Here are the words of Vincent Ruaut (though I tried to help with the English in so far as I could), who I alluded to mostly in my report about a tournament he played in – His deck is the most exciting thing I’ve seen in the 93/94 format for a long while so I think it’s well worth hearing about it straight from its source

How did I came to play Reanimator ?

One day, as I was browsing my large collection of magic cards, I stumbled upon an italian version of All Hallow’s Eve without understanding what it did. I checked on the web and I was immediately sold.

And just like that, I was done with Lestrée Zoo.

I then went on a quest to look for stuff written about the card. But there wasn’t much to find and what little I found wasn’t very interesting. Those who know me know me to be a deckbuilder who likes to create decks sporting funny if not zany cards. I remembered an archetype in legacy which sometimes play Show and Tell either in the main or in the side. It seemed like it could be great and very much fun to play Eureka as a virtual Show and Tell (although technically it’s more like Show and Tell is a weaker progeny of Eureka than the other way around).

My birthday was coming and my wife, lovely as she is, asked me what I wanted : “4 Halloween my dear !” Ok, she said, let’s order them ! I love her with all my heart..

A small trip on MKM and a couple of weeks later, I had my 4 Halloweens [All Hallow’s Eve]. Time to brainstorm ! The first thing I noticed was that there are only a few reanimation cards in the format :

Animate Dead : Enchant creature 1B

All Hallow’s Eve : Sorcery 2BB

Resurrection : Sorcery 2WW

Hell’s caretaker : Creature 3B

Reincarnation : Instant 1GG

Triassic egg : Artifact 4

Some cards that could work with the “bringing stuff back from the graveyard” theme :

We also have a few “broken” cards to fill our graveyard in 93/94 :

Bazaar of baghdad : Land

Wheel of Fortune : Sorcery 2R



The “BOM”, Bazaar of Moxen’s Eternal Week End would take place around the end of october 2016, which letft me two months to try and build a « deck to beat »..

The decklist



Main deck

3 or 4 “Halloween” ? I left one out because of the 4-mana casting cost. As it’s expensive, 4 Dark Ritual would allow me to burst out in an easier and earlier fashion. 4 Bazaar of baghdad for sure. 4 Animate Dead : obviously ! That was the easy part. Sylvan Library offers good synergy : I can see what I’m going to draw and I can choose what I want to discard with the Bazaar. 3 seems to be enough. Of course, I need creatures.. the best ones will have evasion like flying or trample and as I don’t play them from my hand they can be expensive :

Lord of the Pit : Great, it has the two abilities and I can pay its upkeep with the other reanimated creatures.

Triskelion : It’s an artifact that I can trade with my opponent’s creatures or blast his or her last life points : 4.

Demonic Hordes : no evasion but it can makes itself useful by controlling Mishra’s Factories, Maze of Ith or blue lands. 2 for now.

Nicol Bolas : The BIG DADDY ! Unfortunately it’s legendary, so only 2 make it to the deck.

Hypnotic Specter : small creatures, but they can give me game from turn 1.

Creatures : check, Reanimator engine : check, Draw : check. Now, the most important in those colors and format : the Power 9 -barring Timetwister because it’s counterproductive and Mox pearl as I don’t play white. Demonic Tutor, Sol Ring, Regrowth. Lands: Bayou X4, Underground Sea X2, Tropical island X2, City of Brass X3, Swamp X2, Forest, Strip Mine. Last but not least, 3 Concordant Crossroads for the kill after having resolved a Halloween ! In effect, those are pretty much a Time Walk in that deck (but for the fact that a Time Walk would ask you to pay for those Lord of the Pit’s upkeep costs).

Sideboard

3 Eurekas to replace the 3 Halloweens. Thinking about what is dangerous for this deck, I can’t find any obvious answer. Playing blue cards, I can bring in some counterspells to improve my chances to resolve my critical spells : Counterspell X3 and the underrated Flash Counter X2. Against Blood Moon ? I have Boomerang which is also a sort of catch-all sideboard card in this format. With some blue and green in the side I thought of adding a bit of black as well : many decks play Underworld Dreams with Winds of Change… why not take advantage of it too with 3 Underworld Dreams of my own ? That leaves one single spot. Recall ? That card actually allows me not only to return some broken ones to my hand but also to discard some huge creatures !

When all was said and done, I arrived at the following list :

[Tapped.out link to the deck]

The BoM ! (October 2016)

Time to go to the “Bom”!

