So Mono black reanimator is a fun budget deck and I can offer some suggested upgrades if you want this for legacy as opposed to the casual playgroup you are seemingly in? There are a lot of cards that help your stratergy as well as provide disruption or much more explosive starts.

I was wondering why Entomb isn't sideboarded...

Entomb is Maybeboarded due to having such a high cost per single.

It's in the same boat as It That Betrays in that there is no downside to adding in the card to this build apart from me wanting to try and keep this a Budget deck as much as possible.

Purchasing a 4-set of Entomb is easily equal if not more to the entire cost of the rest of the deck.

If I can trade for, or find cheap copies on line of, some of these cards then they'll make the cut.

Also, after well over 300 games testing, this deck averages wins by Turn 6...though, it's worth noting that in most games the winner is decided by Turn 4.

Attacking with annihilator so early most of the time, it's not guaranteed that I can wipe down an opponent's health total (that is not the focus of this deck), but I can surely count on wiping their board (land included). How many turns they managed to hold out from there with lifegain and/or other distractions isn't really relevant to my purposes.

A game in the bag is a game in the bag, no matter how many turns the opponent squirms for before it's finally over, heh...

Thank you so much for sharing this amazing deck Apollo_Paladin! You've convinced me to buy into Legacy so that I can play with one of my friends who is also building a deck. I love the budget focus and the fun interactions I've seen playtesting a few hands.

I haven't played it yet, so what I'm about to ask is just based on my speculation. Would love to hear your thoughts though!

I was wondering if Dark Ritual or Cabal Ritual would have a place in variants of the deck? Perhaps if there is a bunch of graveyard hate they could be sideboarded in to help hard cast some removal.

To that end, I was wondering specifically if you have considered Nevinyrral's Disk or Spine of Ish Sah or Scour from Existence or similar cards to respond to Grafdigger's Cage and Leyline of the Void. Would any of those cards or others be worth bringing in from the sideboard in the event of running into graveyard hate? Alternatively, perhaps Duress could provide some protection?

Thanks so much for the informative guide and your hard work on the deck! I can't wait until it comes.

One more thought! Have you considered Sundering Titan as an alternative to some of the Eldrazi? I couldn't get my hands on four copies of one of them and thought it might be an interesting substitution.

@ maltheyounger

You're quite welcome! I hope it does well for you!

@ maltheyounger

I've been toying around with the idea of some Artifact/Enchantment hate in case I run into one of those shutdown cards, but in practice this deck tends to speed together so fast that often things like that aren't a consideration (I admit an early Grafdigger could pose an issue, but that's also literally the only card of its type for the mana cost too, this could be a playgroup vs online type thing & it's possible other groups would see more benefit from something like this.)

The Dark Ritual line, I only have Culling the Weak in there because it can help towards my win condition of getting Annihilators out of the graveyard. The only "Graveyard-to-play" spell available for the mana of Dark Ritual is Exhume. If I want other options, I need at least 4 mana so that little bit doesn't really help me out as much as you'd think. Cabal Ritual could be okay, but along the same lines of trying for early wins; it doesn't provide enough mana at the time I'd be using it. Also, The primary focus of this deck has to be its win condition combos in order to function, so I'd be pretty hard-pressed at deciding which cards to cut out as all of them in here have a pretty defined purpose.

As for the Titan, I'm not a fan in this build since I already run on pretty low mana as it is and destroying my own lands isnt something I'm keen on. Especially not when Annihilator can eat opponent's lands at no cost to my own. I've found Annihilator creatures to be the most reliable win condition card to pull early from a graveyard; I've seen dozens of other speed dredge builds using other creatures, but they're usually something like an early Iona, Shield of Emeria which while nice, isn't 100% consistent against all deck types, and also these other decks tend to be quite expensive due to running various high-dollar power creatures.

One thing I like about my build is how inexpensive the selections are, which opens it up to a wider audience. I'd say the Titan definitely fits the Budget part, but as for functionality I'm not sold - though if you attempt this and it works out for you I'd be interested to hear about another spin on my build!

The other artifacts you suggested are far too high a mana cost to be any use in this build. You really don't want to be spending Culling the Weak mana on anything except pulling Annihilators from the Graveyard for optimal game play.

Also, Nonbasic lands are so ubiquitous now that the Basic Land destroy on the Sundering Titan isn't nearly as useful imo. He's certainly no Annihilator substitute =/

Thank you for the thoughtful response Apollo_Paladin, I learned a lot just from reading it! You make excellent points. I will report back if I make any tweaks to let you know what I find. You're doing a big service to the community here and I'm grateful for it!

@ maltheyounger

Since you say you're newly getting into Legacy, you might also want to take a peek at my favorite Mono-White deck (since you're already apparently ordering my favorite Mono-Black haha).

I hope you don't stomp your friend too hard; hopefully he/she isn't just getting into Legacy too or else their experience might be somewhat...skewed haha

Anyway, welcome to the fold bud

My Favorite Mono-White Legacy Deck: Intense Aura Beatdown (with Infinite Defense!)

