I want a Chainer Reprint!!! I wonder what the chances of seeing it in Modern Horizons are
At least he's not all that expensive right now. I picked up my copy in nm for a bit under 2€.
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
Razaketh, the Foulblooded is a very strong card. Though I'm probably going to cut it because I've gotten kinda bored of it being pretty much a no brainer wincon. If you can get him into play with Chainer and a bit of mana open, it's likely game unless your opponents can interact.
As for grave hate, yeah, I wouldn't really rely on Bojuka Bog to stop real graveyard shenanigans thanks to it being a one shot sorcery speed effect. Having a creature that you can abuse with Chainer is much more reliable - Agent of Erebos, Crypt Creeper, Withered Wretch etc.
You're not wrong there, but I feel like it would give me an opportunity to sneak in some fast wins without having to survive 2 other players attempt to win first.
If it turns out to be too powerful I can always still use him to value tutor or something.
I'll definitly consider adding another piece of grave hate. The ones you suggested seem nice. I also think I own a Withered Wretch, so it'll be easy to try.
My question is, can I, if I have a Sac Outlet, say a Altar of Dementia reanimate something, say a Kokusho, the Evening Star with Chainer then immediately sac it to the Altar to then bring it back again with the copied ability, thereby reanimating Kokusho twice for 2BBBand 3 life?
If Azusa is going to keep recurring Scavenger Grounds and Primal Command then having a bit of your own graveyard removal could be handy, even if it's "target card" stuff like Withered Wretch or Crook of Condemnation — the latter also having an "all graveyards" out and not getting sacrificed to Teysa's pacts.
I play the only reanimation deck. There are other decks with graveyard synergies of course, but no real reanimation.
Cool, I was definitely most curious about other decks that could use opponents graveyards. For example, it's one thing to have a Meren deck at the table who is just fiddling with their own graveyard, but Chainer just looks at it like a buffet and can respond to her trigger.
Chainer (as well as pacts/edicts) definitely loses some advantage with creature-light decks around, so I can see why you said you might focus on using your own graveyard.
Yeah, a little bit of grave-hate on my part might be worth a consideration. I run Bojuka Bog, but that is just a one time thing.
On another note, I'm seriously considering to re-add Razaketh, the Foulblooded to the deck. I initially cut him in an attempt to lower my curve, but I think that might have been a mistake.
I would combine him with some other pieces, where he can establish a win condition with as few resources as possible. Some sort of Gravecrawler + Phyrexian Altar loop mst likely.
I feel like this would give me a reanimation target that servesas a wincon and can assemble it's own combo. Also if I can't assembe a loop for some reason he'll still be a sac outlet and a tutor, which is what makes Dimir House Guard so great in the deck. The only difference is that Razaketh is repeatable and has a sizable body.
I like this thread. All this recent discussion regarding what a MBC deck looks like in 2019 has invigorated me.
Attacking the Azusa player's card advantage is absolutely the correct play. You can't control their topdecks and they're going to find a way to ramp regardless, but well timed removal in response to Rishkar's Expertise or Shamanic Revelation or whatever will slow them down, which works in your favor. Alternatively - get this - you could play Ankh of Mishra to make vomiting out lands painful and thus the player becomes more susceptible to your drains.
You should play Mind Twist. It's a hoot. There is nothing more satisfying that Twisting the blue mage for their hand after they tap out. Mindslicer is fantastic, of course, but sometimes you need surgical precision.
I think I will try Mind Twist. Originally I thought it would make the targeted player hate me out of the game, but he just had to discard most of his hand (if not the whole thing), so he might not even be a threat anymore.
Yeah, that would've been a nice time to Massacre Wurm, would've killed the Azusa player in fact. UNfortunatley he shuffeled my graveyard (with the Wurm in it) back into my deck with Primal Command the turn before.
I feel like I'm drawing hate anyway, so I might aswell go for the discard, which in theory should be far more disruptive.
The thing is, my meta is actually pretty light on removal overall. Sometimes it feels like people just leave game ending threats alone and it's up to me to deal with them or the game would end very quickly.
The things that need to be removed are oftentimes things mono black struggles with. For exampke last game I destroyed a loaded up Isochron Scepter, a Recycle and something else, that I don't remember right now.