The tournament

Round 1 : Clément (Unpowered RG aggro)

He played a RG aggro, with lots of small creatures, like Scavengers, Mishras.. I got rid of a Mishra but then soon came a second along with a Scavenger. I thought about doing Regrowth on Strip mine… that would let me live 5 more turns. I saw nothing and died. I brought Eurekas for one Nicol Bolas, one Lord of the Pit and one Halloween. Second game, I start slowly and he plays again a Scavenger along with a Kird Ape. Turn 3 I play an Eureka into 3 Triskelion and Nicol Bolas and that was game. Third game, he plays two Mishras that ate much of of my life points. After Finding a Strip Mine with a Bazaar I was able to play 3 turns later Eureka into Lord of the Pit, Nicol Bolas and Triskelion.

2-1

Round 2 : Alexi (The Deck)

Our match was casted on the twitch BoM channel. Unfortunately the video is now lost.. The commentators had doubts about the Halloween’s execution. The way I see it, the speakers did not know much about the Old School formats anyways. He won the toss. I kept an almost perfect hand if it weren’t for the absence of a Bazaar which I drew the first chance I got ! Tropical Island, Dark Ritual, Black Lotus, Sol Ring, Lord of the Pit, Nicol Bolas, Halloween.. Second game, Sylvan Library did the job thanks to an eight-life payment and the synergy with the Bazaar.

2-0

Round 3 : Henrick (The Deck)

He played the “red version”. He suffered from mana-death and I got a very active Bazaar. Halloween brought me back enough to kill him with a Concordant on board. I sided exactly like I sided vs. Clément. I found Eureka into LotP, Nicol Bolas and Triskelion : that ended the game after an Animate Dead and two attack phases.

2-0

Round 4 : Matous (The deck)

He was the Sphinx with all the answers. I could not find any Sylvan Library to try and draw faster. His Serra Angel killed me in a few couple of turns. I sided counterspells in. I played two Hypnotic Specter, both of which met StPs. I hardly brought back a LotP which was stolen by a Control Magic and killed me. Ouch : traitor !

0-2

Round 5 : Merek (ErhnamGeddon)

He used a City of brass which was killing himself slowly for me. A sleepy game with Hypnotic Specter, Sword to Plowshares.. After many turns, Erhnam Djinn and Serendib Efreet came on board. But don’t forget about my daddy LotP : he came to save the day and eat his last points of life. I did not remember the second game. His life points went 19-15-14-7-3-give-up while I stayed at 14..

2-0

After the 5 rounds, I finished second with 12 points. The top8 was made of 6 « The deck » (UW control with different kills), and me in the middle of all that.

I was paired in the quarter-final against Boris , a twenty-year-old friend from Valence (FR), who -as it happens- is my nemesis in old mtg formats.. And what had to happen happened ! Inside of 20 minutes he had done me in for with his Juggernauts. Two games where I found neither a single Bazaar nor any good cards to get in the ring.

Final Impressions

It is a funny and explosive deck. It asks of its pilot to take important decisions about what to draw and the sequencing is a bit tricky. The combination of Sylvan Library and Bazaar of Baghdad is very powerful. I think that Bazaar is underestimated is the format, and it would deserve to be listed in decks playing Sylvan Library. Good creatures for this type of deck are not plenty. Often, their upkeep is too punishing considering what we get in exchange. A creature stands out though : Triskelion. It can block almost everything, can dodge StP and can shoot the last point of life in the end game. Eureka is very powerful but there are many of adjustments to do in order to accommodate its inclusion. It delivers the most explosive plays, but when Bazaar comes early, the hand shrinks fast.

Relooking

Force of Nature : to switch with Lotp ? Its upkeep allows to keep creatures.

Wheel of Fortune : in lieu of Ancestral recall.

Avoid Fate : to protect our creatures for as cheap as possible.

Some red mana sources would allow for Red Elemental Blast to protect us from counterspells.

A journey in Germany (12-03-2016)

The NoobCon

It’s a Swedish tournament and apparently is the Old School world championship. The format was created there and now we have a lot of variants. The format of the NoobCon is very strict with only English cards from Alpha to The Dark. Revised is excluded, Fallen Empires isn’t legal. The Mana burn is applied and I hope in the near future the “alpha Mishra’s Factory rule” too (tapped blockers didn’t deal combat damage back then, so if a Mishra’s Factory would boost itself it would not be able to kill a creature). The tournament’s winner will be qualified for the World Championship.

