Reanimator viable in T1?

[Sheik al Kaji]

I'm wondering if anyone would consider Reanimator a viable archtype. I have this build here I'm running at a small T1 in March. Has it been slown down too much with the restriction of Entomb or can it still win?

Angry

Mana
3 Badlands
3 Bayou
3 Taiga
4 Land Grant
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
4 Dark Ritual

Distruption/Tutoring/Reanimation
4 Duress
4 Buried Alive
1 Entomb
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
4 Reanimate
4 Exhume

Creatures
4 Putrid Imp
4 Wild Mongrel
1 Phantom Nishoba
1 Verdant Force
1 Petradon
1 Clone
1 Akroma
1 Spirit of the Night
1 Reya Dawnbringer
2 Anger

The deck could probably use some Bazaars. But alas, I can only borrow power.

[Toad]

Reanimator already exists in Type One. It's Dragon.dec. Reanimating an Akroma or a Verdant Force and killing in 2-3 turns is cool but Reanimating a Worldgorger Dragon and killing now is better.

[Sheik al Kaji]

Well, there is that combo, of course. But I'm talking about just good ol' beatdown.

[Pern]

Beatdown is fun.

Game two, Dragon frequently becomes Reanimator,
bringing in Verdants or whatever.
Unfortunately, Reanimator dies to the same hate as Dragon
without having the same win record.
It does avoid that greasy combo aftertaste, though.

Your build looks reasonably solid.
The Wild Mongrels and Putrid Imps offer
discard outlets and beatdown, which is cool.
I'd be worried about the three color manabase in my meta,
but perhaps yours has decks that don't run
Wastelands, Back To Basics or Blood Moon.

Re Entomb: Oddly enough, the restriction of Entomb
played a part in the total switch to Bazaar Of Baghdad,
which made Dragon far more broken.
Nice going, DCI.

[Sheik al Kaji]

Well, I wanted those duals in there to make Anger work and to make Petradon swing harder if I have to dredge it up. Wasteland is the only real worry in my meta, so this base should be okay where I am. I'm thinking the Taigas should be tossed. What would be a good replacement?

[Nameless]

Petradon is nice, but I think the new Sundering Titan is much better for what you want.  You can target the same land twice, so you should never loose more then 1 land, worse case scenario.  Besides, they'll never get the lands back then, as opposed to just popping a Swords on Petradon and recovering quickly.

Also, you should be using 4x Bayou, 4x Badlands, and 1x Taiga.  It works better overall, and you're rarely going to want to give up a fetchland/land grant to just get a Green/Red source, but it's nice to have that option open.  Black is your most critical color, primarily because of the disruption it provides, so you want to maximize your sources here.  You NEED a 1st turn Duress/Therapy if you have any plans on early reanimation with quick beats.

On another note, Putrid Imp may work fine in 1.X, but in Vintage that option doesn't fly.  You're really going to want Cabal Therapy on those slots.  You can always cast Therapy on yourself to discard your creature, but you'll very much need the additional disruption that will be available in order to reliably dodge Swords, Force, and graveyard hate.  Besides that, Verdant Force can provide ample tokens to use Flashback with.

As far as Anger is concerned...  You're mainly going to be putting it in the graveyard with Buried Alive, so 1 copy should suffice here.  I understand you want 2 because you hope that you can draw into it more and just discard it, but it would be better using that, and the Clone slot, as Verdant Force #2-3.  The additional Forces simply improve consistancy for you...

Now, I understand why you want Reya in the deck, for the long game, but reanimator decks don't have long games.  Either you kick the snot out of them with the quickness, or they beat your ass.

Maybe some of that will help you out.

[The Atog Lord]

As Toad mentioned, there are several advantages to Dragon over traditional Benzo-style reanimator decks. Dragon essentially wins with a single successful reanimation, unlike other Benzo decks which must reanimate and then attack three or four times. Also, since the Dragon "engine" requires less cards to be used than traditional reanimator decks, it allows more room for disruption. Finally, with the power of Necromancy, Dragon can go off and win during the opponent's end step, a feat of which traditional reanimator is not capable.

Is there a lot of hate for Dragon now? Yes. Even so, ironically, using a traditional reanimator deck will be no better at escaping the hate intended for Dragon since it will run into the very same graveyard removal.

After all of this has been said, if reanimator is your pet deck and you enjoy running it, then by all means, don't let me stop you

[Robert the Swordsman]

Every time I've thought of playing any form of reanimator, the thought comes to mind "Dragon is better" and I leave it at that. I've always been trying to think of any reason at all that beatdown reanimator is better than Dragon in any way, and couldn't think of one for the longest time...

