Lost Rites | Reanimator

Historic Cycling Reanimator

Lightehammer

Land (22)

• 3x Blood Crypt
• 2x Canyon Slough
• 3x Clifftop Retreat
• 3x Dragonskull Summit
• 1x Godless Shrine
• 1x Isolated Chapel
• 2x Mountain
• 2x Phyrexian Tower
• 3x Sacred Foundry
• 1x Savai Triome
• 1x Swamp

Creature (26)

• 2x Archfiend of Ifnir
• 4x Desert Cerodon
• 2x Gravebreaker Lamia
• 4x Horror of the Broken Lands
• 4x Merchant of the Vale
• 3x Scholar of the Lost Trove
• 4x Stitcher's Supplier
• 3x Terror of the Peaks

Sorcery (8)

• 3x Cathartic Reunion
• 2x Rise of the Dark Realms
• 3x Unburial Rites

Instant (4)

• 1x Leave / Chance
• 3x Lightning Axe

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Sideboard

Instant (6)

• 2x Despark
• 2x Disenchant
• 2x Fry

Artifact (2)

• 2x God-Pharaoh's Gift

Sorcery (5)

• 1x Thought Distortion
• 4x Thoughtseize

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Liliana, Death's Majesty

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Elspeth Conquers Death

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What is Lost Rites... and why haven't I heard of it?

First and foremost, the name. Lost Rites is a reanimator/combo deck that uses Unburial Rites and Scholar of the Lost Trove . A little play on words from 'Last Rites' given at a funeral because it's really challenging to win after we've resolved our combo.

There has been a bit of buzz around Scholar of the Lost Trove + Rise of the Dark Realms and I have seen a few different iterations of the deck that never really made a splash. This list is 100% unique and we have been honing it for a while now. One of the most overlooked piece of this deck is that Scholar of the Lost Trove can also reanimate an artifact, meaning God-Pharaoh's Gift is on the table as well.

How do we win?

There are several different ways to win the game within our combo and I will break it down into two parts: the engine and the pay-off.

The Engine:

Unburial Rites reanimates Scholar of the Lost Trove , which reanimates either Rise of the Dark Realms or God-Pharaoh's Gift which either wins you the game on the spot or creates a strong board presence that will close games out in a turn or two, left uncontested. If the combo just isn't coming together, you can use Gravebreaker Lamia to find the missing piece and toss it into the yard, with the sweet benefit of reducing the cost of flashback. If you just need to dig, binning Leave / Chance and ditching your entire hand is incredibly powerful as well. Entomb on a 4/4 Lifelink body with cost-reduction is nuts.

The Pay-Off:

1. Terror of the Peaks + 4 other creatures. You don't get the trigger from Scholar of the Lost Trove as he enters before the Terror of the Peaks , but all of the creatures afterwards you do. So if you have 2x Archfiend of Ifnir , 1x Desert Cerodon and 1x Horror of the Broken Lands in the graveyard (or any other combination of creatures) you deal 20+ damage and win the game on the spot.

2. Craterhoof Behemoth + Tuktuk Rubblefort + four other creatures. This line of play is good against decks like Nine Lives or other Leyline of Sanctity decks. The one caveat is that it requires more singleton combo pieces in your graveyard which can be harder to assemble and leaves us vulnerable to Settle the Wreckage decks. Though this win feels more fun a lot of the time, it has proven to be statistically less efficient.

Don't we just lose to graveyard hate?

The short answer? No. Let's take a look at the most common forms of graveyard hate in Historic currently:

Grafdigger's Cage is popular because it is a cheap, versatile card that can slot into any deck. It is effective against Neoform combo, Muxus, Goblin Grandee , Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath , Genesis Ultimatum and Golos, Tireless Pilgrim decks. Just an absolute powerhouse of a sideboard card. However, we have a couple of very strong plays to combat this. God-Pharaoh's Gift does not return a card, rather it exiles the card and creates a copy, leaving this card ineffective. Additionally, our deck is constructed very carefully and with the exception of Scholar of the Lost all of our creatures can be hard-cast and their average CMC is 3.5. Enjoy casting an endless supply of Horror of the Broken Lands , cycling away and beating face with a quick tempo.

Leyline of the Void is popular because it is a free, pre-game action that cannot be countered. If an opponent is brave enough, they can run this option in a deck without black mana in the deck. While Leyline is a powerful answer and stifles us more than Grafdigger's Cage does, we can still just cast our spells and beat them down the old-fashioned way - which feels especially good.

