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Pojo's Magic The Gathering
Mackerel's Pond

Hello and welcome!

This deck was designed by Desolation Angel, and is a Type 2 Reyanimator deck. For those of you not familiar with the Reyanimator engine, the basic strategy is to get Reya, Dawnbringer (an Invasion rare) into play, and use her to resurrect a creature from your graveyard at the start of each of your turns. Here are her stats;

Reya Dawnbringer 6WWW
Creature - Angel Legend
Flying
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may return target creature card from your graveyard to play.
4/6

Not bad, huh? Unfortunately, the 9 mana casting cost makes it almost impossible to play under normal circumstances. This is why the Reyanimator is built with cards which bring Reya into play from the graveyard, and also put creatures in there to be targeted by Reya's ability. (Life/Death and Buried Alive) Now that I've explained some of the ideas behind the strategy, here's the original decklist;

3 Crosis, the Purger
3 Dromar, the Banisher
1 Duskwalker
3 Phyrexian Delver
4 Reya Dawnbringer
4 Spiritmonger

4 Entomb
4 Buried Alive
4 Life/Death
4 Traumatize
2 Twilight's Call
4 Zombify

10 Island
10 Swamp

As you can see, Desolation Angel has built a deck with Reya, a means of getting her into play, and some big, bad creatures to pound his opponent with. One point to note is the total absence of white mana, because the only way Reya will come out is via the graveyard.

First, I'd like to sort out the creatures. Duskwalker should go, because you can't pay a kicker cost unless the spell comes into play from your hand. The dragons are also going to leave. They give out nice damage, but you can't really afford to pay for their ability. Finally, the Phyrexian Delver will get the chop. In a deck with this many fatties you'll be losing more life than you can afford with this guy.

In the place of all these, I recommend Fungal Shambler, Staunch Defenders and Iridescent Angel. Fungal Shambler should be the first to come out as he takes care of the 3D perfectly. (Drawing, damage, discard) Staunch Defenders are used to regain life again and again, and Iridescent Angel is a creature almost any deck will have problems removing from play. Spiritmonger stays because it is incredibly powerful, and can regenerate itself if your Reya is overworked.

The weak point of this deck is that it is a combo deck. If your opponent can shut down Reya, the burying of Reya, or the subsequent re-animation of Reya then the deck is completely ruined. Therefore, in the spells section I will include Black's answer to counter spells; Duress! Use Duress to pick off the counters from your enemy's hand before letting loose the combo. Also, Last Rites will go in as you can drop creatures in the graveyard and remove your opponent's key cards at the same time. You need a way of discarding cards in case all your Reya are drawn instead of being buried. Tolarian Winds also has this function.

Twilight's Call will have to go, as it helps your adversary more than you, and Traumatize really has no place in this deck with its 3UU cost. Innocent Blood works very well here, as your creature will be coming back from the grave. It also helps with enemy regenerators such as Spiritmonger. The main card drawing in this deck is the excellently versatile Fact or Fiction. Again, take the spells and dump the creatures in the graveyard.

For this version I've dropped the number of Reya to 2. This is chiefly because she is a Legend (only 1 in play at any 1 time) but also because there are 8 other cards with the primary purpose of getting Reya into the graveyard.

2 Reya Dawnbringer
2 Fungal Shambler
2 Staunch Defenders
2 Iridescent Angel
2 Spiritmonger

4 Duress
4 Entomb
3 Buried Alive
3 Fact or Fiction
3 Tolarian Winds
3 Life/Death
3 Zombify
3 Innocent Blood
3 Last Rites

12 Swamp
5 Island
4 Underground River

The land count looks pretty low, but the maximum casting cost you can pay for a spell in this deck is 4 mana. Drawing 3 lands in your first 10 cards from this deck will see you through, which the deck accomplishes well. Here's how the first few turns would look ideally;

1st turn
Swamp, Entomb (Reya into graveyard)

2nd turn
Swamp, Duress, Life/Death (Reya into play)

3rd turn
Island, Buried Alive (Fungal Shambler, Staunch Defenders, Iridescent Angel)
Attack with Reya

4th turn
Reyanimate any of the three above creatures
Underground River
Fact or Fiction

Well, there's my fix of your deck, Desolation Angel. It's very close to mono-black, so you can take full advantage of the approaching Black Torment cards. Hope it works well for you!

 

 

Pojo.com

Copyright 2001 Pojo.com



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