Standard Front Page Feature #3

Features Opinion

zandl

8 June 2016

941 views

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#3 - ever-after-deck

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I’m bringing you a fresh deck each Wednesday from our homepage that caught my eye as it floated down on a deckcycle. I’ll show you the list, provide you with insights directly from the creator, offer improvements, and display a few runners-up that barely missed the cut. Join me as we celebrate our community’s creativity and get the lowdown on a sweet brew!

When am I most likely to see your deckcycles? I’m always taking peeks at TappedOut throughout the day (and night), so there’s not one specific time each week I’m looking for new lists. It’s the luck of the draw, but deckcycling more often can’t hurt you.

This week’s deck belongs to badtwinkie123, who’s not quite done with those creatures just yet.

deck-large:ever-after-deck

Creatures: 11
4 Mindwrack Demon
2 Surrak, the Hunt Caller
1 Dragonlord Kolaghan
1 Greenwarden of Murasa
1 Sidisi, Undead Vizier
1 The Gitrog Monster
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
Planeswalkers: 1
1 Arlinn Kord  ^Flip
Enchantments: 4
4 Vessel of Nascency
Sorceries: 18
4 Ever After
4 Gather the Pack
4 Radiant Flames
4 Tormenting Voice
2 Duress
Lands: 26
4 Blighted Gorge
4 Cinder Glade
4 Evolving Wilds
4 Forest
4 Swamp
3 Drownyard Temple
2 Foul Orchard
1 Mountain

This deck’s end-game plan is to dump any combination of the powerhouse creatures into the graveyard and reanimate two at once with Ever After, likely ending the game on the spot or generating a huge amount of value. A number of control spells and draw spells fill in the holes, giving us the chance to get up to critical mass without too much of a problem, though I’d like to see the amount of control increase. One cute but noteworthy benefit from Ever After is that your non-black creatures become immune to Ultimate Price, for what it’s worth.

        Strengths

Part of the reason I think this deck has so much potential to do well in Standard is the lack of graveyard interaction in the format. There are only a small handful of spells that can deal with cards in graveyard and fewer still that are worth actually using. Additionally, graveyard strategies in Standard are few and far between, causing less players to consider graveyard-hate when constructing sideboards. Finally, while many decks are prepared to deal with a horde of creatures, I don’t believe that many could withstand a sudden flood of high-value creatures.

        Weaknesses

The deck seems to get really deep into filling up the graveyard when all we really need are two big threats and delirium. Since we aren’t playing our entire game out of the graveyard, I fear there may be too many spells devoted to it. Some of those "big threats" we’re relying on wouldn’t be entirely too threatening on most late-game boards, either. The land-base, too, needs quite a bit of work. Blighted Gorge’s presence as a playset, for example, make me a sad person.

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        Creator Insights

What led you to play Ever After over other strategies in Standard?

"I play Ever After because I like the idea of bringing back big creatures at no cost. It is perfect for bringing out Ulamog without ever paying his CMC, for example."

If you were to change anything about the deck, what would it be?

"Though the deck excels against aggro, I definitely need to fit in Grasp of Darkness again, and maybe Corrupted Grafstone."

What advice would you give to anybody looking to build a Reanimator deck in Standard right now?

"If anybody were to build a Reanimator deck in Standard, I’d say Ever After and plenty of big creatures are an absolute necessity."

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        Potential Improvements

• -1 Arlinn Kord  ^Flip
• Though Arlinn can grant haste to a board of creatures, I’ve never been a fan of what else she does (or lack thereof). Most typically, she makes a Wolf, sits, and usually dies without achieving much. If we aren’t hitting an Ever After each turn with her out, she won’t be giving us much of an advantage. Protecting her is also going to be someone of a problem as games progress since we actually don’t have that many creatures to call on for defense.
• -1 Sidisi, Undead Vizier, -1 The Gitrog Monster
• Sidisi can be quite powerful in the right spots, but I’m afraid this isn’t the place for her. We want all of our creatures to stick around on the board for as long as they can and I don’t see her tutor ability playing a huge role in a deck with lots of draw and fuel anyway. As for GitFrog, I don’t think we’re trying to play enough of a grindy game to get full value. There would certainly be times where GitFrog could be an engine, but our goal is to reanimate two back-breaking creatures and go for broke.
• -4 Radiant Flames, -2 Duress
• Flames is a card that undoubtedly gets us out of some rough spots, though its usefulness in different matchups fluctuates wildly. In much the same way, Duress falls short in a number of matchups you’d be likely to encounter in a Standard tournament. We’ll hang onto the cards but move them to the sideboard instead.
• -4 Vessel of Nascency, -4 Gather the Pack
• The Vessel seems like just the thing we want, but it doesn’t find any of the spells that help us survive long enough to see Ever After come down. Even though fueling the graveyard for delirium is crucial to our game plan, we shouldn’t be running short on ways to dump cards into the bin. I do like Gather the Pack more, but I think it’s in the same boat and there is one specific card I’d rather play instead.