Rest in Peace is potentially the hardest of the options to beat as it is typically in a deck with strong mainboard and sideboard answers to our strategy. We do have Disenchant in the sideboard and can hard-cast creatures but this will be your biggest obstacle.

Ashiok, Dream Render fights us on a couple of different angles. By reducing our ability to search with Gravebreaker Lamia they can cut off our ability to assemble the combo and exiling our cards is the only way to effectively drown us out. However, we do have a significant enough board presence to kill him after only 1-2 activations so it becomes a race at that point.

Bojuka Bog &

Soul-Guide Lantern &

Tormod's Crypt . As any old school Dredge player will tell you, one-shot graveyard hate cards are simply a game of patience. Don't overcommit to the graveyard and get blown out, but don't play too slowly either. Many players will see 8-10 cards in your graveyard and get too excitable and crack their card early, letting you rebuild with vigor afterwards and combo a turn or two later.

Why isn't this card in the deck?

One of the earliest decisions we made was to be and exclude . While there are a plethora of good cards that benefit this strategy, such as the original God-Pharaoh's Gift decks using Champion of Wits , Emry, Lurker of the Loch and Refurbish it leaves us vulnerable to an entire slice of the meta - aggro. Not that we win the aggro match-up every time now, but having cards like Stitcher's Supplier and Mire Triton to stifle aggro while advancing our game plan is much more powerful than it might seem. We are a deck that's averages a combo win between turns four and six and a few blocks with our dorks can get us there.

There are a few 'this or that' card decisions that are entirely meta dependent and fluctuate almost weekly as we test the deck further.

1. Rise of the Dark Realms or God-Pharaoh's Gift in the mainboard. Thought GPG has significant strengths against some decks, especially those that lean entirely on Grafdigger's Cage to box us out, the data shows that we simply win more games with Rise than with GPG. Rise wins you the game on the spot approximately 70% of the time, whereas GPG requires you to not only dodge artifact hate but to survive and apply pressure for another 2-3 turns. However, GPG is much stronger against decks with one-shot graveyard hate effects, so we keep it in the side as an alternative win-engine in those decks. Also worth noting, decks with Unmoored Ego will often mulligan to four or five, thinking they ice you out entirely only to have you reanimate GPG and smash face.

2. Lightning Axe vs. Deafening Clarion vs. Wrath of God . This is the debate that occurs most commonly for us. Lightning Axe is able to immediately deal with the threat you care about, like Scavenging Ooze or Priest of the forgotten gods. With our blockers and general game plan, we typically only experience one creature per game that we really win or lose to. Additionally, one of our worst match-ups is Gruul Aggro, and Gruul Spellbreaker and the like are often just bigger than 3 toughness. However, Deafening Clarion fits nicely into the curve and our opponents are not often expecting sweepers in our deck. Many a time you will have an opponent overcommit to the board, get blown out by a Deafening Clarion and scoop on the spot. Winning game one is crucial in some match-ups. Also, being able to get a couple of Stitcher's Supplier 's down, sweeping the board AND getting six cards to your graveyard is insane value.

3. Torgaar, Famine Incarnate vs. Archfiend of Ifnir . Torgaar is an incredible card with a ton of versatility. First and foremost, Torgaar, Famine Incarnate + Terror of the Peaks is 17 damage all by themselves. You stack the Terror trigger, then the Torgaar trigger, so their life becomes 10 and then they take 7 damage from Torgaar's power. Stupid powerful combo. Additionally, they become super affordable by sacrificing a Merchant of the Vale and a Stitcher's Supplier or two. The only reason we are currently testing without them is because they can't cycle themselves into the yard like our other reanimation targets. We made a conscious decision to have a bunch of vanilla idiots like Desert Cerodon and Horror of the Broken Lands because they can cycle early, fill the yard and enable a much faster combo win. Archfiend of Ifnir also is just an incredible card that drowns out the midrange match-ups altogether. Wanna see an OP scoop on the spot? Have a fiend in play and cast Cathartic Reunion while they have a few lands animated with Nissa, Who Shakes the World . Instant win.

Platinum Angel is a tempting card because we can reanimate this card and hedge our wins against combo decks. However, it does often feel like a win-more card. If we have resolved a Rise of the Dark Realms we should have won already. If we are reanimating a singular creature, we have others that allow us to keep digging and go for a win. Definitely not a bad card but currently doesn't make the cut for the 75.