In general things that have to be dealt with are all the green mana doublers from Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Azusa loaded up with a Blackblade Reforged, which tends to end a lot of games with Rogue's Passage, huge token boardstates from Azusa via Avenger of Zendikar or the likes. Recently I've been thinking of just letting him ramp and simply deal with his card advantage engines, if he runs out of cards, it shouldn't really matter how much mana he has, right? Oona, Queen of the Fae has to be removed of course, especially since I'm the guys preferred first target. I'm mono colored and don't play 50 lands after all.
There's a Teysa Karlov deck, which I don't think is all that dangerous compared to the rest, but Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos have been problematic before. The same guy also has an Estrid, the Masked deck. I don't think that one has ever won a game though.
The Azusa player also has a Noyan Dar, Roil Shaper deck, that's basically boardwipe tribal. He doesn't like playing it much, so it rarely shows up.
Things that might be coming to the playgroup soon are a Krenko, Mob Boss deck by the Oona player and a Zur the Enchanter deck from the Azusa player which will apparently be based around Persistent Petitioners.
I actually win my fair share of games. Probably not quite 25%, but I'd say close to 20% for sure. The guy who wins most is the Azusa, Lost but Seeking player. We actually talked about that on Saturday. Our estimate was that he wins roughly a third of our games. So it's not that bad.
I play the only reanimation deck. There are other decks with graveyard synergies of course, but no real reanimation. Azusa has Crucible of Worlds and Life from the Loam of course, plus some of the typical green recursion like Eternal Witness and such. The Teysa deck doesn't really reanimate much at all. It has some graveyard synergies too though.
As far as I can tell they don't mind my strategy. The grave hate comes mostly from the Azusa player, and it's mostly in the form of recurring Scavenger Grounds and Primal Command. I think the Oona decka plays Grounds too, Teysa has a Bojuka Bog every now and again.
Theft effects are actually really uncommon in this playgroup.
They're not really protective of their graveyards tbh, they just see me reanimating something slightly bigger early and see my life drop fast, which I guess makes me a juicy target. There are also not that many useful things to get from them tbh. The Teysa deck mostly plays irrelevant little critters that I wouldn't want anyway. The Oona deck plays very few creatures, it's almost entirely combo based. Basically my only targets come from the Azusa player
Overall I think our games thend to end rather quickly, because like I said everyone is a bit light on removal and the Azusa deck will usually get to a game ending boardstate very quickly.
I guess things could be described like this if I simplify everything down to the elemental level. If the other 3 don't focus on the Azusa player and slow him down early, he wins. If we do, the next thing that will happen is that the Oona player will attempt to mill-combo us out. If we deal with that, I'm very likely to win, if we don't, he wins.
Unfortunately the Teysa/Estrid player tends to lose most of the time.
I've thought about it, but ultimately I think doubling my opponents mana aswell (there are 1-2 other deck with black on the table) makes it by far the worst of the manan doublers. With Extraplanar Lens I can at least keep things onesided by running snow lands.
Caged Sun tends to feel a bit expensive at times. There have been games, where tapping out for a 6 drop has been problematic.
Sadistic Hypnotist is also nice, since he doubles as a sac outlet, which is desirbale for the deck anyway. It's another 5 cmc thing tho, so I'm not sure about him
Some of those seem like very nice options, thank you!
In your experience, does it happen that players choose to take 5 instead of discarding with Painful Quandary? Since the end goal is to get their cards into the graveyard after all.
I like Oppression quite a bit, so that might make it into the deck.
Myojin of Night's Reach is cool, but since it needs to be cast from the hand to get it's ability, I'm not sure it's the best fit for a Reanimator strategy like this.
Yes, I run basically no stax pieces at all. Instead I tried to speed the deck up a little by running a lot of ramp instead. I'm not sure if this approach is working as intened, as it does leave me open to being hated out of the game early.
On the other hand I really don't want to be the guy who locks up the table with all the stax. Something like Contamination would probably be too much for my playgroup. I am willing to try out some less degenerate ways to slow down the game tho.
Yeah, you don't have to lock the table, just put some speed bumps in their way. Some examples of 'softer' stax: Tangle Wire/Storage Matrix/Orb of Dreams instead of Winter Orb; Defense Grid/Conqueror's Flail/Mana Web instead of Contamination. I don't like locking out the table, either, but things like Contamination can also be held until you're ready to win just to mitigate interference for that turn (although that does make it a dead card the rest of the time). I actually have a pile of disruption among my deckbuilding stuff that do various things to fork with my opponents in case I want to try any out. For example, after a game with Chainer that involved an opponent running a Kozilek deck with Storage Matrix on the table, I found I did fairly well just choosing to untap lands most of the time since I could reanimate for blockers. And anything that makes spellscostmore usually isn't going to hurt us much.
