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Back in February, there was a Grand Prix in Quebec City, a week after the Pro Tour in Montreal. Of course, I’m not good enough to make the Pro Tour (at this stage), but I do enjoy going to Grands Prix* when I have the chance. So my friend Clayton and I did the 8-hour drive (each way!) – more like, he did the driving, and I kept him awake and somewhat conscious. We both had homebrew decks, him with Monogreen Control, and I with what he insisted I call Boros Resurrector (since it relied on spending White mana to return creatures to the battlefield – you’ll see in a moment). Neither of us fared *well* but we did ok given that:

1. These were homebrews. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it does mean that it might not be as powerful as known decks. Clayton and I like to brew, but we tend to put a lower emphasis on “pwning n00bz”. That being said, I wanted something that had a vaguely reasonable chance, so I went with something based on a known quantity.

2. They were untuned. Neither of us were actually familiar with the metagame, especially not the sudden appearance of Burning-Tree Emissary-fuelled decks (remember, Gatecrash had just been released about two weeks earlier), and any ‘testing’ we did was basically goldfishing.

3. Neither Clayton or I are ‘good players’. We haven’t a thousand high-level matches under our belts and know how to play against various deck types on ‘autopilot’, even with new brews. That being said, I showed the deck to Paulo Vitor Damo Da Rosa and asked his opinion on it – and he had no idea what to make of it, good, bad, or otherwise.

4. We needed decks we could feasibly build. Neither of us could afford to spend $200 on shocklands, for example, so we’d resigned ourselves to single- and two-coloured decks.

So, without further adieu, here is my decklist:

BOROS RESURRECTOR
MANA
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Clifftop Retreat
1 Shimmering Grotto
8 Mountain
3 Plains
3 Ghost Quarter
4 Chromatic Lantern

CONTROL
2 Oblivion Ring
4 Pillar of Flame
4 Searing Spear

HAND FILTERING
4 Faithless Looting
3 Dangerous Wager
2 Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded

RECURSION
4 Unburial Rites
3 Defy Death
3 Griselbrand
2 Angel of Serenity
1 Luminate Primordial
1 Gisela, Blade of Goldnight

SIDEBOARD
1 Thundermaw Hellkite
1 Bruna, Light of Alabaster
3 Paraselene
3 Nevermore
3 Gilded Lotus
2 Pacifism
2 Oblivion Ring

Here was my thought process when it came to designing the deck. I’d already decided I wanted a reanimator deck of some description – I like cheating fatties into play. The problem – to me anyways – was that every deck ‘insisted’ on being three colours or more, so I looked to see if it was feasible to put together something that could run on less. I suppose in theory I could have gone monoblack but that would have been awkward, needing one card to put cards into my hand, a second to put it from my hand into the graveyard, and a third to reanimate. However, I realized that Defy Death gave me a second way to put a creature onto the battlefield, and Unburial Rites has a white Flashback cost. Faithless Looting was already being used a lot to get cards into the graveyard, so I put two and two together and tried putting together something that was strictly red/white. Keep in mind, this was completely untested until the Grand Prix started.

The original outline called for four Unburial Rites and four Defy Death. That way I’d have a good chance of getting at least one by turn 4 – and a 65% chance of having one in my opening grip. Eight creatures to bring to the battlefield and about 8 slots for hand-filtering – Faithless Looting and similar cards – seemed appropriate, and another 8 slots on removal. That would leave me about 28 slots remaining to toy with, 24 which would be land and the remaining four would be Chromatic Lantern.

I found though that any hand-filtering cards I wanted only drew a couple cards, and so I would need more than ‘just’ eight. I also felt that 8 cards to handle the battlefield wouldn’t be enough – I wanted the option of burning out my opponent as a backup in case the first option of reanimating fat creatures just wasn’t doable, but then there was the problem of cards like Boros Reckoner, or Thragtusk. I’d need to be able to handle them as well, so removal went up to 10, and hand filtering went to 9.

Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded has been a heavily-derided card, but in a deck like this, he does a lot. First of all, you have cards that *want* to be in the graveyard – your fatties and Unburial Rites. Second, you have cards you don’t mind being in the graveyard – Unburial Rites fits here as well, and Faithless Looting is fine if it ends up there. Third, you have cards that you don’t care if they get pitched – excess lands, additional copies of Tibalt, copies 2-4 of Chromatic Lantern (you only ‘need’ one, a second is good, numbers 3-4 aren’t useful). As a general rule, it’s really only your removal slots that you want to hold. And to be fair, Tibalt was really good, to the point where after the event I was commenting I’d want a third in the main, possibly in lieu of the third Defy Death.

Faithless Looting was obvious, and Dangerous Wager was fighting with Wild Guess for space. The plan was that Wager would go in the main and Wild Guess in the sideboard against blue decks, since the discard was part of the cost and thus if you had something you wanted to get into the GY, you couldn’t be stopped. Wager got into the main because I figured it would be a fine play if you had a fatty and Rites in hand, and you could also do it in response to other things – if Sin Collector had existed then, Wager would have made for a good response.

The selection of targets is a bit odd, admittedly. Griselbrand was still in my head as the “best fatty of choice”, even though I found out soon after that people had mostly stopped using him, so I went with 3 in order to have a good chance of getting him but not to worry about Legend-ruling him so much. Angel of Serenity was Angel of Serenity, and Luminate Primordial was sort of a third Angel, to exile problem creatures. Gisela was a fatty that I could feasibly hardcast if things went bad. She could win the game by herself in two swings and turned all my burn spells into “broken” – and my opponents’ into “lame” (seriously, 1R for a 1-damage Instant is kinda bad.. poor Searing Spear!).

As for the sideboard: Thundermaw Hellkite was there to be an extra castable body and to handle Lingering Souls. Bruna and Paraselene were there largely due to expecting to see Bant Auras. Nevermore was a catch-all answer once I had an idea what they were playing – in case something I would need to answer came up. Pacifism and Oblivion Ring were to shut down opposing creatures – Thragtusk doesn’t like Pacifism, Boros Reckoner doesn’t like it or Oblivion Ring, for example. Gilded Lotus was a hedge against the expected Tormod’s Crypts, Purify the Graves, and other graveyard hate – turn 3 Chromatic Lantern, turn 4 Gilded Lotus, turn 5 hardcast fatty and still having mana up to fight off the opposition. 

So far I’ve decided that this deck needs at least a third Tibalt and an additional fatty to reanimate – and the sideboard is in major need of tuning. That being said, I’m pretty proud of how I fared all things considered, and I think I had a good starting point.

Opinions? Go nuts!