Theros Re-Animator Deck

So just taking a break for a few from the previews, I have taken some time and done a bit of research into what Whip of Erebos is capable of in New Standard. I am pleasantly suprised to see that I can stay pretty much where I want to stay with my colors and just annihilate with some re-animation. To give credit where credit is due, I first saw this on Roguedeckbuilder and liked it as a kickoff platform.

 Here is my Rough draft so far:

Creatures: (23)        

2x Angel of Serenity

2x Armada Wurm

1x Ashen Rider

4x Elvish Mystic

1x Giant Adephage

2x Lord of the Void

3x Lotleth Troll

2x Obzedat, Ghost Council

4x Sylvan Caryatid

2x Trostani, Selesnya's Voice


Sorcery: (4)

4x Commune with the Gods


Instant: (8)

2x Abrupt Decay

3x Grisly Salvage

3x Rescue from the Underworld


Enchantment

4x Whip of Erebos


Land (22)

3x Forest

4x Overgrown Tomb

3x Plains

4x Swamp

4x Temple Garden

4x Temple of Silence


Now to kind of give a rundown of some things I am looking at here in this build. This brew has the potential to get nasty real fast. It does of course have it's drawbacks, one of the main ones being the enchantment removal, so I need to have an answer for that. And it might not be as difficult to achieve as we might think.

So let's walk through this step by step here on what I hope to accomplish.

Now the base of the deck is to use the Whip of Erebos
to re-animate cards in the graveyard without paying the high mana costs associated with them. Early in the game you want to use your ramp with your Elvish Mystics
and use your Sylvan Caryatids
to ramp into the colors that you need, as well as be untargetable blockers. I think these are going to end up being early game targets for Pacifism
or Arrest
to stop me from mana fixing. Thankfully I have a good sideboard card in Golgari Charm
to deal with those pesky things.

Now once we get into the ramp, we want to start playing Grisly Salvage
and Commune with the Gods
as fast as possible to try to get to a Lotleth Troll
on the field as soon as we can. I mean, the hope is to draw into one in the opening hand, but we have to realize that isn't going to happen reliably. The reason we want him early on, is to discard away any of the big boys we might draw into so that when a Whip of Erebos
we have targets for it immediately. The other card we want to see early on is Trostani, Selesnya's Voice
because with the Whip on the field, all our creature get the awesome Lifegain ability. And when we re-animate anything, or cast an Obzedat, Ghost Council
we get just ridiculous amount of life coming back to as as we go in swinging. This will help with things like Purphoros, God of the Forge
and his ability to deal damage with creatures entering the battlefield from their side. Now it would be fun to have that guy exiled with Lord of the Void
and have him join our side for some shinanigans. But I mean, hey, we can dream right.

The main combo we want to see go off is to have an Angel of Serenity

sitting in our graveyard with a Armada Wurm
and a Giant Adephage
and something else. You target the Angel with the Whip, bring it out swinging and then it leaves and you bring those nasty buggers out just wreaking havoc and gaining life like crazy. So much damage so fast. And the other resource we have is Rescue from the Underworld
to take out something like an Armada Wurm
which leaves it's token behind, and then you get another one when it re-enters the field and brings a friend with it like Lord of the Void
who in turn is going to mill them 7, and he steals a friend from them to fight for you as well. There are some pretty nice combos that can turn up in here.

Now of course, there are going to be the hard matchups. And I am going to look at building an ironclad sideboard for this. I can see things like Putrefy
coming in very handy against, say a Young Pyromancer
who can wreak a considerable amount of damage if left unchecked.

If I was a rich man, Voice of Resurgence
would be an EXCELLENT card for this deck, but alas, I can't afford one of those right now, let alone the 2 of I would need to make it worth it in this deck. But I do concede, it does have a place here for those of you who may have it.

Well for now I am done with my explanation, have fun with the idea and do with it what you will. I'm pretty sure this is the build I am going to invest it right out of the gate. There will be more to follow with what I run into. As always, thanks for reading and I value any opinions you might have to add!

MTG Theros Full Spoiler Breakdown - White

Okay, so I decided to go ahead and start into White today. Mostly because of the fact that I want to reference back to some of the mono colored cards when we go through the multi-colored cards. So it wouldn't make too much sense to reference back to cards we haven't even reviewed yet.

