Junkyard Deathparty! Kess Reanimator

Commander / EDH Battlecruiser Control Reanimator UBR (Grixis)

MurderForBrunch

Land (36)

• 1x Ash Barrens
• 1x Barren Moor
• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Canyon Slough
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dragonskull Summit
• 1x Drowned Catacomb
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Fetid Pools
• 1x Foreboding Ruins
• 1x Forgotten Cave
• 1x Gateway Plaza
• 1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 4x Island
• 1x Memorial to Genius
• 5x Mountain
• 1x Myriad Landscape
• 1x Smoldering Marsh
• 1x Sulfur Falls
• 4x Swamp
• 1x Temple of Epiphany
• 1x Temple of the False God
• 1x Terramorphic Expanse
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Watery Grave

Enchantment (5)

• 1x Animate Dead
• 1x Arguel's Blood Fast  ^Flip
• 1x Phyrexian Arena
• 1x Phyrexian Scriptures
• 1x Search for Azcanta  ^Flip

Planeswalker (2)

• 1x Liliana, Death's Majesty
• 1x Liliana, Dreadhorde General

Creature (20)

• 1x Agent of Treachery
• 1x Archfiend of Despair
• 1x Bazaar Trademage
• 1x Butcher of Malakir
• 1x Combustible Gearhulk
• 1x Kozilek, the Great Distortion
• 1x Magus of the Wheel
• 1x Massacre Girl
• 1x Meteor Golem
• 1x Mulldrifter
• 1x Nezahal, Primal Tide
• 1x Nicol Bolas, the Ravager  ^Flip
• 1x Niv-Mizzet, Parun
• 1x Phyrexian Delver
• 1x Plaguecrafter
• 1x Ravenous Chupacabra
• 1x Razaketh, the Foulblooded
• 1x Shriekmaw
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Void Winnower

Instant (14)

• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Bedevil
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Comet Storm
• 1x Dig Through Time
• 1x Disallow
• 1x Entomb
• 1x Epiphany at the Drownyard
• 1x Fact or Fiction
• 1x Frantic Search
• 1x Mystic Confluence
• 1x Price of Fame
• 1x Silumgar's Command
• 1x Thrill of Possibility

Commander (1)

Sorcery (17)

• 1x Beacon of Unrest
• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Blood for Bones
• 1x Buried Alive
• 1x Cathartic Reunion
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Dread Return
• 1x Faithless Looting
• 1x Final Parting
• 1x Finale of Eternity
• 1x Gamble
• 1x In Garruk's Wake
• 1x Living Death
• 1x Reanimate
• 1x Tormenting Voice
• 1x Treasure Cruise
• 1x Victimize

Artifact (5)

• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Hedron Archive
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Creativity

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Hi all! This is my take on a Kess Reanimator strategy. Firs and foremost, this is an idea that came from CCOPodcast, episode 79. I really liked the concept of the deck, I love Kess, Dissident Mage as a card, and I'll brew arround it quite a bit. But having the ubiquitous High Tide or Cabal Coffers ramp plus card: Torment of Hellfire is fun once or twice, but it gets really old super quick. However, a reanimator strategy where you can play the same reanimation spell twice a turn is awesome! So, I decided to brew arround it.

Main Game Plan and Deck Description

This is a reanimator strategy with Kess, Dissident Mage as a Commander. The deck itself is a Grixis control shell, with a few spot removal and counterspells, some boardwipes, and most importantly, a bunch of ways to discard/loot away big fatties to bring back from the graveyard! Also, the fatties you reanimate are game-warping, and have usually devastating abilities!

However, this deck is not in the CCO style! It could still be spicy more or less, in that the EDHRec list for Kess does not include many of these cards, but it has a bunch of tutors, which is not very CCO like.

Also worth noting, this deck was literally build from stuff I had in my collection. So far have not still acquired any cards for this deck, which I foresee doing in the near future.

Fill/Empty the Graveyard

There are several ways to empty your Graveyard in this deck, the main one being discarding the big creatures with Frantic Search , Faithless Looting , Cathartic Reunion and so on. I really dig Fact or Fiction and Epiphany at the Drownyard . Also there are other means to fill the bin, such as Entomb , Buried Alive or Final Parting . Sometimes Gamble is a second copy of Entomb.