And then you've got interactions, too. Mana Web might encourage your opponents to overextend their board state by tapping out each turn and not wanting to waste the mana — right into a board wipe. Noetic Scales is friends with discard. Oppression or Defense Grid might cause your opponents to slow down their pace if they don't want to lose cards or want to leave the extra 3 mana open (which ends up telegraphing louder than just leaving UU open). There's a lot of experimenting with your friends' psychology and how they react to different incentives/penalties.
And of course there's negotiation. And there are harmless things like Crawlspace and annoying speedbumps like Silent Arbiter.
I'm unsure about the stax cards tbh, they feel like they do nothing else but slow the game down. I know that's what we want to accomplish, but I just wish there was another way to do this without playing some of those cards.
Silent Arbiter could be cute tho. Might have saved me last night, when I was run over by a horde of tokens from Beacon of Creation. Turns out that card is pretty decent when you have 30 lands on the table
I agree that Crank Chief seems superfluous and could be replaced. I would recommend stuff like Attrition, Oppression, and even Infernal Darkness to slow the game down until you have more resources with which to go "off."
Azusa and Oona tend to be commander-centric so playing more spot removal like Hero's Downfall and Go for the Throat would help those matchups. Ravenous Chupacabra is good, but you lose the element of surprise with it in your graveyard.
Also, obligatory Thoughtseize recommendation. If you know your meta well enough and have decent predictive skills, you can get a lot of mileage out of it. Chainer is much better against countermagic than Erebos but sometimes you're going for a Torment of Hailfire win and need to push it through. Alternatively, you can go after the guy with spot removal to make sure Chainer hangs around.
I like the idea of more discard a lot. Why take my opponents resources from their deck, when I can take them from their hand.
Hero's Downfall is something I think I might try. It's not a fancy card, but it gets the job done. Also there has been quite a bit of graveyard hate recently. No Rest in Peace or anything like it, but Scavenger Grounds tends to find its way onto the board most games...
On that note, what do you guys think are the removal creatures that I should run anyway? Plaguecrafter is a given ofc, but do I want more of the same? Fleshbag Marauder and Merciless Executioner would be easy additions, but I'm not sure how many times I want that kind of effect.
Same with the Ravenous Chupacabra type. Do I run Faceless Butcher in addition to it, do I replace it?
Something I've noticed is that no matter what you reanimate you draw tons of hate. Last night I reanimated a Meteor Golem a couple of times. I got rid of some stuff, but ultimately it left me low on life and vulnerable. I kinda feel like I would've done better that game if I just tried to get bigger threats and not care as much about reanimating removal.
In regards to Thoughtseize I'm a bit unsure. Spending a card to force a single discrad feels weird to me in EDH, but it might work. Have have a set of those, so I can just try it, which I might do.
And the more you get into sacrifice outlets like Attrition that have a controlling effect (or if you use any pacts), the more you might consider self-returning creatures like Bloodghast, Reassembling Skeleton, or Nether Traitor as enablers, or reusable recursion that's cheaper than Chainer like Phyrexian Reclamation, Oversold Cemetery. In my case I haven't had much of a problem with rattlesnaking removal creatures in my graveyard. If my friends start running more graveyard removal I will likely have to adapt to some hidden instant removal like Hero's Downfall. I have to consider that part of the reason they haven't is that I tend not to destroy everything I can, but rather to use my removal creatures when something comes at me or to dodge graveyard removal and target something belonging to whoever pointed graveyard removal my way.
I wouldn't be surprised if your meta is more aggressive about taking a little punishment to get rid of a known threat sitting in your graveyard, but you know them better.
Attrition seems like it could be great if I do end up taking the deck in a slower direction.
The thing with the removal creatures in my meta is that I'm unsure wether I have enough time/life to actually recur a whole bunch of those and still have enough time/life left to then go on to win the game.
Maybe replacing some of my removal with instants would help me put less of a toll on my life total. The creatures do seem a lot better tho, since they're reusable.
Yes, I run basically no stax pieces at all. Instead I tried to speed the deck up a little by running a lot of ramp instead. I'm not sure if this approach is working as intened, as it does leave me open to being hated out of the game early.
On the other hand I really don't want to be the guy who locks up the table with all the stax. Something like Contamination would probably be too much for my playgroup. I am willing to try out some less degenerate ways to slow down the game tho.
