THE LIST

[Zach]

Alright, it's happening again. Zach is playing standard... Dun dun dun. I played this list at a standard fnm yesterday at mox mania, with John, who was my one loss in my 3-1 record.

CREATURES
4 Lotleth Troll
4 Vampire Nighthawk
3 Thragtusk
2 Obzedat, Ghost Council
2 Armada Wurm
1 Angel of Serenity
1 Griselbrand

SPELLS
4 Grisly Salvage
3 Farseek
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Ultimate Price
3 Lingering Souls (this was an addition after my loss to rdw)
4 Unburial Rights

LANDS
4 Overgrown Tomb
3 Temple Garden
2 Godless Shrine
4 Woodland Cemetary
1 Sunpetal Grove
5 Swamp
4 Forest
1 Plains

SIDEBOARD
3 Curse of Death's Hold
3 Duress
2 Pithing Needle
3 Rhox Faithmender
2 Sever the Bloodline
2 Merciless Eviction

What Id like to discuss is the lingering souls slot. I feel like that card is the right choice against the super aggressive, with it's flashback, and synergy with grisly salvage. Thoughts?

By the way, get Obzedat NOW. Card is retarded good

[Zach]

^^BUMP^^ Would really like your guys' opinions on that 3-drop slot. I don't like Healer because of the NEED for turn 3 white. But I haven''t given it a whole lot of testing...

[Travis Lannoye]

Now that Godless Shrine is available, wouldn't that make it easier to cast all your spells?

[Zach]

Yes, but I'm kind of doing a balancing act between too much white and too little green. I'm just afraid of having a super clunky mana base, and ending up casting healer for a net gain of one after having to put a shock into play untapped.

The healer would be in there specifically to get me safely to turn five to slam a thragtusk against faster decks (rdw and it's many variants or zoo), and it really needs to be hitting play on turn three (or at least this is how it has been feeling in testing) to really have a substantial enough impact. And that net gain of one really hurts when they just turn around and spear it.

[Evan]

Basically, against most R decks, Loxodon Smiter is better then Centaur Healer (because of the extra toughness). Can't be searing speared and being able to block 3 P dudes is huge.


Cheers

[John Galli]

Personally I like healer a lot better than nighthawk because you actually gain the life when it comes into play so even if your opponent uses a spear on it (putting them down a card) at least you bought some time. That said, I agree with Evan that Loxodon Smiter is a hard card to deal with.

Most reanimator lists I've seen run cathedral sanctifier out of the board because he's able to be reanimated with angel of glory's rise, but obviously if you're not running the angel it makes the card less valuable. I think if you're going to run it similar to what you have here, the first move I'd make is going with x4 thragtusk main instead of x3, running both centaur healer and faithmender (either in the board or in the main).

I don't think you need x2 armada wurm + x1 grislebrand. I'd cut 1 of those 3 cards. I like having a bigger top end, but not all 3 of those. I also like Angel of Serenity much better than both of those options because it pretty much wins you the game against the majority of aggro decks when it comes into play (my deck for instance has no outs other than to steal it). Armada Wurm is nice too, Griselbrand isn't that great because a lot of decks you can just race around it or you're at too low a life to use him. He's a better card out of the board against control.

I like 4-ofs a lot better than I like 3 ofs, unless there's some specific reason for it. For instance, I'd like x4 Thragtusk and x4 Lingering Souls here because those are cards you always want to see and want to see consistently.

As far as reanimator on the whole, I have a few thoughts about it-

Angel of Glory's Rise Lists - I like these for their value, but sometimes the Angel and team are not big enough to win the game the turn they happen.

Angel of Glory's Rise COMBO lists - I think I like these the best even though graveyard hate hits them a lot harder.

Lotleth Troll lists - This is like yours, I like the aggressiveness of these builds and the fact that your deck can win without the graveyard strategy, not to mention there are many value plays. I don't like however that the deck can take a while to play out and doesn't have as strong a late game or a quick-combo to win. This can cause you to stumble in some aggro matches and lose the long-game to control or attrition. Shoring up this problem I think can only be solved by going combo or having an aggressive anti-aggro game 1 plan followed by a very dedicated board with maybe 1/3 anti-aggro life-gain and 2/3 anti-control (planeswalkers, obzedats, specific metagame trumps)

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If I were building based off your list, here's what I would run-

CREATURES (16)
4 Lotleth Troll
4 Centaur Healer
4 Thragtusk
2 Armada Wurm
2 Angel of Serenity

SPELLS (19)
4 Grisly Salvage
4 Farseek
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Ultimate Price
4 Lingering Souls
4 Unburial Rights

LANDS (24)
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Temple Garden
2 Godless Shrine
4 Woodland Cemetery
2 Sunpetal Grove
1 Swamp
6 Forest
1 Plains

SIDEBOARD
4 Appetite for Brains (against planeswalkers)
3 Rhox Faithmender (to supplement the healers and thragtusk)
3 Beckon Apparition (against any graveyard strategies/competing lingering souls)
2 Ray of Revelation (against Detention sphere and o-ring)
2 Obzedat, Ghost Council
1 Merciless Eviction (I don't mind the misers here because it's for the long game that stalls out)

A few more considerations would be extra spot removal like tragic slip, death wind, an additional abrupt decay or ultimate price, cathedral sanctifier if aggro is still too fast, or a few Sorin.

