WARNING: DO NOT PLAY THIS DECK IF YOU WANT TO WIN GAMES

This deck is NOT good. You don't play this deck to win, you play it because you are a degenerate gambler, and would rather play the most unhinged deck thing you can, and get your matches over in like 10 minutes. That being said, have fun, but don't expect to win... like ever.

And just know, when you DO get a win, you will get ZERO credit, and your opponent will very likely be salty. Very, very salty.

What does Magician even do?

Magician is a meme-tier avatar, we're talking F-tier here, unplayable hot garbage. If you are competing seriously and bring Magician, you will not win, you won't get to top cut.

But Magician shrivels your combined deck size down to 60, which is basically only significant whenever you are including sites as a part of your overall combos and strategy. I say this because there's this popular misconception that Magician decks have a statistical advantage equivalent to running a 40/20 build vs. a 60/30 build, but I'm here to tell you, if you believe that, you are incorrect (mostly).

HOWEVER, if Magician relies on sites as a part of his combos, the numbers DO matter a lot more.

Think about it like this: if you are looking for 2 or 3 specific spells to combo (like [[Ring of Morrigan]] / [[Kythera Mechanism]] / [[Chaoswish]]) then Magician barely helps you more than Spellslinger would. If you are looking for sites specifically (like Roots + Sinkhole) then Magician is effectively much worse at getting those than Seer would be.

If you are generally looking for ways to send cards to the cemetery, whether that's from discarding from hand or from the top of your deck, and then reanimating them using myriad spells and sites, Magician IS (probably) the best way (statistically speaking) to achieve that over the course of the game. As you get closer and closer to your combo outs, you are also filtering all the various other garbage and drawing into heat and/or cards that help sustain the plan B.

This is what makes Magician special, but it's ONLY if you are including site plays as a huge part of "going off." So don't get it in your head that Magician is a better combo avatar than any other; it's a very narrow case where that's true, and then, at what cost?

The cost: you WILL lose games simply because you drew far too many or far too few sites. That will happen. You cannot do anything about it. If you are interested in this deck, you probably know that already and are ok with the gamble.

What does this deck do?

This deck has one objective: cheat big things out in various ways to hopefully get ahead of your opponent way before they can manage it. That's it. It is a "reanimator" deck, but not ONLY a reanimator deck, since we have a few other ways to cheat out a big scary. Plan B is to recur various smaller threats over and over, namely [[Daperyll Vampire]] and [[Renatus Trueblood]] as they can win games on their own, and your opponent has probably spent a fair bit of effort to get rid of other stuff.

Ways to cheat

Reanimator

Use various discard effects to pitch stuff like [[Great Old One]] into the cemetery and play it ASAP with [[Boneyard]], [[Orpheus' Crossing]], and [[Raise Dead]]; if it's Undead, you can also use [[Carrionette]]. A turn 2 [[Draconian Bonekite]] or [[Army of the Dead]] is horrifying, trust me. I know plenty of other reanimator players out there are not impressed by the Undead we have available and opt out of playing Carrionette all together, but I would rather more routes to do the thing.

Ramp

It's also pretty easy to just hardcast stuff in this deck. I have had plenty of games where I open with Tower > [[Four Waters of Paradise]] on turn 1, then follow up with Tower 2 > [[Army of the Dead]] type plays. That's good enough. Even turn 1 [[Mix Aer]], turn 2 any site + crack Mix for [[Daperyll Vampire]] can win you the game if you can follow up with other stuff over the next few turns.

Freebies

[[Falling Star]] and [[The Apex of Babel]] are our two alternate ways of getting cards out. A turn 1 or turn 2 Falling Star off Four Waters is amazing, but even just a tower turn 3 Falling Star can win the game if they don't handle it and you plop down [[The Doom of Dilmun]] on their face. Apex is way more likely to be put together because you have sites like [[Forgotten Tomb]] and [[Wizard's Den]] getting you deeper into your stack.

General Advice

I urge you to find a hypergeometric calculator to use while you test this deck out; get to know your odds. Here's what I use: https://www.mtgnexus.com/tools/drawodds/

Understanding the chances of going off will help you perform. The number of games where I have doored the opponent and lost is actually pretty high, and the most common statement I hear in that scenario is "wow that felt like it was a lot closer than it should have been" which is probably because I am constantly relying on the odds every match to make my decisions, NOT because I am some kind of tactical genius who can pull a meme-tier deck into a high-level competitive environment and do well.

I also urge you to take your plays seriously, but don't take your deck seriously... You're playing a meme, don't get hung up on something "almost" going off, and take the snide comments in stride, because boy, you will get them when people lose, let me tell you. Even good, well-behaved, friendly players hate playing against this deck. Just get ready for the flak.

Magician | Undead Hat Trick

@Lester_IV