Deck Tech: WR Reanimator [ONE] Standard BO1

 Deck Tech: WR Reanimator [ONE] Standard BO1

Introduction:

It's been a long time since I wrote an article! I've "retired" from playing competitive magic for quite a while now, so naturally I haven't had much to write about.

Recently I got an itch to play new standard on ARENA again at the start of Phyrexia: ONE's release. I ended up grinding up from bronze to mythic in a few days, brewing a couple decks that interested me.

After some digging, I stumbled on a few WR reanimator lists built around Invoke Justice that seemed appealing to try.

One of the most powerful cards in ONE slotted comfortably in this deck and to my eye seemed like a HUGE upgrade.

Previous reanimator decks were running Titan of Industry and Portal to Phyrexia. 
While Titan of industry is a great card, casting it once is far from a guarantee win, especially if you spent previous turns durdling or investing multiple cards to cast it. Atraxa draws ~5 of your best cards out of the top 10 cards in your deck and is a must kill creature that single handedly stabilizes any battlefield unless killed. Now THAT goes over the top.

The deck

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/5408307#paper

The strategy of this deck should be fairly obvious. Fill up your graveyard and cast invoke justice/repair and recharge on a big game ending threat. Most of the cards that discard a card into your graveyard also draws cards, which allows you to consistently find and cast a reanimation spell by turn 5. The cards that don't fit into this mold are there to insure you survive until turn 5. The format is fast enough to kill you if you aren't interacting much by that point. 

This doesn't look a clean 4 of decklist, which might imply it's untuned, but I assure you, I spent a lot of time on this deck and tried a lot of different options.

This deck has such high velocity with 25% of the cards in it having a looting effect of some sort. This means it's common to go through anywhere from 25-50% of the deck in a single game, sometimes even more in the longer games. Having too many of a type of effect can be a problem, and the value of a silver bullet type card goes up.

It's common to get 2+ big effects in the graveyard by turn 5, so having a choice of which one to reanimate depending on the situation and matchup is valuable.

Card choices

100% Confidence:

Fable of the Mirror Breaker 4x

Scrapwork mutt 4x

Invoke Justice 4x

Atraxa, Grand unifier 3-4x

Portal to Phyrexia 3-4x

These are the best cards in the deck. The first 3 cards I'd play more than 4 copies if I could and the last two are the most "Stabilize the board -> win the game" of all the options available.

Atraxa is the truth. You commonly fill your hand to the point of discard every time you cast it. Its the card that allows you to go over the top of other decks going over the top, even through interaction. I'm not positive if it's a 3 or a 4 of . I'm currently on 3.
Why 3 if it's so good? I've played between 0-2 copies of Repair and recharge before. With 0 copies, I was definitely too inconsistent at drawing a reanimation spell by turn 5. Because of this, I want skew the top end to be castable with that spell. Portal to Phyrexia also wins the game a v high % , so it's not like we are light on top end. There are situations where one card won't stabilize and the other will, so a split is what I would chose anyway.

Scrapwork Mutt is a little innocuous, but it does everything the deck wants to do. Multiple looting effects (it's common to chump/die with it), colorless to find your red source if necessary, a body to put invoke justice counters on. The haste can sometimes snipe Planeswalkers or kill a control opponent out of no where in conjunction with invoke justice counters.
It's not powerful, but it's the glue that keeps your engines running.

Medium-High Confidence:

 1-4x Steel Seraph

This card really took me by surprise because it doesn't intuitively work with that the deck is trying to do. I was very impressed in practice.

1) It gains you life. I was often barely dying against black decks or red decks on/before turn 5. A few extra points of life goes a long way in this deck. Sheoldred is nasty against the deck because of all the looting effects and invoke despair can finish you off at a low life total. 

2) The modal mode of it being a 5/4 flyer makes it a solid desperation reanimation target. Both reanimation spells target it. I've won games invoke justicing it, give itself lifelink then hasting it with bitter reunion to survive or win the game out of no where. Even if I'm invoke justicing another target, putting counters on the seraph is often the correct play. 

3) It dodges go for the throat, the current most popular black 2 drop kill spell.

The decks trying to do a lot, so unfortunately there's not much room for cards that don't directly contribute to it's gameplan. This straddles the line of both helping you survive and being a reanimation target.

2-4x Cathartic Pyre, 0-2x Sunset Revelry , 2-3x Depopulate

These are all critical effects to help you survive. Cathartic Pyre is important for early interaction, digging when desperate and hitting some key must kill targets. Armored Scrapgorger, Graveyard Trespasser and Thalia Guardian of Thraben come to mind.  It's also the only instant spell to find off of an Atraxa trigger. I find the card a little weak over all , but I want some copies.

Depopulate is necessary against soldiers + mono R and is an important card to get out of some sticky situations with mono black/white. Sheoldred and Phyrexian obliterator are very tough for the deck to kill otherwise. I had 3 for a long time and it felt perfect, but I dropped it to 2 when I added sunset revelry. 

