through general value alone.
I think the next iteration of my deck will try to change up the wincons to be a bit more combo centric and try to fit some cards that slow everything down, like Oppression and perhaps Silent Arbiter.
I think so. It only makes one token, which then grows. That means it doesn't even benefit from something like Intangible Virtue and Sorin, Solemn Visitor as much as other cards do.
Also the token has no keywords (at least for 6 turns after the one you play this), so it could very easily be chump-blocked.
1x Chainer, Dementia Master
Card Draw (7):
1x Skullclamp
1x Night's Whisper
1x Sign in Blood
1x Read the Bones
1x Dark Deal
1x Phyrexian Arena
1x Necropotence
Tutors (7):
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Beseech the Queen
1x Dimir House Guard
1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier
1x Final Parting
1x Rune-Scarred Demon
1x Razaketh, the Foulblooded
Ramp (12):
1x Everflowing Chalice
1x Sol Ring
1x Expedition Map
1x Wayfarer's Bauble
1x Dark Ritual
1x Soldevi Adnate
1x Extraplanar Lens
1x Bog Witch
1x Solemn Simulacrum
1x Crypt Ghast
1x Gilded Lotus
1x Nirkana Revenant
1x Carrion Feeder
1x Viscera Seer
1x Spawning Pit
1x Altar of Dementia
1x Phyrexian Altar
1x Ashnod's Altar
Alternate Recursion (4):
1x Reanimate
1x Myr Retriever
1x Junk Diver
1x Yawgmoth's Will
Lifegain/Lifedrain (5):
1x Blood Artist
1x Zulaport Cutthroat
1x Exsanguinate
1x Sangromancer
1x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
Grave Fuel (3):
1x Entomb
1x Stitcher's Supplier
1x Buried Alive
Removal and Permission (11):
1x Thoughtseize
1x Withering Boon
1x Phyrexian Revoker
1x Plaguecrafter
1x Oppression
1x Praetor's Grasp
1x Sudden Spoiling
1x Ravenous Chupacabra
1x Mindslicer
1x Painful Quandary
1x Meteor Golem
1x Toxic Deluge
1x Nevinyrral's Disk
1x Living Death
1x Massacre Wurm
Utility/Other (4)
1x Gravecrawler
1x Rings of Brighthearth
1x Pitiless Plunderer
1x Wurmcoil Engine
Lands (36):
1x Cabal Coffers
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Thespian's Stage
1x Deserted Temple
1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1x Phyrexian Tower
1x Bojuka Bog
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
1x High Market
26x Snow-Covered Swamp
Made some experimental changes to the list. None of these are fixed, but they are things I want to try.
Notable cuts:
Caged Sun: Felt clunky at times. Nirkana Revenant can be reanimated, while this neeeds to be cast, which imo makes it much worse. I'll see how I fare without it.
Kokusho, the Evening Star: This one is probably not correct to cut. However, I find that I win less and less with the drain/gain loops. I my attempt to reduce the overall cmc of the deck, I'll try to exclude this for now and see how it goes. Gray Merchant of Asphodel stays, since he's a mana cheaper and a zombie.
Abhorrent Overlord: Doesn't do much on it's own. Wurmcoil Engine combos off just as well as this and is cheaper with an arguably better body.
Disciple of Bolas: Probably wrong to cut this too, but I feel that sometimes reanimating this takes up too much time. If I miss it, I'll add it back in.
Notable Inclusions:
Everflowing Chalice: Wanted a cheaper piece of ramp. Thefact that this can't produce B might be a problem, but if that ends up being the case I can still go for Coldsteel Heart or Fellwar Stone.
Dark Deal: To add to the discard sub-theme. Also this + Sangromancer would solve all the life cost problems.
Thoughtseize: I think this might end up being pretty decent. It can disrupt an expected combo, discarda big creature from an opponents hand to bring back, or worst case discard a Razaketh that got stuck in my own hand.
Rune-Scarred Demon: Great reanimation target that helps find the combo pieces I need.
Praetor's Grasp: Another piece of combo hate. Also if I need a lot of mana, this can go get me another Sol Ring. Should be pretty good.
Exhume came to mind, because I'm not really in a creature meta and I think I could get away with it pretty easily.
Sometimes I feel like I don't have enough time to actually get to Chainer, since he's quite mana intensive, which made me think about making the deck less commander dependant.
Overall I think the deck would benefit from cutting some of the expensive stuff for some cheaper options. For example I might cut Ashnod's Altar and readd Viscera Seer etc.