In regards to the wincons, you're definitly correct. I've found I only really go to my opponent's graveyards if there are answers there to things I couldn't deal with otherwise. Say a Reclamation Sage or something along those lines. Winning off of a big reanimated threat has not been the norm. That much is true.
This is actually part of the reason, why I'm thinking it might be better to just focus on my own graveyard and maybe even forgo the pure mill efects like Altar of the Brood and Mindcrank.
Bloodchief Ascension feels like it might be on the chopping block. You're definitly right that it takes a lot of time to activate in a deck like this.
I originally added it as another way to gain life, also thinking "Hey, this combos with Mindcrank anyway, it has to be good here". Turns out it doesn't actually do a great job at gaining life at all. It takes too long to activate to really help with a life shortage in the short term and forces the table to sort of team up on me, which I can't deal with all that well, since like we said, I don't play stax pieces.
You actually hit the nail right on the head with this. I don't think my list is terribly unfocused, but these are the exact things I meant. Ultimately I think I might have to accept that I can't speed the deck up enough to where I might not need any stax at all. Especially at a table with Azusa, Lost but Seeking and Oona, Queen of the Fae setting the speed level of my meta to "actually pretty damn fast"
I think Chainer can be built in quite a few different ways. It can be slow and controlish or a fast reanimator deck. it can include stax elements, it can focus a bit on mill to reanimate more of the opponents creatures, or it can focus on reanimating combo pieces from our own graveyard.
I feel like I might need to focus my list on one of these aspects, as it can feel a tiny bit all over the place at times.
Chains of Mephistopheles would be a great fit, unfortunately I don't own a copy and I don't think I'll be able to get one in the forseeable future
Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed on the other hand is on my list of cards I definitly want to get for this deck. I just need to find a somewhat affordabe copy somewhere. (the judge foils seems to be cheaper, so probably that). He seems like a great fit for the deck. Also Living Death looks like it would work pretty well in combination with him.
Personally I don't like the conditional removal on the Shriekmaw variety of cards. There are quite a few relevant black creatures in my meta, which makes me prefer unconditional removal on my creatures.
Faceless Butcher on the other hand seems great. It might just be a better version of Ravenous Chupacabra in this deck. Having a sac outlet on the board shouldn't be a problem here after all.
Life's Finale could work. I've considered it before. Ultimately I decedied not to run too many wrath effects, since I don't want to end up killing my own Chainer too often. If I ever add more, this one is definitly one of the first I'll test. Alongside the obvious clean and efficient Damnation and the probably a bit too mana heavy Decree of Pain.
Dark Deal seems like it could be sweet. Looks like it's only a few cents, so I might just end up getting one to try it, the next time I order some cards for the deck.
Thanks for the great responses btw guys! I'm glad that there seems to be a good amount of interest in the deck
At least he's not all that expensive right now. I picked up my copy in nm for a bit under 2€.
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
You're not wrong there, but I feel like it would give me an opportunity to sneak in some fast wins without having to survive 2 other players attempt to win first.
If it turns out to be too powerful I can always still use him to value tutor or something.
I'll definitly consider adding another piece of grave hate. The ones you suggested seem nice. I also think I own a Withered Wretch, so it'll be easy to try.
My question is, can I, if I have a Sac Outlet, say a Altar of Dementia reanimate something, say a Kokusho, the Evening Star with Chainer then immediately sac it to the Altar to then bring it back again with the copied ability, thereby reanimating Kokusho twice for 2BBBand 3 life?
Yeah, a little bit of grave-hate on my part might be worth a consideration. I run Bojuka Bog, but that is just a one time thing.
On another note, I'm seriously considering to re-add Razaketh, the Foulblooded to the deck. I initially cut him in an attempt to lower my curve, but I think that might have been a mistake.
I would combine him with some other pieces, where he can establish a win condition with as few resources as possible. Some sort of Gravecrawler + Phyrexian Altar loop mst likely.
I feel like this would give me a reanimation target that servesas a wincon and can assemble it's own combo. Also if I can't assembe a loop for some reason he'll still be a sac outlet and a tutor, which is what makes Dimir House Guard so great in the deck. The only difference is that Razaketh is repeatable and has a sizable body.
I think I will try Mind Twist. Originally I thought it would make the targeted player hate me out of the game, but he just had to discard most of his hand (if not the whole thing), so he might not even be a threat anymore.
