The Resurrection of Reaplace

[ZoneSeek]

With the recent restriction of Gush, the time may have come for Reaplace to be reinvestigated. While it may seem like a janky and ineffective combo deck, it is a stalwart and hard-to-hose threat that can't be ignored. The raise in popularity of Gush was quite a blow to the success of Reaplace. In theory, even a somewhat slow combo such as Reaplace should beat aggro decks, but the speed and brokenness of Gro-atog and variants combined with the Lace hosing Gushes proved to be too much for the deck, and it was put on the shelf.

Enter the DCI - Gush won't be around nearly as often. The primary function of Reaplace is solidified once again and the purpose of my post is to start a discussion on how to perfect this misunderstood combo deck.

First, a brief discussion of how the combo works:

After fixing your hand, you typically set up for your opponent to control black permanents. This is handled quite obviously with laces, though there are alternative means.

Quote Deathlace
Color= Black  Type= Instant  Cost= B A®/B®/U®/R®/4®  
Text (4th+errata): Target spell or permanent becomes black. (Mana symbols on that permanent remain unchanged.) [Oracle 2001/08/24]

Quote Prismatic Lace
Color= Blue  Type= Instant  Cost= U MI®  
Text (MI+errata): Target permanent becomes the colors of your choice. (This effect doesn't end at end of turn.) (Mana symbols on that permanent remain unchanged.) [Oracle 2001/03/07]

One is offered two different Laces with which you can change colors. The Prismatic Lace doubles with the benefit of making the permanent destroyable with Blasts (if played), while the Deathlace is itself unblastable.

Once two separate permanents have been laced, the card Reap is used to generate an infinite situation. In general, you want to make sure to lace permanents you are almost positive will never leave your opponent's side of the table. Prime Lace targets if playing against TnT, for example, would be Welders and Survivals. Lands are always a great target, but beware a sneaky player who may strip their own land. It may seem foolish, but if it buys time, it's a good strategy.

Quote Reap
Color= Green  Type= Instant  Cost= 1G TE(U)  
Text (TE+errata): Return any number of target cards from your graveyard to your hand. You can't choose more cards than the number of black permanents your opponents control. [Oracle 1999/05/01]

Using a Black lotus, which is infinitely Reaped, you generate infinite mana, which you can then use to kill by any means necessary. You may Ancestral your opponent, using Forces and Duresses as backup, if needed, or you can Wish for Stroke or any alternative method. Generally, once the infinite situation is achieved, there is little hope for your opponent.

Using the solid if slow Intuition and Accumulated Knowledge engine, Reaplace hopes to abuse early Reaps as cheap regrowths for power cards, then after two Laces have landed, go for the kill. It is admittedly a little slow, and very redundant, but it is a deck which can turn those disadvantages into advantages. Speed is almost never a matter with the deck, because of its redundancy and disruption. It can effectively combo against control, even facing numerous counterspells. It out-guns control by simply threatening the win more often than other combo decks, which may rely strictly on disruption.

Reaplace is also very difficult to hose through single card strategies. Blood Moon is particularly effective, but because of the full compliment of Moxen and wishable Naturalizes, all is not lost. Null Rod can also be very problematic as it shuts down some of your mana base and most importantly the Black Lotus of said mana base. This, again, can be circumvented by Wishing for Naturalize. Furthermore, a pseudo-infinite situation can be achieved through Time Walk if needed. Any sort of graveyard removal can hurt, but usually there are ways to deal with such a situation.

To further this discussion, here I will present a skeleton of what I believe to be vital cards to the Reaplace deck.

8+ Combo Enablers
4+ Disruption cards
8+ Draw Engine
3-4 Combo Pieces
X Restricted Brokenness
2+ Wishes, with utility and a wishable kill card.
and a mana base

This boils down to

4 Reap
2 Primsatic Lace
2 Deathlace
4 Force of Will
4 Duress
4 Intuition
4 Accumulated Knowledge
1 Black Lotus
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Vampiric Tutor (May be sideboarded for wishes)
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
2 Cunning Wish
Plus the mana base and other cards.

As far as sideboarding is concerned, you are primarily looking for things to Wish for. Prime wish targets include Naturalize, a Lace, a tutor (Vampiric, if any), Bind, and a kill card - Fire/Ice, Stroke of Genius, or my personal favorite, Ebony Charm.

