Modern reanimator
Modern forum
Posted on Feb. 22, 2023, 2:59 a.m. by akorath567
Esper Reanimator Deck Guide Current Deck List Creatures 4x Archon of Cruelty 4x Solitude 3x Grief 2x Mulldrifter Planeswalkers 3x Teferi, Time Raveler Sorcery 3x Prismatic Ending 2x Thoughtseize 4x Persist Instants 4x Ephemerate 1x Malakir Rebirth 3x Otherworldly Gaze 4x Faithful Mending 3x Tainted Indulgence Lands 4x Flooded Strand 3x Polluted Delta 1x Marsh Flats 1x Raffine’s Tower 1x Savai Triome 1x Godless Shrine 2x Watery Grave 2x Hallowed Fountain 2x Island 2x Plains 1x Swamp
Sideboard 2x Engineered Explosives 2x Flusterstorm 2x Dovin’s Veto 2x Void Rend 2x Kaya’s Guile 2x Unmoored Ego 1x Damn 1x Serra’s Emissary 1x Surgical Extraction
Explaining the Main Deck So a lot of you may be thinking why should I play this deck over one of the best decks in the format. My reasoning for playing this deck is just because it is fun and has relatively good match ups against some of the Tier 1 decks. I will explain that later in this article.
So card selection for this deck is kind of tricky and yes there are other cards or different numbers of these cards you can play. This current configuration is what I've arrived at over playing many many games with this. While I have not top 8’d any major tournaments with this but that's because i don't really like bigger events.
The main goal of this deck is to put an Archon of Cruelty into play off a persist. So the ways you have to put Archon into the graveyard is otherworldly gaze, faithful mending and tainted indulgence as the primary ways. You can thoughtseize yourself to do it or move to your natural discard phase. Now I personally don’t like the card unmarked grave in this list because you have the elemental package to fall back on. The secondary plan of this is to fall back on grief, solitude and mulldrifter to beat down, take cards, remove creatures, or draw cards. The absolute fall back plan of this deck is to control the board through prismatic ending, thoughtseize, teferi and your elementals to buy time until you can just hard cast your archon for 8 mana. To be able to recognize which plan to use or when to pivot on to a different plan is the hardest part of learning this deck. This is usually match up dependent but the main plan is still to persist back archon. Normally in game one in aggro and midrange matchups resolving a persist on archon usually ends the game. If you're worried about your archon being removed by your opponent, try to wait until you can hold up ephemerate or malakir rebirth to try and protect it. If it does get removed, unless you can set up another persist, make sure you reevaluate the situation and switch plans if necessary.
Card selection spells are very important to this strategy because you are looking to get Archon into the graveyard and find a persist at the same time. The spells that fall into this category are otherworldly gaze, faithful mending,and tainted indulgence. Otherworldly gaze is a great card as you can rearrange the top 3 or bin an Archon or other cards that you are not looking for 1 mana and it flashes back for 2 mana. So you can see up to 6 cards for 3 mana. Faithful Mending is 2 mana loot twice and gains 2 life. This card turns your burn match up from an ok match up to a good match up. This card has a flashback cost of 3 so you can select 4 cards and gain 4 life. Tainted Indulgence is a blue and a black mana to cast that draws 2 cards and you discard 1 unless you have 5 different converted mana costs in your graveyard. Tainted Indulgence is great in the early game for discarding an Archon. Tainted indulgence will just draw 2 more often than you think due to evoke creatures plus fetch lands and other selection spells.
