Hey everyone Androod here! While testing with my fellow Hex Heroes for the CCS we came across this sweet reanimator deck and it would be remiss of me not to share it now that the CCS is behind us (Congrats to fellow hero HallowedAce on making the finals!). While I did not have a great showing with the deck myself I think this is a very powerful archetype that definitely has a home in standard.

Here we have our decklist. You will notice a very high average casting cost but rest assured we don’t anticipate paying full retail for many of the cards in this deck. The basic idea of the deck is to just get a fatty on the table as early as turn four and with a follow up on turn five or six. Let us take a deep dive into the card choices and synergies in the deck.

Champion: Blue Sparrow 4x Sapphire Shard 2x Rotten Rancor 4x Transmogrifade 4x Arcane Focus (Alternate Art) 2x Gargalith 1x Shard of Cunning 4x Well of Cunning 4x Withering Gaze 4x Mordrom's Gift - Gems: 4x Major Sapphire of Clarity 4x Permafrost 2x Aegilus 4x Runebind 1x Into the Unknown 3x Primal Prism 4x Theorize 3x Sapphire Ice 1x Blood Ice 4x Eternal Seeker 3x Heart's Whisper 2x Alchemite Reserves: 3x Exarch of the Egg 1x Psychic Ascension 1x Gargalith 3x Cheap Shot 2x Into the Unknown 2x Aegilus 1x Archive Dweller 1x Alchemite 1x Sir Draxard



The Reanimates

Mordrom’s Gift and Rotten Rancor are the cards that make the deck possible. You’ll notice that we opted to put the Major Gem of Clarity in our Mordrom’s Gifts mostly ignoring the “It gets all socket powers of this.” clause on it. Dropping a reanimation card from five cost to four is a huge bonus and more than makes up for losing the upgrade on our fatty. We are quickly finding ourselves in a high powered standard format and it is not unreasonable to be dead or an unwinnable position by turn four. Also the allure of reanimating a large troop is the fact that you get it at a discounted rate and increasing that discount by one is far from trivial. The gem inheritance also is not fully irrelevant and plays a real role against the Ovo reanimator deck. Since our Gargaliths and Aegliuses (Aegili? Whatever...) cost one less than theirs letting Eternal Seeker be a one sided board wipe. After testing the deck with only the four gifts we found ourselves wanting more reanimates which lead to Rotten Rancor getting the splash. We were already playing Permafrost so it wasn’t terribly hard to accomplish.





The Fat

No reanimator deck is complete without the fat. Eternal Seeker is out four of because this card just has a crazy amount of utility and it is not out of the question to pay full retail for this on turn seven. Against aggressive decks we are just trying to get an Aegilus on the board as quickly as possible since this locks out most of them. The combo of Gargalith and Aegilus is enough to just lock most decks out of winning the game.

The Glue

This is the glue that holds this pile of greed together. Theorize combined with our Blue Sparrow activations help ensure that we always have an on time discard outlet for our reanimation effects. These abilities are also a great source of card advantage in this deck since we actively want to put cards in our crypt. Heart’s Whisper is a great card for the grind against control decks and can guarantee our fourth shard for Mordrom’s Gift. There isn’t anything I can say about Arcane Focus that hasn’t already been said.

The Protection

Even though we are trying to go big as quickly as possible we do have to care about what our opponent is doing. Withering Gaze picking away a piece of removal or an interrupt helps ensure that our first fatty lands on the board. Into the Unknown is just a catch all to deal with problem cards like Dark Heart. Transmog is a great way to slow your opponents board down for one resource which is ideal in this deck. It can also be used to manipulate the cost of opposing cards for Eternal Seeker to potentially get multiple cards with the deploy.

The Swiss Army Knives









I had to give these two cards their own category because they just do a little bit of everything. Runebind is a heck of a card and there is not much it does not do. This card can let us ignore problems on the board for a period of time like a Gravebane vial or an aggressive troop. Much like Transmogrifade it can also be used to manipulate the cost of opposing cards for Eternal Seeker since the runes are always two cost. It also protects us against opposing interrupts and removal. Runebind can also allow us to re-buy the deploy effect on Eternal Seeker since its very easy for us to draw a shard with Ices and our champion power.

Alchemite is also a card with many roles in this deck. It is a repeatable discard outlet for our reanimation targets that can also generate card advantage in the grindy matchups. Due to the repeated draw this is not something your opponent can leave sitting on the board and will have to burn a removal on it which essentially turns any card in our hand into a piece of discard because we have to get rid of those to let one of larger troops stick later on.

The Shards









The shards are pretty straightforward but I wanted to mention a few things about them. Permafrost serves an important role in this deck. Allowing us to play our fatties for their actual cost in the late game comes up a non-zero amount of the time. Also we are a tri-shard deck that wants to be doing a lot on the first four turns of the game making slow shards suboptimal. Permafrost can help smooth out those first few key turns with some one shot fixing with a temporary resource. There is only a single Blood Ice in the deck and zero Blood Shards because we are primarily a sapphire deck and want to guarantee that if we keep an opening hand with only a Blood Ice we can get a sapphire threshold.

The Reserves

Since this is a linear combo deck at its core our reserves is split up into packages more than cards we just want access to.

The Aggro Package





All we want to be doing against the aggressive decks is surviving until we can get an Aegilus in play and this package aims to make that happen. We trim the durdley cards like Heart’s Whisper and our less good fatties like Gargalith. We replace these cards with the other two Aegilus and the honorary fifth Aegilus Sir Draxard as well as some blockers and cheap removal.





The Control Package





We want a third copy of Alchemite for the reasons I state above in the longer grinder matchups as well as another Gargalith to share the Spellshield love. We always bring in the Archive Dweller along side the Ascension so we have the ability to either remove their Ascensions/wincons or search for our own Ascension these two options make it a very appealing reanimation target that we can reasonably cast even without permafrost.





The Dark Heart Package

As a concession to Dark Heart being very good against us we find two more copies of Into the Unknown to pick up the problem and make it go away. There are other situations in which you’d bring this in but the effect is not free and the card does not disappear once you return it to their hand so make sure and only use this on must answer cards.





The Matchups

This deck wants to play against anything midrange or blood based control deck it can get its hands on. These are matchups that give you plenty of time to set up, play to the board for eternal seeker, and have a hard time beating the Gargalith/Aegilus lock. So it’s the dream matchup.

Low to the ground decks like Mono ruby and redlings are not great game one but not unwinnable. We are favored post reserves with the additional removal and the full suite of Aegilus to dig for.

The nightmare mode matchups are the decks like Ruby Diamond Ardent. These decks are nigh unbeatable since they offer a quick clock combined with void based removal or things that get through spellshield like Diamond’s Favor.





Things I Would Change

One change I was going to make before the CCS and ended up not committing to was cutting the Sir Draxard out of the reserves in favor of a Chronodaemon. As it is a good reanimation target against the sockets deck and we are short a few cards for that matchup. Other than that I don’t think I would change anything else. I plan on exploring a base Ruby/Sapphire version to see if we can sure up the aggressive matchups.





In Conclusion

During our training sessions we were continuously impressed by the decks ability to both grind out a long game and provide some must answer sequences in the early game. These reasons combined with the fact that this deck is just a blast to play and is doing some genuinely powerful things earns it my seal of approval. I highly recommend you take this out for a spin on the ladder. As always thank you for reading and if I’ve peaked your interest make sure and check out Battle Shopper for all the singles you need to put this beast together.

Thanks for reading!

~Androod

@Androod27