PAUPER: Living End (kinda) V2

Wooooo. Playtesting the first version of this was very illuminating. That version went all in on the idea, running essentially no interaction mainboard and only had the cycling creatures as the reanimation targets (if you're curious what changed its on profile under the same name essentially and A LOT changed). It was very consistently able to do "the thing" (exhume out a big creature) even as a 5 color pauper deck, but it was almost always too little, too late, unless you got the lucky perfect hand and didnt have to work for it.

So I needed to do a few things-
I needed better ways to stabilize once i got a creature out (or any way to stabilize)
I needed more threatening creatures and I also needed some way to generate value late game.

The fixes- took out blue as the only reason I was running it was for striped riverwinder. It's a great creature but sometimes its just not enough- hexproof isn't going to save it if I'm already on my heels having to block a giant bogle or something. It's not worth the clunkiness the extra color gave the deck. So bye bye blue.

I essentially replaced it with ulamog's crusher (the usual reanimation target). I didn't run it in the mainboard of the original version because i had no way of getting in the grave....so now that i'm running it I needed a way to get in the grave early without having a spell that is under 3 cmc (I can't use faithless looting or my cascade spells will hit it). I am pleased to announce that I get to finally use merchant of the vale. I always liked that card but this is the first time ive been actually able to fit it in something where it makes sense to me. I can use it turn 1 to dump a crusher, it avoids being hit by cascade and it also produces late game value for me.

That card on its own I didnt feel was enough so my other discard outlet is seize the spoils- also surprisingly good here. Provides me some utility and card draw when i need it- smooths out opening hands and also provides a sack outlet AND mana fixing/ramp which is frequently needed since i'm still running 4 colors.

I went wayyyyy up on the interaction, slowly going from 1 fiery canonade to the full playset, as a giant creature in the face of a 4 weenies sometimes isnt enough, as well as some o-rings which will deal with almost anything.

As for the the "stabilizers", abzan guide is a great addition. The morph is relevant as sometimes I either do not have a way to do get in the graveyard/ or the correct colors and it smooths out otherwise unplayable hands. Opponent will know what it is game 2/3 sometimes when its face down- which sometimes functions as a deterrent to attackers as they might not want to kill it in fear of you reanimating it later.

And because the colors changed, I changed igneous pouncer to elvish aberration and went all in on the forest duals from kaldheim. Elvish abberation is just a better reanimation target in general- and sometimes its preferable to use it to just hardcast crusher or something if the opponent has something in the graveyard that we couldn't macabre away, or if we just dont have any way to reanimate it.

the sideboard had to change like crazy as well, but i think it relatively self-explanatory. I'm still debating whether its better to have mold shambler vs conclave naturalists- as naturalists is a better reanimation target and has a more reliable ETB, but i like that mold shambler can hit lands for tron and the like so im running that for now as it covers more bases when alongside broken wings and O ring.

Is this better than the other more common controllier/all in versions of reanimator in pauper? Not sure (and probably not as always), but its better than my first attempt, so im happy about that for now.

CYCLE OR RECYCLE BIG DUDES TO GRAVEYARD- THEN REANIMATE BIG DUDES...or just play em outright if we get there on lands

• Pauper
• living end
• Reanimator
• 4 color
• exhume
• cycling
• Crusher
• apple pie