Let’s be honest: The usual Preconstructed Deck uses two colors and follows some sort of theme with the given options. Red-Green is Aggro, White-Blue oftentimes has Control elements and following the logic you can apply an easy description to all ten of the two-color combinations in Magic the Gathering. Which is why I like to write about Preconstructed Decks that are outside the norm, either by going all-in on one color or by using three or more. Planar Chaos has both to offer, and for today I am going to take a look at the White-Black-Green “Rituals of Rebirth”, which seems to have some revival theme from the deck’s name alone. Does it deliver? Well, only one way to find out:
Here is the decklist for “Rituals of Rebirth”:
Creatures (23):
2x Essence Warden (G)
2x Greenseeker (G)
3x Fa’adiyah Seer (1G)
1x Wall of Roots (1G)
2x Icatian Crier (2W)
1x Spike Feeder (1GG)
1x Sengir Autocrat (3B)
2x Jedit’s Dragoons (5W)
1x Bog Serpent (5B)
1x Twisted Abomination (5B)
1x Jedit Ojanen of Efrava (3GGG)
1x Teneb, the Harvester (3WBG)
2x Havenwood Wurm (6G)
3x Phantasmagorian (5BB)
Spells (13):
2x Rebuff the Wicked (W)
3x Evolution Charm (1G)
2x Search for Tomorrow (2G)
1x Resurrection (2WW)
3x Dread Return (2BB)
2x Harmonize (2GG)
Lands (24):
11x Forest
4x Plains
7x Swamp
2x Terramorphic Expanse
And as is so often the case, WotC has written some introductory text that allows players to get an idea of what the package has on offer:
“Some view death as a door into another world. The Rituals of Rebirth deck views death as a revolving door that leads right back onto the battlefield! Early in the game, drop giant creature cards into your graveyard with cards like Icatian Crier, Fa’adiyah Seer, and Greenseeker. Then play Resurrection or Dread Return to put a gargantuan attacker from your graveyard directly into play. Teneb, the Harvester is your best bet: Not only is it a 6/6 flying Dragon, but it’ll reanimate more of your creatures as it takes huge chunks out of your opponent’s life total. If you haven’t gotten Teneb into your graveyard yet, you have plenty of other options, like Phantasmagorian or Jedit Ojanen of Efrava. Your opponent will have a hard time dealing them with on turn 4! As the game goes along, you’ll accumulate so much land that you can simply play any of your giant creatures from your hand, which means Evolution Charm becomes useful as a resurrection spell as well. When your creatures won’t stay dead, who can stand in your way?”
– Planar Chaos “Rituals of rebirth” THEME DECK PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
That sounds pretty much on point, even though I would disagree with the statement of the opponent having a hard time dealing with the creatures in the deck by turn four. But let us start from the beginning: “Rituals of Rebirth” has a pretty solid early game for a Preconstructed Deck. Two copies of “Essence Warden” are not to be underestimated since they can heal you for sizeable amounts of life points when left alone. “Greenseeker” also helps by transforming cards in your hand into basic lands, which not only gets the deck out of bad hands but also provides setup for the reanimation spells that give “Rituals of Rebirth” its name. “Fa’adiyah Seer” has a similar purpose, drawing into more lands while ditching any non-lands the card reveals for more graveyard setup. There is only one copy of “Wall of Roots” but even as a single card you profit from the combination of more defense with added mana generation. “Icatian Crier” can also ditch cards from your hand and produces small tokens for blocking and for life gain via “Essence Warden“. All makes sense so far and seems to add up, which is why the deckbuilder decided to introduce some chaos into the mix: “Spike Feeder” does not do anything for the theme at all since it is small on its own, costly when used for counter distribution, and quite honestly unnecessary for life gain since you already have a better option for that in the deck. And while “Sengir Autocrat” is a good card that provides a solid number of bodies to work with, there is not really anything one can do with that so far.
