Protect/Recycle Graveyard

[Cyberium]

What are some of the best ways to protect or recycle graveyards in BG based decks?

[Serenade]

If the deck is [one type of ]permanent-based, Creeping Renaissance is amazing.

[RxPhantom]

The best way to protect your graveyard is to protect yourself. Bojuka Bog and similar cards target the player, not the graveyard itself. Giving your self hexproof with Witchbane Orb or Orbs of Warding would be a good place to start.

[pokken]

Generally speaking there are just too many things you won't be able to interact with that attack your yard. You can't do anything to timetwister or echo of eons, giving yourself hexproof is a waste of a card in 95% of all games, and cards like ground seal don't stop too many other hate pieces.

The best thing you can do is:
1) play lots of ways to kill creatures and destroy permanents
2) play veil of summer as a way to stop a bunch of things that is almost always live
3) Have an alternate gameplan
4) consider riftsweeper if you have a specific couple cards you need
5) play thoughtseize

The best defense against the various things people do to hose GB is to have tons of ways to remove cards like rest in peace. The most common things people play other than bog are things you can answer with removal (scooze, rip, leyline, grafdigger's cage, silent gravestone, etc.).

You're better served using the cards you would use to give yourself hexproof or try to protect your yard from very difficult to interact with things like Bog in developing a backup gameplan generally.

I've played a lot of graveyard decks over the years and if you're not playing blue (wherein counterspells are obviously the best deterrent) you're never going to stop everything; it's best to load for the most common things and try to keep your card quality high.

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As far as recycling, generally it is a good idea to play a commander that enables your yard shenanigans somehow.

Here's a short list of GY cards I like:

• volrath's stronghold
• entomb
• genesis
• phyrexian reclamation
• oversold cemetery
• eternal witness
• skullwinder
• dread return
• life from the loam
• crucible of worlds
• phyrexian delver
• survival of the fittest
• splendid reclamation
• world shaper
• yawgmoth's will
• seasons past
• petrified field
• ramunap excavator
• body snatcher

[Mookie]

The best recursion pieces are in the command zone - Meren of Clan Nel Toth, Tasigur, the Golden Fang... even Storrev, Devkarin Lich. If you branch out to blue, Muldrotha, the Gravetide is best-in-class.

After that, it depends somewhat on what you want to recur.

Lands: Crucible of Worlds, Ramunap Excavator, Life from the Loam, Splendid Reclamation
Creatures: Animate Dead, Reanimate, Phyrexian Reclamation, Necromancy, Living Death
Anything: Eternal Witness, Regrowth, Skullwinder, Den Protector, Greenwarden of Murasa
Everything: Praetor's Counsel, Seasons Past, Wildest Dreams
I'll also call out Elixir of Immortality and the legal Eldrazi titans (Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre) as ways to shuffle things back. Titans work particularly well with Survival of the Fittest.

As for protecting your graveyard... you're not going to be able to protect yourself from everything - you can shut off some effects with hexproof (Orbs of Warding, Witchbane Orb), but protecting individual cards from stuff like Scavenging Ooze requires making it impossible to target cards in your graveyard, period, which is only really available through Ground Seal.... which rarely is going to work well for you. Rest in Peace is also pretty tough to stop. You could run Jester's Cap or Sadistic Sacrament to proactively remove them, but I wouldn't recommend it.

IMO, the best way to protect your graveyard is to not overextend - don't throw more cards in than you actually need. The second-best way is to have a solid removal suite - make sure you can keep Leyline of the Void, Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, Scavenging Ooze, and friends off the table. Alternatively, consider Syr Konrad, the Grim to make your opponents think twice about messing with your graveyard.

...and suddenly, I want to make a Syr Konrad Four Horsemen deck. That sounds like it would be amusing.

[gilrad]

Graveyard hate is generally a silver-bullet answer, so any anti-hate cards will give you stronger effect if you stop it with the effect on the stack, forcing the table to find a new answer, rather than sitting behind a protective layer waiting for the table to get around it.

I had an old Karador, Ghost Chieftain deck that dedicated a number of cards to keeping me from decking out:

- Winding Canyons combined with Riftsweeper or loaming shaman to instantly save your graveyard from a relic of progenitus or rest in peace, maybe even true believer for targeted effects like bog. Of the three effects though Loaming Shaman is the preferred one because it also doubles as graveyard hate of its own.

- Entomb combined with any of the original Eldrazi titans (Kozilek, Butcher of Truth)

[darrenhabib]

Let's identify some of the usual suspects...

Bojuka Bog
Relic of Progenitus, Nihil Spellbomb, Tormod's Crypt
Deathrite Shaman
Scavenger Grounds
Agent of Erebos, Angel of Finality
Rakdos Charm
Ravenous Trap
Remorseful Cleric
Stonecloaker
Timetwister, Time Reversal, Time Spiral, etc

There are a ton more, but the point is that there is a spread of ways and no real way to defend against all these effects.