Pact of Negation is an option that combo decks like Neoform use because it allows you to protect your win. However, because we have no blue mana in the deck - and we are more of a midrange combo deck - this card is a trap that gives our opponent more wins than us.

Mana Base

When you use conventional tools, like we have here on TappedOut or a mana calculator, you are going to get an incredibly skewed and inaccurate split. Doing the math ourselves, we have to account for the mana sources we actually use, rather than just appear on a card, and some cards in our deck we just never cast - like Scholar of the Lost Trove . Additionally, there are cards we CAN cast if we have to but because it isn't part of our actual game plan we don't take special considerations for those cards. The costs we account for are:

: 3x Unburial Rites flashback.

: 4x Stitcher's Supplier , 4x Horror of the Broken Lands cycling, 3x Unburial Rites , 2x Gravebreaker Lamia .

: 4x Merchant of the Vale /Haggle, 4x Merchant of the Vale , 4x Desert Cerodon cycling, 3x Cathartic Reunion .

This brings our total 'accurate' mana requirements to:

: 3

: 13

: 15

You can configure your lands however you like, but our mana base currently provides the following mana:

: 9

: 14

: 17

We are a combo deck that wants to hit our first five land drops without fail, so we shot for the middle with 22 lands. Worth noting, we experimented pretty heavily with Brightclimb Pathway   and Needleverge Pathway   in the place of our basics, however we found that our mana was consistent enough that getting blown out by Field of Ruin , Assassin's Trophy and Settle the Wreckage wasn't worth the very slight increase in color consistency - especially because nearly none of the cards in our deck require more than one of any particular color to cast.

Sideboard Guide

Our current sideboard: 4x Thoughtseize , 2x Disenchant , 2x Fry , 2x Despark , 1x Elspeth Conquers Death , 2x God-Pharaoh's Gift , 1x Liliana, Death's Majesty , 1x Thought Distortion .

I hesitate to even write sideboard guides in Historic, because the meta shifts so frequently we make adjustments faster than we update the deck guide. However, here are some general pieces of advice as well as threat assessment tiers for the current meta.

• Tier I Threats: Bant Harmonicon decks, Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath decks, and Teferi, Hero of Dominaria decks. These decks have main and sideboard answers that are challenging for us to overcome, such as Rest in Peace , Unmoored Ego , Bojuka Bog and Ashiok, Dream Render . Because of this, it may often be effective to use the bait-and-switch/combo-to-midrange strategy. This is a trick combo decks have used for years to try and combat decks bringing in a handful of graveyard hate pieces. To accomplish this, you can board out Scholar of the Lost Trove , Rise of the Dark Realms and a handful of your cycling creatures to bring in a playset of Thoughtseize , Fry , Despark , Elspeth Conquers Death , Liliana, Death's Majesty and win the value game while they sit with a handful of dead silver bullets.

• Tier II Threats: Embercleave decks, Soaring Thought-Thief decks, Muxus, Goblin Grandee decks. These decks don't necessarily have hate pieces that target our strategy but they often just beat us in the race. Even Dimir Rogues, which seems like it would be in our favor because they fill the yard for us, have enough permission ( Spell Pierce , Drown in the Loch , Negate , Wizard's Retort ) that we can't ever get off the ground. We are actually exploring Hope of Ghirapur as a sideboard option for this match-up, stay tuned.

• Tier III Threats: All the rest. Anybody who has been playing Magic for a while now knows that at BEST you can expect a 60% win-rate against any field, accounting for luck of the draw and card variance. That being said, there are decks that we just blank a fair portion of the time and you can sideboard as you see fit.

Maybeboard Guide

There are a ton of good cards in this strategy and within our colors. Feel free to make suggestions and we will do our best to incorporate them as we can.

Thanks for your help!

We appreciate you taking the time to check out our work and help us improve. If you read this entire deck guide, you are a champion. I know it is a lot of writing, I just miss working for WoTC and doing this sort of thing on a daily basis. Cheers.

Date added	3 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is Historic legal.
Rarity (main - side)	5 - 5 Mythic Rares 27 - 3 Rares 10 - 5 Uncommons 15 - 2 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	4.32
Tokens	Copy Clone, Zombie 2/2 B