Sometimes They Come Back Again Flashback
Past Brian David-Marshall
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Brian David-Marshall is a New York–based game designer who has been involved with Magic since 1994, when he started organizing tournaments and ran a Manhattan game store. Since then, he has been a estimate, a thespian, and one of the longest-tenured columnists on DailyMTG.com, equally he enters his second decade writing for the site. He is likewise the Pro Bout Historian and one of the commentators for the Pro Tour.
the undead, some of my favorite Magic cards come back from the graveyard. 1 of my all time faves is a card near people accept never even heard of: Whiteout from Water ice Age. While I have actually used its primary ability to footing a creature with flight in gainsay, I was originally attracted to this carte's ability to render to your hand from your graveyard if you sacrificed a snow-covered state. I tried it in every possible deck that had an ability that required discard. I tried it with Mesmeric Trance, which would essentially let you lot to sacrifice a land to draw a carte du jour, but I never found a deck in which that engine felt right. Shortly afterward the emergence of a deck known as Bugbind, I finally found a home for the unassuming green instant.
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I retrieve one game where I had no cards in my hand, a Stormbind in play, and viii lands on the board. My opponent had not seen the synergy of Whiteout and Stormbind earlier and assumed I could non deal 12 damage to him earlier his next plow, when he would assuredly defeat me. I tapped all of my mana so proceeded to sac a land, returned Whiteout from my graveyard, used two mana to activate Stormbind discarding Whiteout, sac'd another land to render Whiteout. . . I sacrificed four lands and did viii damage at the cease of my plough. I finished him off during my upkeep with my remaining four mana.
Shard Phoenix is another card that I loved to bring back from my graveyard. I had a monored Pyromancy deck that used artifact mana and the underused red enchantment to deal five damage a turn to my opponents. Squee, Goblin Nabob would later render from your graveyard to your hand for free. Survival of the Fittest, Masticore, Zombie Infestation, Falling star Storm. There was no cease to the ways in which Squee was -- and continues to be -- driveling.
Today'due south Lesson:
Abusing cards that come up back from the graveyard.
While there have always been cards that come back -- as we have seen above -- and there have always been Zombies -- every bit nosotros have seen all calendar week -- information technology seems similar it is only with the advent of the "tribal" theme that recursive cards have been members of the undead tribe. While everyone has been all a titter about Graveborn Muse, I wanted to talk about two other Zombies and how y'all can take advantage of their power to come back from the dead.
Undead Gladiator turns every card in your deck into a cycling card -- albeit for a total of four mana. While it does not describe y'all extra cards -- too known as bill of fare advantage -- information technology does permit you to speed through your deck to find the best cards to adjust your game situation -- likewise known as bill of fare selection. In the early game, Undead Gladiator helps y'all dig for the cards y'all demand, and in the late game, it turns actress lands into cards. Every once in a while, it even gets in the game to swing for 3 damage. Undead Gladiator interacts best with cards that exploit the cycling mechanic. Lightning Rift, Astral Slide, and Invigorating Boon all combo nicely with the Zombie Barbarian.
A card that nobody seems to be talking about at all is Ghastly Remains. While I accept a hard time imagining anyone using its amplify mechanic to make information technology very big (although I have seen some interesting interactions with Infernal Caretaker in Limited formats!), I tin run across it being used and abused in Standard with many of the cards that take been exploited with Squee in the Extended format.
With Compulsion, yous tin can draw an extra card a turn for 
. In terms of the generic mana cost it is actually i mana cheaper than Whispers of the Muse with buyback. Sure the colored mana cost is pretty intensive. But if you play it in a more often than not black deck, it should not be that hard. You could play with swamps, Tainted Isles, and Underground Rivers. Every country in your deck would produce blackness, which would allow y'all to ever be able to return Ghastly Remains to your hand while still giving you the blue mana needed to cast Coercion and other blue spells.
Zombie Infestation would be a handy outlet for those actress cards and would also philharmonic nicely with Ghastly Remains without a Compulsion on the board. Once you have and a Zombie Infestation in play you could plough each draw pace into a 2/2 Zombie token. I attempted to build a deck with these concepts in mind and came upwards with the following (as you can see I could not resist the call of the Graveborn Muse in a Zombie deck):
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The deck has not been field-tested much yet, and a number of the cards should probably not max out at four copies. Three may be the right number for Compulsion, Ghastly Remains, and mayhap Smother. This would allow yous to play with three copies of Cunning Wish and all sorts of good stuff in your sideboard.
I received more mail final week than for any 2 previous columns combined. Next week'south column volition pit human against automobile and accost a topic that came up more than a few times in my correspondence with readers.
Brian may exist reached at brian@fightlikeapes.com.
Source: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/learning-curve/sometimes-they-come-back-again-2003-03-05
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