Ancient & Undying Devotion

Modern Aggro BG (Golgari) Counters Reanimator

Snake_Oil

Creature (22)

• 4x Geralf's Messenger
• 4x Gravecrawler
• 2x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• 4x Strangleroot Geist
• 4x Viscera Seer
• 4x Young Wolf

Land (24)

• 7x Forest
• 4x Overgrown Tomb
• 8x Swamp
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 4x Woodland Cemetery

Enchantment (10)

• 2x Hardened Scales
• 2x Phyrexian Arena
• 2x Rancor
• 4x Retribution of the Ancients

Instant (4)

• 4x Abrupt Decay

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Sideboard

Creature (3)

• 1x Thrun, the Last Troll
• 2x Vorapede

Enchantment (2)

• 2x Spider Umbra

Artifact (1)

• 1x Bow of Nylea

Sorcery (2)

• 2x Maelstrom Pulse

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Maybeboard

Creature (14)

• 4x Birds of Paradise
• 2x Corpsejack Menace
• 4x Gurmag Swiftwing
• 4x Sylvan Caryatid

Instant (6)

• 2x Aspect of Hydra
• 4x Tragic Slip

Sorcery (4)

• 2x Night's Whisper
• 2x Sign in Blood

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There are variants of this deck that use Ooze Flux or Zameck Guildmage but as soon as I saw Retribution of the Ancients this became the new hotness.

Look at it. Remove X counters from AMONG (read: As many as you have) creatures you control. You can clean the board of the counters from your undying creatures and go to town over and over. Even if your foe has no creatures and you're hit by a boardwipe, you can just remove all the counters on your undying creatures and spray down a Gravecrawler to save your bodies.

Geralf's Messenger is AMAZING with this. Not just because of the ETB effect, but because you always have a zombie on board for Gravecrawler to use for it's own reanimator effect.

So with all of these coloured creatures like Messenger and Strangleroot Geist -- How do we take advantage of this?

Devotion. We splash in a pair of Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Aspect of Hydra to add some shunt to your bunt cake. There's always an option to run the Gods, Erebos and Nylea, obviously.

The only thing I'm not sure about it Butcher Ghoul -- I have far better options for 2CMC (Strangleroot Geist) and 1/1 (Young Wolf) so I'm not sure about what might replace it -- Gurmag Swiftwing fits as an evasive blocker, but I could also use Birds of Paradise or Sylvan Caryatid as ramp.

Could this be competitive? Let me know with advice and suggestions, and +1's/upvotes are always a sign that I'm on the right track!

Top Ranked	Achieved #19 position overall 10 years ago
Date added	10 years
Last updated	10 years
Legality	This deck is Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)	0 - 3 Mythic Rares 29 - 3 Rares 8 - 0 Uncommons 8 - 2 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	1.78
Folders	Ideas, Good ideas, good Modern decks, Ideas, inspiring decks, Modern, Cool decks MDN, Cool Decks, Interesting modern decks, Modern