Bg

Game Plan

Bg Reanimator is a hand-disruption-first combo deck that wins by deploying an eight-mana threat on turn one or two. The opening sequence revolves around three interlocking pieces: a discard outlet (almost always Putrid Imp, whose activated ability discards a card to give itself flying), a reanimation spell in Reanimate or Exhume, and a haymaker to cheat into play. Dark Ritual stitches these together, collapsing what would be a three-turn setup into a single explosive turn. Cabal Therapy, Unmask, and Duress serve double duty, clearing the permission or removal that would answer the reanimated threat before it ever enters the stack; they are cast first, not after, so the fatty arrives into an empty hand. The primary threats are Verdant Force and Akroma, Angel of Wrath, chosen because Verdant Force generates board presence every upkeep and fuels future Cabal Therapy flashbacks, while Akroma's protection from black and red renders the most common answers in Premodern useless the moment she resolves.

When the blitz fails, whether countered, disrupted, or met with a resolved answer, the deck shifts into a patient grind built around Buried Alive as its reorganizing engine. Buried Alive loads the graveyard to order without needing Putrid Imp in play, enabling a clean Exhume or the Death half of Life // Death on the following turn at no creature cost. Sickening Dreams doubles as a sweeper for token and weenie boards: pitching accumulated fatties as its cost clears the battlefield while simultaneously stocking the graveyard for a second reanimation attempt. The life total spent on Reanimate is a real resource, so the deck times deep into games by presenting a new haymaker each time the previous one is answered, using its full suite of Reanimate and Exhume to outlast removal-heavy opponents through sheer redundancy.