4C Reanimator 17-9-3 FNM YTD

Standard FNM Four Color Reanimator Zombie

myronrocks

Land (23)

• 4x Aether Hub
• 3x Concealed Courtyard
• 4x Inspiring Vantage
• 2x Island
• 1x Mountain
• 1x Plains
• 2x Sanctum of Ugin
• 4x Spirebluff Canal
• 1x Swamp
• 1x Wandering Fumarole

Creature (19)

• 3x Advanced Stitchwing
• 2x Champion of Wits
• 4x Combustible Gearhulk
• 3x Elder Deep-Fiend
• 1x Haunted Dead
• 1x Noxious Gearhulk
• 4x Prized Amalgam
• 1x Stitchwing Skaab

Sorcery (11)

• 4x Cathartic Reunion
• 1x Fumigate
• 1x Hour of Devastation
• 3x Refurbish
• 2x Tormenting Voice

Instant (7)

• 3x Kozilek's Return
• 4x Lightning Axe

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Sideboard

Sorcery (6)

• 2x Fumigate
• 1x Never / Return
• 3x Sweltering Suns

Instant (4)

• 2x Anguished Unmaking
• 2x Negate

Enchantment (5)

• 1x Cast Out
• 4x Fevered Visions

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Welcome! Here you'll find my 4 Color Reanimator list in Amonkhet standard.

Part Grixis Emerge, part UR Zombies, part Mardu Gearhulks, playing equal parts beatdown, tempo, and combo, this deck is a Frankensteinian monster. Fittingly described as "disgusting" by my saltier opponents, it has certainly earned a spot in my heart as one of the most memorable decks I've built and played. Read on to find out what makes it so special to me.

Overview

The overall deck concept is about doing cool things, complicated things, and powerful things from lots of different directions to kill your opponent.

Fundamentally it's a reanimator deck: dump powerful creatures in your graveyard to reanimate them onto the battlefield a turn or two quicker than you can cast them.

If you dumped Haunted Dead , Stitchwing Skaab or Advanced Stitchwing, get those on the battlefield quicker by reanimating them at instant speed. If you dumped gearhulks, get those back on your turn with Refurbish to trigger strong ETB effects. Either option will trigger Prized Amalgam if they are available.

Just by doing this you'll be ahead of the opponent on power earlier in the game. You may well put the opponent on defense by turn three or four with creatures mostly out of the range of a lot of the typical removal spells currently available in standard.

But that's not all!

The deck also lets you emerge off of any reanimated creatures at a discounted cost with Elder Deep-Fiend to lock the opponent down.

You can also reanimate the emerged creature afterward to get it back again. Then grab another Elder Deep-Fiend for the following turn thanks to Sanctum of Ugin. This ensures that you can repeat the emerge/reanimate loop, and thus keep the opponent's board locked down for as long as you have the cards in hand to discard and reanimate again and again.

Winning the Game

Our main goal as you can see is to seriously disrupt the flow of the game toward our advantage significantly and as early as possible.

Early Game

If the opponent sits back on turn two, we Cathartic Reunion and set up a potentially huge turn three play with reanimated zombies. A Stitchwing Skaab and Prized Amalgam together present six points of damage for the reanimator price of one on very sizable bodies attacking on turn three. Three of it is in the air. Add another amalgam and that's nine power swinging in. Worst case scenario a trade is forced, or a removal spell kills one of your zombies. But that's okay. Reanimate it!

If the opponent tries to go wide we wipe the board early with Kozilek's Return, and try and set up a huge turn four gearhulk. Turn four Combustible Gearhulk will usually net you three cards. Among those three will likely be something else worth discarding to reanimate later. Also we get a 6/6 first striker on turn four!

If you're lucky, you can get it all. Stitchwing Skaab and a couple Prized Amalgams on turn three and a Combustible Gearhulk on turn four, for a total of 15 power on the board.

Mid Game

In addition to presenting early power, our secondary goal is to continually pressure the opponent with recurring threats from the graveyard turn after turn; to pressure the opponent with board control with Elder Deep-Fiend and the very powerful and efficient Lightning Axe; and of course, later in the game, after the opponent has exhausted resources, to play large gearhulks with awesome ETB effects directly from hand.