• +4 Traverse the Ulvenwald
• In lieu of Gather the Pack, Traverse will allow us to go and find whatever we want for just 1 mana. delirium won’t be too difficult to achieve with what we’re leaving in and Traverse itself is an immensely powerful card when combined with...
• +4 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
• If we’re aiming to morph this build into a slightly slower, more controlling deck, Dark-Dwellers is exactly what we need. After flipping a good portion of our hand/deck into the graveyard by the late-game turns, the Goblins give us a vast amount of utility and lines of play. With Traverse and delirium, we actually have an unending chain of Dark-Dwellers or a free Worldly Tutor for something else with a 4/4 menace. It’s not a shabby target for Ever After either, once we add in...
• +2 Kolaghan's Command, +2 Fiery Impulse, +1 Grasp of Darkness, +1 Ultimate Price
• As we slow the deck down a bit to match our end-game strategy’s speed and to account for cutting Radiant Flames, we’re going to need more removal. The Command’s mode are all useful in this build and can even let us discard something from our own hand to make Ever After stronger. Fiery Impulse is likely to have spell mastery by turn-4 or so while Grasp and Price fill in a few gaps and serve as more fodder for Dark-Dwellers.
• +2 Languish
• Though Radiant Flames gave us a decent sweeper, I’m not a believer that Standard needs one on turn-3. Even though our 4-drop slot is already a bit crowded, Languish serves a purpose in melting away Ojutai and the likes of Humans and CoCo more reliably. Turn-4 also seems to be the sweet spot for wiping the board against Rites decks, as well.
• +1 Dragonlord Atarka, +1 Surrak, the Hunt Caller
• Atarka is a big play that can neutralize a healthy number of would-be blockers and/or troublesome planeswalkers. Surrak is a threatening card with Mindwrack Demon and Goblin Dark-Dwellers, and also off of Ever After. Granting haste to something like Ulamog or Atarka is a big deal in any matchup and can be nearly impossible for an opponent to predict.

This leaves us with the following list:

Creatures: 15
4 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
4 Mindwrack Demon
3 Surrak, the Hunt Caller
1 Dragonlord Atarka
1 Dragonlord Kolaghan
1 Greenwarden of Murasa
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
Instants: 6
2 Fiery Impulse
2 Kolaghan's Command
1 Grasp of Darkness
1 Ultimate Price
Sorceries: 14
4 Ever After
4 Tormenting Voice
4 Traverse the Ulvenwald
2 Languish
Lands: 25
5 Swamp
4 Hissing Quagmire
3 Cinder Glade
3 Evolving Wilds
3 Foreboding Ruins
3 Smoldering Marsh
2 Forest
2 Mountain

(As there was no sideboard in the original list, here’s a decent build of one.)
Sideboard
3 Radiant Flames
3 Transgress the Mind
2 Chandra, Flamecaller
2 Clip Wings
2 Duress
2 Naturalize
1 Virulent Plague

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        Runners-Up

Check ’em out, leave some feedback, and give ’em an upvote already.

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100% Pure Angus Beef

Commander / EDH jettskawhirl

SCORE: 45 | 43 COMMENTS | 9857 VIEWS | IN 30 FOLDERS

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deck-large:rite-elves

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I'm not even sorry

Modern* MrBiggieD

SCORE: 169 | 118 COMMENTS | 22614 VIEWS | IN 92 FOLDERS

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For those of you suggesting Modern as a more widely explored format in this series, know that our very own Chiefbell is going to be taking over in that department. Beginning soon, you’re going to see his own weekly Front Page Feature series that specializes in Modern!

Do you have anything else to add? What would you do differently? What do you think? Let me know down below!

Keep deckcycling out there! You never know when I could be eyeballing your list.

Happy tapping, players!
zandl

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