Specifically in just black and green for protection.
If you wanted to protect against creature graveyard exile effects, then Torpor Orb, Cursed Totem can be used as a wide catch-all against other decks as well.
Collector Ouphe and Null Rod can protect against activated artifacts that exile graveyards.
So there are some general hate cards that if they don't effect your own deck can be used, and they are just not dead cards like a lot of other tactics tried by players.

As far as recyclers, if it's not specifically around the commander itself doing most of the leg work, then Seasons Past is my favorite for value.
Living Death is by far the most powerful creature graveyard recycler in the game.

[Sinis]

Not in b/g, but, I found Lazotep Plating to be really good. Giving yourself and your creatures hexproof at instant speed, and getting a chump zombie for blocks or edicts in the bargain is actually tight for 1U.

[Cyberium]

Thank you all for ideas. My biggest issues are instant speed grave-hate that either happens during opponent's turn (prevents me from ridding it at sorcery-speed or too late after the trigger), or instant speed ones that can't be dealt with at, well, instant speed. Kinda wish black has an instant that exiles cards in your own graveyard then return it later. Instant speed Loaming Shaman is definitely a neat idea, and Sadistic Sacrament/Praetor's Grasp would let me browse opponent's library and expect what's to come.

Though, much like in the old days when you keep lands/creatures in hand to avoid board wipe, perhaps this is a game-play concern, i.e., try not to dump too many things into GY, lest I risk it gone?

[pokken]

Yep, not overextending is key when you're prepping for yard hate. Don't tripe dredge your sylvan library in the face of unknown opponents Mookie hit the nail on the head there.

[darrenhabib]

Definitely as mookie and pokken mention, the absolute best way to get good at graveyard strategies is to try and play on more marginal graveyards for your value if you can.

Examples are when you have dredge outlets is making sure that you can use them later. I play a lot of Life from the Loam decks, and once the game has gone on for a little while, there are two main things that I'll do. Firstly I will almost always make sure that I don't expose the "dredge" card to removal itself. This means either not leaving it in your graveyard OR having a way to draw at instant speed so that I can dredge in response.
During the early game this isn't always possible, but once I have dredged numerous times then it should be a priority so that if your graveyard is removed, you can start the dredge plan again.
The second thing to assess is whether you have enough resources in your graveyard to function. You'll always want more of course, but really the better player will see if they can get enough value from what they have already.
For example you might be able to recur one creature every turn (somehow). This creature might only be able to effect the game in one particular way. You might have multiple creatures in the deck that can toolbox your way through many situations. But I'll access if this creature (or creatures) I already have access to will be enough to grind value.
For example let's say I have Caustic Caterpillar as a creature I can recur each turn. If I have the option to not expose my graveyard further by putting more cards into it, where I know that the Caustic Caterpillar is going to grind my opponents out of getting the traction that they want, then you just don't need to unnecessarily do it. It feel a bit weird because you know that your deck is capable of doing quite powerful things if you were to go further with the graveyard plan, but if what you have is "good enough" then just be patient and keep using it, even if it's not the most busted thing your deck can do.

This comes up a lot with mass reanimation as well. If you wait a turn then you'll likely get double the value. Wait another turn and you might get like quadruple the value.
Don't get me wrong high risk high reward can win you a lot of games. But invariably as I get more experienced, I'll always pull the trigger at the first opportunity rather than wait for higher returns.

I'm not a huge fan of shuffling your graveyard into your library to "save" it, as really this can be just about the same result as it getting exiled anyway. Sure there might be some cool cards that you'll lose forever, but in a format of 100 cards, you'll have others to get. Honestly unless you really are a combo deck that truly relies on a couple of key cards, then I wouldn't put much stock into it.
But as mentioned getting an Kozilek, Butcher of Truth or Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre into your graveyard can do this, and Survival of the Fittest is great at doing this.

[hyalopterouslemur]

The problem with protecting graveyards is what it means. I like Orbs of Warding to deal with things like Bojuka Bog and Nihil Spellbomb. But against something like Scavenger Grounds, Scavenging Ooze, or Deathrite Shaman, it does nothing. You can remove two of those, but they've already done their damage. I'm also a big fan of Leyline of the Void, and cards like that (also Rest in Peace, Grafdigger's Cage) don't target, but they can be removed.

But Scavenger Grounds just can't be stopped. Except by Blood Moon or Kismet and Back to Basics together.

[pokken]

The problem with protecting graveyards is what it means. I like Orbs of Warding to deal with things like Bojuka Bog and Nihil Spellbomb. But against something like Scavenger Grounds, Scavenging Ooze, or Deathrite Shaman, it does nothing. You can remove two of those, but they've already done their damage. I'm also a big fan of Leyline of the Void, and cards like that (also Rest in Peace, Grafdigger's Cage) don't target, but they can be removed.

But Scavenger Grounds just can't be stopped. Except by Blood Moon or Kismet and Back to Basics together.

In blue there're a lot of answers that're generic but sadly countering anything is only in blue pretty much. Summary dismissal, disallow, voidslime, etc.

I would love to see countering triggered and activated abilities be secondary green (for artifacts/enchantments) and white (for creatures), I think that'd be a fun changeup.

[hyalopterouslemur]

Well, there is Bind|Invasion.