Introduction
Mono Black Reanimator is a fast combo deck. Much like its more expensive 3- or 4-color version, it’s a deck that fills its graveyard with big threats and reanimates them, backed up by discard spells. This deck is classified as ‘highly unfair’ due to its incredible ability to ‘cheat’ on the mana curve. It’s pretty consistent at putting a Griselbrand or another threat into play on turn 1. The deck wins through combat damage or opponents conceding because they see no outs to a big fatty this early in the game. You’ll like this deck if you enjoy playing unfair magic and playing through hate. There is a lot of hate for graveyard interactions so you’re going to need a good strategy to win those sideboard games. You’re usually favored in the first game of the match, though Endurance can be a pain in the ass. Nevertheless, Reanimator is a hell of an archetype to play and there’s just that feeling about putting Griselbrand in play on turn one.
Budget
Price: ~ 600 USD or 550 EUR
Playable from 550 USD or 500 EUR
Updated January 2023
Most recent deck lists: here. Note: MTGGoldfish doesn’t split the different versions of Reanimator into different pages, so you may have to look through recent lists to get an updated Mono Black version.
How does Mono Black Reanimator work?
The main goal of this deck is very simple. You put a creature in your graveyard and reanimate it. Do this fast and you have a fatty while your opponent doesn’t. Before and/or after you can shred their hand through many discard spells.
Since you’re not playing Faithless Looting in a mono-black deck, there are other ways to get your fatties into the graveyard. The most effective and obvious way is of course Entomb, but you can also target yourself with Thoughtseize, Unmask or Cabal Therapy. Once your target is in the graveyard, you reanimate it through Reanimate, Exhume or Animate Dead.
In some matchups, reanimating Iona wins you the game on the spot. Examples of these are: Painter, Delver if you’re high on life total (naming blue), Initiative, Elves, 8-Cast. Archon of Cruelty is amazing at doing a Griselbrand impression while being immune to Karakas. Griselbrand just feels like straight up cheating. If you can have it in play on the first turn of the game, it’s hard to lose. Serra’s Emissary is another amazing reanimation target. Some lists play other targets like Vilis, Broker of Blood to kill their opponent’s board. Other card you can try out are Tidesprout Tyrant or Sire of Insanity.
Acquiring Mono Black Reanimator
The most expensive cards in this deck are:
- Lake of the Dead
- Archon of Cruelty
- Grief
- Thoughtseize
- Unmask
- Entomb
- Reanimate
- Lotus Petal
Lake of the Dead is by far the most expensive card in the deck, and while it’s really good in a mono black build, I think you can start without it. This saves you roughly 100 USD or 70-80 EUR.
Upgrade paths
The most obvious upgrade path for Mono Black Reanimator is building into the full-color Reanimator deck. The main price tag of this path is dual lands. This can also be done in phases. The first thing you want to do is get Badlands and fetch lands to get them. This allows you to improve your deck with the addition of Faithless Looting. You also get the added bonus of being able to run Shatter effects and the beloved Magus of the Moon in your sideboard.
After you’ve obtained 2-3 Badlands, you can expand to either white or green. I believe white is the current weapon of choice, but green has its merits as well. For the white splash, you get access to Serenity, Wear//Tear and Silence in the sideboard as well as the option to play a list with Children of Korlis, at the cost of 1 Scrubland. The green splash requires a Bayou, and allows you to play Assassin’s Trophy, Abrupt Decay, Reverent Silence, Veil of Summer and Xantid Swarm (which does a decent Silence impression).
If you run into a lot of graveyard hate, you can do an additional upgrade after you got into 3 colors. With your black fetches you can also run one Underground Sea in your deck, which opens the door to Show and Tell in your sideboard. This is a great way of laughing at your opponent mulliganing to Leyline of the Void and getting your Griselbrand in play anyway.
Additional Resources
There’s a Discord server: here. There’s a whole section dedicated to Mono Black.