How does this work?

As mentioned in the description:

The hidden combo in this deck is Goryo's Vengeance + Sundial of the Infinite .
You cast so called mill spells like Glimpse the Unthinkable or Breaking targeting you. By doing this you hope getting one or two of the used creatures, preferably Griselbrand in your graveyard. Next you need a Sundial of the Infinite (I also run 3x Fabricate to ensure that I have one when I need it). The next step is casting a Goryo's Vengeance (or Footsteps of the Goryo), targeting the creature in your graveyard. Now, normally, you would have to exile/sacrifice the creature at the beginning of the next end step. Once said trigger goes on the stack and the time has come to exile/sac it, you activate Sundial of the Infinite's ability as a response. This will remove the so called delayed triggered ability of the reanimation spell from the stack. Your turn has now ended and you still have your creature.

This is only one way to get them out. Of course you don't really need the Sundial of the Infinite, it's just a perfect fit in this deck. You can either win by milling your opponent (forcing him/her to put cards from the top of his/her library in his/her graveyard) or simply by attacking him with your resurrected creatures.
Surely Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger helps in both cases.

Griselbrand is even worth just reanimating without a Sundial of the Infinite. You won't keep him forever, but at least you drew seven cards by activating his ability.


There is one alternative way to return your milled creatures to the battlefield: Unburial Rites. It is also a perfect fit in this deck, because it doesn't matter if it's in your graveyard or hand.

I hope this answers your question ;-)

I see the thought but that was exactly my confusion was that none of the reanimator's specifically mention the end step. Simply the end of your turn. I could be confused on oracle translation but my thinking is that the creatures die at the end of the turn, not the end step. Sundial just makes that happen. If it was something like Spark Elemental, I might understand as that mentions the end step. These creatures aren't sacrificed by means of end step so ending your turn just kills them. Please, correct me.

Does Sundial bypass end of turn effects? Just turns them off?

I believe by ending the turn, it exiles all triggers on the stack. Day's Undoing, does anyways, and I figure it's the same for app end the turn effects. So it will exile the sacrifice trigger when it's on the stack

I see. So it does supersede end of turn effects. So would effects that also trigger at the beginning of your end step also vanish?

Yes. But important: As it states on the card, "until end of turn effects wear off", which means if you cast a Giant Growth for example, your creature won't stay +3/+3 forever, because Sundial of the Infiniteremoves that effect.

As long as any ability is on the stack, it will get removed with Sundial. And these "sacrifice at the end of your turn" effects go on the stack, thus can be removed with Sundial.

Awesome deck man, this is really cool. Do you have problems with speed? As in, how many turns does it usually take to set it all up? Have you thought about any fog type effects to delay while you set up? +1

Thanks CrovaxTheCursed for your further explanation and comment!

Usually, as a fair amount of playtests have shown:

It really depends wether you get creatures in your grave and have a reanimation spell ready. The Sundial is actually more or less optional. For example, you get a Griselbrand out on turn 2 (Hedron Crab T1, mill Griselbrand, Goryo's Vengeance T2), you then just activate his ability, giving you seven cards... Enough to get started with the full combo.

Have you considered Hunted Horror as a possible 1 or 2 of? A 7\7 trampler for 3 Mana (the third Mana being sundials cost) with no drawbacks is really good.

Either way awesome deck.

Yes I have thought about this, also about Eater of Days or Leveler, but I found it not to be as good as initially thought.

Thanks for the hint anyway :-)

Really interesting. +1.

Some ideas:

You might consider replacing some Breaking with Tome Scour or more crabs, which give you more consistent turn 1 plays, doesn't require mana fixing, and gives you room to play Goryo's Vengeance or Sundial on turn 2.

Dakmor Salvage is nice in a deck packing Raven's Crime.

Hi Wizard_of_the_Broke, thanks for commenting!

If you take a look in the revision section (right side of the page), you can probably see that I have already experimented with Tome Scour. I agree with you that it fits better in the curve, I will test it again. Thanks.

Cheers

Have you thought about sideboarding Welding Jar for artifact-haters? There's a lot of them out in the modern meta these days.

Also, how do you win T4-T5 w/o sundial?Great deck, though. Love the idea!

Archive Trap maybe??

@Bovine073: Well I haven't won in turn 4 to 5. It is more that you will then most likely have one of your finishers on the board or at least your combo ready.

@Nilock: Nah, this is too much, I don't want to completely mill myself. Maybe sideboard. Thanks for the suggestion :-)

This sort of seems like a Gifts Ungiven deck with out the Gifts Ungiven, you might consider adding it. If you are unaware of the card, the trick with it is to only get 2 or 3 cards then the opponent is forced to put Griselbrand or Iona, Shield of Emeria in the grave to be reanimated.

Ah, I see. I think you could drop a Hedron Crab as well, and I do like the Gifts Ungiven idea for this deck.

I could also see Domineering Will working amazing here, someone aggroing against you, just take all their creatures, lol.

+1! Good to see that other people love the Sundial of the Infinite as much as I do!

I built a deck around it not too long ago, Don't Blink [$30 Budget]], but this one is much more competitive! Nice work!

You can't mill yourself with Archive Trap anyway, just pointing that out.

Awesome deck, +1! Ever thought of Sphinx's Tutelage + Griselbrand? Draw 7 cards = 7 triggers of Tutelage, which is at the very least 14 milled cards. Only opponents, but still seems good to me. Might also be too slow, but it's a thought. Pilfered Plans and Brainstorm may also be worth it if you include the Tutelage, but Brainstorm is likely better because its cheap and also helps if you accidentally draw one of your bombs and would have rather milled it.

It's this kind of out of the box thinking that I live to see in modern. +1 cheers mate

Hi TheAlexGnan. I see your suspicion, but I can assure you that it works. Have a look at the gatherer link to verify. In the card text, it explicitly says "...at the beginning of the next end step".

The reason why there are differences between the card text and the official ruling text is: WOTC changed their mind on how to word the ruling. So stuff like "When [...] comes into play" became "When [...] enters the battlefield" and "whenever you play an instant..." became "Whenever you cast and instant..." and "at the end of turn" became "at the beginning of the next end step".

Therefore it's absolutely comprehensible why you and some other people are not certain if this works.

I hope this helped you a bit :-)

PS: Oh, and the same goes for Footsteps of the Goryo.

Hi Karzald, thanks for your suggestions!

Pilfered Plans is considerable, I add it to the maybeboard. I will test it and post the result here afterwards.
Brainstorm is unfortunately not modern legal, else I would certainly play it :-D

Hi adbirk, thanks for commenting!

Gifts Ungiven is actually really something I could add.

Cheers