Scourge brings some new toys to the Reaplace repertior. Brain Freeze is a very plausable wishable win condition. It's just as quick as Stroke of Genius, just as soild, and much harder to Misdirect - even though that's usually not an issue. Stifle may or may not be replacing Interdict (or Bind) in that slot, which provides an answer to annoying hosers like Tormod's Crypt. I definitely think it's worth testing. The loss of a cantrip may be worth the versatility and cost issues involved with Stifle.

And now, my questions for you, the community. Is Reaplace going to be viable in July, once Gush is out of the question? Which cards post the most significant threats to Reaplace, and how can it board answers in the sideboard to deal with those threats?

I look forward to any and all input I will recieve.

Thank you for your time!

ZoneSeek

[jpmeyer]

I always thought that the reason that ReapLace fell to the wayside was because people were playing with anti-graveyard cards because of TnT.

[ZoneSeek]

That is also true. I personally gave up on it because I got tired of having my Laces Gushed away.

[Saucemaster]

I was doing fine with ReapLace--actually, doing fairly well--until GAT came along.  GAT singlehandedly destroyed this deck, while you could at least play around or deal with graveyard hosers.

As for the basic question--hard to tell this early.  It's still a tough combo deck to play well, and you won't see many people playing it, but it's a hell of a lot of fun and competitive when it's in the right hands.  I'll throw it back together and get back to some more serious testing with it.  At the very least, it's no longer a futile effort.

[SummenSaugen]

July looms near, and I think that qualifies this thread for a bump.

I've been working on this deck a lot more recently than I had been before.  I became interested in the deck about a week before GAT came to be, and I became somewhat disgusted.  Without Gush around it's going to be very different...

The path is clear for ReapLace now, but the problem is...

Quote like seriously, it's more complex than keeper and academy combined

Kl0wn hit the nail on the head, and so I began to ponder quite a bit on the deck.  I think it's necessary for someone that knows their shit to say some words right now, and by some words, I mean a whole freaking lot of them.  A primer might not be out of the question...

[MoreFling]

ZoneSeek: I don't know much about ReapLace, but I have one comment I just have to make.

I tested the deck a few times myself, so it does have some merit I guess.

Quote Using a Black lotus, which is infinitely Reaped, you generate infinite mana, which you can then use to kill by any means necessary. You may Ancestral your opponent, using Forces and Duresses as backup, if needed, or you can Wish for Stroke or any alternative method. Generally, once the infinite situation is achieved, there is little hope for your opponent.

This is totally untrue. Why would you ever ancestral your opponent? You can just draw your own deck, find the wish, and stroke with fow backup. I don't see at all why you would ever ancestral your opponent.
Enjoy winning the safe way!

[SummenSaugen]

If you've used all your wishes already for answers, Ancestral is a handy way to kill them.  Just recur Ancestral and Duress, and duress the three cards away.

[Grand Inquisitor]

or for builds that run white, draw your deck, abeyance, then ancestral them to death.

i think summen's right, can anyone put together even a rough attempt at a general guide on playing the deck?

[kiky]

I play a lot recently with ReapLace although not in tourney, and I found sometimes I got Laces without Reap or I have Reaps without Laces..

I tried to up Cunning Wish to 3 (i'm thinking of 4), and keep 1 Death Lace, 1 Prismatic Lace and 1 Reap in sideboard.

this way, I can wish for the missing component.
If opponent somehow able to remove key cards from my graveyard,  I can also wish those card.

[jpmeyer]

Quote (SummenSaugen @ June 28 2003,01:44)If you've used all your wishes already for answers, Ancestral is a handy way to kill them.  Just recur Ancestral and Duress, and duress the three cards away.

This was Reap's actual kill mechanism before Wishes let it put Stroke in the SB.  You've already Duressed them and stuff so that you know you can go off, so then you just make your infinite mana, draw up all your Duresses and Forces with Ancestral, and then you Ancestral them and follow up each Ancestral with a Duress.  If they managed to draw three counters or something, you can go and take all of them, Reap back your spent cards, and that SHOULD count as having succesfully demonstrating an engine and you should then be allowed to say that you are doing it an arbitrarilly large number of times.

[Lord of the Goats]

so what's the advantage of playing reaplace over hulk? they both use the intuition/ak engine and the same core minus the actual combo. hulk's combo is signifigantly smaller and more efficient imo. i'm aware that the decks play signifigantly different but on paper it looks like hulk is just more efficient

[suicide_slushy]

There are two real reasons I can see as to why to play reaplace over hulk.  The first is style, reaplace has to be the coolest combo deck around, I know that this really has no merit concerning competitave T1, however my next point does.  