[Zach]

I was running smiters at one point, but he was continually just a blech body to put in front of a ton of dudes, when hell rider just has potential to finish you off after he hits play. So I like the CIP life gain to offset hell rider the following turn.

[John Galli]

Updated my post with a revised list possiblity

[Zach]

So you don't think Obzedat should be in the main? Every time I've played it in testing I've just felt dirty bad horrible. Dude is so strong... But thanks for the input. For your list I'd have to pick up another tusk, and a couple lands, but that's not a problem. I'll sleeve this up sometime.

[John Galli]

I'm not 100% sure or anything, as I don't play that deck that much. I think, like with anything, you'll need to put the playtesting time in first and I'd proxy / play online before I'd buy any cards.

I think first and foremost thragtusk is still one of the best cards in standard and it's tough for both aggro and control so it should be a x4 of if you're playing this style of list (non-combo). Obzedat is a great card, but it's not what you want against aggro, so I'd rather just have it in the control matchups if there are other choices.

The aggressive version of this deck that you're playing I think will really require a lot of fine tuning. You'll probably want to try a lot of 2-ofs and singletons to see which cards work better in most places.

I think you might actually want more Angel of Serenity's, maybe x3 or x4 of main deck. It does a lot more than Armada Wurm most of the time; for instance-

- It can remove planeswalkers or stack creatures from your graveyard under it against a possibly impeding supreme verdict / removal spell

- It can pretty much clear the board against most aggro decks

- the worst an aggro deck can do against it is steal it, which they could do against armada wurm with the only bigger drawback being that armada wurm leaves you with another blocker. Plus, there's a lot of aggro decks running very light on steal effects. While my RDW build runs Conscripts, a lot of the recent top tier ones don't run any kind of threaten effect or only x1 out of the board. Even if they do have it, you won't always lose to that play

Your biggest money card in the deck is easily lotleth troll. I think that's the reason you build it this way as opposed to going combo. Again, I like the combo version better, but this version does have an actual deck that can play out aside from just trying to go all-in on unburial rites. If you get a slaughter games played against you, it's not that back-breaking (especially since most players would call unburial rites). Same goes for graveyard hate.

For lotleth troll to work properly, you're going to have to keep a close eye on your creature count. So something like-

4 Lotleth Troll
4 Centaur Healer
4 Thragtusk
4 Angel of Serenity (I'm actually thinking more and more as I write this that this is the proper number as you can pitch to troll or faithless looting early)
1-2x of another creature maybe

The other thing you'll have to test is whether Lingering Souls is worth it or not. You're playing it hear mostly as a value proposition; to buy you time and to combat mass sweepers (which don't bother you much anyways). People are playing some token hate, against RDW there's thundermaw, electrickery, flames of the firebrand, against jund there is sever the bloodline and mizzium mortars, and some other decks have illness in the ranks if it catches on. THEN you have the issue of the decks playing lingering souls + intangible virtue (sometimes strictly out of the board to trump the other souls deck). That all said, it's still a powerful card and may be the right choice. You'll have to experiment with what other 4 cards could be there. That could mean more dudes to pitch to troll or straight up play, or a few more spot removal spells. You could play say Restoration Angel or Wolfir Silverheart here, you could play Wolfir Avenger, you could play a lot of stuff I'm just throwing out some randoms (could even be more big dudes).

[Zach]

Here's the list I'm currently testing...

4 Lotleth Troll
4 Centaur Healer
3 Thragtusk
2 Obzedat
1 Armada Wurm
3 Angel of Serenity

4 Grisly Salvage
3 Farseek
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Ultimate Price
4 Lingering Souls
4 Unburial Rights

4 Overgrown Tomb
3 Temple Garden
2 Godless Shrine
2 Sunpetal Grove
4 Woodland Cemetary
4 Swamp
4 Forest
1 Plains

Sideboard
3 Beckon Apparition
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Ray of Revelation
3 Rhox Faithmender
3 Illness in the Ranks
3 Duress

I'm actually really liking souls against control, it's a really easy way to play around sweepers. I'm running a third abrupt decay against detention spheres in the u/w/x control matchups, and also for the hee proof enchantments deck. I still REALLY like the extra game 1 gas against control with Obzedat, so I'm keeping him in the main for now, since the healers and souls are slowing down the aggro matchups a lot. Angel is also great for reanimation against them as well, and I've gotten to turn seven safely enough to hardcast against other aggro matchups as well.

[Travis Lannoye]

I agree with John that the inclusion of LoLTroll requires a much bigger creature count. You want to be able to feed it whenever you can, because it's a tough thing to get rid of in today's environment. Assuming you keep up regen mana, the only two cards I can think of that would remove it are Sever the Bloodline and Terminus. Adding more creatures also makes your Angel of Serenitys better.

[Zach]

Can any of you think of a good enough creature to put in the 4cc spot? Short of adding red for huntmaster, or hell rider? The only thing that I can think of off the top of my head is desecration demon... And, well... Ew.

[John Galli]

Restoration Angel maybe, but why do you "need" something in that slot?

[Zach]

Idk, I just feel like having a 4cc body wouldn't be a bad idea. And resto angel would be cool to abuse with angel of serenity, thragtusk and armada Wurm. Another thing to test, I Spose, as opposed to running lingering souls, and then it's another guy I can pitch to loltroll