Well, looks like Amonkhet is going to have a discard/cycling theme, with at least one card spoiled that looks pretty frickin' good in this deck. Hype!
Potential AKH includes:
My playgroup always said I should try and make an aggressive deck, as opposed to my usual control builds. So, this here is an aggressive reanimator list looking to start killing players off as quickly as possible, while also having enough longevity to survive a longer game if necessary.
I'm not sure if the list is completely tuned (at least, as tuned as it can be without increasing its price significantly), but my current experience with it shows a high amount synergy and explosiveness which I'm rather happy with.
The Commander Show
Olivia excels in this deck for a variety of reasons:
- First, she's inexpensive, allowing her to come down quickly and making it less painful to recast her a couple of times if necessary.
- Second, being a consistent discard outlet enables the deck's reanimation effects.
- Third, giving creatures haste is huge. A lot of creatures are much more threatening when our opponents don't get a turn to react and prepare for them, turning them basically into spells that can punch people in the face. Other generals can also give haste, but, going back to Olivia's cost, they're usually as expensive as the bombs we'd want to reanimate (ex:
Dragonlord Kolaghan
), giving Olivia a significant advantage in speed.
Olivia is kind of like having
Fervor
as a commander, but better because she's also a discard outlet and, if worst comes to worst, an evasive, 7-turn clock.
-
Gray Merchant of Asphodel
: One of the weaker bombs, but still potentially potent. This deck runs high on black mana, so Gary should be able to drain quite a bit of life. The life-gain is also rather important for this deck, as it's liable to play fast and loose with its starting 40.
-
Heartless Hidetsugu
: Part of the reason why this deck likes lifegain wherever it can find it. Each Heartless activation effectively cuts the deck's work in half, and giving him haste means opponents have a very small window in which to stop him once he resolves.
-
Master of Cruelties
: An old friend of Kaalia and Alesha, Olivia can't abuse the Master quite as well, but she can still effectively turn it into a sorcery that says, "Choose an opponent without blockers. They're dead." Even if they aren't literally dead, as they would be if Kaalia or Alesha were attacking alongside the Master, this deck has little trouble dealing 1 damage on a future turn. And who knows, maybe one of our opponents will swing in with a mana dork and finish the job for us.
-
Demon of Dark Schemes
: Trying out this card in place of
Sheoldred, Whispering One
for the time being. It costs less in mana and $$$, has greater immediate impact (in my opinion, since I believe this deck is more scared of token/weenie armies than stand-alone threats), and can dominate a long-game in a similar way if left unchecked. The only disappointment is that it returns creatures tapped, meaning giving them haste is a bit of a nonbo.
-
Hellkite Tyrant
: Potentially the best creature in the entire deck, depending on our opponents. If anyone is ramping hard on mana rocks, the Tyrant comes out of nowhere, hits them like a truck, undoes all of their hard work, and gives it all to us. Another example where Olivia's haste takes a card that's already powerful and makes it feel almost like cheating.
-
Inferno Titan
: Will often be dealing 6 off of its ability alone when it comes down, which is enough to kill most problematic blockers, threats, and generals. From there, it just hits for a bunch, which is exactly what the deck is looking to do.
-
Massacre Wurm
: Massacres players with token armies or who rely on sacrifice effects, while also getting small blockers out of the way of our other threats. It isn't the bombiest of bombs, but the Wurm does good work.
-
Sire Of Insanity
: A beefy attacker, but that's not why it's here. Making our opponents hellbent puts a lot of pressure on them to draw an answer for our giant creatures, which we can continue to reanimate from our grave thanks to the initial discard combined with our multiple sources of permanent-based, repeatable card draw.
-
Steel Hellkite
: Mostly here for its unique ability to actually interact with enchantments. Red/Black is a combination which has basically no game against the many powerful enchantments which litter the format, so this dragon is one of our few outs besides killing the offending enchantress.
-
Sepulchral Primordial
: It's like a miniature
Rise of the Dark Realms
that we can reanimate. And if we have enough cards in hand, then each stolen creature will also have haste, which should probably mean at least one opponent dead.