Thank you! I like the aura deck and I've saved it for future reference. He's trying a wonky Griffin Canyon strategy so we'll see how it goes! I just did a little digging and found kind of a fun card that probably is too slow to help the build, but could both tutor and put something in the yard: Divining Witch. Realistically, though, I should just save up for Entomb haha.

Yeah, Entomb is about the only card I'd be willing to break from my "Budget Theme" on. So far this year I've been pretty good about not ordering singles (saving money and all due to world circumstances), but this one tempts me. It does. It's such a ridiculously good fit for this build; apart from not even being close to a Budget card. A playset of those is easily equal or greater than the entire rest of the cost of the deck! Haha

I played against this deck several times, and it won handily 3/5 times. The first time I played your deck, I beat it, but it didn't draw well at all - mostly swamps and the Putrid Imp without the other combo cards, so I won't consider that a fair test. The second time was closer, and I ended up losing to your Imp and the Heir of Falkenrath  ^Flip, both being pumped up by discarding so they could fly over my small creatures. The other times I was just crushed, as planned :)

When the combo works in your deck, which appears to be most of the time (even the small creatures cycle out of the graveyard quite readily), it's unstoppable. It's almost impossible to come back from losing all of your permanents that early in the game. Makes me think the annihilator ability is broken, but that's only because you've built a deck that takes advantage of it so well. Nice work :)

Thanks for the compliment! Yes this deck is difficult to stop once it starts attacking, but it's not impossible either. I assure you Annihilator is not broken, it's just an extremely powerful ability haha.

There are ways to beat any deck in Magic, that's one of the neat things about the game; no matter the deck someone can always design a deck to crush it. My Triple Teysa Deck (on profile here) is one I built with the intention of beating decks with lots of large nasty targets (including this deck well as couple others in my playgroup hehehe).

Low-mana target Exile isn't something there's really a workaround for with this build, but I've found that most decks which can hold off the Annihilator build generally don't have that much attack power either since such a large amount of the deck is dedicated to cheap removals in order to stand a chance.

I do think you realized why my friends despise this deck though, and why in the description I talk about the "winner being decided" regardless of "how many turns they hang on to squirm for". Most often people who know the deck will just resign after my first attack, because you are correct: there is no way to come back from losing all your permanents that early in the game. Especially not when I've still got permanents on my side causing you to lose more per turn.

Again, cheap exile like Path to Exile or Swords to Plowshares may be your only salvation at that point, and even that is no guarantee (though, I've noticed for whatever reason some people don't like to Swords to Plowshares one of my big annihilators on Turn 2 - maybe wary of such a big Lifetotal discrepancy?

White has a lot of nice anti-creature cards, like you mentioned. I could also see a counterspell deck with Leyline of the Void doing well. What has your experience been playing this against control decks?

The Black Leyline hasn't been a huge issue for me since this deck is fast enough to win before it can be cast - meaning the only real risk is in the opponent one having one off the draw (which itself generally needs 4x copies to be a reliable strategy - not super common at all, even in online constructions I've seen). As I said above, there are deck which can generally slow this deck down, but if they are consistent enough to keep up game after game, then there's generally not much room left for offense I've found (so at best they just prolong the game & force me to win/cast differently).

Grafdigger's Cage was mentioned too, and I could see that being more a risk since there are lots of artifact synergy builds and it has a very low cost. I'd be willing to consider some Artifact/Enchantment hate options for the Sideboard on this build, but in truth/practice in my playgroup I have not run into any of these builds which can pull one of those two cards off as reliably as I can dredge out Annihilators (esp. since I can dump any number of them in on Turn 1 with Putrid Imp). That's why the strategy I outlined for Optimal Play involves Discarding the Annihilator creature right away, even though Putrid Imp can't attack the turn he's cast. Get them in while you can, just in case, is the idea.

I'd be interested to hear suggestions for Legacy Artifact/Enchantment removal to help with some of those cards mentioned; as I said I've not run into either in a heavy enough capacity that it's been warranted for me personally, so any ideas are welcomed!

In order to reliably beat this deck over many games, it seems you pretty much have to build a deck designed just to counter its win strategy. That's a risk with any Magic deck though; if you don't count decks crafted specially to destroy THIS deck, then it stands up remarkably well. I suppose anyone could throw off a win/loss record if they were determined enough to build something just to beat it.

Counterspell Decks as you mentioned aren't as great as you'd think, not only because I can cast Dread Return from the Graveyard, but also because if any hand-cast cheap creature is countered, it only goes to the Graveyard, not Exile - meaning I can just Unearth it right back out. In general I've found Counterspell-heavy decks to merely slow this deck down by a couple turns and nothing more.

Having stuff in my Graveyard with this build isn't really that much of a detriment.

I have a few copies of recurring nightmare, is it useful for this deck?