To really get those beats going there's unexpected tempo game such as the afore mentioned Elder Deep-Fiend loop. Reanimating a Noxious Gearhulk to eat their blocker or combo piece is also sometimes a huge tempo play. Plus it nets you sometimes very significant lifegain to help you stabilize while you root around in the graveyard.

There's even an out-of no-where combo-ish win with my personal favorite: dealing 15 or so damage with Combustible Gearhulk .

(Never take the damage. Never.)

Late Game

Late in the game you're generally looking to see if you can eat a large creature with Noxious Gearhulk , find a window to safely drop Nahiri, the Harbinger, or get an Elder Deep-Fiend cast trigger on their upkeep. Generally one of these three things will need to happen to overcome a stagnant board.

It's my strong belief that resolving a Nahiri, the Harbinger mid game and having her survive until late game is one of the most entertaining lines. Her +2 card filtering is very strong in the late stretch. You see so many quality cards at a point in the game when most decks are top-decking. Her -2 isn't irrelevant, either mid and late game. But it's that approaching ultimate that can put the pressure on the opponent. If you can get the ultimate you'll most likely break the board state and close out the game really quickly. Even better if you uptick her loyalty counters beyond eight so she survives. I'm usually grabbing Combustible Gearhulk for the extra card advantage. I've won a fair number games with this line.

Otherwise casting Elder Deep-Fiend is probably the safest and most direct line late in the game. Either you're tapping their blockers at their upkeep to swing in for lethal on your turn, or you're effectively Time Walking on their upkeep. I've probably won the most games on this line, smashing face with a board of zombies, deep-fiend, and an activated Wandering Fumarole .

All in all the deck takes the shape of serious big beatdown. However it is that you get there, once you have a window to start attacking in, generally expect to win in two to three turns by taking 5-16 points from your opponent's life total each turn.

The deck is pretty flexible though wins generally come from the beatdown.

Card Choices

Utility

Cathartic Reunion is a must in this deck. Digs three cards deep at the cost of discarding two cards. Basically the best card in the deck. For a deck that wants to put cards in the graveyard it's all upside. I'm often digging for Refurbish to get gearhulks online turn four.

Tormenting Voice is Cathartic Reunion lite. It's not as powerful, but there are times you'd rather not discard two cards. Discarding just one to draw two is still great and offers the flexibility needed sometimes.

Refurbish is here just for the gearhulks. Three is the right number for the amount of hulks we play. They are useless if you haven't discarded a gearhulk.

Lightning Axe is cheap powerful instant removal. The discard cost is what we're after. Helps keep the graveyard stocked while also removing a lot of different creatures.

Kozilek's Return is also fairly cheap instant board wipe. The initial damage is weaker at just two to each creature--though it can be enough to cripple mono black zombies as I've come to learn. But it's the secondary effect from the graveyard that we get when we cast Elder Deep-Fiend that makes this card really special. Five damage sweeper is really amazing. I never feel bad discarding this card, unless I'm up against wide weenie aggro.

Nahiri, the Harbinger is one of my favorite cards for this deck. I'm mainly ticking her up turn after turn just to loot cards and filter out bad draws. But occasionally she exiles a threat, or even ultimate for a Combustible Gearhulk to refill my hand or Noxious Gearhulk to gain some life. The card is just so flexible.

Liliana, Death's Majesty compliments nahiri in this deck really well. While Nahiri, the Harbinger puts creatures into the graveyard, Liliana, Death's Majesty gets them out onto the battlefield. Making a 2/2 zombie isn't bad either. Her ultimate is not irrelevant, but it's not ever really what we're working toward with her. Generally she's -3 as soon as she resolves.

The Creatures

Prized Amalgam is part of the backbone of the deck in many ways. This card is always a four-of. They are great to discard. I hardly ever hard-cast them as they recur off zombie reanimation and Refurbish . And their 3/3 bodies add serious early power to the board. I never really mind trading them off, since they'll just come back eventually.

Haunted Dead is a weaker body in the deck, but still great for early pressure. Also good to flash in during combat for the 1/1 spirit blocker.

Advanced Stitchwing is the main beatdown body. Costs a bit more to reanimate but it's a 3/4 flying attacker on turn four. Generally 2 or 3-of since the cost is a bit higher and we don't want an imbalance by having to discard too many cards.

Stitchwing Skaab another early 3 power attacker albeit with the weakest body. I've been less impressed with this card than others, but it still feels right in this list. I generally keep it as a one-of. It ends up being great to loot to add pressure later in the game once the opponent has lost momentum.