Now I do want you to keep in mind as we go through this, I am not yet a seasoned veteran of this game. And I am only looking at things as though I would use them, or see a use for them. I probably miss a lot. So if you see me looking at a card from a completely wrong perspective, feel free to jump in and give your two cents as well. As long as you give me a nickname, I will put your post on the blog under the card you are mentioning. If you have a blog or a website as well, I will throw a link to it as well next to your name.

Okay, now that we are done with the pleasantries, let's get on with looking at these White cards from the Theros set. Like usual, we will start with any Mythics and work our way down to commons. Also as always, if I miss a card you wanted to see covered, feel free to let me know and I will try to get it added for you.




Of course, the first card we run into in this. I am a huge fan of this planeswalker. She does all the things I like in a planeswalker. She gives the ability to defend herself, she gives the ability to knock down a big creature, and everyone gets evasion, plus a boost. I dig it.

I see this being a magnet for some heavy removal, but hopefully you can figure out some way to protect her, like some of the blue counters we looked at earlier.

I see this being a card that is going to do well in Standard, I expect we will see it in token builds and in White Weenies decks, as well as a few others. I would even expect this to be played alongside Ajani, Caller of the Pride
.

They seem to mesh well together, both produce tokens and both give things evasion, and make them stronger. So win/win there.



 Okay, so he isn't THAT great in comparison to the other god cards. He is a token producer, which works great in token decks moving forward. But the Vigilance is not really super great in my opinion.

Lets go ahead and preview Spear of Heliod
while we are on topic.
So we see that in conjunction with his Spear, he gives Vigilance and +1/+1, and we have the ability to produce a creature and destroy a creature that dealt damage. Lots of mana eaten up between all of that for a semi-productive strategy. Not worth it IMO.
























So this is the Pre-Release Promo for White. I guess if you look at it this way, this is supposed to be your guaranteed bomb rare. It's not bad at all, a flyer 4/4 with first strike, with the ability to bestow it for 7. I dig it.

We will talk some more on this one soon, when I go over the possible Pre-Release combos we could look forward to.
























Well, I don't really like the card. Mostly because it's so conditional. You HAVE to have a mountain to use this card. That being said, if you are playing W/R, it's decent. Still falls prey to enchantment removal.








Ha! I switched image types on you! But seriously, this looks better. For sure this isn't bad, but doesn't seem worthy of a Rare slot. I mean, not when we have Akroan Crusader
Caption as a common. I mean seriously. The double-strike is nice, but just putting a 1/1 counter on the guy isn't THAT great. I digress.

I can see this being played in Boros style decks that are going to overload Dynacharge
Caption to trigger all their Heroic affects. But I mean, to waste a spell that targets JUST this guy when there are so many better cards. I just can't see it.

I want 4. That is all. Give me a playset. And why not? If you are playing any type of Enchantments build and White is in your build colors, this needs to be in there.

I see this being played and played and played. It's going places, and I see it being easily a $7-$10 Rare card.















So it COULD be a 6/8 that can block all day long. For 10 mana, a 6/8 that can swing and block back to back, eh, it's okay. Nothing I am going to be rushing out to get crazy over. And you watch, this will be the Rare that I end up having to build my pre-release deck around.

Okay, not bad. We are getting a bit better. It has potential. A 2/1 for 1 is great first turn, would be great with Haste on it. Should have had it. Some good multicolored hate in there.

I would play it. It's got a bit of potential in a limited format, but it becomes extremely essential in our dual colored oversaturated meta right now. Easy LG for sure.
















Even though it's only an Uncommon, I just wanted to give this bad boy a shout out. It's got an uneven mana cost. I get that. Most people don't like to do the dual mana CMC, but this is just nuts. EVERY creature gets a 1/1 counter from this guy. SO much better than the Fabled hero. Sometimes I don't get what WOTC is going for when they give these cards their rarity.







Well that wraps up my coverage of the White Rares and Mythics from this set, check in later today for the Green and Red coverage, all wrapped up into one. I will be hitting the duals on Thursday night and then will be the live blogs from Main Street Magic and Miniatures as I open packs and build my deck for pre-release and all the excitement that entails on Friday night. Unfortunately I just don't have the time to get to the combos that could be in each pre-release setup like I want to.

Thanks for reading, and have a great day!!