I feel like I'm drawing hate anyway, so I might aswell go for the discard, which in theory should be far more disruptive.
The thing is, my meta is actually pretty light on removal overall. Sometimes it feels like people just leave game ending threats alone and it's up to me to deal with them or the game would end very quickly.
The things that need to be removed are oftentimes things mono black struggles with. For exampke last game I destroyed a loaded up Isochron Scepter, a Recycle and something else, that I don't remember right now.
In general things that have to be dealt with are all the green mana doublers from Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Azusa loaded up with a Blackblade Reforged, which tends to end a lot of games with Rogue's Passage, huge token boardstates from Azusa via Avenger of Zendikar or the likes. Recently I've been thinking of just letting him ramp and simply deal with his card advantage engines, if he runs out of cards, it shouldn't really matter how much mana he has, right?
Oona, Queen of the Fae has to be removed of course, especially since I'm the guys preferred first target. I'm mono colored and don't play 50 lands after all.
There's a Teysa Karlov deck, which I don't think is all that dangerous compared to the rest, but Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos have been problematic before. The same guy also has an Estrid, the Masked deck. I don't think that one has ever won a game though.
The Azusa player also has a Noyan Dar, Roil Shaper deck, that's basically boardwipe tribal. He doesn't like playing it much, so it rarely shows up.
Things that might be coming to the playgroup soon are a Krenko, Mob Boss deck by the Oona player and a Zur the Enchanter deck from the Azusa player which will apparently be based around Persistent Petitioners.
I actually win my fair share of games. Probably not quite 25%, but I'd say close to 20% for sure. The guy who wins most is the Azusa, Lost but Seeking player. We actually talked about that on Saturday. Our estimate was that he wins roughly a third of our games. So it's not that bad.
I play the only reanimation deck. There are other decks with graveyard synergies of course, but no real reanimation. Azusa has Crucible of Worlds and Life from the Loam of course, plus some of the typical green recursion like Eternal Witness and such. The Teysa deck doesn't really reanimate much at all. It has some graveyard synergies too though.
As far as I can tell they don't mind my strategy. The grave hate comes mostly from the Azusa player, and it's mostly in the form of recurring Scavenger Grounds and Primal Command. I think the Oona decka plays Grounds too, Teysa has a Bojuka Bog every now and again.
Theft effects are actually really uncommon in this playgroup.
They're not really protective of their graveyards tbh, they just see me reanimating something slightly bigger early and see my life drop fast, which I guess makes me a juicy target. There are also not that many useful things to get from them tbh. The Teysa deck mostly plays irrelevant little critters that I wouldn't want anyway. The Oona deck plays very few creatures, it's almost entirely combo based. Basically my only targets come from the Azusa player
Overall I think our games thend to end rather quickly, because like I said everyone is a bit light on removal and the Azusa deck will usually get to a game ending boardstate very quickly.
I guess things could be described like this if I simplify everything down to the elemental level. If the other 3 don't focus on the Azusa player and slow him down early, he wins. If we do, the next thing that will happen is that the Oona player will attempt to mill-combo us out. If we deal with that, I'm very likely to win, if we don't, he wins.
Unfortunately the Teysa/Estrid player tends to lose most of the time.
Caged Sun tends to feel a bit expensive at times. There have been games, where tapping out for a 6 drop has been problematic.
Sadistic Hypnotist is also nice, since he doubles as a sac outlet, which is desirbale for the deck anyway. It's another 5 cmc thing tho, so I'm not sure about him
In your experience, does it happen that players choose to take 5 instead of discarding with Painful Quandary? Since the end goal is to get their cards into the graveyard after all.
I like Oppression quite a bit, so that might make it into the deck.
Myojin of Night's Reach is cool, but since it needs to be cast from the hand to get it's ability, I'm not sure it's the best fit for a Reanimator strategy like this.
I'm unsure about the stax cards tbh, they feel like they do nothing else but slow the game down. I know that's what we want to accomplish, but I just wish there was another way to do this without playing some of those cards.
Silent Arbiter could be cute tho. Might have saved me last night, when I was run over by a horde of tokens from Beacon of Creation. Turns out that card is pretty decent when you have 30 lands on the table
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna cut Bloodchief Ascension from the deck together with Mindcrank and Altar of the Brood.
I like the idea of more discard a lot. Why take my opponents resources from their deck, when I can take them from their hand.
