{"ops":[{"insert":"-WIP PRIMER!-\nThis is my attempt to make a powerful but fair bracket 3 Celes, Rune Knight deck that is fun to play against and with.\n\nThe Maybe board is in progress, as this deck list is cards I personally own. The cards I am about to buy/testing are on the maybe list.\nThe Side board are cards that were fun, but I rotate them in and out to see how they work with different setups.\n\nI created this with 3 MAJOR limitations in mind.\n1) No Persist!*\n2) No Tutors!*\n3) No Infinite Combos!\n\nTo clarify my Asterisks:\n1) There is 1 single persist enabler in the deck, named Isilu. In order to get Isilu onto the battlefield, you need to untap with Eirdu in play. I think of this as fair since you give the other players an opportunity to answer this potential wincon once it's on the board. (There are a couple ways to get Eirdu on board at instant speed, so play accordingly, and responsibly. I tell my pod before the game starts about this.)\n2) The Tutors restriction. I hate hate hate hate hate shuffling my deck! The land base has me doing it up to 3 times already. I did however create this to be strong for it's bracket level, so the land base needed to be powerful and fast, plus deck thinning is important when you want to get to the point. Finally there is Buried Alive. This is the only card that will let you search the library. It is intended to get 4 specific cards; Anger, Sephiroth Fallen Hero, and Blood Ghast or Interceptor into the Graveyard. At 3 Mana and Sorcery speed, I find it to be about as fair as possible, considering you can't do much without other reanimation in hand or on board already. The power level of the deck is vastly lower without Haste on everything and this was the most reasonable way to set up for what the deck truly wants to do, which is to have a creature enter from the graveyard and attack at least once each turn.\n\nWhy Celes, Rune Knight?\nFF6 is one of my all time favorite games and Celes is my favorite character in the game. Having her World of Ruin journey retold in MTG has felt so flavorful and fun to play. I utilize both of her abilities to make a very difficult to deal with board state that's not afraid of swinging in every turn. My philosophy is that the game will end, each creature is a clock on the board.\n\nDiscard any number of cards, Draw that many + 1.\nCeles is in the command zone to help sculpt your cards into what you need both in hand and in the graveyard.\nThis effect is enhanced by ETB Doublers and a couple fun flicker effects: Elesh Norn, Panharmonicon, Teleportation Circle, and finally Mardu Siege Breaker.\n-Why not run more flicker effects? I want Celes to also level up as a threat on board herself. Removing her counters makes her an annoyance at best, I want her to be leading the charge, not just a card cycling engine in the back line.\n\nCreatures entering or cast from a grave yard under your control give ALL your creatures a +1/+1 counter.\nCeles on the Battlefield is a payoff for reanimating beyond just going wide. This deck goes tall very quickly, and leans in on this ability for combat instead of a combo. (Were in bracket 3, remember?)\nIt's also highly flavorful to bring in the Final Fantasy theme of leveling up my party, Celes has been thrust into the world of ruin with the thoughts that her friends are all dead, she must discover that they are out there, bring them back together and grow stronger to overcome the battles ahead.\nAlong with the +1/+1 counters, there are Keyword Anthems/Lords based mostly on having modified creatures. This ability enables those cards to give all creatures Double Strike, Life Link, and Flying.\nBuff the board up to be able to block anything safely, but don't have any fear of creatures getting killed. Each dead blocker is an opportunity to reanimate and buff the board again.\n\nThe Creatures.\nEach creature is in this list for a reason, I've been through a lot of testing and had to make a lot of painful cuts. I'm going to discuss them by category. (Turn the custom tags on)\n-Anthems\nWhat good is a wide board of non tokens? This deck is about powering up for combat damage.\nAnger is here to be killed or discarded asap! Haste is VERY potent in this deck.\nArchetype of Aggression is the perfect CMC and Base Power for targeting, while giving board wide Trample. Bonus effect removing it from opponents.\nEnvoy of Ancestors give everything Lifelink, perfect sustain for the life cost reanimation effects. Often this amounts to a +30 life gain swing the turn he comes out.\nChocobo Knights gives Double Strike, to everything. + Chocobos!\nAbzan Falconer is the answer to a major problem for most low power decks. Angels? Dragons? No problem. Flying to all is Freedom. Removing any idea that you can't swing in and hit for lethal.\nSephiroth, Fallen Hero is more Final Fantasy, but also a card that does a lot of heavy lifting. Making your entire board state base power 7/5 is already great, but it doesn't stop there. This card triggers Celes from the Graveyard effectively making it cost 3. When you do swing with him, the board is a bare minimum 8/6. Finally, it's ok to lose him, he's naturally reanimates without added assistance.