Pointed Discussion

This thing is gonna be a powerhouse in Standard, especially with all the self milling from stuff like Splinterfright

i think the white mana in the flashback cost was a deliciously clever way to nerf this card

do i really want to splash white in my graveyard deck?

maybe. We'll see

Cheaper flashback for the win.

DAMN YOU WHITE MANA. DAMN YOU TO HELL.

strictly better than rise from the graOH IT'S NOT A ZOMBIE THAT'S JUST TERRIBLE

@ greg2367

This can also only hit your grave, which is kind of lame. I liked taking something from an opponent's graveyard.

My Karador Commander deck just got another card to play with.

Interested to see what this might do in standard.

A False Defeat you play from the graveyard. Nice. And if you have black mana in your deck, you could also play it the normal way, as well.

Sooooo goooood

Hmm, what's the best reanimaton target these days?

That's it, i'm running a standard reanimator deck. With Jace's Erasure to put some cards into my grave, and this card to bring them back.

I love how when people see this card they immediately think "Reanimation Deck". I love this just for getting back guys after they've been hated on from the battlefield, "Oh you killed my Geist-Honored Monk? Well guess what, she's back with even more friends!"

Really awesome card all around, reanimation deck / getting key players back etc. I think it can nicely fit into any Black / White deck that is packing some nice creatures.

I bet they're going to make a card called Blessed Sleep next.

Black and white. Reanimates disgustingly powerful threats from the grave. High octane nightmare fuel art.

I do believe I've fallen in love.

I don't see what all the fuss is about. It's 5 mana, which isn't significantly cheaper than anything else you could just hard cast (in Standard). Its cheaper flashback cost isn't in a color that's good at milling (Black or Blue). And it's restricted to your graveyard. I'd rather have Rise from the Grave, just for less restrictions (and ideally something more like Animate Dead or Reanimate, for getting those threats out quickly).

Now imagine how crazy this would be if the flashback were green instead of white.

At least now I know what to name with my Phyrexian Revoker.

T1: Forest, Birds of Paradise
T2: Swamp, Liliana of the Veil, discard a threat card like um Sheoldred, Whispering One or Sun Titan or Grave Titan
T3: any land, discard Unburial Rites, flashback Unburial Rites, return Sheoldred or Titan
T4: profit

I bet you thought my Grave Titan was dead... and this Sun Titan was dead. NOOOOOOPE! Unburial Rites

You know what this thing does?

Two more ETB triggers on your titan (or anything that has a nice ETB).

Sideboard options against graveyard decks for Standard;
Nihil Spellbomb (whole graveyard)
Surgical Extraction (instant speed response to this, good against decks with few win cons)
And my favorite, Noxious Revival. Works well against uncastable ten mana creatures.
And with all that, I'm still looking forward to seeing this card in action.

I don't care that its flashback cost isn't in a color that's great at milling itself, I think it has fantastic value for a straight up BW deck with useful/powerful creatures.

Tempted to splash white in my self-mill, just for an excuse to run this. I could chuck in eight (four B/W, four U/W) dual lands, I guess...

This is what you want to do in Solar Flare:

Turn 1: Land, maybe Ponder.
Turn 2: Counter/Kill spell.
Turn 3: Liliana of the Veil discarding this, or Forbidden Alchemy discarding this and a fatty.
Turn 4: Use Liliana to discard a fatty and play this.

Turn 4 Titans or Praetors are good, I hear.

@greenzero: good idea, except for the "or Storm Crow. There is no another option than storm crow. Remember, 4 storm crow is a 5 turn clock.

Good card, but kind of useless in a mono-black deck.

I once found myself with several playsets of Faithless Looting, four of this, and some Shattered Perception, then raided my rare and uncommon binder for stuff that I've never been able to profitably cast. Shortly thereafter I found myself unburying Hellkite Overlords, Flayer of the Hatebound, Geralf's Mindcrushers, and Pelakka Wurms with Dragon Scales, all in the same 60 card deck!

my first choice for any kind of reanimate in Modern. This thing makes sure my Doran, the Siege Tower deck keeps on swinging away. I wasn't around during flashback's earlier stints in standard, but I gotta say this mechanic is awesome for conserving important slots in decks. This and Ancient Grudge are definitely my favorite flashback cards. 4.5/5 for being one of the best Modern reanimation options, and for being a solid card late game for important comebacks.

Be careful running Standard Reanimator, guys. They're reprinting Tormod's Crypt in M13.

This thing is a pest. Remember all those "dies to doom blade" comments? Well yeah, but with this they have to take it out 3 times!!!

Avacyn's Pilgrim. Flashback Problem solved.

I have had this card played against me before and it has hurt. It has me thinking of building my own variant of the 4C decks that seem to be hitting standard recently. This is an article regarding one such deck I am thinking of modifying for my own purposes.

http://www.mtgnoob.com/2012/10/new-standard-4c-rites.html

what's better than 1 thragtusk?

