After I picked up my first deck at the Comic shop we walked over to the Sports Card shop and I got this one. They had a bigger selection and who knows what I’d have grabbed if we’d gone in the other direction. I think the logic here was it was WUB, so that fit in nicely with the RG Deepwood Menace. Also how great is the weird little dude that is Somnophore?
Tombstone
A blue and black deck, with a small white splash, which mixes the Cycling mechanic with a touch of reanimation.
Official product information webpage (archived)
“Tombstone” is all about making the most of your graveyard. The deck’s main theme is the combination of cycling and reanimation. For 2, you can discard a cycling creature like Sandbar Serpent or Pendrell Drake and draw something else – preferably Exhume, Victimize, or Diabolic Servitude, to get the discarded critters into play from the graveyard.
Urza’s Saga Preconstructed Decks Strategy Guide (compiled here)
The decklist and card images can also be found on Moxfield, MTG Goldfish and mtg.wtf.
It’s not uncommon, while I’ve been doing these, to think “oh, I absolutely loved that card’s art” and see Andrew’s name on it. I can’t say that he’s really rocketing up my favourite artist list — because he was already up there without me realising. (We’ll just ignore the 5th Edition swamps)
Enhanced Deck
TOMBSTONE
ENHANCED DECK LIST
Lands (24)
2 Adarkar Wastes
2 Drifting Meadow
2 Island
2 Plains
2 Polluted Mire
3 Reflecting Pool
2 Remote Isle
2 Rootwater Depths
2 Swamp
2 Thalakos Lowlands
3 Underground River
Creatures (16)
1 Warrior Angel
3 Merfolk Looter
4 Drifting Djinn
2 Benthic Behemoth
4 Abyssal Horror
2 Verdant Force
Other (20)
3 Disenchant
1 Armageddon
2 Mana Leak
2 Counterspell
3 Catalog
1 Reanimate
4 Animate Dead
3 Diabolic Servitude
1 Living Death
Sideboard (15)
1 Circle of Protection: Red
2 Clear
1 Disenchant
1 Rune of Protection: Red
4 Wall of Essence
2 Mana Leak
2 Counterspell
2 Dread of Night
Decklist also on MTG Goldfish and mtg.wtf
Reviews
Beat and Skies
Beats and Skies does a bracket. Pool 1, Week 1. Round 1: decks 1 to 8.
Tombstone is a blue and black deck, with a small splash of white, built around the interaction of creatures with cycling, and reanimation spells such as Victimize. A good strategy in theory, but it didn’t really come together here.
So what’s going on here? 12 creatures, and one of them is Phyrexian Ghoul? Why bother including white? Your most expensive cards – two of them – cost 6 mana but there’s 27 lands in the deck? You probably don’t really need to dig deeper than that to write this deck off completely, but let’s do so anyway.
Cubic Creativity
Budget Deckbuilding: Tombstone
The idea of Cycling your creature cards and then reviving them later is flawed for the very reason that all those Cycling creature have nothing to offer while on the field. You are not going to put a dent into the opposing life points with the line-up this deck is running, while lots of spells depend one returning creatures to the field which are not worth said effort.
Ertai’s Lament
Urza’s Saga: Tombstone Review (Part 1 of 2)
Tombstone asks an intriguing question- what if everything in the deck had cycling and you could burn through your library to find what you wanted? And what if we threw in some recursion to make sure that what you cycled didn’t go to waste?
Urza’s Saga: Tombstone Review (Part 2 of 2)
Hits: The cycling/recursion combo is a clever one, and could be very effective in the right deck
Misses: Tombstone isn’t that deck. Too much filler and odd, non-synergistic filler. You get cycling weenies in a later-game deck with the Merfolk, for instance, and a creature that lets you abuse enters-the-battlefield (ETB) effects in a deck that only has one ETB creature (and it costs six!)
OVERALL SCORE: 3.50/5.00
flourishingmusic79
M:tG Precon Decon
Spoiler: it’s not in the top!
Comments:
Lol the reanimator spells have the same CMC as the reanimation targets, fukkin wut?
@RadiantRealms
A pretty succinct observation.
The Horror is definitely costed as Mind Rot (2B) plus a 2/2 flier (2B). But almost certainly would have been largely unplayable other than in a precon or limited context even at 3BB. I don’t remember it lasting very long in any of my decks, although as a fresh faced not quite Teenager I was pretty excited when I first opened it. And underwhelmed by the far superior Somnophore. I guess that’s one of the things with precons though, and why it was probably perfect as a teaching tool.
@ReubenAotearoa
Troll and Toad (customer review)
Urza’s Saga Tombstone Preconstructed Theme Deck (MTG)
Easily the worst Preconstructed deck I have ever played. The idea is to Cycle cards and reuse cards but there is really nothing in the deck worth cycling for. Abyssal Horror is horribly overcosted and Somnophore has a great effect but is too vulnerable with a toughness of 2. Beyond that the quality of the creatures is just not good enough to put any meaningful pressure on the opponent. Some of the non-creature spells could see play in other decks as supporting cards, nothing spectacular and certainly not worth acquiring this deck to break it up for other decks. The most useful cards from this deck are the lands which can Cycle, a sad commentary.
Doc
Unboxings
Doctor Alzheimers Academia Magica
German language channel
Grandpas Magic
As always, if you played with or against this deck and wanted to share some thoughts: please do! Always stoked to be made aware of new (to me) content so if there’s anything I’ve missed… point me in that direction!
Speaking of things that are missing… I’ve had this post “finished” for the last 20 minutes, but have been trying to figure out what I haven’t done. And it’s the deck photo. Don’t think I’ve actually taken one of it, so will have to do so. Crusher as well, given that’s alphabetically the first deck from Urza’s Legacy.
Edit 14/11/23: finally got around to adding that deck photo.
Edit 20/11/23: added links to my own reviews, because I absolutely love linking myself.
Edit 02/01/24: added CC link.
Beats and Skies 
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