This is in response to the OP, I haven't read anything else on this thread, nor do I plan to. I'm gonna shoot it to you straight. You can't just half-ass reanimator in your cube and expect it to work. Go big or go home. Either provide the support or don't, but personally I think it's important for cubes to support it. Here are the cards that are absolutely critical for the strategy to succeed.
Reanimation Spells
Animate Dead
Dance of the Dead
Exhume
Necromancy
Reanimate
Unburial Rites
Life//Death (450+)
Enablers
Entomb
Buried Alive
Outlets
Rotting Rats
Targets
Griselbrand
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Myr Battlesphere
Obviously you need the reanimation spells for this strategy to work and I've listed the best ones above. You need Unburial Rites since it allows you to Entomb for a reanimation spell. Buried Alive is narrow but quite welcome as an Entomb mimic, albeit a significantly weaker one. Rotting Rats serves as a discard outlet that also disrupts your opponent, blocks, and can be Entombed for in case you draw your target. By playing Unburial Rites and Rotting Rats you take Entomb from broken to next level. It opens up the possibility of Entombing for your targets, your reanimation spell, and your outlet. It allows Entomb to serve any and every purpose that your deck needs to function smoothly. Lastly I consider Griselbrand, Elesh Norn, and Battlesphere to be the three pillars of the reanimation deck. You really don't need more than three targets in any given deck and the more of the above targets that you have in your deck the better.
I think reanimator works best in a control shell so I wouldn't recommend trying to build a combo reanimator deck, in other words, a deck that's sole purpose is to reanimate as quickly as possible. I also wouldn't recommend pairing your reanimating strategy with green. It's fine to play a reanimation spell or two in your green deck but only as an afterthought, and I still don't even think it's that great. I would rather play a control deck that reanimates rather than a midrange deck that doesn't quite know what it's trying to do. Oh, and since the entire strategy hinges on Entomb you need it above all else. Reanimator decks without Entomb are mostly trash.
Just wanted to pipe in real quick and say that over the last month this card has probably killed more people (or been the result of more wins) than almost any other card in my cube (and most certainly done as much or more work than any of the other green "fatties"). It is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than it looks on paper, as the amount of damage it produces is absurd.
Its really strange to me. What you're saying is so obvious, yet everyone is contorting themselves to rationalize why he isn't good enough. Meanwhile, other creatures that are clearly inferior to him get tortured justifications as to why they're must plays.
Play creature ramp: somberwald, rofellos, gaea's cradle, elves, etc. Cast Behemoth. Win game. Duh?
Hes fine to Natural Order too, if you have a few other creatures in play.
The fact that he isn't great for every single fatty cheat method isn't terribly relevant unless cards are suddenly bad for not fitting into every single deck now.
I totally agree with you. Craterhoof is unreal but people just refuse to test him.
I don't understand the math here. I count two, and it's somewhat disingenuous to say "untapped twice" anyway because you're sacrificing immediately after the second untap.
Your opponent untaps, no sac. Next turn they untap, one sac. Misguided Rage isn't a magic card so Stax hasn't impacted your opponent on that turn either. The turn after that they sac two permanents which is when it starts actually affecting them. The problem with Stax is that unlike Tangle Wire the card is actually symmetrical unless you build your deck to break it. And nobody has even brought up the worst part about Smokestack which is that it's awful when you are behind. With the quality of magic cards these days Smokestack just doesn't cut it. For 4 mana or less you can just play a ubiquitous card that wins the game on it's own and that doesn't require deck strain or setup.
I think it's pretty bad. To quote Greg Hatch: "You're opponent gets to untap THREE TIMES before Smokestack does anything." And I've gotta agree with that statement and tbh that's not where I want my cube cards to be, let alone a 4-mana artifact. Also the reason Tangle Wire is so much better is because it breaks it's own drawback every single turn by tapping itself whereas Smokestack can only be sacrificed once. On top of that cube is really about tempo nowadays rather than grinding people out with cards like this.
I'm not sure I agree with this. It's countermagic that protects your creatures from some removal, and it might be a decent combat trick but your guy has to be big enough for double strike to matter (which isn't always true in the land of boros 2/2s), or it's just damage to a player.
They're all decent, but most of my boros decks don't want to leave 2 mana open waiting for my opponent to try to remove their creatures, so the indestructible part leaves a lot to be desired.
I'm not faulting anyone who chooses to play it, but I don't consider it a home run at all.
I actually agree with this and I think Boros Charm is being over valued. We have been testing it and it's been fine but not great. The problem is that it actually only has one mode most of the time which is the indestructible mode. The double strike will almost never be relevant since it's usually going to be better to 4 them. So when it's in your opener it's really annoying because burning their face is just terrible early on, the double strike isn't a mode, and you have to keep your mana open for the only mode that's really usable. For the most part I have wanted a burn spell over it so I can actually kill their creatures rather than having them play a Rofellos/Bob/etc. and then staring at Boros Charm feeling like an idiot. It's good wrath protection but outside of that I haven't been overly impressed by the card. It's not a bad card but it's not the god card people are claiming it to be.
Just looking at those lists above makes it even more clear that Putrefy hits many more priority targets than Decay. Lots of the cards on that Decay list don't even count (Sarcomancy) and the Putrefy list is pretty impressive. Don't get me wrong, I love cheap spells but the arguments for Decay aren't convincing for powered cubes and are even weaker when talking about unpowered cubes.
