Green/White/Black Reanimator Deck with Grisly Salvage and Angel of Serenity

September 26, 2012 | Posted by Dee

With the new cards, Grisly Salvage and Angel of Serenity, from Return to Ravnica, it looks like Wizards is giving us the tools to build a decent reanimator deck.

Grisly Salvage is good because it fills up your graveyard with reanimation targets and Unburial Rites. Also, it helps you find land to cast the expensive creatures if you can’t find an Unburial Rites. If you already have enough land and you need to cast a certain creature, the card helps you find it.

Angel of Serenity is an awesome creature to reanimate with Unburial Rites. She does so much. She can clear your opponent’s board by exiling three creatures.

If your opponent has an answer for the Angel, you still slow him down a lot because his three creatures go back to his hand instead of the battlefield. He has to spend mana again to recast them.

Sometimes he won’t have an answer for her. That makes it very hard for him to win because he just lost three creatures and now he has to deal with a 5/6 flyer.

If your opponent doesn’t have any creatures on the board, you can still get a lot of value from her. You can exile creatures in your graveyard like Thragtusk, Armada Wurm, or even another Angel of Serenity. Then, if she leaves the battlefield, those creatures go to your hand.

You can also combine both abilities as long as you don’t target more than three creatures. For example, you can exile two of your opponent’s creatures on the battlefield and exile one creature in your graveyard.

Here’s a decklist I’ve been working on. It’s fun to play and I think it’s a strong deck for FNM (Friday Night Magic).

GWB Reanimator
Creatures (20)
Spells (16)
Lands (24)
Sideboard (15)

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Creatures

You want to be able to cast Angel of Serenity because you won’t always see an Unburial Rites. Therefore, I’m playing 4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim and 2 Deathrite Shaman for mana acceleration.

Both cards can produce white mana to help with Angel of Serenity’s triple white casting cost.

With the mana ramp from these creatures and the lands you get from Mulch, it’s not uncommon to just cast Armada Wurm and Angel of Serenity and win without Unburial Rites.

Deathrite Shaman can be inconsistent with producing mana because he needs a land in a graveyard. I tried to make him more consistent by adding 2 Evolving Wilds. Also, Grisly Salvage often puts lands in your graveyard.

Deathrite Shaman may not be able to produce mana right away early in the game, but you can still use him to gain life by exiling creatures in graveyards.

You can exile creatures that go to your graveyard from Mulch and Grisly Salvage that you don’t want to reanimate. You can also exile creatures in your opponent’s graveyard that have died.

This ability is great in the mirror match to keep them from using Unburial Rites. Against aggro decks, you gain life from the ability, which buys you time until you reanimate or cast a big creature.

Also, Deathrite Shaman can exile instants and sorceries. This ability is effective against Snapcaster Mage and flashback spells like Think Twice and Desperate Ravings.

I’m playing Centaur Healer because I think this deck can be vulnerable to fast aggressive strategies. The green/white creature gives you a good amount of life for three mana.

Also, it has a 3/3 body for blocking. It’s a good blocker against creatures like Gravecrawler, Precinct Captain, and Ash Zealot.

I included two copies of Fiend Hunter because it can be a lifesaver against decks with few removal spells. Sometimes you can reanimate it for a lot of value.

In one game, I targeted Fiend Hunter twice with Unburial Rites. The first time was to buy some time until I could drop an Armada Wurm. The second time was to remove a blocker so that I could hit my opponent with Armada Wurm.

I also reanimated Fiend Hunter in a different game to get rid of Bloodline Keeper, a creature that can dominate the board by himself.

Thragtusk is one of the best cards in post Return to Ravnica Standard. It’s a catch-all answer for many things.

It can buy you a lot of time versus aggro by giving you five life and multiple blockers. It pressures control decks with its five power. If it leaves the battlefield, you can continue attacking with a 3/3 Beast token.

Along with Angel of Serenity, Armada Wurm is the other expensive creature that can dominate the board right away. This card gives you a total of ten power and ten toughness for only six mana.

The two 5/5 bodies are great at blocking ground creatures. Also, they have trample so you can race effectively even if your opponent has chump blockers.

Spells

Along with Grisly Salvage, Mulch gives you another card that can fill the graveyard with Angels, Wurms, and Unburial Rites. The lands you reveal from Mulch go to your hand so the card helps you have enough mana to cast the expensive creatures. Also, it helps fix your mana.

I went with Oblivion Ring as the removal spell because it deals with everything from creatures and planeswalkers to enchantments and artifacts. Planeswalkers in particular can be a problem because the deck is not an aggro deck. It doesn’t have a lot of cheap aggro creatures to attack planeswalkers to destroy them.

In a reanimator deck, Unburial Rites is one of the most important cards. It allows you to get a powerful threat like Angel of Serenity on the battlefield as early as turn three. Also, you can cast the card twice because it has flashback. Flashback can give you a ton of value because you can reanimate two big creatures with just one spell.

Filed Under Standard 

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3 Responses to “Green/White/Black Reanimator Deck with Grisly Salvage and Angel of Serenity”

  1. Carlos on September 27th, 2012 9:56 am

    Nice decklist, what do you think about “LOTLETH TROLL” in this deck?

  2. Dee on September 27th, 2012 7:22 pm

    I don’t know how good Lotleth Troll is in a reanimator deck because I haven’t tested it. If I was to play it, I would want to change the deck a lot and add more ways to find Unburial Rites.

    Lotleth Troll’s discard ability is not very good if you don’t find Unburial Rites. I would add cards like Faithless Looting or Thought Scour but the mana base will suffer because you’re adding another color.

  3. E on October 12th, 2012 10:26 am

    You could include the lotleth troll and add ghoulchanter’s call. Just in case you don’t get the unburial rights, you’d now have a way of bring back cards to your hand (not as good as to the field but for significantly less). This gives a lot of potential for just straight sacking to lotleth and pumping him back up. Although it would be muuuch more efficient in gb zombies, I feel like it has potential to be thrown in here if you wanted to include the troll





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