Hero's Downfall is something I think I might try. It's not a fancy card, but it gets the job done. Also there has been quite a bit of graveyard hate recently. No Rest in Peace or anything like it, but Scavenger Grounds tends to find its way onto the board most games...
On that note, what do you guys think are the removal creatures that I should run anyway? Plaguecrafter is a given ofc, but do I want more of the same? Fleshbag Marauder and Merciless Executioner would be easy additions, but I'm not sure how many times I want that kind of effect.
Same with the Ravenous Chupacabra type. Do I run Faceless Butcher in addition to it, do I replace it?
Something I've noticed is that no matter what you reanimate you draw tons of hate. Last night I reanimated a Meteor Golem a couple of times. I got rid of some stuff, but ultimately it left me low on life and vulnerable. I kinda feel like I would've done better that game if I just tried to get bigger threats and not care as much about reanimating removal.
In regards to Thoughtseize I'm a bit unsure. Spending a card to force a single discrad feels weird to me in EDH, but it might work. Have have a set of those, so I can just try it, which I might do.
No, I haven't tried Painful Quandary. At 5 mana it always felt a it expensive to me. Maybe I'm wrong on that.
Since I'm trying to add more discard to the deck anyways, what are some other pieces of discard you'd suggest?
Attrition seems like it could be great if I do end up taking the deck in a slower direction.
The thing with the removal creatures in my meta is that I'm unsure wether I have enough time/life to actually recur a whole bunch of those and still have enough time/life left to then go on to win the game.
Maybe replacing some of my removal with instants would help me put less of a toll on my life total. The creatures do seem a lot better tho, since they're reusable.
On the other hand I really don't want to be the guy who locks up the table with all the stax. Something like Contamination would probably be too much for my playgroup. I am willing to try out some less degenerate ways to slow down the game tho.
In regards to the wincons, you're definitly correct. I've found I only really go to my opponent's graveyards if there are answers there to things I couldn't deal with otherwise. Say a Reclamation Sage or something along those lines. Winning off of a big reanimated threat has not been the norm. That much is true.
This is actually part of the reason, why I'm thinking it might be better to just focus on my own graveyard and maybe even forgo the pure mill efects like Altar of the Brood and Mindcrank.
Bloodchief Ascension feels like it might be on the chopping block. You're definitly right that it takes a lot of time to activate in a deck like this.
I originally added it as another way to gain life, also thinking "Hey, this combos with Mindcrank anyway, it has to be good here". Turns out it doesn't actually do a great job at gaining life at all. It takes too long to activate to really help with a life shortage in the short term and forces the table to sort of team up on me, which I can't deal with all that well, since like we said, I don't play stax pieces.
You actually hit the nail right on the head with this. I don't think my list is terribly unfocused, but these are the exact things I meant. Ultimately I think I might have to accept that I can't speed the deck up enough to where I might not need any stax at all. Especially at a table with Azusa, Lost but Seeking and Oona, Queen of the Fae setting the speed level of my meta to "actually pretty damn fast"
I think Chainer can be built in quite a few different ways. It can be slow and controlish or a fast reanimator deck. it can include stax elements, it can focus a bit on mill to reanimate more of the opponents creatures, or it can focus on reanimating combo pieces from our own graveyard.
I feel like I might need to focus my list on one of these aspects, as it can feel a tiny bit all over the place at times.
Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed on the other hand is on my list of cards I definitly want to get for this deck. I just need to find a somewhat affordabe copy somewhere. (the judge foils seems to be cheaper, so probably that). He seems like a great fit for the deck. Also Living Death looks like it would work pretty well in combination with him.
Personally I don't like the conditional removal on the Shriekmaw variety of cards. There are quite a few relevant black creatures in my meta, which makes me prefer unconditional removal on my creatures.
Faceless Butcher on the other hand seems great. It might just be a better version of Ravenous Chupacabra in this deck. Having a sac outlet on the board shouldn't be a problem here after all.
Life's Finale could work. I've considered it before. Ultimately I decedied not to run too many wrath effects, since I don't want to end up killing my own Chainer too often. If I ever add more, this one is definitly one of the first I'll test. Alongside the obvious clean and efficient Damnation and the probably a bit too mana heavy Decree of Pain.
Dark Deal seems like it could be sweet. Looks like it's only a few cents, so I might just end up getting one to try it, the next time I order some cards for the deck.
Thanks for the great responses btw guys! I'm glad that there seems to be a good amount of interest in the deck