“Rituals of Rebirth” has an interesting transition into high mana values with only “Sengir Autocrat” as a four-drop and nothing creature-wise for five mana. In the best case, you probably use reanimation during those turns to revive the big guns, but let us see what options there are to play for that. “Jedit’s Dragoons” is quite frankly terrible, with 2/5 Vigilance being nowhere near good enough to eat a revive spell, regardless of whether they heal for four life points when entering the battlefield. And the six mana “Bog Serpent” is a bad joke aswell: 5/5 with two drawbacks is just a bad idea and there are plenty of cards that do better than that. “Twisted Abomination” is a little better, both as a creature on the field as well as in terms of setup. You can easily discard it for its own Swampcycling effect and 5/3 with a cheap Regeneration effect is certainly passable, albeit nothing I would seek out to play. The good targets are provided by the deck’s Rare cards: “Jedit Ojanen of Efrava” is a 5/5 with Forestwalk, putting any player with a “Forest” on a four turn clock without any outside help, while also growing your ranks with smaller tokens of himself when attacking or blocking. And “Teneb, the Harvester“, Rare number two in “Rituals of Rebirth”, is no slough either: 6/6 with Flying is immediately sending alarm signals to the opponent, and being able to revive any creature card for three mana when it deals damage to a player is just the cherry on top. This even helps over the fact that “Havenwood Wurm” is a terrible revive option since its Flash is meaningless and it then just becomes a semi-big Trample creature, while “Phantasmagorian” provides its own counter against itself and costs too much to retrieve.
The spell selection in “Rituals of Rebirth” is also surprisingly passable. “Rebuff the Wicked” helps keeping the creatures you revived on the field by simply countering any harm coming their way for cheap. “Evolution Charm” is a very interesting tool that can either help searching for more lands, retrieve creatures from your graveyard, or a rather uncommon effect for Green in giving a creature on the field Flying; and therefore allowing your big beaters to evade certain blockers. “Search for Tomorrow” is further mana ramping, and in my personal opinion both good when played via Suspend as well as for its normal cost later down the line due to always bringing the land card onto the battlefield untapped. To actually revive creatures in this deck, you have two options to work with: The White “Resurrection“, which is as straightforward as it gets by just taking a creature from your graveyard and placing it on the field for four mana, or the Black “Dread Return” which does the same as “Resurrection” but also has Flashback that you can pay with by sacrificing creatures. Now effects like that of “Icatian Crier” and “Sengir Autocrat” make sense. As the last card in the deck, we have two “Harmonize“. Do not get me wrong, “Harmonize” is great since it provides a draw spell in Green; but since “Rituals of Rebirth” already features two additional colors in White and Black there are definitely other options in terms of getting cards than a rather vanilla “draw three”.
If I had to give my thoughts on how to improve “Rituals of Rebirth”, I would probably start with two things. First, add more useful creatures to revive because the line-up the deckbuilders chose to work with is pitiful. There were lots of useful cards in both Time Spiral and Planar Chaos that could have been used, with “Avatar of Woe“, “Craw Giant“, “Mystic Enforcer“, and “Phantom Wurm” all being available without taking any Rare slot; and “Valor” would have been really good as discard fodder. The other thing that is completely missing is removal. White-Black-Green is a dream team of removal that can take out pretty much any card type in existence and yet there is no removal in “Rituals of Rebirth” at all which means that the deck is going to be stuck when anything prohibits creatures from attacking.
Which leaves us with the usual question: Is the deck worth buying? Well, in terms of moneymaking, there is not much room here. According to Cardmarket at the time of writing, “Teneb, the Harvester” has a price trend of 0.54€ while “Jedit Ojanen of Efrava” only racks in 0.41€ as its price trend. “Rebuff the Wicked” is actually the most expensive card at a price trend of 1.48€, while “Essence Warden” lists 1.14€; and since the deck has two copies of both you can double that profit. But with starting prices of 15€, you really only get the money you invested into the box out of it at most. “Rituals of Rebirth” is much better for playing purposes, since there are a lot of interesting cards in the mix that do not appear that often outside of the block in question. If you are interested in playing this deck and tinkering with it, I would say that paying 15€ is not too much money.
Cubic Creativity 