-
Baleful Force
: Draws 4-5 cards a turn cycle if not dealt with quickly. Also part of the reason the deck wants its lifegain - we run a lot of effects like this, and while we'd rather have a full hand than full health; it's nice to be alive to still play all those cards.
-
Void Winnower
: It's big and gamewarping like only an Eldrazi can be. It cuts off half of our opponent's spells, removes half of their blockers, and hits for a quarter of their starting life totals.
Reanimation Show
This deck runs 14 pieces of reanimation, many of which are self-explanatory, but a few of them are somewhat interesting:
-
Apprentice Necromancer
and
Doomed Necromancer
: They're sort of like a miniature
Sneak Attack
with Olivia, discarding the creature we want to summon to give them haste, and then summoning it for cheap. Or they can just summon something that's already there.
-
Whip of Erebos
: The reanimation effect is good, but it's the lifegain that's really impressed me in testing. Giving lifelink to a board of giant creatures, or just to a lone
Heartless Hidetsugu
, quickly rockets our lifetotal well above where it began, no matter how masochistic we've been up until that point.
-
Feldon of the Third Path
: Feldon was my first commander, so I'm fairly acquainted with the power of his ability. However, Feldon feels way stronger in this deck than he ever did in his own, thanks to the addition of Black.
Sidisi, Undead Vizier
,
Sepulchral Primordial
,
Gray Merchant of Asphodel
, etc. - there are some juicy targets for Feldon to copy and he can generate massive value in short order.
The most important part of any deck: drawing as many cards as humanly (vampirically?) possible. It's especially important here because Olivia loves throwing our cards away, so we need to refill in order to not fall behind.
Beyond that, though, setting up a steady stream of card draw is what lets the deck turn into something of an engine. We discard bombs to turn on our reanimation, then we reanimated those bombs, discarding other bombs to give them haste, then we reanimate those bombs and... It's quite conceivable for this deck to go from a full hand and no board (well, other than Olivia) to no hand and a full board, all of which is swinging at an opponent's face, over the course of a single Main Phase.
Being Black, most of this draw is paid for directly from our lifetotal:
Phyrexian Arena
,
Graveborn Muse
,
Bloodgift Demon
,
Baleful Force
,
Night's Whisper
,
Skeletal Scrying
. The only time our lifetotal matters is when it's below 1, and we fully plan to try and get our opponents to that point before us.
This deck also runs a couple of wheel effects in
Reforge the Soul
and
Dragon Mage
. These cards are great for refueling when we're nearing empty, and also for filtering towards the reanimation effects which let the deck make its power plays. Wheel effects are also rather fun with a
Sire Of Insanity
on the table.
The deck also has a new addition in
Cathartic Reunion
. I was always a bit hesitant about
Tormenting Voice
in this deck, since it just seemed like it had too low of an impact and did nothing when topdecked. Reunion shares the latter problem, but makes up for it by doing serious work in the opening turns. Discarding a pair of bombs and getting three draws towards reanimation effects is powerful enough for the card to warrant a spot, at least for now.
Important Interactions Show
-
Apprentice Necromancer
/
Doomed Necromancer
+
Olivia, Mobilized for War
: Went over this in the reanimation section, but it's the interaction which initially really drew me toward Olivia, so I'll revisit it again: With Olivia on the battlefield, we cast one of the Necromancers. Olivia's ability triggers when the Necromancer enters, allowing us to discard a card and give it haste. Generally, we want to discard one of our bombs so that we can then immediately reanimate it with the Necromancer's activated ability, but in the case of Apprentice, it's generally best to prioritize a creature that only needs a single turn to do what it needs to -
Massacre Wurm
,
Sidisi, Undead Vizier
,
Sire Of Insanity
, etc. Cheating creatures in like this has two major benefits: they will generally cost significantly less mana and they can't really be countered. An opponent could, of course, counter the Necromancer, but then the threat we want is still in hand, and they're down a counterspell.