Hulk's "combo" revolves around tog which is succeptable to removal and takes awhile to establish enough cards to swing for the full 20 whereas with reaplace and other combo decks you just win.

-disclaimer- I'm not saying that reap is a better deck than hulk or that hulk doesn't crush aggro in the same fashion as any other combo deck, simply stating the reasons that I see why someone would choose reaplace over Mr. teeth.

[BWM]

I think that the problem of Reaplace is that it relies on opponents having permanents in play...


Now, what happens if the opponent for some random reason refuses to play a single permanent...

You'll get a draw...

Now, how can a deck be good if it can only draw??

[MoreFling]

Quote (BWM @ June 29 2003,09:27)Now, how can a deck be good if it can only draw??

Thinking hard about your next 3cb entry Ward?

Anyway, on-topic, and especially at JP: I can understand you pick up duress as well, all I'm saying, and I believe is really true, that it shouldn't be needed to go through that trouble when you can just win the 'easy' way.

[SummenSaugen]

Quote Now, what happens if the opponent for some random reason refuses to play a single permanent...

You simply use...  SLEEPER AGENT TECH!!    


...I'm sorry, I'll never do it again.

[walking dude]

I've done some testing with reaplace,
my list was


        4 Polluted Delta
        4 Underground Sea
        4 Tropical Island
        3 Bayou
        1 Library of Alexandria
        1 Black Lotus
        1 Sol Ring
        1 Mox Sapphire
        1 Mox Ruby
        1 Mox Pearl
        1 Mox Jet
        1 Mox Emerald
        1 Time Walk
        1 Ancestral Recall
        1 Regrowth
        1 Vampiric Tutor
        1 Demonic Tutor
        4 Deathlace
        4 Reap
        1 Fact or Fiction
        4 Accumulated Knowledge
        3 Intuition
        4 Brainstorm
        2 Cunning Wish
        2 Deep Analysis
        4 Force of Will
        4 Duress

Good news is this mana base seems to work. I was quite happy with it and allways had the right colors and enouph mana to cast my spells.

Bad news is its just not fast enouph. To win the deck needs to find 5 combo bits. 2 laces, 2 reaps and then either lotus or timewalk. Even with tons of draw power a 5 card combo is hard to throw together.  I was testing this v tangle tnt and most games tnt was just faster than the combo.

As much as I hate to say it, I think the deck might be stronger with just dropping the reap lace combo and replacing it with a more compact 2 card combo, or with togs and mana drains.

[jpmeyer]

Quote (MoreFling @ June 29 2003,04:22)

Quote (BWM @ June 29 2003,09:27)Now, how can a deck be good if it can only draw??

Thinking hard about your next 3cb entry Ward?

Anyway, on-topic, and especially at JP: I can understand you pick up duress as well, all I'm saying, and I believe is really true, that it shouldn't be needed to go through that trouble when you can just win the 'easy' way.

Well, this is mostly from before there really was the "easy" way to win with Cunning Wish.  If you ran a Stroke back then you were just wasting a slot.

[SummenSaugen]

Reap is a different engine based on the fact that a single reap and a single lace can recur anything, not just combo parts.  Eric Spinelli (and maybe others) (aka Spin13) called it 5Regrowths.dec, because essentially that's what it did - recur key spells to ruin your game, such as Duress, Ancestral Recall, or Time Walk, and then use the recursive 'engine' to assemble the pieces from there.  So in actuality, it's more of a three card combo in which none of the pieces are restricted.

Assemble a Lace,
     a Reap,
          and almost any other card.

[walking dude]

I know the reap and laces can work as regrowth before you win, but a regrowth just isn't good enough. You lace reap ancestral and then draw three cards and next turn tnt attacks and kills you.
When you put 2 combo cards together you need to win right then. Rector plus therapy = win right then. Illusions + donate = win right then. Horn of greed plus fastbond = win right then. Earth craft + Nest = win against aggro right then. Tog + cards = Win right then.
Reap + lace = regrowth.
Reaplace is just out powered by the other combos available. You can duplicate my testing if you want, but I found that after playing a whole lot of games that replace (at least that build) just wasn't fast enough to beat good aggro like TnT. You need to come up with some sort of radical innovation to fix that and either speed the deck up or add removal to slow aggro down if you want the deck to be viable.