I doubt anyone will believe me, but Borderland Ranger and Civic Wayfinder have been awesome for us. They look innocuous but I think they play a critical role in green decks. The CA and fixing rocks and they are useful with plenty of cards. It's always nice to have some random chump standing around ready to hold a sword, or get sacrificed to a Disciple of Bolas, trade with Savannah Lions, or even get Restoration Angel'd. I simply love them and encourage everyone to play both.
I actually like Primal Hunter the most. The color intensity hasn't mattered too often and he steals the most games. I like Wildspeaker the least and Relentless is always solid. The deathtouch wolves are just so annoying.
The white decks we play rarely want a 5 mana creature unless they are 3 color Bant.
Sun Titan really only sees play in Bant decks around here. I've never seen him paired with red or black. That may sound odd but we have a player who drafts Sun Titan very highly and (surprise surprise) almost always finds a way to draft Bant. He loves the archetype so much that we call value green and blue cards "Bennett cards".
1. Sun Titan has been much better for us than Reveillark. It's better at attacking, defending, is harder to kill, and the constant recursion is much harder to deal with than the one time recursion of Reveillark which is also more work to set up since it requires two cards.
2. Baneslayer is fine but I wouldn't blame anyone for cutting her. The white decks we play rarely want a 5 mana creature unless they are 3 color Bant.
Reanimation Spells
Animate Dead
Dance of the Dead
Exhume
Necromancy
Reanimate
Unburial Rites
Life//Death (450+)
Enablers
Entomb
Buried Alive
Outlets
Rotting Rats
Targets
Griselbrand
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Myr Battlesphere
Obviously you need the reanimation spells for this strategy to work and I've listed the best ones above. You need Unburial Rites since it allows you to Entomb for a reanimation spell. Buried Alive is narrow but quite welcome as an Entomb mimic, albeit a significantly weaker one. Rotting Rats serves as a discard outlet that also disrupts your opponent, blocks, and can be Entombed for in case you draw your target. By playing Unburial Rites and Rotting Rats you take Entomb from broken to next level. It opens up the possibility of Entombing for your targets, your reanimation spell, and your outlet. It allows Entomb to serve any and every purpose that your deck needs to function smoothly. Lastly I consider Griselbrand, Elesh Norn, and Battlesphere to be the three pillars of the reanimation deck. You really don't need more than three targets in any given deck and the more of the above targets that you have in your deck the better.
I think reanimator works best in a control shell so I wouldn't recommend trying to build a combo reanimator deck, in other words, a deck that's sole purpose is to reanimate as quickly as possible. I also wouldn't recommend pairing your reanimating strategy with green. It's fine to play a reanimation spell or two in your green deck but only as an afterthought, and I still don't even think it's that great. I would rather play a control deck that reanimates rather than a midrange deck that doesn't quite know what it's trying to do. Oh, and since the entire strategy hinges on Entomb you need it above all else. Reanimator decks without Entomb are mostly trash.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
I totally agree with you. Craterhoof is unreal but people just refuse to test him.
Your opponent untaps, no sac. Next turn they untap, one sac. Misguided Rage isn't a magic card so Stax hasn't impacted your opponent on that turn either. The turn after that they sac two permanents which is when it starts actually affecting them. The problem with Stax is that unlike Tangle Wire the card is actually symmetrical unless you build your deck to break it. And nobody has even brought up the worst part about Smokestack which is that it's awful when you are behind. With the quality of magic cards these days Smokestack just doesn't cut it. For 4 mana or less you can just play a ubiquitous card that wins the game on it's own and that doesn't require deck strain or setup.
I actually agree with this and I think Boros Charm is being over valued. We have been testing it and it's been fine but not great. The problem is that it actually only has one mode most of the time which is the indestructible mode. The double strike will almost never be relevant since it's usually going to be better to 4 them. So when it's in your opener it's really annoying because burning their face is just terrible early on, the double strike isn't a mode, and you have to keep your mana open for the only mode that's really usable. For the most part I have wanted a burn spell over it so I can actually kill their creatures rather than having them play a Rofellos/Bob/etc. and then staring at Boros Charm feeling like an idiot. It's good wrath protection but outside of that I haven't been overly impressed by the card. It's not a bad card but it's not the god card people are claiming it to be.
Just looking at those lists above makes it even more clear that Putrefy hits many more priority targets than Decay. Lots of the cards on that Decay list don't even count (Sarcomancy) and the Putrefy list is pretty impressive. Don't get me wrong, I love cheap spells but the arguments for Decay aren't convincing for powered cubes and are even weaker when talking about unpowered cubes.
Because like I said:
Sun Titan really only sees play in Bant decks around here. I've never seen him paired with red or black. That may sound odd but we have a player who drafts Sun Titan very highly and (surprise surprise) almost always finds a way to draft Bant. He loves the archetype so much that we call value green and blue cards "Bennett cards".
1. Sun Titan has been much better for us than Reveillark. It's better at attacking, defending, is harder to kill, and the constant recursion is much harder to deal with than the one time recursion of Reveillark which is also more work to set up since it requires two cards.
2. Baneslayer is fine but I wouldn't blame anyone for cutting her. The white decks we play rarely want a 5 mana creature unless they are 3 color Bant.