After a month or so of brewing and testing, and many and i mean many differnt builds and color combinations trying to make exhume and reanimator somewhat competitive in pauper, i have landed on this list.
If you are going to read further i want to thank you for your time and interest. do note i am severely dyslexic and have tried my best to not make this a jumbled mess, but if any spelling mistakes have gone trough or i phrased something weird i apologise in advance and hope it dident bother u to mutch.
idea's behind the choices
Troll of Khazad-dumi've always liked that one of our bombs would have cycling stapled on top of it, just for the reason that it needs nothing other than itself to get into the graveyard. And troll fills that role perfectly being able to mana fix is just the cherry on top of an already good looking pie. (and i haven't even talked about the fact that if u turn 1 swamp Dark Ritual into Troll of Khazad-dum then Exhume if troll is not removed u will often deal 12damage to most decks uncontested until they can block it)
Discerning Taste recently i stumbled upon this card and fell in love with it as the main way of getting lifegain into the deck no more need to open up creature slots or splash green for Boulderbranch Golem. taste offers us card selection sometimes between 6-8-10 life on top of filling the graveyard with the cards we dont want. or cards we can use later, so its never a dead card in our hand.
Bitter Reunion it is the main way we get creatures from the hand to the graveyard doing so gives us card advantage and thats why its mainly in the deck as a way to get creatures out of the hand and as an extra way to get card advantage. and being able to give haste is quite nice as a bonus.
Dragon Breath is more or less an artifact of previous itterations it serves no other purpose then wanting to be in the graveyard and giving free haste from there. so most of its interactions are with our bombs and faitherless looting/ Summon Undead.
Faithless Looting or Thrilling Discovery is a something i have been playing with for a while and both have different reasons why u should play them. discovery gives life and u go +1 in cards but it needing 2 card to discard makes it a card u dont always want to play. looting on the other hand lets us see more cards but the upside it gives is where it goes doesn't really matter since it can be played from the grave and if u get 2 new thing u dont need u discard them with the same effect. so in combination with summon undead and bitter reunion looting seems to flow a lot more better with the whole deck
matchups/game strategie
If u run a lot of interaction like counterspells or removal spels u will probably have a good shot against the reanimator strategies. Same go's for the decks that have some decently threatening creatures to keep up with ours.
So in pauper those would be:
Mono blue fearies: they just seem to have an infinite number of counter spels at there disposal, while beating us down with 1/1 or 2/2's for a slow agonising death. I have also run against some decks running Echoing Truth mainboard and i just wanted to eat my shoe at that point. my plan at this moment is try and bait the counterspells as best as the opportunities provided themselves and eventually late game hard cast things like our troll and crusher.
UB terror: The fact that Exhume can be free value for these decks is not great. Pair that with the letter of removal spells and counters black and blue have in the format and ur always having a blast against the terror decks. although we run a lot of recession spells so removing our bombs is just delaying the inevitable but having or giving haste is key for a win against these matchups. (in previous list i tried Striped Riverwinder main or in the sideboard to avoid some removal but it being a 5/5 same as Gurmag Angler and Tolarian Terror makes exhuming it not great. i do like cycling on our reanimator targets, it makes it easier to get things in the graveyard.)
bogles: they often but not always run Journey to Nowhere so thats a hurdle we need to get over at one point. also eventualy they just create an equal or bigger thread than what we have. playing against bogles is a race, who can be the first to have a big creature or in our case how quickly can we have multiple.
how to play against reanimator.
like the name would suggest the graveyard is verry important even more important the spells that get our stuff back from the graveyard. so exiling our graveyard or countering our reanimation spells makes it hard to achieve our gameplan.
having 12 reanimation spells create enough density to eventualy resolve a couple of spells, also dark ritual help a lot later in the game to hard cast things like an Ulamog's Crusher.
when playtesting i also took a liking to Summon Undead since u can cast it when u have an empty graveyard and even if we dont mill anything having Troll of Khazad-dum cycle itself in the graveyard as a target in a pinch helps alot.
i'm currently more afraid of bounce spells because putting something like a goliath or a crusher back into your hand early in the game makes us spend resources we might not have at that moment to get it back to the place we want them to be.
sideboarding
Cast into the Fire: good against any deck running the artifact lands. combo decks like alter tron. and low to the ground decks like kuldotha red cawgate and fearies
Maul Splicer:if they run destroy or sacrifice a creature removal or bounce spells in the main of sideboard. splicer can be a decent option to switch in while the golems are not game winning enough splicers make a decent board. (if we ever see a downshift of Trostani's Summoner i already know that bad boy is going in the maindeck)
Nihil Spellbomb: pretty good tech against graveyard based strategies so the mirror, UB terror, dredge and even tortex if u time it right also agains familiars (maybe turbo fog).
Shred Memory: serves double duty great against the same decks nihil spellbomb is good against while also having the ability to let us search an Exhume makes it great for when recurring multiple creatures is the gameplan or we are playing against a lot of counter spells.
Leave No Trace: good against Journey to Nowhere great against anything boggles plays or where enchantments are a key to the oponents strategy or removal package.