I think it will, but there's no reason not to talk it through first.
Anyways, back to Chainer.
Are there any more cards like Entomb, Buried Alive, Final Parting and Corpse Connoisseur?
Also, I've been thinking about replacing Ashnod's Altar with something else, it just feels like making 2 is so much worse, than making B with Phyrexian Altar or literally any other Sac Outlet with Pitiless Plunderer on the board. Is that crazy?
Lastly, what are your thoughts on playing some other cheap Reanimation spells aside from Reanimate? something like Animate Dead or Victimize/Exhume? I think that might make the deck less reliant on the commander and allow me to play a stronger game if I don't have enough mana available.
Actually he's currently building a Krenko, Mob Boss deck, which will definitly be different. Still likely very powerful tho, as there are a ton of possible infinite combos in Krenko aswell.
I suppose I could up the powerlevel of my own deck a bit and go full-on RazaReanimator and combo out before everyone else, maybe something similar to this: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/razabridge-reanimator/
Probably not a smart choice in the long run. We'll just have to convince him to power down the deck.
If only I wasn't one of those blue-hating "I don't want to play the control game" kind of players, things could be so much easier
The funny thing about this whole ordeal is, that the Oona player is actually the newest(to the game) player in the group. The 2nd time we sat down to play he already had Isochron Scepter and Dramatic Reversal aswell as Paradox Engine in the deck. That was before he even knew the card Expropriate existed. I guess he's just a natural born spike.
Since then he's added various ways to create infinite mana to the deck and recently started to cut even the likes of Phyrexian Altar, because why sac your Oona tokens for mana, when you can just make infinite mana and win without needing any tokens in the first place.
Also, since Bolas's Citadel was printed recently, that's already in the deck with Top and Necro to go infinite and kill the table with Aetherflux Reservoir.....
Sry, I'm just venting a bit here
The Oona player upgraded his deck and combo'd out with infinite manan 4/6 games. I managed to stop him in one with Phyrexian Revoker and ended up winning that one. I might need some more anti combo techs....
On the other hand, Painful Quandary did pretty well everytime I drew it. Oppression on the other hand likes to hide at the bottom of my deck, so I can't talk about that one yet. I only drew t once and it got Windfalled away.
Most of these I've already considered. I like Fellwar Stone a ton in general, but I'm not sure if mana rocks that add 1 manan are enough for this deck, they feel like a little raindroplet on the hot stone that is Chainer's thrist for BBB.
Coalition Relic is cool too, I ran that before I added Extraplanar Lens to the deck. In particular I like how you can use it to get to Chianer with only 3 lands in play. However, I've since learned that casting Chainer without mana up to reanimate the same turn cycle is usually a bad idea.
The tapped rocks have always felt weird to me. I never tried them, so I might be wrong on this, but they do seem kinda bad. Also again, just 1 mana might not be enough.
Thran Dynamo and Worn Powerstone I think produce way too much colorless mana. The deck is so B hungry, I sometimes find it diffucult to use even my Sol Ring mana effectively.
Thought Vessel and Mind Stone are not impactful enough imo. Also I never see myself cashing in a Mind Stone in this deck ever.
I like the flexibility on Everflowing Chalice, but again I woory that it might not help much since it only produces colorless mana.
EDIT: Also I used to like Burnished Hart, until people started to kill that thing way to often before I could crack it. It's actually terrible to play a 3 mana 2/2 that does nothing
I like the idea, but I'm afraid it wouldn't work out well in practice.
Let's compare it to another card that sacrifices and draws cards Disciple of Bolas. Disciple only needs to sac 1 creature, will ususally draw a lot more cards and tends to be life cost neutral at least.
God-Eternal Bontu on the other hand needs more than 1 sacrifice to be good enough. This also means it's less loopable, since it'll take up so many more resources than Disciple. It has a higher cmc and it's body is not good enough to justify the drop-off in draw power. Additionally, I don't think there is such a thing as excess lands in this deck. I've never played a more mana hungy deck ever before.
So the only thing that's really good about it is it's way to avoid exile. That would be really awesome, but I'm afraid the card just isn't good powerful enough for this to tip the scales in its favor.
On the note of this deck being extra mana hungry, I'm currently on the lookout for fitting ramp pieces. I guess the important number we'd want to hit is 8, since that allows us to cast Chainer, Dementia Master and reanimate something the same turn.
If anyone has some suggestions, I'd love to hear about them!
There were tons of times where it mattered that it didn't double up with one of the mana doublers.