[MoreFling]

This is probably silly, but how about stuff like Moment's Peace and Renewed Faith? It works in T2 to stall out aggro decks, and the problems faced are of a similar kind. Now don't jump on me comparing wake with reaplace, or tnt with rg beats, but I think you get what I'm trying to say:
Build in survival spells to assemble your board position a bit.

jp: I haven't tested reaplace before ON actually. I always read about it, but was sure I'd never run into it here. Until I decided I wanted to give it a go for fun, but got crushed by GAT all the time

[SummenSaugen]

Honestly, I've been playtesting the hell out of this thing, and if ZoneSeek was available right now, he'd probably tell you - Aggro is still too slow most of the time, just like other combo decks.  Even so, ReapLace is less about a combo and more about being a big fat synergistic recursion engine.  ReapLace looks a lot more like what Keeper would evolve to be if it could run 5 regrowths.

Most boards typically accomodate Tangle and Sandstorm already, not only as sideboard tech but as wish targets.

[Saucemaster]

Quote This is probably silly, but how about stuff like Moment's Peace and Renewed Faith?

MoreFling, Tangle is the typical card used for this.  I once suggested Moment's Peace in a Reaplace thread, but Azhrei correctly pointed out that in almost all situations, you'd rather have Tangle--it'll give you two turns, and the second of those turns won't require you to tap any mana.  The more efficient mana usage turns out to be more important than the potential for Intuition-->Moment's Peace in this deck (typically).

Renewed Faith I'm skeptical of, however.  Tangle should be all you need most of the time (especially since you can often go into Tangle recursion mode until you find a way to kill).

[ZoneSeek]

I agree with Saucemaster and SummenSaugen on these issues without a doubt - when aggro gives you trouble, Tangle shuts them off for a turn or two to let you set up for a win.

I'm going to be putting some serious effort into tweaking this once a reasonably clear read-out of the very near July metagame comes around. Playing and watching the tournaments at Origins really helped me get a feel for what things will be like soon. Reaplace should be a fairly strong choice in the new metagame ... and I'll be one working on it for damn sure.

[walking dude]

hmm I hadn't found tangle I'll have to retest with that in the side.

[theorigamist]

This is what my list has been for about 5 months:

Card drawing/Tutors: 17
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Intuition
3 Cunning Wish
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Timetwister

Combo stuff: 9
4 Reap
2 Death Lace
2 Prismatic Lace
1 Black Lotus

Protection/Other broken stuff: 11
4 Force of Will
4 Duress
1 Time Walk
1 Balance
1 Regrowth

Mana: 23
6 SoMoxen
4 Polluted Delta
4 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
2 Tundra
2 City of Brass
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Island

Sideboard: I'm not sure exactly.  But BEB will be there, and probably Smother, Stroke of Genius, more Laces, etc.  

This list has been pretty fast for me, except that it has a tendency to just screw you, like, put all the Laces at the bottom.  The thing is, you need to draw so many combo pieces, and then cast them all, without the opponent doing anything, to go off the way the deck is meant to.  I found myself more often just using Reaps for normal recursion, which drags the game out a little longer than a combo deck wants to.

As crazy as it sounds, has Stasis ever been considered for this deck?  It keeps all their stuff tapped better than Tangle Wire.  It costs less than Tangle Wire.  You don't need more than Black Lotus mana to go off anyway.

[Gabethebabe]

SB should also have Vampiric Tutor so you can Wish for a card in your deck rather than your SB.

Is Elephant Ambush a SB worthy wincondition for if your Lotus has been RFG?

[Lord of the Goats]

merchant scroll looks like it's pretty damn good in the deck. it fetches the majority of the deck including prismatic lace... the only 2 things that it can't fetch that you'd want to are lotus and reap. also, i'd consider sbing the 4th reap and uping the wish count to 4. 3 reap main still lets you inuition for them.

is fof worth the slot? i know that in tog i really didn't like it because it cost more than intuition and didn't draw more than ak for 3 or 4. i can see that being the case here as well... especially since you can recure the ak's

[MoreFling]

with merchant scroll you can get an intuition for lotus + reap, so Lord of the Goats has a good point.

[SummenSaugen]

I'm not sure on the validity of using Fact or Fiction in here, but it's definately funny to watch someone twitch when they've seen what you do with Reaps game one.  It's even better than a FoF in Stoopid Madness.

[Soupboy]

First-- apparently I've had an account for the past year, and I've been posting in the Unregistered Forum.  Who knew?

Second-- How essential are the Moxen?  I'm missing Pearl and Jet, but have the rest of the Power.  Is it viable?  Now that TurboNevyn is dead I want a new combo.

Peace,
The Soup