...a friend of mine loaned me Dragon to play in a few casual games with someone else, and I finally found, at the very least, a reason that traditional face-smashing can be better than Dragon.

That reason is: you must get, specifically, a Dragon and another win condition in your graveyard. Now, I know that, with Bazaar, all you need is Dragon, but with reanimator, any creature you discard is now a very threatening weapon; it's much easier to be able to discard anything and have it in play in seconds then to have to wait around / dig for a particular one. With Dragon no longer (or very rarely, at least) running Buried Alives or Entomb, it isn't always able to meet the need as quickly. On a minor note, traditional reanimator runs sorceries to get their things into play, whereas Dragon uses creature-enchantments, which are easier to mess with.

Long-live reanimator.

Good luck.

[Sheik al Kaji]

A suggestion some friends gave me were to run Survivals over Mongrels. It seems pretty mana-intensive to me, what with needing green mana to get stuff into my graveyard. Also, thanks for all these other suggestions. I think I'm going to put these into practice.

[DEA]

reanimator is so much more fun than dragon
the "greasy aftertaste" doesn't really float my boat
i run dragon with fun fun creatures to reanimate
i've found interesting tech with keldon champion to combat damping matrix
i also put in reya for the heck of it
if you're playing all out to win, then perhaps dragon is for you
but if you enjoy the game for the sake of the game, and if you like to hear the opponent say "what the fuck??", reanimator is actually quite cool

[Evilkin]

I played a lot of BU Reanimater over the summer in a number of T1 tournaments with fairly good results. I will say that I have switched to Dragon for the time being, but still do not rule out traditional Reanimater when thinking of a particular metagame.  Believe it or not, there are advantages of Reanimater over Dragon.  I think the main one that comes to mind is that it has the same draw engine dragon does but has no risk of losing all your permanents.  With Reanimater you can build your hand up with all kinds of animate effects and duress and cast them all whenever you want without the fear of well timed stifles, chain of vapors, naturalize, swords, etc removing all your permanents from the game.  You normally have many targets to reanimate and draw into more then enough animate effects.  Obviously the major flaw with Reanimator is the fact you don't win the game as soon as you bring a creature out and combo decks and even some fast aggro decks can overwhelm you before you can finish them off.  This is also why I run blue for Force of Will, cause it will end up winning a lot of games you should have otherwise lost.
I haven't changed this deck for quite some time, but if your interested in it, you might want to give it a try.  I think it has a slightly better match up then Dragon against control, but is far weaker against other aggro.

4 FoW
4 Intuition
3 Careful Study
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Mystical Tutor
4 Exhume
3 Reanimate
3 Duress
1 Entomb
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
3 Squee
1 Akroma
2 Verdant Force
1 Plated Slagwurm
1 Anger
1 Reya Dawnbringer
4 Dark Ritual
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mana Crypt
4 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
2 Badlands
1 Swamp
1 Island

[Sheik al Kaji]

Well, taking into account a lot of the non-"Play Dragon!" suggestions, I've revamped the decklist. There are two ideas I'm still kicking about and I'd like to hear this board's opinions. The ideas I'm toying with are Survival of the Fittest over Mongrel and running Living Hive. Against combo or control, the Hive's damage practically doubles every turn!

Angry 2.0

Mana

4 Badlands
4 Bayou
1 Taiga
4 Land Grant
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
4 Dark Ritual

Disruption/Tutoring/Reanimation
4 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Buried Alive
1 Entomb
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
4 Reanimate
4 Exhume

Beats
4 Wild Mongrel
2 Verdant Force
1 Phantom Nishoba
1 Sundering Titan
1 Akroma
1 Spirit of the Night
1 Reya Dawnbringer
1 Anger

[kirdape3]

Unless you lack Bazaar of Baghdad (speaking of which, what an amazing card that would be in this deck), Dragon is superior in every manner to a strict Reanimator deck.  The people that are telling you to straight up play Dragon if you wish to use cards such as Reanimate or Animate Dead are doing so for a reason.

[Lockdown]

What kirdape says is true for the most part.  There are very few situations where you find yourself in a position where reanimator does better.  So the answer to whether or not Reanimator is viable in t1 (assuming viable means that it can compete against the top decks) is no.  However, as DEA says, beating down with big creatures is so much more satisfying than goldfishing.  It's really up to you to determine why you play Magic.  Just for the plain fun of it?  Or is winning all that really matters to you?