Topic: Feedback: Azban Reanimator

Hello everyone,
        I made a reanimator deck and was wondering how it could be better.

Creatures:
2x fleeceman lion
3x loxodon smiter
2x mother of runes
2x elvish piper
3x sylvan caryatid
3x lotleth troll
2x brimaz, king of oreskos
1x iona, shield of emeria
1x vorinclex, voice of hunger
1x sheoldred, whispering one
1x jin-gataxias, core augur
2x sphinx of the steel wind

Instants:
3x undying evil
3x dromoka's command

Sorceries:
3x buried alive
3x exhume

Enchantments:
3x spirit mantle

Planeswalkers:
1x Sorin, solemn visitor
1x Ajani, mentor of heroes

Lands:
2x canopy vista
2x isolated chapel
2x sunpetal grove
5x forest
5x swamp
5x plains

I don't have a sideboard at the moment.
I could probably use some swords to plowshares or path to exiles but I don't have any at the moment.

Last edited by Iws93 (2016-03-03 05:41:58)

Re: Feedback: Azban Reanimator

Your mana base is not set up to support all 4 colors you have in your deck.
You can either address the mana issue and add in some mana fixing options as well as some land that produces blue mana. Or you can remove blue from your deck all together (which would be my personal choice).
Additionally you might want to consider adding in some Beastcaller Savant either way. Also your deck isn't very consistent. You have a bunch of really good cards but they don't neccessarily work with one another and you only have one or two of most of them. Figure out what you want your deck to do and add more of those cards and take out ones that don't do that.

That should get you started then we can go from there.

Re: Feedback: Azban Reanimator

That's true, I've never cast any of the blue cards without using exhume or elvish piper. I use lotleth troll to discard the big creatures then exhume them when I have the chance. I know I could part with undying evil for some removal or collected company, get rid of jin-gataxius and add a brimaz or fleecemane. What would your suggestion be for what to take out and what else to add in. I pretty much ran the deck around having a solid defense while i got all the cards necessary to exhume the bigger creatures.

Re: Feedback: Azban Reanimator

That's a good use of Lotleth Troll. I have a black green EDH deck with Meren as my Commander and have done that same thing before.
Her ability to bring a creature back from the grave is insanely awesome.
I would say go ahead and cut your Undying Evil, Jin-Gataxius, and the Sphinx. Replace with another Iona, Shield of Emeria and another Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger, and 1 more Sheoldred, Whispering One.
To make up the rest of the space either do as you suggested and add in more Brimaz and/or Fleecemane, or some kind of removal. Ruinous Path comes to mind first because it's in standard and it's low CMC. Then there's one of my favorite cards In Garruk's Wake but thats 9 frickin mana so....


I'm gonna copy paste your deck and edit it the way I would run it and then you can look at that and modify yours to fit with what you want it to do and the cards you have or are willing to purchase.

Re: Feedback: Azban Reanimator

This deck needs more Griselbrand.

Profile  Tradelist

Re: Feedback: Azban Reanimator

Check this out.

https://deckbox.org/sets/1349339

let me know how you feel about the changes I made.

Re: Feedback: Azban Reanimator

Kammikaze wrote:

This deck needs more Griselbrand.

Not a horrible idea but already plenty of big creatures that do the reanimation part.

Re: Feedback: Azban Reanimator

I guarantee you Griselbrand is a better reanimator target than any other except for Iona against certain decks.

Profile  Tradelist

Re: Feedback: Azban Reanimator

My opinions:
1) The deck has a bunch of cards that don't fit the reanimator theme: Fleecemane Lion, Loxodon Smiter, Sylvan Caryatid, Brimaz, even (to a lesser extent) Vorinclex. Mom is probably fine. Elvish Piper always seems too slow to me. Lotleth Troll certainly works, but needs at least 1 fatty in your hand, whereas Entomb and Buried Alive don't.
2) Reanimator really needs to be all-in. Cut the non-creatures that don't help you get there: Undying Evil, Dromoka's Command, Sorin, Ajani, Spirit Mantle.
3) Add more reanimation and reanimation enablers: Entomb, Reanimate, Cabal Therapy (targeting yourself) a 4th Exhume, a 4th Buried Alive, maybe Dark Rituals.
4) Griselbrand is the best, Sphinx otSW is great, Jin-Gitaxias is great, Iona is great. Sheoldred certainly fits the theme.

Profile  Tradelist

Re: Feedback: Azban Reanimator

I could see swapping out Griselbrand for Vorinclex but I disagree with Jin-Gitazias and Sphinx simply because of adding a 4th color mana. I mean I guess you can just know that the only way they will ever be cast is with the reanimation effect but I would rather be able to cast everything in my deck based off the land I have. JS.

Re: Feedback: Azban Reanimator

You don't need to add a 4th color. In fact, my suggestion would be to run mono-B, maybe W/B if OP really want's to keep Mom. It's a reanimator deck, if you're not reanimating stuff you're going to lose. You're never going to expect to hard cast any of these big fatties.

Edit: The main reason that Griselbrand is so good in reanimator decks is that you can use the draw 7 ability in response to removal, which is the main weakness of this archetype.

Last edited by Kammikaze (2016-03-03 22:39:49)

Profile  Tradelist

Re: Feedback: Azban Reanimator

Yeah I could cut the other instants and sorceries and add an exhume and buried alive, i dont have the budget to buy the playset of entombs and cabal therapy i could get a grisel instead of vorinclex. Im not really sure what creatures i should add to replace brimaz, sylvan, loxodon and fleecemane though. The only reason they are there are for mana ramp and quick defense against creature heavy decks. Spirit mantle was mainly for brimaz. And undying evil was just filler but after thinking about it having dromokas command kind of makes it redundant if the creatures im trying to save already have a counter on it. So anyways which creatures would fit this deck better?