Introduction
Modern Is A weird Format, there are a lot of strategies and currently the meta is very diverse (The Top Deck Death's Shadow is only 10% of the meta). One Strategy I am very fond of lately is Reanimation. Reanimator decks use self milling cards in order to place creatures in their graveyard, in order to bring them back to the battlefield. This is what Goryo's Vengeance does.
This card is absolutely Broken. For 2 mana the ability to return any creature in our deck to the battlefield is insane. Griselbrand, Obzedat, Ghost Council, Jace, Vyrn's Prodigy, and taisgur, the golden fang, any of these creatures can be on the field on turn 2. Goryo's Vengeance also interacts extremely well with Obzedat, Ghost Council and Jace, Vyrn's Prodigy. Forget exiling them at the end of turn, their respective ability allow them to escape the exiling effect completely. These Interaction place vengeance at an incredibly difficult card to play against.
The Deck
So at the most basic level this deck is a Reanimator deck in the Esper colors. It focuses on cheating in certain creatures with Goryo's Vengeance, and using these creatures to defeat your opponent. All in all this is a Combo Deck and needs to be played in a combo manner. The Deck Breaks down into 4 parts, 1). The Filtering: creating good card selection/advantage in addition to throwing key cards into the Graveyard. 2.). The Disruption: because we must assemble our combo it is important that we have cards to disrupt our opponents plans. 3). The Combo: the actual reanimation of the creatures you plan on winning the game with. And finally, 4). The End Game: how to win the game once you've completed your combo. One important thing to remember about this combo, is that its not infinite, you will not win the game on the spot. You need to finish the game.
1). The Filtering
The one thing every Combo Deck needs is, the right cards. Our combo requires cards not only in our hand but also in our graveyard making card selection and advantage crucial. There are 3 cards that this deck uses for filtering. 1). Thought Scour, 2).Serum Visions, and 3). Jace, Vyrn's Prodigy.
Thought scour
The first of the filtering cards is Thought Scour. For 1 mana at Instant speed we are able to mill 2 cards which could put one of our creatures into the graveyard, and draw us a card, helping us assemble our combo. Thought Scour is one of the most desirable opening plays possible with this deck.
Serum Visions
Our second card for filtering is Serum Visions. Visions allows us for 1 mana to draw a card and pick what we will be drawing due to the Scry 2. Serum Visions is one of the best cards to efficiently assemble the combo and create overall card advantage.
Jace
Our 3rd card for filtering is Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
. Jace is more than just a hit with Goryo's Vengeance, it also loots cards. Jace does everything, he puts cards into the graveyard while finding you the cards you need to assemble your combo. Jace's ability to not only assemble your combo but have a large board presence as a Plansewalker, makes him one of the most versatile cards in the deck.
2). The Disruption and Removal
As with any deck, you need to be able to interact with your opponents game plan. The easiest way to do this is through Disruption and removal. Our Deck has 4 key pieces of Removal: 1). Liliana of the Veil, 2). Thoughtseize, 3). Fatal Push, and 4). Collective Brutality. These 4 cards each cause your opponent difficulty in a variety of ways, making them top cards in the deck.
Liliana Of The Veil
Liliana of the Veil is strong... very strong. And most of all she interacts with the opponent in 4 different ways. Her first way is her +1 ability, making both players discard a card. Whats great about this ability is that a lot of time you want to be discarding cards in order to assemble your combo, while for a majority of the time your opponent does not want to be discarding cards. It builds up your gameplan while slowly ruining theirs. Her second way is her -2 ability, making an opponent sacrifice a creature. This ability is a removal spell. And its hard to deal with, while they do get a choice of what to sacrifice, it has the ability to remove things that our only true removal spell, Fatal Push, cant. Her third way is her ultimate. If you ever ultimate Liliana you will almost certainly win the game. And her fourth way is her being there. One of the harder things about this deck is that it doesn't always combo quickly which means we are very vulnerable against hyper-agressive strategies. Liliana is a body that needs to be removed which takes some pressure off of your life total in the early portion of the game.
Thoughtseize
Thoughtseize is 1 mana look at your opponents hand, see what they're playing, and then pick something that they have to get rid of. The cards amazing. We have information on what they're playing on the 1st turn and we get to disrupt their strategy. This card puts us in a position of advantage straight off the bat and at many times can secure a path to victory.
Fatal Push
Fatal Push destroys almost any top creature in Modern. Goyf, Bob, Snapcaster, Death's Shadow, JVP. Fatal Push hits all of these. In addition to the ability to easily trigger revolt with Fetch Lands, Fatal Push becomes the best removal spell in this deck and possibly the format as a whole.
Collective Brutality
Collective Brutality is similar to Liliana in that its a multi use card that pushes many important strategies of the deck. Its ability to give a creature -2/-2 allows it to be used as a situational removal spell. Its Duress like ability allows for both information and hand disruption, and Its life drain ability makes it very flexible and creates a very strong need based card. But what is best about this card is that in order to use multiple abilities you need to discard cards. Similarly to Liliana, Collective Brutality helps assemble our combo while interacting with the opponent making it a top option for this deck.
3). The Combo
There are 2 key pieces to this combo. A creature in the graveyard and Goryo's Vengeance. Here I'm going to explain the different creatures and what to pick when reanimating something.
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Our first target is Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
. In the early game Jace is a 0/2 who loots, a solid card. Once you have 5 cards in your graveyard Jace becomes stronger. Jace's ability to flip into a plansewalker is crucial when looking upon the rules of Goryo's Vengeance. Because he becomes a plansewalker, Jace is no longer removed from the game as he would be as he remained a creature. This ability makes Jace a free Plansewalker that dominates the board state once it comes to the battlefield. And assuming you have enough mana you can bring back Jace then flip him, then because of his -3 you can recast Vengeance and bring something else back. Jace is one of the strongest cards to bring back in this deck and should always be considered as a primary target.
Griselbrand
If I told you that you could have a 7/7 Haste, Flying, Lifelink, with the ability to draw 7 cards for 2 mana I would be telling the truth because we play Griselbrand. Even though Griselbrand is exiled at the end of turn, it doesn't matter. we already attacked our opponent for 7 life while drawing 7 cards that allow us to rebuild our combo. If hes there take him.
Obzedat Ghost Council
Obzedat, Ghost Council interacts perfectly with Vengeance. Because of its ability it never gets exiled by Vengeance and continues to blink and drain your opponent. It can only be stopped by an instant speed removal spell making it the top option for Vengeance.
4). The End Game
The best way to end the game is to continue to use vengeance to reanimate creatures. Through Jace and Snapcaster Mage we pretty much run 8 copies of Vengeance. Keep comboing until you get an Obzedat lock or your opponent concedes. Remember that the game is usually not over after 1 combo, you need to wait until you can find a window where you can keep using your combo and your opponent cant stop you.
The Mana Base
The mana is pretty simple. We have Fetchlands to make sure we have our good fixing. We play 2-3 swamps, islands, and plains in order to keep ourselves out of an auto loss to Blood Moon. And we play one Overgrown Tomb so that we have a green source for some of our sideboard cards.
Sideboard
The sidebaord is pretty simple. We have Stony Silence to slow down affinity or other artifact based decks. We have Leyline of the Void and Nihil Spellbomb for graveyard hate against living end or dredge. We have Negate + Stubborn Denial
to protect our combo from control decks. We have Malestrom Pule to play against token strategies. And we have Abrupt Decay to add some more spot removal to the deck.
Thank you for reading. If you have any comments or suggestion please tell me. And if you liked the Primer please give it a thumbs up. It shows me that primer was good and helpful. Sincerely Samslam