I agree that Carrion Feeder is worse, but he's a 1 mana Zombie, I need a few of those if I want to win super easily with Razaketh, the Foulblooded and Gravecrawler. I don't actually need to dig for a wincon if i get to reanimate Raza and have a body to tutor up Gravecrawler, which tutors up a 1 mana zombie. Then I get to replay the Crawler and can tutor for any combo I want. I just need mana to do it. Or not even that if I were to add things like Lake of the Dead and some more Rituals.
1x Chainer, Dementia Master
Card Draw (7):
1x Skullclamp
1x Night's Whisper
1x Sign in Blood
1x Read the Bones
1x Phyrexian Arena
1x Necropotence
1x Disciple of Bolas
Tutors (6):
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Beseech the Queen
1x Dimir House Guard
1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier
1x Final Parting
1x Razaketh, the Foulblooded
Ramp (12):
1x Sol Ring
1x Expedition Map
1x Wayfarer's Bauble
1x Dark Ritual
1x Soldevi Adnate
1x Extraplanar Lens
1x Bog Witch
1x Solemn Simulacrum
1x Crypt Ghast
1x Gilded Lotus
1x Caged Sun
1x Nirkana Revenant
1x Carrion Feeder
1x Spawning Pit
1x Altar of Dementia
1x Phyrexian Altar
1x Ashnod's Altar
Alternate Recursion (4):
1x Reanimate
1x Myr Retriever
1x Junk Diver
1x Yawgmoth's Will
Lifegain/Lifedrain (6):
1x Blood Artist
1x Zulaport Cutthroat
1x Exsanguinate
1x Sangromancer
1x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
1x Kokusho, the Evening Star
Grave Fuel (3):
1x Entomb
1x Stitcher's Supplier
1x Buried Alive
Removal and Permission (9):
1x Withering Boon
1x Phyrexian Revoker
1x Plaguecrafter
1x Oppression
1x Sudden Spoiling
1x Ravenous Chupacabra
1x Mindslicer
1x Painful Quandary
1x Meteor Golem
1x Toxic Deluge
1x Nevinyrral's Disk
1x Living Death
1x Massacre Wurm
Utility/Other (6)
1x Gravecrawler
1x Torment of Hailfire
1x Rings of Brighthearth
1x Pitiless Plunderer
1x Wurmcoil Engine
1x Abhorrent Overlord
Lands (37):
1x Cabal Coffers
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Thespian's Stage
1x Deserted Temple
1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1x Phyrexian Tower
1x Bojuka Bog
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
1x Buried Ruin
27x Snow-Covered Swamp
I cut Cabal Stronghold. It felt like I never activated ti, even if I had a few Swamps out, mostly, because once you have a mana doubler for your Swamps this becomes a lot worse.
Stitcher's Supplier is a cheap zombie for Gravecrawler and fills our graveyard. Should be a good fit.
Carrion Feeder replaces Viscera Seer. This is a zombie, which is the only reason why I made this change. I don't think both of their abilities are all that relevant, but a sac outlet on a creature is nice.
Oppression & Painful Quandary have been decent so far, not 100% sold on them yet (small sample size), but I think I like them.
Final Parting replaces Corpse Connoisseur. While this is a spell and replaces a zombie, I think it's super powerful for this deck. The ability to get any big creature we happen to need into the grave AND tutor up Reanimate is crazy good.
Yeah, we have difficulty interacting with these kind of things. I guess our best shot to deal with them is either discard from the black side or tax effects from the white side, both with the goal to prevent them from casting those kind of spells entirely.
Tbh I think Despark is far too specific to replace an allstar like Vindicate, but I'll be very interested in the results!
The more combo centirc approach might actually be the way to go. If we do the math, we get 13 reanimations with Chainer from 40 life, which would leave us at 1. Ofc that's not a realistic scenario, since we'll cast a Night's Whisper or a Necropotence here and there, which will reduce the ammount.
It's also almost certain that we'll take at least some ammount of cmobat damage. Not even taking into account out more life taxing cards like Reanimate, I think it's safe to say we won't get more than 6-7 reanimations (assuming no life-gain shenannigans) at best per game. That might not be enough to just win through general value alone.
I think the next iteration of my deck will try to change up the wincons to be a bit more combo centric and try to fit some cards that slow everything down, like Oppression and perhaps Silent Arbiter.
I think so. It only makes one token, which then grows. That means it doesn't even benefit from something like Intangible Virtue and Sorin, Solemn Visitor as much as other cards do.
Also the token has no keywords (at least for 6 turns after the one you play this), so it could very easily be chump-blocked.