How about a card that gives you two more?

so if I use it on my dead Mikaeus, the lunarch do I get Mikaeus, the unhallowed? :D

Defined a deck and a format. Still a boogeyman. One of the best reanimation spells ever printed. Best of all, it has flashback. 4.5/5

If Yawgmoth's Will is a machine gun, this is a double-barreled sniper rifle.

They each have the ability to outshine the other if you've dedicated your deck to making it happen. I would be quite interested a Duel Decks where these two Black Grave-hackers face off.

Of course Yawgmoth's Will has a LOT going for it, but this does a few things that card doesn't- notably it can be used in mono-white decks, as Lingering Souls can be used in mono-black decks. Off-color Flashback is better than normal Flashback, regardless of converted Flashback costs, as it turns the card into a hybrid colored card.

Also worth noting (please correct me if I'm wrong)- Flashback can be used at Instant speed, yes? And is only slightly easier to predict than cycling cards out of hand when the graveyard is thick.

I think, for sheer insane POTENTIAL, Dread Return is the most bang for your buck. Maximizing it forces you into almost a single decklist, but then, that decklist is close to a maximization of MAGIC, so...not bad. Dredge is just kinda nice. :)

Yawgmoth's Will CAN get 'anything' and this only gets creatures, but even back in 'Old School' Magic before all this "Midrange" and "Tempo" started replacing a nerfed, shadow-of-itself ''Control", you were still probably always going to finish with either a creature or milling. Does anyone remember Phyrexian Dreadnaught anymore? That was the BIG BEAST -before- even original Darksteel Colossus. Of the various kinds of Combo Decks out there, pretty much right around DSC's printing, and the rotation of almost 30%-50% of all the "Famous Broken Cards", Creatures have been the best Card Type, only recently replaced by Planeswalkers. (Jace wasn't the final nail. Tamiyo was, because she proved that WOTC is still willing to make Very Excellent Planeswalkers post-Jace. Tibalt, in fact, being the only one from her whole Block that wasn't Really Good, and her being the end of the Block, showing that they're Still Doing It.)

I don't understand the logic behind the cheaper off-colour Flashback.. thinking of putting this in my modified M13 Exalted Intro deck with Sun Ti.... and Sin Collector.

@zomboss

No, you just get a dead Mikaeus because he enters as a 0/0. :P

@C5r1a5z0y and anyone else doubting how this card is awesome:

This card is amazing for a few reasons, most of which have been mentioned. CAN be used in monowhite, CAN be used in monoblack, CAN be used in white/black, CAN be used twice... That last one ties into why I like it a lot more than other reanimation cards. There's several abstract deckbuilding concepts that exist (exempli gratia: the mana curve, the CUMULATIVE mana curve, utility, card advantage, etc.), but there's one that I never found a name for. I call it deck slotting.

Deck slotting is an argument for why Lava Axe can be a decent card. It's not as utility-friendly as, say Lightning Bolt (only hits players, not creatures/players), and it's not NEARLY as efficient as Lightning Bolt (5 mana for 5 damage is terrible compared to a boon)... however, Lava Axe has a literally more powerful effect for the same slot that Lightning Bolt uses, meaning that you'd have more room in the rest of your deck for other spells. If your deck is outright designed to burn the opponent, 4 lightning bolts would barely be more damage than 2 lava axes. Under lava axe, with those tactics, you'd have more cards in hand and you'd have more deck slots open. NOW DON'T GET ME WRONG, Lava Axe is a terrible card; I'd prefer to have a mana dump like Blaze or its variants over Lava Axe any day, but it provides another aspect to deckbuilding.

This (and any powerful flashback card) is like putting a 9 converted mana cost card that resurrects two creatures and leasing it over two turns. Card advantage, it's awesome. You lose one card in hand for two resurrections. Mana efficiency, it's awesome. 5 mana is not too much for a resurrection. It may be only from your graveyard, but if you were relying on your opponent to play killable fatties, then you need to put this in a deck that doesn't rely on the opponent doing anything. ALSO WORTHY TO NOTE is that the flashback cost is cheaper, meaning if you have to discard it, it's like madness, as a madness cost is almost always cheaper than the spell cost.

And THAT is why this is awesome. The only thing they could have done better is make Lingering Souls the black with white flashback and this the white with black flashback, so you could have used this in conjunction with discard in a monoblack.

What I'm getting from the flavor text is: In Innistrad, more often than not,you're a zombie.

An absolute house in W/B, it made Junk standard viable,
6/5 if you've got the colors.

@greg: A graveyard vs your graveyard. Unburial Rites loses in that category.

Unburial Rites is my favorite reanimation spell. Dread Return may be better in a hardcore dredge deck, but this is much better in casual.

4.3/5