Against the Odds: Offspring's Revenge (Modern)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode 268 of Against the Odds. Last week, we had an Against the Odds poll featuring some of the spiciest 2020 cards that we haven't played already this year, and in the end, Offspring's Revenge]] took home a dominating win. As such, we're heading to Modern today to reanimate some powerful creatures as hasty 1/1s with the help of our namesake enchantment. What craziness does Offspring's Revenge enable in the format? Let's get to the video and find out in today's Against the Odds; then, we'll talk more about the deck!
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Against the Odds: Offspring's Revenge
The Deck
On one hand, building around Offspring's Revenge is pretty obvious: you need to get red, black, and / or white creatures into the graveyard so Offspring's Revenge can reanimate them as hasty 1/1 tokens. On the other hand, figuring out exactly what creatures to reanimate with Offspring's Revenge is tricky, mostly because Offspring's Revenge turning the creatures into 1/1s means that it isn't very good for reanimating big creatures. Instead, we want creatures with powerful enters-the-battlefield, sacrifice, or attack-based abilities.
To further power up Offspring's Revenge, we have a couple of copies of Anointed Procession. Since Offspring's Revenge turns the creatures it reanimates into tokens, if we have Anointed Procession on the battlefield, we get two copies instead of one every time we use Offspring's Revenge. In conjunction with creatures with enters-the-battlefield triggers, this combo can do some absurd things and allow us to quickly take over the game with 1/1s!
Of course, for any of this to work, we need to fill our graveyard. For this, we turn to Stitcher's Supplier, Commune with the Gods, and Grisly Salvage. Commune with the Gods is the most important of our graveyard fillers because it also allows us to dig five cards deep for Offspring's Revenge, so along with supporting our namesake enchantment once it is on the battlefield by stocking our graveyard with creatures to reanimate, it helps find Offspring's Revenge as well.
So, let's assume we get a Offspring's Revenge on the battlefield. What are we trying to reanimate? Here, we have two plans, one for slowing down the game while we get things set up and one for finishing the game. For slowing down the game, we turn to two land-destruction creatures that conveniently put themselves into our graveyard: Fulminator Mage and Avalanche Riders. These cards work absurdly well with Offspring's Revenge because they naturally sacrifice themselves after they do their job of blowing up a land. Picture this start: on Turn 1, we play a Birds of Paradise. On Turn 2, we play a Fulminator Mage and sacrifice it to blow up one of our opponent's lands. On Turn 3, we Avalanche Riders to blow up another land (and choose not to pay echo). On Turn 4, we'll have enough mana for Offspring's Revenge, which can then get back Fulminator Mage (to blow up another land) and then Avalanche Riders (to blow up another land!). When things go well, it's very possible that we can blow up literally all of our opponent's lands and maybe even pick up a flawless victory!
Meanwhile, we also have one Ashen Rider, which can work as another copy of Avalanche Riders or Fulminator Mage by exiling a land when it enters the battlefield (or dies, as a bonus), but it also has the upside of hitting any permanent. So if our opponent has a problematic creature, artifact, planeswalker, or enchantment, Ashen Rider offers a reanimatable answer.
While blowing up all of our opponent's lands could lead to us winning if our opponent scoops in frustration, we have a plan to get our opponent's life total down to zero too (other than attacking with a bunch of 1/1 Offspring's Revenge tokens), with one copy each of Gravebreaker Lamia, Master of Cruelties, and Apocalypse Demon. Gravebreaker Lamia isn't great at winning the game by itself, but it can tutor up whatever one-of finisher we need and put it directly in the graveyard to reanimate with Offspring's Revenge. If our opponent doesn't have any blockers, our best finisher is Master of Cruelties, which can hit our opponent to one from any life total if it connects with a single attack, which then allows us to close out the game on the following turn with any Offspring's Revenge 1/1. If our opponent has blockers, we can go with Apocalypse Demon, which is sneakily strong with Offspring's Revenge since it gets around the "it's only a 1/1" drawback. Technically, Apocalypse Demon is a 0/0, which means coming back from the graveyard as a 1/1 actually makes it stronger rather than weaker. Then, Apocalypse Demon gets +1/+1 for each card in our graveyard. Thanks to cards like Stitcher's Supplier, Commune with the Gods, Grisly Salvage, and fetch lands, its pretty easy to get 19 or more cards in our graveyard, which makes Apocalypse Demon into a one-shot flying attacker!
Rounding out the deck are one Combat Celebrant, which essentially allows us to get two Offspring's Revenge activations in one turn by giving us an extra combat step, as well as one Siege Rhino for lifegain and a bit of direct damage, Birds of Paradise to ramp and fix our four-color mana, and a couple of Lingering Souls to mill over with things like Commune with the Gods and Stitcher's Supplier and then flashback to make some flying blockers. Lingering Souls also works extremely well with Anointed Procession, potentially giving us eight 1/1 fliers on Turn 4 or 5 if we can play it and flash it back in the same turn.
The Matchups
The biggest concern for Offspring's Revenge is graveyard hate. While many of our reanimation targets are cheap enough that we can cast them naturally, cards like Rest in Peace, Leyline of the Void, and Relic of Progenitus are really strong against our deck since they shut down our namesake Offspring's Revenge. Dedicated aggro (or fast combo) can also be a problem. While Offspring's Revenge is hard to beat in a long game, if our opponent can kill us on Turn 2 or 3, we're unlikely to have time to get Offspring's Revenge on the battlefield. (Plus, aggro and fast combo typically care less about getting lands blown up than midrange or control does.) On the other hand, Offspring's Revenge is really solid against slower aggro and combo decks, midrange, and control. In these matchups, our Fulminator Mages and Avalanche Riders do a good job of slowing down the game, which gives us enough time to get Offspring's Revenge online and take things over with our graveyard reanimation value.
The Odds
All in all, we finished 4-1 in our video matches and 4-2 overall (after losing a rematch to Uro Pile), giving us a 66.7% match win percentage and making Offspring's Revenge solidly above average for an Against the Odds deck. More importantly, we did some spectacular things with the deck, nearly picking up a flawless victory, janking our opponents out with surprise 29/29 Apocalypse Demons, doubling up our tokens with Anointed Procession, and much more! While we did get a bit lucky to mostly dodge graveyard hate, the deck felt surprisingly solid and was super fun to play. It might be worth giving Offspring's Revenge another look in formats like Standard and Historic as well. In the right deck, the enchantment is extremely strong!
Vote for Next Week's Deck
Next week let's revisit another Against the Odds classic in Modern, but which card should we build around? Let us know by voting here!.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. Don't forget to vote for next week's deck! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com
