Revival Experiment

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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Highlander Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planar Constructed Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Revival Experiment

Sorcery

For each permanent type, return up to one card of that type from your graveyard to the battlefield. You lose 3 life for each card returned this way. Exile this.

ProgramIncomplete on The Mycotyrant

2 months ago

Sure thing!

When I decided to build this deck I really wanted to lean into the descend theme so I challenged myself to run as few non-permanent spells as possible. I think my initial list had like 1 or 2. Overtime, I ended up adding more since I realized I needed efficient self mill payoff cards like Reanimate and Overwhelming Remorse or else the deck was a little too clunky. Currently I'm running 9 but I'm looking for oppurtunites to cut some without losing power or efficiency.

But still, even though it isn't "pure permanents" I still tried my best to cover all of the deck's bases with permanent spells. We have permanents that can remove threats like Chupacabra Echo and Reclamation Sage; permanents that can draw cards like Skullclamp and Izoni, Thousand-Eyed; permanents that can ramp us like Sakura-Tribe Elder and Aftermath Analyst; permanents that mill like Mesmeric Orb and Ripples of Undeath; permanents that can bring stuff back from the grave like Journey to Eternity  Flip and Animate Dead; we even have The Meathook Massacre and Invasion of Fiora  Flip as our boardwipes.

One really nice upside to having everything our deck wants to do on permanent spells is that it makes cards like Malevolent Rumble and Cache Grab really consistent at grabbing something useful. And I recently added Revival Experiment which seems like a really nice payoff for going all in on permanents.

Anyway, the basic idea of this deck is self-milling and using my commander's ability to swarm the board with tokens. Usually we want to spend the first couple turns setting up, hopefully getting a repeatable mill effect on the battlefield like Mesmeric Orb or by pairing one of our dredge cards with a discard outlet like Matzalantli, the Great Door  Flip or Geier Reach Sanitarium. Once we've got our mill engine set up, then we can cast our commander. We want to make sure he triggers his end step ability the turn he enters so we can start getting our tokens online.

The tokens really are the core pillar of the deck. They can be sacrificed for value with cards like Skullclamp and Wight of the Reliquary; we can turn them into mana dorks with Insidious Roots; they can gain us a ton of life off of Essence Warden and Ayara, First of Locthwain; and they can present lethal by giving our Craterhoof Behemoth an army to buff. We also have the ability to drain the table to death with the aforementioned Ayara or Mirkwood Bats if we manage to mill enough cards. And of course, since they pump our commander, we can also win with commander damage.

Since we're milling so much the deck also has a reanimator subtheme. Reanimate and Animate Dead can bring back wincon creatures like Craterhoof and Ayara. Squirming Emergence can reanimate any permanent so it's an awesome way to put planeswalkers into play or snag an engine piece or even wipe the board with Invasion of Fiora  Flip. Similarly, Rise of the Witch-king let's us bring back any permanent while also forcing our opponents to sack a creature which is nice.

A new card that I'm actually testing right now is Chthonian Nightmare. The fact that it's a repeatable reanimate effect for only 2 mana seems really strong. And even if you don't "charge it up" by repeatedly reanimating creatures that cost less than 3, roughly 75% of the creatures in my deck are 3 or less anyway and among those are some really impactful targets like Eternal Witness, Reclamation Sage, Six, and Accursed Marauder just to name a few. Very excited to see how it performs!

Alongside the reanimator subtheme we have an aristocrats subtheme. As mentioned earlier the tokens make great fodder for stuff like Skullcamp and Wight. And we have creatures that either sack themselves, like Sakura-Tribe Elder and Aftermath Analyst, or want to be sacrificed, like World Shaper. All that sacrificing can net us additional value off of Liliana, Dreadhorde General or Mirkwood Bats since he triggers on token sacrifice as well. We also have Disciple of Freyalise  Flip, a great reanimation target that can draw us a ton of cards by sacrificing our creatures that grow in size as our graveyard does like Splinterfright and Souls of the Lost.

So yeah, that's the deck. It can be a bit slow and the lack of instant speed interaction is definitely a drawback but overall I like it a lot and it can have some explosive turns. You just have to be careful not to mill yourself out which is why I added in Kozilek, Butcher of Truth. He's a bit random so I might replace him with Elixir of Immortality. We'll see.

P.S. Apologies for the long winded reply, hopefully it was insightful.

seshiro_of_the_orochi on The Sagas of Muldrotha and her Mediocre-Friends

2 years ago

First things first, I really like the tone of the deck description. This is a casually built deck that doesn't want to max out, it's just fun. Great thought. I built Sylvia Brightspear and Khorvath Brightflame with a similar attitude, and the deck is just a beauty.

Regarding this list, let me suggest some more underplayed, but fun cards for it:

Gravebreaker Lamia is a powerful tutor, a fine creature and even provides ramp. A card I really like in Lurrus of the Dream-Den is Omen of the Dead. It's cheap recursion and can even sacrifice itself. Desecrated Tomb is similar to Tormod, and the flying tokens can definitely add up pretty fast. Revival Experiment is another card could be really fun in here.