\n\n-Recursion\nThis is the primary focus and strategy of the deck. Every creature is better when it enters from the grave yard. As such, the list of creatures that bring back others, or return themselves is the bulk of the deck. We want to trigger Celes as much as possible to swing in for lethal, or rebuild from a board wipe. Resilience is key to answering decks that cheat out high value spells for free over and over again.\nBloodghast is such a fantastic utility creature. He basically never goes away, is a perfect sacrifice target, often opponents are too scared to kill it, making it get WAY more value than his cost. Sac him for Mana multiple times a turn with Fetch Lands + Crucible of Worlds + Phyrexian Alter. Sacrifice him to either version of Sephiroth or Shadow for Draw, Counters or Buffs. Triggering Celes every turn when set up.\nPriest of Fell Rites is the best reanimation creature ever printed for this deck. Combos well with Luminous Broodmoth for twice the value, targeting other reanimation creatures with him sets up trigger chains. Finally Instant speed activation for no mana makes the entire grave yard a looming surprise threat for attackers even when tapped out.\nDoomed Necromancer has all the same benefits of Priest of Fell Rites, but costs more mana. The activation costing a pip also makes it just a slightly worse version of Priest in very way. But slightly worse is still a fantastic card.\nAlesha, Who laughs at Fate is an amazing value creature offering same turn repeatable reanimation which scales up quickly. Having first strike makes it easy to self power up, and the first reanimation makes the next one even higher mana value with Celes out. All around great card for the theme and goals of the deck.\nTerra, Herald of Hope is a pet card for massive FF6 flavor, fortunately it's a good one! While her recursion has limits and a 2 mana cost, she does fly on your turn to easily get the hit in and slightly fills the graveyard every combat on your turn. Any time a Power 3 creature is listed, it's amplified because of Terra's ability to reanimate. There is an added category of Creatures she can recur just to show how much weight Terra can pull.\nGrave Researcher is a newer card, I have not yet been able to have him hit the board in a game, but the card does speak for itself. Surveil is VERY strong for this deck, and he can re prepare when the grave is sufficiently filled. Having reanimate on a stick as both a Terra and Sun Titan target is peak territory for setting up reanimation chains.\nChainer, Nightmare Adept Speaking of Chains, I finally picked this card up! Every time he hits the battlefield, he's a problem for my opponents. He does it ALL! Fillls the grave, gives Haste, Triggers Celes. Ideal targets are cards like Priest of the Fell Rites and Doomed Necromancer, who can then pull in another more expensive creature. Bonus points for being able to Discard Sun Titan targets into the grave, or Anger. Also 3 Power!\nInterceptor, Shadow's Hound is mostly in the deck for Flavor. He is the best boy of the deck offering some nice utility flexibility, allowing for a mana dump every combat that triggers Celes and gets in an added 4 menace damage without fear of being killed off. Bonus synergy with any Sacrifice outlets as you can reliably use him as the target for cards like Sephiroth, Sephiroth and Shadow. Shadow especially gains menace as one of the 2 Assassins in the deck, while they're on board together, making it more likely for him to connect.\nLuminous Broodmoth is equal to casting Life 3 on all creatures you control. (Life 3 is an automatic revive spell in Final Fantasy) This triggers Celes and retriggers all ETB effects of those creatures, while giving them Flying! Fun synergy with this is to revive a Priest of the Fell Rites, then you get to sue his ability twice before he stays dead meaning you can perform some very elaborate Reanimation chains prior to combat leading to an alpha strike if all is set up.\nVincent Valentine was a pleasant surprise for me when I played against the new Ashling, he was able to build up 28 power in 1 turn cycle from all the sacrifices my opponent did. When he attacks he tramples with life link, then if he dies in his flipped side, he automatically reanimates powering up the whole board. He is the threat that never stops! Bonus was the fact that it was a Final Fantasy character. Natural Recursion is always convenient, so you can confidently turn him sideways every turn.\nCarmen, Cruel Skymarcher is quite a card. Carmen synergizes with everything you want to be doing each turn, killing creatures, getting bigger and reanimating bigger threats! She also has flying with a bonus little bit of life gain.\nKarmic Guide is here for chain recursion only. Meant to be dumped into the graveyard and reanimate targeted first, then hit the creature you truly want back on the field. Bonus points for hitting Other recursion creatures with Karmic guide.\n-WIP PRIMER!-\nLots of interaction is available to assist with trimming down threats, most of it is on creatures with ETB.\n-WIP PRIMER!-\n\n\n"}]}