Support Cards that don't fall into the other categories include Mulldrifter, Teferi, Time Raveler, Ephemerate, Malakir Rebirth, Thoughtseize and Prismatic Ending. Each of these cards serves a different purpose to some extent. Let’s start with a prismatic ending. Prismatic Ending is the only nonland permanent removal spells that you run but we do have an off color triome to exile things with up to cmc 4 or less. Normally speaking ending is for cards like Ragavan and any graveyard hate cards in game 1. Its to much of a versatile card not to play in the current format. Thoughtseize is a 2 of in this decklist because we are playing Grief. Thoughtseize is for the combo and control matchups. Thoughtseize can disrupt the combo decks and see if the coast is clear to reanimate Archon in the control matches. Teferi, time raveler is a great planeswalker and second best planeswalker that is legal in the modern format (first of which is Wrenn and Six). Teferi is currently in the deck to disrupt the control decks and shutdown the cascade decks. Teferi allows you take cast most of your deck at instant speed or it can draw a card depending on how relevant it on the current board state. Ephemerate and Malakir Rebirth play a similar role. Grief on 1 plus either of these cards allow you to take multiple cards from your opponent before they usually have a chance to respond. Malakir rebirth is also a tapped land if your land short. Ephemerate work really well with any creature in you deck either as protection spells or a value spell by getting extra triggers. Now Mulldrifter is probably the weakest card in the deck but can also be one of the best depending how you use it. Mulldrifter is a blue and 4 generic 2/2 flying ETB draw 2 with evoke of a blue and 2 generic. On the surface it is a weaker card compared to the other ability of the creatures in your deck. However with cards like ephemerate and malakir rebirth it becomes a 4 mana discard a card draw 4 or 6 depending on which card you're casting and allows you to catch back up in card advantage. I have casted persist on mulldrifter on many occasions looking for cards to get me back in the game and make a blocker.
Lands So this deck is very mana color intensive but is also light on mana because of the amount of card selection. The color intensity of the deck lies in the fact of your draw spell being multiple colors while needing to have black mana up for your persists. Prismatic ending is your premier removal spell so you need to splash an off color triome that can be cycled later in the game. Now in my local area there has been an uptick of blood moon type effects, so I am up to 5 basics. This allows me to have prismatic ending to remove it easier if necessary and still be able dig through my deck with my primary draw spells.
Sideboard Choices Your Sideboard can be many different cards depending on what matchups you want to have a better chance of beating. This current configuration is trying to just generally cover most of the top decks and switch to more of a midrange deck then a combo deck like in game 1. I'm going to start with the 2x Flusterstorm. Flusterstorm is for the spell base decks such as the cascade decks, burn, murktide, creativity, and UW control. The 2x Dovin’s Veto serves a similar purpose. Veto is for any decks that have problematic noncreature spells that you can't afford to resolve. Veto i usually bring in for the creativity, cascade, burn, UW control, and tron. Now a personal favorite card is the 2 of unmoored ego/ Necromentia. This card is for hardcore combo decks and tron style decks. I usually bring it in for the cascade deck, underworld breach, and tron. My 2x Void Rend in the sideboard is great at just removing nonland permanents at instant speed. I bring this card in for murktide, control, tron and many other match ups because of its versatility. Kaya’s Guile is a neat card due to its many different modes. It is your primary source of graveyard hate and life gain out of the sideboard. It also can come in clutch in the bogles or hammer time match up due to the sacrifice and create a flying blocker mode on the card. This card also has entwine on it to do all the modes. Engineered explosives is a great card for dealing with the low to the ground or voltron style of decks. You can deal with many problematic permanents at once with this card if they share the same converted mana cost. The card Damn is in the sideboard for a destroy all creature mode. This is mainly in here to deal with the large creature match ups like Eldrazi Tron and decks that are similar. Now I still bring it in the little creature match ups just in case because it is also a 2 mana removal spell. The one of surgical extraction is great for the archon mirror type match ups if they attempt to persist one or you are able to make them discard it. It is also a good card in most current graveyard style matchups. Now the most controversial card in my current iteration is Serra’s Emissary. Serra’s Emissary is a great card for decks that can only kill with one card type as you and creatures you control gain protection from that card type. Now I expect people to bring in removal for my archon and other creatures. Emissary will likely also be able to be removed by these same spells so try to make sure that you have an ephemerate or some other kind of spell to protect it.
