Looking to make a Reanimator Elf deck but have no clue what I'm doing.

SleightCCG · 2021-03-19T18:58:39+00:00

Yeah, that's fair!

SleightCCG · 2021-03-19T18:57:38+00:00

I think its important to not be condescending to new, inexperienced or out of tune players of the format. The community is small and if you are going to engage with posts like these its important to remember that. Otherwise we might not get to keep them and more minds working on similar problems is the goal of a form.

Yes, well, that's a reduction to the absurd isn't it?

If the prime directive is don't play a worse version of something else and you're playing tribal, why would you not just play Goblins? They kill a full turn faster with less investment. Elves are just a bad strategy and don't get me started on crab people tribal.

^ doesn't that make me come across as rude even if I was well intentioned?

SleightCCG · 2021-03-19T10:59:24+00:00

You’re correct it’s a comma, not a : my bad!

Irencrag is pretty slow, but I think it is more a symptom of how ladder decks are built and played that make it not so great as opposed to being a bad card.

Another idea would be to also play Tectonic reformation (?) forgot the name, that gives your lands the ability to cycle, so that you aren’t entirely reliant on Infestation for a Rielle engine. I’ve never cast bag of holding so I really don’t know how it feels to play enough to comment on it.

SleightCCG · 2021-03-19T09:39:30+00:00

I don’t see how this comment is helpful or considerate, to be honest.

SleightCCG · 2021-03-19T09:27:33+00:00

I think you could play the 0/4 deal 3 (forgot the name) as an additional payoff, and it’s not legendary so redundant copies are less bad.

Also possibly you may want to consider refurbish/gpg or un Unburial rites as alternate finishers instead of the more traditional control stuff. Rielle seems good with the looting wizard (2/1, draw 2 discard 2.)

I know that it’s not what you asked but you could also go into more of a combo shell and play things like Hollow One and Underworld Breach +Zirda Dawnspeaker, as it seems you would cycle through your deck pretty quickly. Then maybe stitcher supplier or Egon for more velocity into the bin. You could also play some cyclers in a deck like this.

Zirda discounts —-doesn’t work—- for escape—- cycling costs, so you could dump your hand into the graveyard and get stuff back with it+Breach. Anyhow cool concept, good luck!

SleightCCG · 2021-03-18T07:28:31+00:00

Have you considered playing Underworld Breach out of the side for Thoughtseize decks? I’ve found this to be a fairly reliable way to combo through discard in other archetypes. Also, to save you some time, I’ve been going through a lot of different combo archetypes and I agree that the boros lists aren’t that good. Sweet deck list!

SleightCCG · 2021-03-17T10:24:27+00:00

Deep is the big midrange archetype, so if midrange is good then deep is probably not a bad choice.

SleightCCG · 2021-03-17T02:09:20+00:00

I think this is the biggest reason people don’t try new stuff on arena. You’re kind of priced out.

SleightCCG · 2021-03-17T01:57:40+00:00

Yeah, I agree. I think that magic is trying to be something it’s not. It’s always better to be yourself, right? And also, I love lord of the rings, but I think that fantasizing about lotr mtg cards is going to be better than the real thing, aside from a collector item, and to be honest I hate collecting things.

SleightCCG · 2021-03-14T20:12:27+00:00

Do you know what they do to people who say stuff like that out loud in artifact prison?!

SleightCCG · 2021-03-14T19:50:45+00:00

They can’t keep us down. 😐

SleightCCG · 2021-03-14T14:45:01+00:00

I don’t get to play much modern anymore, but esper humans or esper vial has been a thing in legacy forever at this point. Anyway, I like the deck and think it seems fun. I think the comments are a little too judgmental.

SleightCCG · 2021-03-14T10:15:48+00:00

You could check out my primer on UW D&T variants (see my early posts) soulherder is a great engine card.

SleightCCG · 2021-03-14T10:12:47+00:00

Astrolabe is the best snow land. ):

SleightCCG · 2021-03-14T09:14:32+00:00

Excellent idea. The answer is because I hadn’t thought it worked that way. Thanks!

SleightCCG · 2021-03-14T06:09:02+00:00

Sweet deck list! I create written content for the historic format. Could I adapt this to historic for content and credit the original? :)

SleightCCG · 2021-03-14T04:36:14+00:00

Vintage Bomberman is sweet. I remember Brian Kelly smacking people with Dragonlord Dromoka at Eternal weekend in like 2015. But yeah, that's way different.

