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Mandrake Reanimator

Work in Progress
+4

Cost Curve

Type

Faction

Information

This is an older deck I built around using Shoal Stirrings to reanimate large mandrakes from your void.

Previously, the only relevant large mandrakes worth reanimating were Euryd, the Drifting Song and Corpsebloom since everything else was either too slow or too weak. These mandrakes are actually pretty good, with Euryd basically winning the game the following turn or in the long run if it died and Corpsebloom being a legitimately solid, well-statted unit that impacts the board and leaves a body when it dies. In addition, Forgotten Find adds an extra layer to the deck where it didn't need to rely on Shoal Stirrings, and instead could use Forgotten Find to ramp into those threats instead of relying exclusively on recursion in a similar manner to how a Xenan reanimator list might play.

Behemoths of Thera added a new big mandrake that fits the deck extremely well: Pheromone Flytrap. The previous best 2-mandrake combination included Euryd and Corpsebloom for Euryd's ability to threaten 17 flying quickdraw damage if both stick, Corpsebloom's immediate board impact, Euryd's ability to take over games when it dies, and Corpsebloom's stickiness and resiliency against stuns. Flytrap blows the combination of Euryd-Corpsebloom out of the water because it impacts the board through killing a unit through killer Euryd, gives both units endurance so neither need to worry about stuns, makes Euryd significantly more threatening if it doesn't stick, and threatens 22 damage, which is extremely close to lethal.

A lot of the market is geared towards disruption, with Turn Back Time being used to fetch combo pieces out of the void and Silverblade Menace being used to beat control decks that would be able to effectively deal with at least one of the deck's gameplans.

Edit 1: replaced Arcanum Hourglass with Forgotten Find to improve ramp consistency. A major reason why Hourglass was in the deck was because older versions of the deck used Brenn's Insight to discard cards and dig through the deck, but without Brenn's Insight there's less of a need for a relic that ramps. In addition, most of this deck's power is depleted and is not redundant, so using Forgotten Find to play power cards of my choice becomes very powerful.

I reduced the number of copies of Pheremone Flytrap to 3 to reduce the likelihood that I find a copy in my hand without a way to discard it, and removed 2 Shoal Dredgers to reduce the likelihood that I draw them without a way to play them. I replaced them with Lightning Sprites in order to play them more consistently.

Edit 2: replaced Send an Agent with Lethrai Marauder and Pitfall Trap with more copies of Shoaldredger. It turns out that removal that fits your game plan is better than removal that doesn't fit your game plan, and Lethrai Marauder fits this deck's game plan better than Send an Agent does. It's also a second source of killer if we end up hard-casting Euryd or play Shoal Stirrings for Euryd but not Flytrap, a useful relic hate card that's usable against cards like Sling and Mask of Torment (alongside Quicksilver Gateway protected by Aegis, which was actually a very significant problem in one game), and an aggressive threat I can play to aggressively dictate the pace of the game. Shoaldredgers went in while Pitfall Trap came out because having a cheap target for killer buffs is actually really, really good and a higher density of units makes it generally more consistent.

Not sure if I'm happy with the power base, there's a good likelihood I replace at least the time sigil with something else.

Details

Shiftstone Cost
Does not include campaign cost
23,150

Premium Cost
184,800

Influence Requirements
2 2 2

Power Sources
9 14 14 16 4

Power Calculator
Shiftstoned Icon View Deck on Shiftstoned

Deck Rarities
17 25 29 4

Card Types
35 0 20 0 25

Contains Cards From Campaigns
Shadow of the Spire [Set1087]
Buried Memories [Set1105]
Hour of Glass [Set1115]
Enter the Arcanum [Set1135]

Archetype
Combo

Updated
February 12, 2023

Added
February 6, 2023

Views
2,146

Eternal Version
Behemoths of Thera

BBCode For Comments

Deck URL

Revisions (Since last major patch) February 12, 2023


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Comments

FightApathyOrDont Eternal Version: 23.02.02
This is awesome. I had played with the idea of Mandrake Reanimation in the past. I am definitely going to revisit now that you've pointed out some strong BoT Mandrakes.
Interesting thought: were you aware that the the Titans created by Call the Ancients are Mandrakes? And Torgov's Trading Post fits very nicely in here?
ArureTheIncomprehensible Eternal Version: 23.02.02
I was aware of Call the Ancients creating mandrakes, but I decided it wasn't worth using because it clutters the deck. Trading Post has a different problem in that it makes you a lot more reliant on drawing Arcanum Hourglass instead of trying to rely on Hourglass for redundancy. There's also the problem with both in that I don't have shiftstone to spend on them for what's likely a marginal benefit.

It's an interesting idea though, thanks for sharing.