Seriously, red players, stop stealing my shit.

I guess that sort of went as planned. I sleeved up R/B/W Reanimator for the Tuesday tournament at Ancient Wonders, scoring 2 wins and 2 losses and placing 4th. I didn't expect to win or anything; I just wanted to try something different. My decklist was similar to the decklist I used a few months ago, with some minor alterations:

Main Deck:

3 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite

4 Griselbrand

1 Sun Titan

4 Lingering Souls

4 Faithless Looting

4 Liliana of the Veil

2 Doom Blade

2 Oblivion Ring

3 Day of Judgment

3 Timely Reinforcements

4 Unburial Rites

1 Elixir of Immortality

Land

7 Plains

4 Blackcleave Cliffs

4 Isolated Chapel

3 Dragonskull Summit

1 Mountain

4 Swamp

3 Evolving Wilds

I realize now that this list is just terrible for the following reasons: First, I hate Faithless Looting. Although it is generally a useful card in the deck, allowing you to put your fatties in the graveyard, it slowly leads to card disadvantage. Whenever you cast Faithless Looting, you are basically spending a card to draw two cards and discard two cards, which means your hand size will have shrunk by one. I don't like being in a situation where I have only 2 cards in hand and my opponent has 6, regardless of what I have in the graveyard.

Second, Liliana of the Veil is kind of bad in the metagame right now. There are too many Blade Splicers floating around making her second ability almost useless.

Third and most importantly, there is no dominant fatty in Standard at the moment. Yes, I can reanimate a Griselbrand or an Elesh on turn 4, but sometimes I've already taken too much damage to safely use Griselbrand's ability. Both creatures are just soft and die to spot removal, or to clone effects. I go through all this trouble to cheat Griselbrand into play only to watch him die to a Phantasmal Image.

Fourth, the inclusion of the Elixir of Immortality was pointless. I realize now that without the Shriekhorns, I'm not going to be in danger of running out of cards.

After I goth back from this tournament, I toyed around with the Green version of reanimator, utilzing Mulch and Tracker's Instincts. I think it generally displays the same weaknesses mentioned above. (note: Craterhoof Behemoth is a decent attempt to get an instant kill, but it requires you to commit a lot of mana dorks to the board, which I think makes the deck inconsistent).

Without further adieu, here are the games.

I lost the first round to Nathan Doyle running Goblins. I don't feel like I should have lost this match, so thats a little frustrating. I mean, I had three Timely Reinforcements and three Day of Judgments mainboard; I added additional copies in games 2 and 3.....so.....wtf. Anyway, I won game 1 by resolving a Sun Titan and thinning my deck of land with an Evolving Wilds. I lost game 2 when I reanimated a Griselbrand and had it stolen from me with Traitorous Blood. I probably should have included several copies of Apostle's Blessing in the sideboard to anticipate these types of plays. Anyway, after stealing my demon, Nathan hit me with it, gained seven life, then drew 14 cards and double Goblin Grenaded for the win. Lame. I hate being killed with my own shit. Game three was similarly disappointing and I lost the match, 1-2.

I received the bye in round 2.

In round 3 I played against G/W aggro. His Swords of War and Peace were useful, but he seemed to get somewhat mana flooded. Surprisingly, Liliana did most of the damage, destroying his hand and clearing the way for a reanimated Griselbrand. I won the match 2-1.

In round 4 I was paired against Steve Empey, running NayaPod. These games were incredibly lopsided and Steve just basically wiped the floor with me without resistance. I lost the match 0-2.

I suspected the deck was bad before I played it, but now I definitely know its bad. I just wanted to have some fun and play something different, and so I did. Now I can return to Wolf Run Ramp until it retires in the fall.

Thanks for reading.