This deck is my semi-casual, very budget friendly version of a Legacy reanimator deck. It's obviously not (highly) competitive, but it can very reliably reanimate a fatty on turn two and I'm pretty sure with a bit of luck you could win a game or two even against 'real' Legacy decks.
Overview
I shouldn't need to tell you what the decks is trying to do. Cheat out a fatty as soon as possible and kill/disable your opponent before he has a chance to do anything meaningful.
For this budget version I didn't even try to enable an unreliable turn 1 combo (which isn't even all that likely in the competitive version of the deck that costs thousands of dollars), instead I opted for a very reliable turn 2 combo. You play
Faithless Looting
,
Careful Study
or
Hapless Researcher
on turn 1 to get one of the 9 fatties into the yard, then you play a reanimation spell on turn 2 to bring it back to the battlefield.
The
Lotus Petal
s allow you to use
Ponder
/
Preordain
on turn 1 if a combo piece is still missing without preventing you from casting a reanimation spell on turn 2 since you can go t1 land > Ponder t2 Lotus Petal > loot spell and then use the remaining two lands to cast any of your reanimation spells. And even if everything goes well on turn 1 you can use the Petals to cast
Duress
on turn 2 before you reanimate to ensure you won't get a nasty surprise.
While playing the deck you should keep in mind that mulligans are your friend. You can safely mull down to 5 cards, the deck doesn't really care much about card advantage as it's a combo deck.
Reanimation targets
The creatures are just a mixed bag of cheap casual fun and since there is no
Entomb
in the deck you can't use them as a toolbox anyway.
You can get
Sphinx of Uthuun
pretty much for free and in a casual settings it's an awesome card. You get a meaty flyer and a free
Fact or Fiction
, which is almost as good as the draw 7 cards ability of
Griselbrand
or
Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
. And unlike Griselbrand's ability it doesn't cost any life and unlike Jin-Gitaxias ability it's an etb effect that doesn't care about instant speed removal. Obviously the two mentioned cards are still way better, but they also cost a lot more and this is an alternative I'm very happy with. That's why there are 4 of these in the deck, it's never a bad idea to cast them as it ensures you can reanimate another creature on your next turn. Griselbrand isn't as expensive as he used to be though, so if you want to spend some money to upgrade the deck you know what to do.
Terastodon
can cripple your opponent's mana base and you can also make good use of a
Gemstone Mine
with only 1 counter left to get an elephant for yourself.
Archon of Valor's Reach
is another meaty flyer that also works as a blocker and since your deck doesn't run any instants you can safely choose this as an option to ensure counterspells and most removal won't be a problem anymore for you.
Pathrazer of Ulamog
is a bit risky as he dies to a simple removal spell like
Swords to Plowshares
without doing anything, but if he is able to attack on turn 3 the game will most likely be over.
Ashen Rider
is pretty straightforward, you can remove their best card on the board and get a big flyer. And then you can get rid of another permanent if they kill it.
Iona, Shield of Emeria
is the only card that is worth more than pocket change, but it's just such a nice and unfair card that I wanted to include it and it has become cheap enough. Without
Entomb
it's not nearly as good as it would be normally and against some decks it's not that great, but overall it's a card that can end the game on the spot against many decks.
If you want to replace any of the creatures for budget or other reasons I recommend
Dream Trawler
(hexproof, built-in discard engine, big flyer with lifelink, card draw and great snyergy with all the loot and filter cards in the deck, what else could you want?),
Zetalpa, Primal Dawn
(a very tasty keyword soup) or
Sire Of Insanity
(unreliable depening on the situation, but can end the game on the spot).
Reanimation spells
The reanimation spells are the usual suspects except for
Reanimate
, which I didn't include mainly for budget reasons. Funnily enough
Dance of the Dead
has become almost as expensive, so you may want to replace these with Reanimate. I had a playset of Dance of the Dead, but only a single Reanimate, so I chose the former. But the life loss also hurts a lot and against some decks it can be brutal, especially if you keep in mind that the deck runs City of Brass and pain lands. And if you don't even try to pull off the turn 1 combo of the real deck you can just as well use a two mana spell that doesn't have such a huge drawback. Your choice.
Mana base
The mana base is as cheap as possible. Unfortunately
City of Brass
(or
Mana Confluence
) happens to be quite expensive these days, though the cheapest versions are still somewhat affordable. And since we run three colors it's a pretty much a must have. You could maybe add
Aether Hub
/
Tendo Ice Bridge
instead, but during testing even the single copy that is in the deck could cause problems in a very low percentage of games, so I would assume if you had 4-5 copies of these cards in the deck it would make the deck noticeably worse.
There is absolutely no substitute for
Gemstone Mine
, which is even better in this deck than City of Brass. But fortunately it has become cheaper within the last two years, so this shouldn't be that much of a problem.
The pain lands are cheap and the deck doesn't care that much about life loss, especially if you don't run Reanimate. If you want to spend a bit more (or if you have them already) you can use fast lands (
Spirebluff Canal
et al.) instead, which are perfect for this deck since you don't need more than two lands to cast any spell this deck wants to cast and three is the absolute maximum you want on the board anyway. But pretty much any dual will do that enters the battlefield untapped on turn 1, so if you have eg any shock lands lying around you can use them as well.
The
Lotus Petal
s aren't absolutely necessary, but they certainly help and don't cost a fortune. You can add a few more lands, another
Hapless Researcher
or
Preordain
s to replace them if you want though.
Other spells
The other spells (Faithless Looting, Careful Study, Hapless Researcher, Duress, Ponder, Preordain) are very cheap already, but if you have a really tight budget you could switch Ponder and Preordain so you have 4 Preordain and only 2 Ponder.
Cards missing from the true Legacy deck and reasons for not including them
The dual land/fetch land manabase is missing for obvious reasons - it's insanely expensive nowadays.
Entomb
is also quite expensive, but there is another reason why I don't play it. If you don't aim for a turn 1 combo it's only half as good as it doesn't dig for cards like
Careful Study
or
Faithless Looting
does. If you're missing a land or a reanimation spell in your starting hand you can only take a mulligan with Entomb. With Faithless Looting in your hand it's reasonable to keep the hand. And even later in the game if your first reanimation didn't finish the game the loot cards can help your search for cards you need, which is something Entomb can't do. Of course the toolbox aspect of it makes up for this, but overall it's not something that is absolutely needed for this kind of more reliable, but slightly slower reanimator deck.
Dark Ritual
makes no sense without Entomb,
Thoughtseize
and/or
Cabal Therapy
. And without
Reanimate
it makes even less sense.
Lotus Petal
is a lot more useful for this deck.
Unmask
is the opposite of reliable, which is not what this deck is aiming for. It's yet another card that theoretically allows turn 1 reanimations or zero mana card disruption. Good in a competitive environment, but not needed here.
Thoughtseize
was replaced by Duress for budget reasons. While there are absolutely situations where Duress is better it should be clear that Thoughtseize is the better card as it can hit creatures and you can use it as a discard outlet as well. However without the Dark Ritual or Unmask turn 1 combo it's not super necessary and Duress does almost everything we really want in this deck just as good, so this would be one of the last things I'd upgrade if I wanted to spend more money.
Cabal Therapy
isn't expensive, but it's pure trash in a casual setting.
Griselbrand
isn't exactly a free card, but it's not super expensive either and would certainly make sense in this deck. So if you have money to spare add him.
Chancellor of the Annex
may be good in a competitive Legacy environment, but in a more casual setting there are better options in my opinion. The
Force Spike
ability also becomes less useful in a slower deck like this one.
