Stadard Metagame Musings

I love Standard right now.  It's the most fun, diverse, and interesting format in ages.

I am lucky enough to be able to build almost any standard deck I want, and have been having a blast playing many of the lists I posted in the previous Standard Gauntlet article.  I tried Solar Flare recently, but tweaked it a bit to be more like the lists running around on MTGO which have far more threats than most of the controlish lists I've seen running around, like AJ Sacher's top 8 deck.  So I added a lot of creatures and put the counter spells in the board. I figured I could have a transformative board plan and morph into a true control list in games 2 or 3 if I needed.

The deck was fun, but it got me thinking about playing huge fatties, which is one of my favorite things to do (being a Timmy, deep down inside my spike facade) in magic.

I realized that I wasn't really playing a control list, I was playing Reanimator.  Once I made this mental leap, I started really thinking in terms of reanimator instead of control.  The first thing I thought about changing was the mana base.  Green doesn't really offer anything strong as a color for reanimation strategies, unless it's in a Pod deck, which I wasn't thinking this would be.  Red on the other hand had some really interesting options.  I made a quick list of cards that might work well in a 4 color reanimator list.

Desperate Ravings
Charmbreaker Devils
Inferno Titan
Urabrask, the Hidden
Sphere of the Suns

Sphere of the Suns is a necessary evil in a 4 color deck.  Despite the new enemy duals, there is not enough land fixing to warrant running four colors without some added color fixing.  It is also some nice ramp, allowing for rather broken opening sequences.

So here's a preliminary list:

4 Sphere of the Suns
4 Forbidden Alchemy
4 Desperate Ravings
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Sheoldred
1 Urabrask, the Hidden
1 Grave Titan
1 Charmbreaker Devils
2 Phantasmal Image
4 Unburial Rites
1 Sun Titan
1 Wurmcoil Engine
2 Bloodline Keeper
4 Merfolk Looter
2 Black Sun's Zenith
1 Liliana of the Veil

4 Sulfur Falls
4 Drowned Catacombs
2 Isolated Chapel
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Glacial Fortress
6 Island
6 Swamp
2 Nephalia Drownyard

Let's look at how a deck like this could play out:
Turn 1: Land, tapped - probably a blue or black making land.
Turn 2: Land, hopefully untapped, probably a island or swamp. Merfolk Looter.
Turn 3: Sphere of the Suns, land, Loot discarding Charmbreaker Devils.
Turn 4: Land, loot discard Sheoldred, Unburial Rites returning Shoeldred.
Turn 5: Upkeep, loot discard Forbidden Alchemy, Sheoldred returns Charmbreaker Devils, Main Phase cast Urabrask, attack for 14.
Turn 6: Loot in Upkeep, discard Elesh Norn, Sheoldred returns Elesh Norn, Charmbreaker Devils returns Unburial Rites or Forbidden Alchemy, Main Phase - attack for well over 20.

Seems ok.  It needs to hit it's land, but it can almost ignore the other players board, unless they are threatening the kill faster than we get Elesh Norn online.  

With a Charmbreakers on the field and a full yard, you'll be returning either Unburial Rites or on of the two instant speed yard fillers/ card draw, either of which makes your strategy far faster.  Bloodline Keeper is a legitimate threat on turn 3 or 4, and really helps deal with weenie rush archetypes.
Black Sun's Zenith will only be returned by the Devils if the Zenith was countered and ended up in the yard.  If you cast it, the shuffle back in effect will prevent you from returning the card to hand.  The deck plays like it has 8-10 Reanimation effects and with all the card draw and digging the deck has, you almost always find the pieces you need.

So that's my Reanimator list.  Hope you like it.

I'd love to hear your comments below.