Sunset Revelery is a new addition. I don't have too many reps with it, but mono R got popular once I hit mythic. It's a bad matchup without tools against it. This is the best card stabilizing card against mono red, can cantrip in dead matches and protects against edicts vs black. (lower confidence than the other 2)

0 The Elder Dragon War

I tested this card extensively. After turn 4 it's rare I'm desperately digging for a reanimation spell in the current build. The 2 damage to each creature mode misses too many key targets and does too much collateral damage. When neither mode is effective the dragon is too weak for the mana paid for it. I want the mana base to be as white as possible and RR on turn 4 sometimes misses. I could see some different builds utilizing the card, but not this one.

2-4x Bitter Reunion

I waffled back and forth with bitter reunion. The other options available effect the battlefield in the early turns. You really feel the pain of taking a turn off against fast decks. However, the utility of the permanent ended up being a big deal in the slower matchups. The haste is very important to help beat control decks and is situationally key in other matchups. Hitting all your land drops is important , so if you have the breathing room and you are land light, an effect that draws you 2 can be a big boon.

0-2x The Restoration of Eiganjo

The initial version of this deck ran 4 copies. I quickly began to hate the card because I found myself dying before it did anything meaningful. The base version that I built this deck off of had 4 copies, but that deck leveraged the value in ramping to 6 mana to cast Sanctuary Warden. Not only was the card slow, but it didn't help you dig to your reanimation spells.

I eventually scaled it back to 0 copies. Afterwards I found myself bricking on land drops a bit too frequently or running out of cards to loot away when digging. Getting a plains when necessary was really important.

The combination of Bitter reunion and Eiganjo is really good in the slower matchups. Filtering is so important , which Eiganjo doesnt do, unless it returns a bitter reunion! This interaction gets around some of the mana inefficiencies of both the cards.  

It's situationally quite useful, but I don't want to draw many copies.  I am currently at 1. 

Medium-Low confidence:

0-1 The Wanderer

The singleton copy of the wanderer was in the deck since inception and I've never been able to justify cutting it. The card does a lot of things the deck can't otherwise do, but it rarely stole games for me I was going to lose, merely prolonged my survival.

Against decks with Farewell, overcommitting to the board with the addition of a Planeswalker prevents you from getting devastated TOO hard.

Against soldiers/infect/mono white, edicting the board is can be quite powerful. 

It's the only Planeswalker type for Atraxa.

It can be hard cast OR reanimated with all the reanimation spells.

The double strike creatures work well with invoke justice + haste.

Low Confidence:

One with the multiverse & Cityscape leveler

This is a very recent addition along with cityscape leveler. While I would rather have Atraxa or Portal to Phyrexia on average, this card is still very powerful, is good in some situations where portal isn't and can be reanimated with Repair and Recharge. 

These cards are in the deck for the slow matchups where Portal to Phyrexia isn't very good. One with the multiverse works well with cityscape leveler as it allows you to get the cast trigger. 

My logic:

With 6 copies of the premium targets, there's a good chance you'll have one in your graveyard by the time you want to reanimate them. In the matchups where portal isn't very good, there's a good chance the game will go super long and you'll want some other powerful options. Because you go through so much of your deck when the games go long, there's a good chance you'll find them and it being impactful.

Killing non-creature permanents is very challenging in this deck, so a card that can gun down multiple of them felt important. Cityscape levler + haste from bitter reunion is a nice combo.

It's very possible that the decks where portal isn't good aren't worth hedging for, as they don't seem to be good or popular. They are very bad MU though.

Matchups

A lot of the matchups are very sensitive to the cards we have in the deck and the version of the deck that players brings. 

Scary cards:

Counterspells, Farewell, Graveyard Trespasser (not as bad as one might think), The Cruelty of Gix, Thalia , Guardian of Thraben

Great Matchups:

Mono White

Good matchups:

Black midrange W/O Blue

Green stuff

Neutral matchups:

Black midrange W/ blue

Infect

Slightly Bad matchups:

Mono R

Soldiers

Horrendous Matchups:

Mono U 

Creatureless PW control with lots of countermagic

Best of 3 Changes

 I haven't played any BO3 so this is all speculation but...

It's likely the deck is worse in BO3 as there are some very powerful cards against us that decks can bring in. If the deck is "on the radar" Cruelty of Gix's, counter magic and Unlicensed hearses in numbers will likely be too much for it.

I would want to change the main deck. I'd increase the cards that are good in the slower matchups (Bitter reunion and Restoration of Eiganjo) and relegate some of the aggressive hate (sunset revelry) to the sideboard.

The most common sideboard hate against us will be unlicensed hearse so I'd like to change the main deck cathartic pyre's for abrade.  Slower Bankbuster decks are also more common in bo3 than in bo1.The discard on cathartic pyre is useful, but it's a distant secondary function of the card. 

The sideboard I'd like have a full replacement plan for the wraths and the portals in the main deck for the control matchups. Likely up to a playset of cityscape levelers and Restoration of Eiganjo. I'd also want to test up to 3 Wandering Emperor for the counterspell heavy + farewell decks.

1-2 Loran of the 3rd path vs white + unlicensed hearse w/ BR midrange.

Sunset Revelerys and Wraths for agro.

Conclusion

The deck is fun. The deck is powerful. Very few people are playing it. It's not tier 1, but with perfect tuning and good piloting it's close. It could be a meta-call. After many tweaks, I'm winning a lot with it and finally consider it a good deck. I recommend giving it a shot if you want to go over the top of those midrange decks!