Combustible Gearhulk -- Hands down the backbone of the deck and real reason we play gearhulks at all. 9 times out of ten the ETB refills our hand which is just huge play for this deck. Occasionally though the ETB hits an opponent for massive damage. Remember, all our creatures have pretty high costs... Oh yeah and it's a 6/6 first striker that can be cheated in on turn four with Refurbish or with haste via Nahiri's ultimate. I love this card! I can confidently say it's won me games.

Noxious Gearhulk is here mainly for the removal and lifegain. Generally this guy helps me stabilize mid game. Don't get me wrong, I'll attack with it all day if I can but it's vulnerable to removal like Grasp of Darkness and often gets killed usually the turn I put it in play. I have forgotten about the menace keyword before. If it does survive to attack do remember that it swings in with pseudo evasion.

Elder Deep-Fiend is just insane. This card closes out games. I've found that two is the right number for this deck due to the color restriction and the amount of other stuff I'm trying to do. But once you draw it any other creature in this deck makes it cost much less to play. And I'm usually emerging on the opponent's upkeep and tapping their lands or creatures to lock them out of their turn. Usually opens the door for a huge swing on my turn to follow. Games often come to a close with one of these. Sacking Sanctum of Ugin to find another to repeat the process is most assuradely GG.

Lands

I know what you're thinking. Four color lists push the manabase. Is the mana reliable? The answer is: Yes. I have not had serious problems with mana production in this deck. It's consistent. My informal assessment is qualitatively based on a sample of 100 or so individual games both casual and FNM.

I believe there are three reasons why in my experience four colors has been successful

• The lands themselves. Right now in standard the fastlands are in all of our colors. This means that we can run up to 12 copies of each fastland. Think of modern for second. The right number of fetchlands for a lot of modern three color lists is about 8 to 10. This lets you draw them consistently in the opening hand to fetch out whatever color you need. Fastlands obviously don't fetch, but by saturating your opening hand probabilities with a lot of fastland you'll be able to cover a lot of your colors pretty consistently. Aether Hub s act as four additional fast lands. We use the energy very carefully, only for plays that are imperative to setting up our game.

• Mana requirements. While many of our cards cost 4 or more, we generally care most about impacting the game on turns three and four. That means that our important plays cost maximum of 4. All the zombie reanimation, Refurbish , removal, Nahiri, even Elder Deep-Fiend all cost four or less in our deck. As you see that lower cost allows us to push the manabase a bit more.

• The MOST important plays are red. Cathartic Reunion and Tormenting Voice are arguably the most important cards of the deck. Without them this deck would simply fail. Large creatures would be completely stuck in our hand. So as long as we skew a bit toward ensuring red mana, the loot spells can dig you out of a hole.

Notes and Tips

Gameplay Tips

Here are a few important issues to be aware of while playing this deck. It's not a beginner's deck! There are lots of triggers to remember. There are many lines of strategy that require constant attention to all zones of play (except maybe exile). The manabase is complicated. All of these factors take serious work to play successfully through. Here are just a few tips I've learned mainly through trial and error.

• Remember the Prized Amalgam!! Check your graveyard religiously during the game. I can't tell you how many amalgam triggers I've forgotten, and consequently how many games that error may have cost me.

• On that note, probably the second most important thing to remember: if you're going to reanimate a zombie like Haunted Dead or Advanced Stitchwing during their turn, and you want the Prized Amalgam trigger so you have attackers on your next turn, be sure to do it on one of their main phases! The way Prized Amalgam is worded means it's coming in "at the next end step". So if you've waited until their end step to reanimate, you'll have to wait until the next end step, which would be yours. A lot of people blow right through combat and say, "go ahead" to pass the turn. Don't let your opponent do this. Speak up right away after the combat phase if you intend to reanimate during their second main phase. That way you return a zombie to the battlefield, tapped, triggering Prized Amalgam from the graveyard to return during their next end step. Then you can proceed to their step so that Prized Amalgam correctly triggers to come onto the battlefield.

• Remember that Haunted Dead brings a 1/1 spirit as an ETB trigger that is untapped. This is important because you can use it to block during combat.

• Nahiri, the Harbinger is good attacker bait. You can slam her and make a good bet that the opponent will focus on killing her. So long as she's not your absolute only out, it's usually okay if they take a turn to attack her. Use it to your advantage.