On that little adventure I was not alone. Our trip started with me and Alexandre travelling from Orléans to Montbéliard where we joined Nicholas and Sébastien -a well-known awesome guy in the magic community. Alex would play a red “artos” aggro, Nicolas a grixis aggro-control and Seb a mono-blue which won the tournament due to the special rules of the tournament. I found the idea to be interesting : points were added to your total for your deck’s particularities (if any; pretty much the only way not to get any such points was to play “The Deck”).

The decklist

The list is composed of 65 cards.. which I only noticed when I took a picture of it at the end of the tournament ! The goal was to use at first Eureka and then Halloween. But, with less active lands and moxes and the fact that Bazaar discards, I did not have the best conditions to play Eureka. The combination of Sword of the ages and some big creatures left only one turn to the opponent to find a solution. I still had alternate kills with Animate Dead and Halloween. The benefit is that the deck gets more creatures and simplifies my choice about what to discard.

The tournament

Things didn’t go as well that time. And I even ended up playing my buddy Nicholas ! We tested the day before and I lost so many times that I assume it would go the same. But the pictures speak for me..



I finished with a quite poor result (in fact my only victory was the one against my friend !), but still it was a very cool and funny tournament. A pint before the start and a chilled-out atmosphere in the pub/restaurant “Das Vogel”. We got a calm zone, with large seats and plenty of space to play. A very nice place to play in.

What did I learn?

65 cards are too much for this deck. Heh ! I’m now convinced that it’s very hard to play both Halloween and Eureka in the same maindeck. I have to make a choice and I can’t run as much of one as of the other -especially concurrently. Those changes made with my friends upset the philosophy of the deck and I did not have a good felling playing it (Sorry Nicolas). I was satisfied with Colossus of Sardia. They usually attack only the one time, but after that it’s not dead to me as it is fresh meat for the Lord of the Pit’s upkeep. And with a power of 9 it leaves a devastating mark on the opponent -or his board. I still find LotP very aggressive for both players. I have to find a creature to help keeping it in play. I think about Tetravus and its possible 3 flying tokens offspring. Nicol Bolas has its place in the deck. Its discard’s capacity is amazing. When it comes on the battlefield it captures the opponent’s attention. Concordant Crossroad is a dream come true. I must play it early against control but tardily against aggro. Moxes must be of the color I actually use. For sure, Jet and Emerald, but the other ones are not that useful. Perhaps they have to be balanced between the lands color and the different creature’s upkeep costs. Gloom could be a good add because of the problem that StP and Disenchant sometimes give me. It would sometimes come out turn one and is additionally a good answer to white weenie decks too.

On the road again with Reanimator…

After the useless german tournament in Karlsruhe, I went to one in Paris at Magic Bazar, the 22nd of January. The blog already did some reporting on that tournament, including some pics of some of the mean board-states that deck can engender, so I’ll just add a bit to it.

The deck list

I came back full circle to a list very close to the first, with some changes in the sideboard and only two in the main : Wheel of fortune and Urborg replacing Mox Sapphire and a Swamp. My hope was that Wheel of Fortune would help me fight “The Deck” and “Mono Black” by refilling my entire hand after having abused the Bazaar : expecting too much Hymn to tourach or Mind Twist going around (Fallen Empire was legal there). After the BOM, I worked on my sideboard because of Sword to Plowshares, Lightning Bolt and so on. That’s why I decided to cut the Counterspell (its double blue casting cost is hard to meet with this deck) for Flash Counter and to try Avoid Fate for its even lighter cost. Chaos orb could be a solution against Maze of Ith, Library of Alexandria or anything that makes “The Deck” faster.



The Tournament

Turn one: Bayou, Lotus, Hypnotic Specter and… Concordant Crossroads ! That happened once in each of my first two rounds ! Including that time pictured left against the eventual winner of the tournement, Cyril, playing the Deck. That turn 1 attack on the play made Cyril discard his only potentially active card : his one and single StP 🙂 Still I lost this match and another one which put me a point away from the semi-finals.

What did I learn?

This version is very pleasant to play. The sideboard still need some work, especially against “The Deck”. I’m considering cards like Chains of Mephistopheles or Disrupting Scepter to minimize the advantage that “The Deck’s players can have from Jayemdae Tome or Library of Alexandria. Avoid fate allows several options of protection against StP, Disenchant, Lightning Bolt and so on. Boomerang is a bit expensive with UU in its casting cost. Maybe I will get them out. Chaos Orb hasn’t left me with a good impression.