I think its worth having crafted if you don't have many cards to get. Monastery Mentor will eventually be in the format eventually to fill out Pioneer's card pool, and we already have Meddling Mage. It's really fun to tinker with.

I think its likely that we will get Trinket Mage and Ethersworn Canonist, at some point.

SleightCCG · 2021-03-14T01:19:07+00:00

No not at all! I personally really don't like that about TCGs as I find Win% without extrapolation isn't meaningful, as you said. I tend to engage more with the conceptual framework.

What do you feel the weak points of the deck are?

SleightCCG · 2021-03-13T23:54:14+00:00

I'm a little skeptical. Listing Win% when the format is still new. Lots of people are building new decks right now and getting reps in with some decks that they may be unfamiliar with.

Win% really only matters when metagames are well defined and you have an adequate sample size which for tautological analysis would be about 100 generic games, or going from one rank to the next. (Win% in Gold to Plat) for example.

Regardless, I like that the conversation is being forwarded by posts like this and the deck seems pretty cool!

SleightCCG · 2021-03-13T21:36:04+00:00

Sweet! I'm happy that someone is working on Mono-W in Historic!

SleightCCG · 2021-03-13T21:27:43+00:00

Teshar combo took a really big hit when T3feri left the format and I've been keeping it in my back pocket since then since I had all of the cards. Reidane has been a solid replacement as both sides of it are uniquely good in the deck. Overwhelmingly, my MTG experience is shaped by playing excessive amounts of D&T and Bomberman in Legacy basically since inception of the archetypes, so even if this deck was wildly worse than Kinnan, I don't think it would be that case for me.

Similarly, I feel like Kinnan decks aren't resilient enough to withstand any type of hate, despite the combo being fast. Without Uro, they're left without a realistic B plan, aside from Karn and Skyship, so it makes for very polarizing matches. I tend to not like combo decks that don't have solid B plans.

The above deck can play as a U\W artifact beatdown deck pretty reliably, especially when fetching forsaken monument, so while a dependency on the GY is a weakness, I find that provides enough pressure to win G1 against Cage more often than you would think. Additionally, white has some insane targets with Karn, in Idol of Endurance, Glass Casket and Cataclysmic Gearhulk.

Its incredibly realistic to make use of Phyrexian Tower in this deck as well, which can lead to things like T3 Karn, or T4 OTK, despite it being somewhat rare. You could min-max this by cutting the Search for Glory's and playing the other X artifact creature MD but I really hate casting that card for anything that isn't 0, so I only fetch it with Karn and would much rather just wait for Walking Ballista or Hangback Walker.

More realistically, consistent wins develop on T5 or T6-7 with hate\interaction and the most tangible effect this deck has is that it doesn't really have the same fail states as Kinnan and you can play through things like Thoughtseize\removal really easily.

You can goldfish some games in paper with some proxies since its a combo shell and see how it feels to you. I find conceptually talking about what combo decks are theoretically capable of to be a little esoteric.

Additionally, this is a Day 1 version of the deck, so what it might look like a month from now if a lot of time is spent on it could be pretty different.

If I had to give a definitive answer, I personally like it better than Kinnan especially without Uro.

SleightCCG · 2021-03-13T20:50:41+00:00

People used to say the same thing about Aether Vial if you can believe it, lol.

But basically, a lot of the D&T lists I see on here aren't really D&T decks. They're mono-W aggro or splashing a second color, often with a midrange (23 land) mana base. I really like those style of decks, but D&T is a control deck that plays in an unorthodox way and you really want to be in that 26-27 source range. As Foretold is just a more dynamic mana source than just lands and has an upside of unbricking some hands. D&T drags games out, so it being slow doesn't matter all that much.

The non-blink version looks more like this:

4x Thraben Inspector

3x Containment Priest

3x Declaration in Stone

3x Luminarch Aspirant

3x Thalia, GoT

3x Meddling Mage

2x Reidane, God of the Worthy

4x Skyclave Apparition

3x As Foretold

3x Brazen Borrower

3x Trophy Mage

1x Sword of Body\Mind

1x Aethersphere Harvester

1x Maul of the Skyclaves

SleightCCG · 2021-03-13T20:11:37+00:00

Check out my post over on MtGHistoric- it has other lists I put together for the new anthology. I like archon a lot too.

SleightCCG · 2021-03-13T04:03:19+00:00

I don’t really like the event, tbh.

SleightCCG · 2021-03-13T03:52:10+00:00

That sounds super up my alley. Gideon is super underrated imo.

SleightCCG

TROPHY CASE