Raffine Brainstorming

[pokken]

So I have three decks floating in the esper colors (orzhov breena, esper varina, esper tivit). these decks are collectively problematic in my current playgroup:

* Breena has problems with countermagic and creates extremely agonizingly long games
* Tivit is...tivit. C'mon, why did I do that.
* Varina is just too strong even without any real ramp, the combo package is too resilient and easy. I over did it. The problem is I don't particularly like the beatdown variant of zombies, so I don't think rebuilding this as beatdown or slower aristos is in the cards for me.

My deck count has also gotten a little unsustainable from a maintenance perspective so I'm thinking about torching all these decks and building something new in the esper-area.

I've kinda honed in on Raffine as a commander whose art and play patterns I like; I realize he might wind up too strong but nobody really plays him anymore and I dig the art and card so whatever :D Thinking bout giving it a try.

I've been through the various Raffine threads and narrowed down on a few things I'm a bit interested in:

* Enchantment token makers
* Planeswalker token makers
* Reanimator (I especially have nowhere to play stupid stuff like Toxrill, the Corrosive and Consecrated Sphinx right now)
* Proclamation of Rebirth // Return to the Ranks effects
* Playing an actual deck that goes nuts on draw with something like Reconnaissance Mission effects / Teferi's Ageless Insight

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I'm thinking about a general ethos of trying to skip all the interaction staples that exist today (so no Fierce Guardianship, no Generous Gift etc.) and trying to do things much differently, to make room for just more stuff I don't usually see.

I'd also like the deck to play fast fairly simple games, since most of my decks get so complicated. And I recognize that many of the things that interest me are...not super streamlined (enchantments and pw's particularly).

With that and the above in mind, a few short questions to help guide my thinking:

* What sort of ramp strategy should I pursue? I'm kinda leaning toward my usuall white approach of Cosmic Intervention since it synergizes pretty strongly with the deck, but I'm open to trying something dumb like just sucking it up and not playing fetchlands, running Azorius Signet or whatever if

* What sort of one-card enablers are there for raffine? Honestly I wonder if Lingering Souls is a Raffine card :D Is sttuff like Bitterblossom and Skrelv's Hive reasonable or too slow?

* Do we think Raffine can be built with a streamlined gameplan that isn't too strong if you constrain your interaction suite?

[ISBPathfinder]

I could possibly see leaning hard into the reanimator side of things. The fact that you get to throw away things sets the rez effects up easily. The self recurring things like Bloodghast are easy but I was also thinking reanimator in the idea of like filtering some big fat juicy creatures to grave and then hitting them with things like Necromancy.

In the end I didn't do that previously because I felt that the streamlined chain gang of cheap creatures and interaction was more consistent. If you weren't looking to come out of the gates as fast as possible though and do some war crimes I could see looking into reanimator being a thing.

[pokken]

I could possibly see leaning hard into the reanimator side of things. The fact that you get to throw away things sets the rez effects up easily. The self recurring things like Bloodghast are easy but I was also thinking reanimator in the idea of like filtering some big fat juicy creatures to grave and then hitting them with things like Necromancy.

In the end I didn't do that previously because I felt that the streamlined chain gang of cheap creatures and interaction was more consistent. If you weren't looking to come out of the gates as fast as possible though and do some war crimes I could see looking into reanimator being a thing.

Yeah that's exactly where my head was at; interestingly I think reanimator could combine with enchantment heavy deck as well since there are so many reanimate enchantments (Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead, Necromancy at least:D)

Could do something like, play a few minor pillowfort enchantments, a Heliod, God of the Sun / Sacred Mesa type stuff, then drop Raffine basically as a discard outlet that provides a little velocity.

Synergizes a bit with Replenish effects too.

The small gotcha is that it might be hard to keep the gameplan from getting too diffuse - getting the enchantments to create enough bodies fast enough might be hard?

Might be just a decent set of token generators with reanimation might be better, but need to figure out what the early game looks like. And whether I run like Raise the Alarm / Lingering Souls stuff, or what.

The nice thing is that even just like....connive 1 is enough to get a Toxrill, the Corrosive in the bin to reanimate it. Or, if I wanted to get super cute, could focus on fatties that generate a crapload of bodies I guess.

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Thopter Foundry might be another way to approach the deck, raffine has quite a lot of synergy with thopters. :D Hangarback Walker Thopter Spy Network etc.

[PrimevalCommander]

I am a sucker for reanimator builds. There is a Sefris of the Hidden Ways thread that plays the reanimator theme with lots of looting. Might be worth a look for some inspiration on that strategy in esper. I mean, if your not cheating the mana cost on an 8-drop, what are you even doing with your life Link to the thread in my sig, it takes you to page 4 where my budget list is, but the OP decklist is much more tuned.

You still still need the reanimate portion, but not the looting portion, so the 5-6 looter slots become Necromancy spots and bingo-bango, you're in business

[pokken]

I am a sucker for reanimator builds. There is a Sefris of the Hidden Ways thread that plays the reanimator theme with lots of looting. Might be worth a look for some inspiration on that strategy in esper. I mean, if your not cheating the mana cost on an 8-drop, what are you even doing with your life Link to the thread in my sig, it takes you to page 4 where my budget list is, but the OP decklist is much more tuned.

