Wasn’t this also a volleyball game on N64?
Dead and Alive
A monoblack deck which seeks to take advantage of it’s graveyard in various ways.
Official Deck Lists (Archived)
Interactive deck list with images via mtg.wtf
This piece didn’t initially grab me, but taking time to look at it there’s actually quite a lot of nice interplay. The Poltergeist certainly looks mischievous, is the wisp from it’s head creeping up toward the woman’s lantern? Love her expression too, she’s not having it.
Reviews
Beats and Skies
Beats and Skies does a bracket. Pool 1, Week 1. Round 1: decks 1 to 8.
This is a monoblack deck with a graveyard theme. Weatherlight itself had a bit of graveyard matters focus so it makes sense for the Development team to start with 24 Swamps and go from there. While Dead does pack two copies of Buried Alive it’s not really a reanimator deck as you’d expect. It can use Necromancy to get things back, sure, but the main purpose of the graveyard is to fuel stuff like Necratog and Spinning Darkness.
Cubic Creativity
Budget Deckbuilding: Dead and Alive
Looking at those really old decks gave me new inspiration for deckbuilding and even showed me cards I was not aware of before. And the finisher for Weatherlight is actually quite interesting: The mono-Black deck “Dead and Alive”, which makes the most out of all resources available to you, including life points and graveyard.
Ertai’s Lament
Weatherlight: Dead and Alive Review (Part 1 of 2)
The modern recursion deck looks to drop something fat and unpleasant into the graveyard, then cheat it out early. That’s not to say that it’s not possible here, but as we’ll see the mechanics of the deck don’t really push in that direction. Instead, Dead and Alive adopts a more generalist approach, using the graveyard as additional resource within a more conventional arsenal of beaters and support cards.
Good write up of the history of Graveyard matters cards leading up to the release of Weatherlight in Jay’s introduction here.
Weatherlight: Dead and Alive Review (Part 2 of 2)
Hits: Solid removal package, including a pair of Drain Lifes for additional cross-table reach; good diversity in lines of play without feeling like a singleton-heavy Duel Deck; does a great job of illustrating the set’s graveyard focus
Misses: Slower than it looks, the wrong series of draws can leave you paralysed against your opponent with few effective options available to you if you haven’t managed to stock the graveyard
OVERALL SCORE: 4.50/5.00
flourishingmusic79
Shout out also to the absolutely striking
Morinfen by Carl Critchlow which I’ve used as the preview image for this post.
Edit 23/10/23: added the flourishmusic79 video and adjusted the templating to fit in better with my current “formula”.
Edit 20/11/23: adjusted my description in the top section and added the summary from my “bracket” post.
Beats and Skies 
Leave a comment