Once you have some or a lot of big creatures in the bin you can reanimate them with a lot of spells, like the namesake Reanimate or other spells like Beacon of Unrest , Dread Return and Victimize . Also there are other non-instant and non-sorcery spells like Animate Dead and one of my favourites Phyrexian Delver . Another really cool reanimation spell is Liliana, Death's Majesty

Finally, there are two spells which bring back a ton of creatures such as Living Death and Finale of Eternity . Finale is definitely conditional, but not as much as you might think. I mentioned this deck has a ton of tutors, and a great one is Final Parting . If I have Kess, Dissident Mage in play I sometimes tutor for Living Death to the Graveyard and Ashnod's Altar in hand. What you do, is play Ashnod's Altar you sacrifice everything and then play Living Death with no drawback or even Finale if you have enough mana! This specific synergy won me one of the three games this deck has seen!

Big Mean Creatures

The creatures in this deck are really big, and really mean! And they come into play really early! There are mostly two types of creatures, the ones with mean static abilities, and the ones with powerfull ETB effects.

Of the creatures with static abilities Void Winnower has to be one of the best ones! It shuts down so many stuff! Also Archfiend of Despair or Kozilek, the Great Distortion can also be really oppressive. If you need to draw cards both Niv-Mizzet, Parun and Nezahal, Primal Tide can draw an enormous amount of cards. Nezahal also lets you discard two or three big creatures, which feels great!

Then, there are creatures that have really powerful ETB effects such as Combustible Gearhulk , Agent of Treachery , Meteor Golem , Shriekmaw , Ravenous Chupacabra and Phyrexian Delver . Also Nicol Bolas, the Ravager   has a pretty good effect, and in a long game, it can reanimate more creatures.

Finally, stuff like Razaketh, the Foulblooded or Butcher of Malakir are generally good creatures, they are big flyers, and they have an awesome synergy!

Control and Removal

An important aspect of this deck is Control magic. I don't mean literally Control Magic but Magic spells to control your opponents.

Removal includes Single Target Removal Bedevil , Silumgar's Command , Price of Fame and Chaos Orb in the form of spells. There is also creatures such as Shriekmaw or Meteor Golem . All of this can be used at least twice, maybe more in the case of the creatures. There are counterspells such as Arcane Denial , Disallow and Mystic Confluence

There are boarwipes such as Blasphemous Act , Phyrexian Scriptures and In Garruk's Wake , and also Massacre Girl which is sweet!

One of my favourite cards in the deck is Liliana, Dreadhorde General . It draws cards, kills creatures and gives the opportunity to reanimate Meteor Golem or Combustible Gearhulk once more.

Miscellaneous

In the deck there's also a bunch of tutor as I mentioned, such as Final Parting , Diabolic Intent , Razaketh, the Foulblooded technically and Gamble .

There is raw card draw in Phyrexian Arena , Treasure Cruise , Dig Through Time and Arguel's Blood Fast  , as well as Search for Azcanta   which is a way to filter and bin that can be turned into Azcanta, the Sunken Ruin which basically is a land that impulses for a non-creature spell.

There is also five artifacts that act as ramp in Sol Ring , Mind Stone , Talisman of Creativity , Hedron Archive and Ashnod's Altar . Also Solemn Simulacrum acts as ramp and card draw alike.

Graveyard Hate

Finally, a really important part of the deck is making sure your opponent's Graveyard is empty. For this purpose I have both Bojuka Bog and Phyrexian Scriptures . And here's why it's so important, let me take you to a POWERFUL MAGIC story! I died, a lot!

I was playing against two Mono-Black decks. My life total isn't huge. I sacrifice everything to Ashnod's Altar and cast Living Death to bring everything back without paying much attention to my opponents' graveyard. I'm confident I'm in a good position, in that I have a Massacre Girl and some removal creatures in the graveyard, so maybe a remove a couple things and have a 4/4 Menace leftover. Unluckily one of my opponents had a Syr Konrad, the Grim and the other a Blood Artist . I put the Massacre Girl trigger on top of everything to resolve it before all the removal creatures... I still died before resolving anything else! I have to admit it was super fun! I died to my own Living death! :D

And this is essentially the deck. I hope you like the list. By all means, go listen to the Commander Cookout Podcast episode, it's great! And if you have any suggestions, comments, critics or just want to say anything in particular, comment bellow! Any kind of feedback is appreciated! :D

Date added	4 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	12 - 0 Mythic Rares 40 - 0 Rares 22 - 0 Uncommons 13 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	4.19
Tokens	Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	Commander, Cool Deck List