You still still need the reanimate portion, but not the looting portion, so the 5-6 looter slots become Necromancy spots and bingo-bango, you're in business

You got any thoughts on the right approach to getting a couple bodies out before Raffine, Scheming Seer? Hopefully something cooler than "Play 10 1 drops" :D

[PrimevalCommander]

You got any thoughts on the right approach to getting a couple bodies out before Raffine, Scheming Seer? Hopefully something cooler than "Play 10 1 drops" :D

I did an open ended search for some options. Here are some that might be interesting. These are outside the typical Raise the Alarm

• Virtue of Loyalty
• Ashnod, Flesh Machanist
• Ancestral Blade
• Beckon Apparition
• Call the Bloodline
• Callous Dismissal
• Carrier Thrall
• Cartouche of Solidarity
• Case of the Stashed Skeleton
• Charismatic Conqueror
• Clarion Spirit
• Cloud of Faeries
• Clowning Around
• Cryptbreaker
• Deceive the Messenger
• Devouring Sugarmaw
• Doomed Traveler
• Hunted Witness
• Drag the Canal
• Emergency Weld
• Fungal Infection
• Glimmer Lens
• Hero of Precinct One
• Homicide Investigator
• Hunted Horror
• Lazotep Chancellor
• Lazotep Plating
• Legion's Landing
• Mordor Muster
• Mourner's Surprise
• Myrsmith
• Nested Shambler
• Nezumi Linkbreaker
• Occult Epiphany
• Orcish Medicine
• Rat Out
• Recruit the Worthy
• Resolute Reinforcements
• Rotten Reunion
• Sand Scout
• Secure the Wastes
• Shamble Back
• Skycat Sovereign

Maybe just playing impactful 1 drops is a good strategy, because not many of these really tickle my fancy. I would look for the cards that do something useful outside of the token making, perhaps Lazotep Plating, Callous Dismissal, and perhaps a couple of the grave hate instants that do something for you if you don't need the creature token on turn 1 and 2. The Raise Dead+token variants help keep creatures in your hand for connive triggers while adding bodies. nothing spectacular, but for 1 and 2 mana, these are just grease cards anyway. Occult Epiphany is one of my favorites out of the set, being able to make more tokens than the mana invested (potentially) while filtering your hand. A few of these + some high impact creatures like Mother of Runes / Giver of Runes and a couple others and you have a decent early game with some additional utility after turn 4.

[darrenhabib]

I saw the "Planeswalker token makers" and you could go Ascend from Avernus, Command the Dreadhorde, Primevals' Glorious Rebirth, Triumphant Reckoning to lean heavily into this theme.

[pokken]

I saw the "Planeswalker token makers" and you could go Ascend from Avernus, Command the Dreadhorde, Primevals' Glorious Rebirth, Triumphant Reckoning to lean heavily into this theme.

This is a pretty legit idea! Might have to acquire some walkers but definitely doable. I used to have BW tokens tho so at least Sorins are covered :D

[ISBPathfinder]

Living Death could also be nice.

[pokken]

Living Death could also be nice.

I am a little torn so far on whether this is a single target reanimation or mass reanimation deck;

On one hand I think there's an Open the Vaults // Replenish deck using enchantments to make tokens, that could win with a massive Opalescence // Starfield of Nyx type attack

Probably a second approach that uses small cheap creatures and dumps big fat creatures, that could use a mix of Living Death Animate Dead Necromancy Reanimate etc. This deck is pretty strongly synergistic since getting the little guys back is good, but lacking a lot of haste options makes it a bit awkward. Most of the creatures I am inclined to play just generate card advantage that is worse than just playing more little guys though :D

An approach with planeswalkers and legendary creatures using the suite of Primevals' Glorious Rebirth + the other mass walker+creature raises.

It's probably my natural biases but I lean toward enchantments. Raffine letting you bin enchantments while also letting you make Academy Rector a threat is hilarious to me for some reason; don't know that I've ever forced anyone to kill my rector like that since the days of Sword of Fire and Ice

Raffine turning Starfield Mystic and Mesa Enchantress and stuff into threats is cool and might also give me the opportunity to play Invasion of Theros // Ephara, Ever-Sheltering which I kinda like. And of course Teferi's Ageless Insight and Reconnaissance Mission and Bident of Thassa are also enchantments which is pretty cool.

Heliod, God of the Sun and Skybind package has a pretty strong synergy with Raffine too of being able to blink blockers and chain out a ton of mana. That said, getting Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx to work might be really hard so deck could become very sanctum dependent.

Raffine being able to come down after you have assembled a large board of goons is kind of an interesting play pattern; if you play raffine, then alpha strike with enchantments, doing a connive 10 could extra seal the game.

Annnd, it could give me the impetus to cull another deck I am struggling with (my Abzan enchantress deck:D).

[darrenhabib]

It's probably my natural biases but I lean toward enchantments. Raffine letting you bin enchantments while also letting you make Academy Rector a threat is hilarious to me for some reason; don't know that I've ever forced anyone to kill my rector like that since the days of Sword of Fire and Ice

Nothing to do with this thread, but I did an enchantment deck with Jo Grant cycling them them into graveyard and The First Doctor/Tardis casting Resurgent Belief.
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