• Don't be shy with Cathartic Reunion. It's okay to discard a lot to keep digging through your deck. Sometimes I'll give up a land or axe to sculpt the perfect set up for big board presence. It sort of depends on the match ups.

• Elder Deep-Fiend is usually going to be played on the opponent's upkeep. This is so that you can tap their lands down before they get to draw. Tapping lands is a crippling play in itself but doing so before a card is drawn for the turn is just mean. It's a slight edge on top of an otherwise excellent play.

• On that note, remember the Kozilek's Return in your graveyard!!

• This is going to sound weird but don't get too focused on reanimating zombies. Actually check once in a while if you can simply cast a gearhulk or even Elder Deep-Fiend from your hand. I know it's silly, but sometimes games go long and since the deck has us paying so much attention to the graveyard and corresponding triggers it's easy to miss what's right under the nose.

Tuning / Deck Building tips

While I do believe this list is fairly well tuned, some folks have pointed out interesting directions to go. Also, there are the slightest tweaks I still do consider and go back and forth on from time to time. I don't have a super analytic process for determining adjustments. I mainly just use the experience in games and my gut.

• Tormenting Voice can be cut to two, for a total of six loot spells (not counting Nahiri) without impacting performance too badly. I recently decided to bump to three Voice and the full playset of Reunion and it just feels smoother to me, though.

• Advanced Stitchwing and Stitchwing Skaab numbers are a little flexible. I usually more keep Advanced than Skaab. The reason for this is to push the threat package slightly toward the larger body for turn three Reanimation and turn four attacking. Stitchwing Skaab remains at one-of most of the time but is never fully cut. I still like having the option for an early flying beater that somewhat resembles in gameplay feeling the UR tempo Delver decks of yore.

• This one is more of a general tip: Make sure you preserve the right balance between zombies and other things. One of the issues I have with the straight up UR Zombies lists are that they can plateau quickly in the game leaving you stranded with not a card to discard for reanimation. This deck tries to correct that by dipping white for refurbish, Nahiri, and thus gearhulks. Bear in mind that small adjustments to the overall numbers of each category of cards (Utility vs Creature type) will change the balance of the deck.

• Don't push color restriction too hard. Avoid adding BB, RR, WW cards that you actually intend to hard cast. I don't have enough evidence to say that the mana base can support it.

• It is possible to run a Verdurous Gearhulk , thus making this 4C list a 5C list. Why do this? The answer is simple: to throw counters on any of your flying creatures. The 1/1 spirit can turn into a serious threat out of nowhere. I swap verdurous in from time to time when I'm feeling it.

• The second Sanctum of Ugin is tempting but just too greedy.

Sideboarding

the sideboard plan is pretty transformative with two main options. Depending on what we're up against, we either swap out all of the gearhulks or all of the zombies.

We have excellent game after side boarding against control and go-wide aggro. We have decent game against creature midrange. Our worst matchup is against planeswalkers.

VS Control

Against control, you cut gearhulks (leave one or two combustible), refurbish, KReturn. Leave Lightning Axe in for discard purposes.

You swap in all four Fevered Visions, both Negates with Never / Return and Anguished Unmaking flexible for planeswalkers as needed.

VS Aggro

Against aggro or weenie, you cut all zombies and bring in all sweepers. Pretty straightforward.

VS Midrange

Keep most of the deck intact. Maybe cut a Combustible Gearhulk and a Stitchwing Skaab for both Fumigates. If it's planeswalker midrange, things get a little tricky. Best bet is to cut combustible and KReturn for the Anguished Unmaking and Never / Return.

Plus 1 if you enjoy. Thanks.

Top Ranked	Achieved #6 position overall 7 years ago
Date added	7 years
Last updated	6 years
Legality	This deck is not Standard legal.
Rarity (main - side)	8 - 0 Mythic Rares 25 - 12 Rares 16 - 1 Uncommons 6 - 2 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	3.84
Tokens	Champion of Wits 4/4 B, Spirit 1/1 W, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	Ideas, Standard Decks, Reanimatin, Cool Decks, Interesting Standard Decks, standardideas, Standard Amonkhet ideas, AKH Standard, De todo, NEED TO BUY
Based on	[KLD] Reanimator FNM Record 11-7-1 myronrocks STD