This is also probably a good place to note that we can't really get blown out by kill spells here. With Olivia's ability, we choose whether or not to discard as it resolves, at which point our creature already has haste and we can respond to such a spell by activating the ability. If the creature dies before the ability resolves, then we just don't discard and content ourselves knowing there's one less kill spell in the world. Alternatively, since Olivia's ability doesn't target and thus doesn't fizzle when the creature is killed, we can discard regardless to reanimate our threat some other way.
-
Sidisi, Undead Vizier
+ Olivia: These two cards work really well together if we need a specific card in the grave. When Sidisi enters, we simply stack the triggers so that we tutor up the card we want, then we discard it to give Sidisi haste. Viola, a DiY
Entomb
!
-
Heartless Hidetsugu
+
Whip of Erebos
: This one's pretty simple, but also extremely powerful. Hidetsugu's ability deals damage, so giving him lifelink means that, after dealing damage to each opponent and ourselves, we gain life equal to the half our life we just lost plus all the life we take off of our opponents. In a typical 4-player game, this could mean our opponents are now all at 20 and we're sitting at a comfortable 100.
-
Sire Of Insanity
+
Baleful Force
: An important nonbo. Since each player discards on each player's end step, we're basically just losing a life and milling a card every upkeep. This isn't the worst thing, as it does fill our graveyard nicely, but it kind of defeats the Baleful Force's primary purpose.
Tutoring Show
This deck doesn't run too many tutor effects, but the ones it does have give it a variety of options for dealing with certain boardstates or pressuring opponents.
-
Diabolic Tutor
and the like: If you have reanimation, these will usually be getting a bomb. If you have a bomb, they'll usually grab reanimation. Things get interesting when what you really need is some way to deal with a player who's getting out of hand.
Against powerful creatures, you'll generally want some form of removal:
Ashes to Ashes
,
Big Game Hunter
,
Chaos Warp
,
Inferno Titan
,
Murderous Cut
,
Snuff Out
,
Terminate
,
Zealous Conscripts
, or
Master of Cruelties
and force them to chump.
Against a bunch of little creatures:
Demon of Dark Schemes
,
Massacre Wurm
,
Steel Hellkite
.
Against noncreature threats:
Chaos Warp
,
Hellkite Tyrant
,
Steel Hellkite
,
Rakdos Charm
,
Vandalblast
,
Zealous Conscripts
.
Against decks that can win out of hand (combo/control):
Keldon Firebombers
,
Sire Of Insanity
,
Void Winnower
.
Against grindy decks (Midrange/Control):
Baleful Force
,
Feldon of the Third Path
,
Phyrexian Arena
,
Whip of Erebos
.
If the game is dragging on and your graveyard has gotten full, then check and see if
Balthor the Defiled
can just end the game on the spot.
-
Buried Alive
and
Corpse Connoisseur
: Should generally get
Anger
before anything else. Olivia does sometimes get removed, so having back-up haste is pretty handy.
-
Praetor's Grasp
: Will generally be looking for boardwipes, removal, ramp, cheap counterspells we could maybe cast off of
Fellwar Stone
, and, if it comes down to that, cards we simply can't beat.
For upgrades, I'd of course consider the more powerful tutors, Wheel effects, and mana artifacts. I'd also consider including
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
to combo with
Zealous Conscripts
, which can let the deck auto-win a game with
Buried Alive
and a single reanimation spell:
Buried Alive
for Kiki, Conscripts, and
Phyrexian Delver
. Reanimate the Delver, Delver reanimates Kiki, Kiki copies the Delver, which reanimates Conscripts, allowing Kiki to make infinite hasty 3/3s and swing for a billion.
Overall, I've been rather impressed with the deck's ability to hit hard and fast, or to sit back and wait for an opening, at which point its usually-hasted creatures are quite capable of capitalizing on the opportunity and knocking some skulls. Highlights from having played the deck a bit include: Hitting a player turn 3 with
Master of Cruelties
and forcing the remaining opponents into topdeck mode with
Sire Of Insanity
(Prossh player won by draw into two boardwipes, but c'est la vie), a friend who borrowed Olivia drawing 20+ off of
Disciple of Bolas
after stealing my Ayli deck's
Phyrexian Processor
, and hitting a
Memnarch
player with
Hellkite Tyrant
.
