Izoni's Big Graveyard Bash

November may be upon us but that doesn't mean we can't get spooky with it. Izoni is here to show us how to rock the reanimating cauldron in this janky, all-in Golgari Reanimator deck. There are better, more midrange strategies you could possibly be running but this right here is all about bringing back the big boys from the graveyard!

This deck revolved less around the commander and more around the reanimation strategy. We have ways to discard and mill our library to ge our enormous payoffs into the graveyard and ways to cheat them out on the battlefield. What our commander brings to the table is the color pairing, as well as the value in casting her while we have a bunch of creatures in our graveyard. All in all i was pretty pleasantly surprised by the amount of plays this deck had to offer, even with such a focused strategy.

Getting Cards in the Graveyard:

We need ways to get cards into our graveyard, and luckily Golgari gives us some pretty aggressive ways to do so. Most of these creatures serve as threats on their own, and can really help dry up our opponent's removal in the early game. Glowspore Shaman gives us a good mill effect on the graveyard, helping us find lands if we need them in the early game. Our 3-drops are all quite aggressive: Rotting Regisaur is a free-but-compulsive discard outlet and a very scary threat, while Erstwhile Trooper allows us to discard one creature per turn and get in pretty aggressively. Charner Troll comes at a cost both to mantain and to discard creatures, but can grow rather large, and it's also not a huge deal to let him go to the graveyard. Rankle, Master of Pranks is a decent threat that requires to hit our opponent to provide us with a chance to discard, draw, and possibly remove a threat. Doom Whisperer allows us to pay 2 life to surveil whenever we need to as well as being a 6/6 flampler for 5 mana, and Underrealm Lich allows us to continually get select creatures into the graveyard, as well as being pretty hard to remove.

Bringing Them Back:

We need as many ways to bring our creatures back from the graveyard as possible, and thanfully both black and green can provide us with this effect. Blood for Bones requires a creature to be on the board, but allows us to return a card to both the battlefield and our hand, giving us maximum value from having creatures in our graveyard. Bond of Revival brings a big creature back with haste, which can be helpful to close things out, and Cauldron's Gift can mill extra cards when bringing back its target, helping us dig for the best payoffs. The Cauldron of Eternity is an artifact we can hopefully cast for cheap to consistently bring back the huge threats we chuck into our graveyard. Finally we have the finales: Finale of Eternity is decent removal, and can bring back all of our creatures for a HUGE swing turn if we can cast it for X=10. Finale of Devastation allows us to bring back one creature with converted manacost X from our graveyard, and if we are able to make X=10 can make our Izoni Bugs quite large.

Reanimation Targets:

We need good reasons to be running the reanimator strategy, and here they are. Massacre Girl can be a board clear in the correct situations, and is a very powerful target against some strategies. Cavalier of Night can provide some removal, as well as a way to return our beefy 3 drops back on the battlefield on death. Cavalier of Thorns is simply fantastic in this deck, as he both puts cards in the graveyard, is a fantastic body, and can bring back a card we didn't want milled back to the top of the library on death. Thron Mammoth provides us some board control if it gets to stick, and Vilis, Broker of Blood is just a huge value card that can completely take over the board, providing immense value and removal potential for a cost. Impervious Greatwurm makes the cut because it is the biggest creature in Standard, and can even be convoked by the Izoni bugs if necessary! Our finishers are in Lotleth Giant if we have enough creatures in the battlefield and End-Raze Forerunners to buff up our board and swing in for the win.

Some Ramp:

This is a very creature-centric strategy, and since a lot of our noncreature slots are taken up by reanimation sorceries, we need all of our ramp to be creature-based. And that's what we have here. Other than what is expected from the monogreen mana-dork package is Woodland Mystic, which though just a worse Llanowar Elves can help this deck get the acceleration it needs to cast its very expensive spells. Other notable additions are Leyline Prowler for being just a pretty good value creature in Brawl as well as giving its mana, and Beanstalk Giant, who doubles as a threat later on.

Good cards to help our strategy:

We can't just be running all big dudes and reanimation, we need to make sure we don't get absolutely crushed! That's why we run Assassin's Trophy, the best removal card in standard, and Price of Fame which has the added benefit of letting us surveil our reanimation targets into the graveyard. Questing Beast is just a very solid creature, and I wouldn't be mad either playing or reanimating it in a time of need. Molderhulk is one of the reasons to be running Golgari reanimator, and though it's not fantastic, playing a 2 mana 6/6 that ramps us a bit can be pretty helpful. The Great Henge is ambitious, but with amount of big creatures with high power we have available to us I thought it could work fine. To round this off we have Find // Finality, for its ability to bring back creatures to our hand we can cast if necessary or be a pretty decent board-clear at 6 mana.

The Lands:

This deck also runs 24 lands, but we don't expect to be casting all of our big dudes anyways. In terms of different lands of note in the deck the one that stands out the most if Field of the Dead. While there are only 14 other types of land in the deck, the amount of cards that let us search for lands or play them from our graveyard, combined with the mild sacrifice synergies in the deck made me put it in. I still have only drawn it once, and it was pretty okay because I drew it late into the game. Sure would suck to draw it as the first card in the game though.

Time to party!