No that's perfect, math guy over here. Just curious about your statistical method. Totally clear, thanks. :-D also, I think the land change helped.

Jesus. I personally throw crap in the deck and through playing if I feel I want to see it more or less, I adjust accordingly. I wish I was that mythodical but it's just not in my blood.

2 x Bone Splinters

4 x Gatecreeper Vine
2 x Evolutionary Leap
4 x Elvish Visionary
1 x Despoiler of Souls
3 x Gather the Pack

1 x Nissa, Vastwood Seer
1 x Liliana, Heretical Healer
2 x Fleshbag Marauder
2 x Graveblade Marauder

2 x Languish
1 x Erebos's Titan
4 x Bitter Revelation

2 x Outland Colossus
1 x Conclave Naturalist
2 x Gilt-Leaf Winnower
3 x Necromantic Summons

2 x Kothophed, Soul Hoarder

1 x Gaea's Revenge

4 x Golgari Guildgate
2 x Woodland Cemetery
6 x Forest
10 x Swamp


My take on the G/B Reanimator theme, with a minor sacrifice subtheme.

I would rather have the 2x Gilt-Leaf Winnower than 2 of the Necromantic Summons personally

Spencer I like your use of 4x bitter revelation. I believe it is a must for reanimator decks. The 3x necromantic summons did not make sense until I saw that you were running revelation. Ideally revelation can turn on spell mastery / put a body in your GY before turn 5 so that you can get a choice summons.

Not a fan of despoiler of souls though. I realize it has synergy with your sac effects but you already have 8 visionaries and gatecreepers. The big issue is that it can't block and your deck will be pretty slow on the offense.

You could also stand to use some more reanimation targets IMO. Outland collossus is pretty obvious. You could upgrade the 2/1 lady into the 5 drop 4/4 that does the same thing in order to further up your reanimation target count.
Priest of the blood rite is a good card but only a so so reanimation target, since the +2/+2 effect would go on the guy that drains you 2 per turn.

Great synergy between bitter revelation and necromantic summons. I believe I haven't seen that in other lists.

Gather the pack has sinergy with spell mastery effects too

The reason I'm running Reclamation Sage is to make Woodland Bellower viable. Bellower is a great card, but only if you have multiple green 2-3 drops to summon and make him versatile. Still, when he's normally summoning a Visionary maybe he's just not good enough. I could easily drop the bellower and the sage for an Outland Colossus and a Conclave Naturalist and the deck would run mostly the same.

With 3 Gather the Pack and 4 Bitter Revelation to dump whatever I choose in the yard I feel like Despoiler of Souls gets a lot more value, and seems like a pretty good way of putting on a clock. It can turn into a card draw engine combined with Evolutionary Leap, and it's a removal spell for BBB with bone splinters. I feel like it will be a great card here, and I'd at least want to keep a miser's one of for long games. I could see cutting a single Despoiler for a Colossus if it turns out I don't have enough reanimation targets to summon.

I do think you might be underestimating how easy it is to get my bombs/Despoilers into the yard. If I cast a single Gather the pack and a single Bitter Revelation that's already 9 cards I've looked at and had the potential to dump. I can also discard one if I flip Lili.

Edit: One reason for Despoiler that might not be readily apparent: I learned after building my Abzan deck that an Outland Colossus and a Gaea's Revenge on the board is by no means a won game. An opponent can cast something like a Whirler Rogue and chump for a few turns while they race me. Lack of trample is a major issue with this set's fatties. If I have the ability to cast multiple threatening spells per turn and/or start putting on a clock earlier, then things like Colossus/Gaea's Revenge can close out the game with ease.

BG is perennially a favorite color combination for me, the combination of ramp, removal and inevitability is just delicious. I will attempt to translate a real-world extended deck of mine here.

The Endless Waltz

One mana:
2x Bone Splinters

Two mana:
1x Evolutionary Leap
4x Gatecreeper Vine
1x Gather the Pack

Three mana:
3x Fleshbag Marauder
1x Liliana, Heretical Healer
1x Nissa's Pilgrimage
1x Nissa, Vastwood Seer
1x Reclamation Sage

Four mana:
4x Bitter Revelation
1x Erebos's Titan
2x Gravedigger
2x Languish
1x Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
1x Wild Instincts

Five mana:
1x Cruel Revival
2x Necromantic Summons
1x Priest of the Blood Rite

Six mana:
2x Kothophed, Soul Hoarder
1x Woodland Bellower

Seven mana:
2x Gaea's Revenge
1x Nissa's Revelation

EDIT: Lands:
9x Forest
4x Golgari Guildgate
9x Swamp
2x Woodland Cemetery


The original incarnation of this deck is obviously much better (to the tune of Eternal Witness and Putrefy and Damnation and a weird elf engine with Wirewood Herald and Symbiotic Elf powering up Nantuko Husk for the win). To capture the spirit of it though, I have focused more on ramp and inevitability than straight reanimation. The idea is that your board will recover from board wipes so well that you run your own. This deck is more of a big ramp/reanimator than the original (the original is small and quirky and efficient, like ramping a kicked Primal Growth with Wirewood Herald and then casting another Wirewood Herald with the two untapped mana). Anyway, enough about what I can't have. This deck is a little light on traditional removal, but it has enough sacrifice to put the hurt on any nontoken deck, and it can reanimate Fleshbag Marauder several times to clear even a stubborn board off. It has a variety of options in the mix and has silver bullets to a number of strategies tossed in (when your ramp spell can get rid of Rogue's Passage I'd call that a win).

As the metagame develops, the decklist will also develop. Less useful things will be removed, and more 4x/3x/2x cards will appear to smooth out the deck. I like that Woodland Bellower can pull out creature removal or artifact/enchantment removal with this build. Anyway... that's my take for now.

Actually no, it can't. Woodland Bellower only works on non-legendary, green creatures.

Reclamation Sage.

But if he thinks he can grab a Fleshbag, well.....

Personally I would increase it to four and remove Unholy Hunger for Gilt-Leaf Winnower and Nissa. Just to give more targets for Necromantic Summons and the onus of trying to destroy your creatures to your opponent, while you just play one big threat after the other, laughing of his removal bringing them back again.

Hmm, specifies green. Alright, my bad. I guess I got carried away by card value.

The two stipulations non-legendary and green take the card from potentially amazing, to almost garbage, lol.

Not at all, it loses some of its charm. But in my deck you gain an artifact removal, or an extra card or land; plus an extra blocker. All that for and 6/5 body. It sounds good to me, specially if you can reanimate it.

Like I said, 'almost.' Just imagine if it could tutor Nissa though, by comparison.

Btw, why would you use it to tutor a land?

Fair enough

Yeah, even knowing the limitations I would still run Woodland Bellower. It advances your board with a card which may carry card advantage of its own. Compared to Outland Colossus, if it dies and we bring it back even once it has gotten better value vs. just being a lump of meat.

It's a card that has the potential to become much better with every expansion we get, though. A card this powerful should always be on your mind, even if it's not that good right now. Just imagine if they include something like Leatherback Baloth at some point.

No doubt about it. As soon as I saw it I was thinking hell yes. Then I looked more carefully at the pool and I was very disappointed. Imagine if we had eternal witness, lol.