Goryo's Sundial - Reanimator Mill

Modern Combo Competitive Gifts Ungiven Mill Reanimator WUB (Esper)

Telerik

Combo (7)

• 4x Sundial of the Infinite
• 3x Trickbind

Creatures (8)

• 4x Griselbrand
• 2x Iona, Shield of Emeria
• 2x Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger

Lands (24)

• 3x Flooded Strand
• 3x Godless Shrine
• 2x Hallowed Fountain
• 2x Island
• 2x Marsh Flats
• 1x Plains
• 4x Polluted Delta
• 2x Swamp
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 4x Watery Grave

Mill (8)

• 4x Glimpse the Unthinkable
• 2x Hedron Crab
• 2x Tome Scour

Reanimate (8)

• 2x Footsteps of the Goryo
• 4x Goryo's Vengeance
• 2x Unburial Rites

Usability (5)

• 1x Gifts Ungiven
• 2x Raven's Crime
• 2x Snapcaster Mage

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Sideboard

Other (15)

• 3x Disenchant
• 3x Dispel
• 2x Drown in Sorrow
• 3x Path to Exile
• 2x Spell Pierce
• 2x Thoughtseize

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Maybeboard

Other (8)

• 1x Breaking / Entering
• 1x Dakmor Salvage
• 1x Geist of Saint Traft
• 1x Isochron Scepter
• 1x Pilfered Plans
• 1x Sphinx's Tutelage
• 1x Thirst for Knowledge
• 1x Thought Scour

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How to play this deck?

Well, a lot of you guys asked in the comments, how this deck really works. Let me explain it to you:

The core

...is obvious, your main goal is to get one of the bigass creatures in your graveyard and reanimate it.
The bigass creatures are:

Griselbrand
    My favorite! 7/7 lifelink plus a huge card advantage if you activate his ability.

Iona, Shield of Emeria
    Stops wars if necessary! Against a one- or two-color deck she can easily shut down your opponent.. well... forever.

Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
    Quite a badass, isn't he? I like him being indestructible. Also his ability, which triggers whenever he attacks, helps to win the game. Later more..

Get your creatures in the graveyard

For that cause I run Glimpse the Unthinkable. Important is, "Target player..." Yes, you cast it targeting yourself. With ten cards, the probability that one of your big creatures is among them is quite high.
There are also Tome Scour and the Hedron Crab, which are played for the same reason as Glimpse.

For all these so called mill cards (to mill - putting cards from the top of the library in one's graveyard) applies the following:
Once you have your creatures in your graveyard, you can start using those spells on your opponent, forcing him/her to mill him/herself. About that, Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger does his part as good as the mill cards.

Reanimation!

Finally, time to party! I run Unburial Rites, Goryo's Vengeance and Footsteps of the Goryo to bring back my fallen - well, milled - creatures.
Unburial Rites brings them back permanently, however both Goryo's cards do not. For this specific problem, I have the Sundial of the Infinite (and Trickbind.

Shortly explained, you still get to keep the creature reanimated with one of the Goryo spells. If you're curious how this works, read in Sundial of the Infinite + Goryo's Vengeance - How does it work? about it.

Sundial of the Infinite + Goryo's Vengeance - How does it work?

As explained earlier, I use Sundial of the Infinite or Trickbind to stop Goryo's Vengeance and Footsteps of the Goryo from forcing me to sacrifice/exile the resurrected creature at the end of the turn. But how? Here is the answer:

Goryo's Vengeance and Footsteps of the Goryo , both cards are not quite "up-to-date". At least the ruling text as it is written on the card. On the card, it says:

...sacrifice/exile it at the end of turn.

Well, on gatherer it says:

...sacrifice/exile it at the beginning of the next end step.

There is actually no difference between those two writings, the previous one (the one on gatherer) is just newer.
This lets us better understand how the card actually works:

When you cast Goryo's Vengeance, it does two things:

1) it reanimates your creature

2) it creates a delayed triggered ability which will trigger at the beginning of the next end step -> Forcing you to exile your creature at that point

Now, once your end step begins, the delayed triggered ability triggers and goes on the stack. It'd say something like that: "You now have to exile your creature pls".

Here comes the trick:

In response to that ability: You simply end the turn by activating Sundial of the Infinite. Yes, this works. Firstly, it's still your turn. Secondly, Goryo's Vengeance just put an ability on the stack, you can of course respond to that. Alternatively you can counter that ability with Trickbind, which results in the same way as does ending your turn.

The outcome: You keep the creature and don't have to sacrifice/exile it ever again (at least not because of the Goryo spell).
That's because you let the ability trigger before you ended the turn or countered it. So Goryo's Vengeance thinks it's job is done and won't trigger a second time or something like that.

What about cards like Gifts Ungiven?

Well, see, I run Unburial Rites and fatties like Griselbrand, why should I not run Gifts Ungiven when I even play blue?

Then there's Snapcaster Mage. Useful when I lost all my Goryo's Vengeances due to self-mill.

Raven's Crime - perfect if my hand is full of the fatties. I normally don't hardcast them (play them from my hand by paying their full mana cost), so this is the easiest and cheapest way to get rid of them. Also still usable when in graveyard.

Tome Scour: I just want to mill myself as fast as possible, so this seems the best spell to fulfill that wish. Some suggested Thought Scour 'cause of the draw, but in my opinion, two cards is too less, even if I get to draw a card. After all, I don't want cards in my hand but rather in my graveyard.

Top Ranked	Achieved #2 position overall 9 years ago
Date added	9 years
Last updated	9 years
Legality	This deck is Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)	8 - 0 Mythic Rares 37 - 2 Rares 6 - 5 Uncommons 4 - 8 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	3.61
Folders	new, Modern Competition, decks i like, Favorites, Breaking the Meta, Interest, Decks to build, Decks I love, Modern decks, Decks