SIDEBOARD GUIDE This is for what I consider to be some of the current top decks for the format. For Murktide take out 1 Archon 1 Prismatic ending, 1 Persist, and 2 otherworldly gaze. Murktide bring in 1 Damn, 2 Void Rend and 2 Kaya’s Guile. Scam take out 1 Archon, 2 Thoughtseize, 1 Prismatic Ending and 1 Persist. Scam bring in 1 Damn, 2 Void Rend and 2 Kaya’s Guile 4c Control take out 3 Prismatic ending, 1 Ephemerate and 1 otherworldly gaze 4c Control bring in 1 Damn, 2 Void Rend, and 2 Kaya’s Guile Tron take out 3 Teferi, Time Raveler and 1 prismatic ending Tron bring in 2 unmoored ego and 2 dovin’s veto Burn take out 3 teferi, time raveler and 1 thoughtseize Burn bring in 2 kaya’s guile and 2 flusterstorm Hammer 3 teferi, time raveler, 1 otherworldly gaze, and 2 Mulldrifter Hammer bring in 2 engineered explosives, 1 Damn, 2 Kaya’s Guile, and 1 Serra’s Emissary. Creativity take out 1 Archon, 1 persist, 1 ephemerate, 2 otherworldly gaze, and 4 prismatic ending Creativity bring in 1 surgical extraction, 2 void rend, 2 engineered explosive, 2 flusterstorm, and 2 dovin’s veto Cascade take out 1 archon, 1 ephemerate, 2 mulldrifter, and -3 otherworldly gaze Cascade bring in 1 engineered explosive, 2 dovin’s veto, 2 flusterstorm, and 2 unmoored ego.
Other Sideboard card to consider Now i have tried many SB cards in this deck and will go over then in brief detail. First off I'll start with Orvar, the all-form. This card is very narrow for other archon style matchups but outside of this it is way too narrow to play as liliana of the veil is not seeing much play in the format. Secondly is mystical dispute/subtlety. Both of these cards serve the same style of use to truly stop the control decks from resolving their planeswalker and other relevant spells. Imoved away from these as flusterstorm has become more relevant. Stony Silence is a card I've tried before and had great results with because most of the graveyard hate in modern are artifacts that have to activate and ability to use the effect. I am not playing it currently to not go all in on the reanimate plan for games 2 and 3 due to how the rest of my current sideboard is configured. Leyline binding is a great card and I had my deck tweaked to cast it for 1. I had trouble with Leyline binding because it kept interfering with the main strategy of the deck but it was still a great card to be playing. Spell pierce is next on my list. Spell pierce is currently great in modern due to cards like wrenn and six and other cheap spells. I stopped playing Spell Pierce because in the matchups where i would bring it in they went to long for it to truly be relevant.
Conclusion In conclusion this deck is a lot of fun for people that like drawing cards and can pivot from the persist plan to the hard cast plans in a moment's notice depending on how the game is going. Archon of Cruelty is a truly amazing card on its own and this deck supports it by being able to create multiple triggers in one turn or being able to control the board until you can cast one. I highly recommend this deck for fun and maybe slightly more competitive play than a standard FNM.
wallisface says... #3
I’ve just noticed you already have this exact same deck here, wall-of-text and all… so i’m completely puzzled as to why this forum post exists?? What are we discussing?
February 22, 2023 4:58 a.m.
Yeah the deck looks pretty strong and fine tuned from my perspective.
I recently picked up a few copies of Hallowed Moonlight to compliment Rest in Peace to help combat reanimmator but your list still seems like it could still win.
wallisface says... #2
You should have made this as a deck instead of a forum post, imo.
The list is very hard to read in its current format, and its very similar to existing stock-standard Reanimator lists, so not really a discussion point in-of itself.
I didn’t read the wall of text that followed the decklist, because its a wall of text - but again i’m not sure what discussion you’re looking for here. I get the feeling this really wants to be created as a decklist instead of a forum post - like this.
February 22, 2023 4:56 a.m.