Show and Tell in the board of BR Reanimator

In January I played BR Reanimator at GP Louisville (you can see my tournament report here).  As preparation for that, I tested a variety of different sideboard plans, including a white splash for Wear/Tear, a green splash for Abrupt Decay and Reverent Silence, and several transformative sideboards into threats that didn't use the graveyard, like hardcasting Grave Titan with Lake of the Dead, or casting Pack Rat and Young Pyromancer.  Ultimately, I settled on splashing blue for Show and Tell.

I went 10-5 at that event, which isn't groundbreaking but was still a record I was fairly happy with.  Since that event it seems like reddit gets a post about every two weeks by someone considering BR reanimator and asking about the right sideboard options, and since I'm getting tired of writing out my thoughts every time, I figured I'd just make the case for Show and Tell once and for all.

The original list I played is available in my tournament report.  If I were sleeving the deck up today, this is what I would play. 

Spells	Lands
Creatures 4 Griselbrand 4 Chancellor of the Annex 1 Sire of Insanity 1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite 1 Iona, Shield of Emeria Reanimation 4 Reanimate 4 Exhume 3 Animate Dead Discard Outlets 4 Faithless Looting 4 Entomb Discard 4 Unmask 2 Thoughtseize 2 Collective Brutality Fast Mana 4 Dark Ritual 4 Lotus Petal	4 Polluted Delta 4 Verdant Catacombs 3 Badlands 1 Underground Sea 2 Swamp
Sideboard
4 Show and Tell 3 Blood Moon 2 Echoing Truth 2 Simian Spirit Guide 1 Collective Brutality 1 Firestorm 1 Tidespout Tyrant 1 Grave Titan

I still don't like Tidespout Tyrant as much in BR as I do in UB, mostly because he's not that great unless you've drawn a bunch of cards with Griselbrand, but finding the space for other cards means I need a more universal catch-all, and he's the best at that.  If you find you have the space, I still prefer Blazing Archon + Ashen Rider, as both accomplish what you want when reanimated without needing a followup spell.  Unfortunately you need both slots to accomplish what Tidespout will do on his own, so when space is at a premium Tidespout gets the call.  In this case, I've added an additional Deathrite answer to the board (the 3rd Collective Brutality) due to his metagame omnipresence.

Why Show and Tell?

Against some decks, fighting the permanents is difficult. You have to assemble 3 cards (the discard outlet, the reanimation spell, and the hate answer) instead of just two, and that hate answer is usually no more than a 4of, and often just a 3of in your non-brainstorm deck. Answering multiple copies can be even harder (someone opens on two leylines, for example, and you're probably just dead). Show and Tell (and also Stronghold Gambit) skirts this and instead puts you back on a two card combo against all of the hate except Containment Priest.

The decks that are most likely to bring in permanent based hate against you are the ones where you want to skirt the hate entirely. I'm largely talking about non-Delver Deathrite decks (Elves/Maverick), 4C Loam, Eldrazi, etc.  Fighting permanent based hate against these decks can be an exercise in futility.  While you're digging for an answer to Deathrite they cast Scavenging Ooze, and while you're looking for an answer to him they play Knight of the Reliquary and you have to respect the potential for Bojuka Bog.  Since these decks are all creature-heavy, Show and Tell is significantly better than Stronghold Gambit (the next best option for skirting the hate).

I side in 4 Show and Tell and 2 Echoing Truth in those matchups, which means you do have a universal answer to whatever they might have if you don't draw Show and Tell. You also never get stuck holding decay and staring at Leyline or holding Wear/Tear and staring at Deathrite or Priest.

Show and Tell isn't a universal sideboard plan.  It's not something you bring in against every deck.  In matchups that revolve around countermagic and graveyard hate that is cast from hand you're just better off  playing your regular game.  You are already prepared to fight that kind of interaction with your discard.  Don't pitch Griselbrand to Faithless Looting all willy-nilly on turn 1 hoping they don't have Surgical and you'll be fine.  For a more detailed sideboard plan, click here.

The biggest question I get asked is "Doesn't this mess up my gameplan?  How do I know if I'm supposed to discard the reanimation target to faithless looting if I don't have Show and Tell or a Reanimation spell handy?"   Obviously yes, it does have an impact on sequencing.  That said, I feel like I get this question a lot more from people who are accustomed to playing Brainstorm and Ponder in their combo decks, where you're looking for each piece individually.  In a combo deck like this, without access to a plethora of library manipulation, you're not looking for individual cards, you're looking for a plan.  You should be mulliganing to a plan.  Postboard the graveyard is not a safe space for your reanimation targets to just hang out anyway, so you shouldn't be discarding things you will want access to until you're ready to use them anyway.  It's for this reason that I side out Faithless Looting in some matchups, matchups where I don't have time to cantrip into answers and my graveyard isn't a safe place to leave a creature for an entire turn cycle.

Yes, you will have hands with Entomb and Show and Tell.  Try not to compare those hands to Entomb and Exhume, but instead compare them to Entomb and Abrupt Decay, or Entomb and Wear/Tear, since those are the other options for those sideboard slots.  You're no more likely to successfully combo off with Entomb and Abrupt Decay than you are with Entomb and Show and Tell.  On the other hand, your significantly more likely to combo off with Griselbrand and Show and Tell than with Griselbrand and Abrupt Decay.

I'm not sold, what next?

What finally made up my mind was tracking how my sideboard worked in games.  Every postboard game will fit into one of the following five categories:

1. I didn't draw my anti-hate, but I won anyway
2. I didn't draw my anti-hate and I lost
3. I drew my anti-hate, but didn't need it and I won anyway
4. I drew my anti-hate, but it wasn't good enough and I still lost
5. I drew my anti-hate and used it to win

In my testing, I won a decent amount of games with the white and green splashes, but those games almost always fell into categories  #1 and #3.  Very, very rarely did I see a game that fit into category #5.  That's when I started seriously exploring other options, because clearly the cards I was playing weren't a factor in whether I won or lost.  In fact, I lost some games that fell into the category of #4 where I drew too much anti-hate and not enough actual combo pieces to win, where the sideboard cards actively detracted from trying to win.

If you're not sold on Show and Tell, try playing your preferred strategy for a while and keeping track of your postboard results.  This deck is definitely one that plays out differently depending on your playstyle, so you might have different results than I did.

A final note on BR vs UB

Often when I'm talking about this strategy people bring up just playing UB across the board.  I usually push back against that because I don't see BR as UB's unwanted stepchild, but a deck with it's own strengths and weaknesses.

BR Reanimator and UB Reanimator are fundamentally different decks that attack different metagames. One is not better than the other in a core way, they're just better at different times because they have different strengths and weaknesses. Distilled to one word each, BR Reanimator is about speed and UB reanimator is about consistency. In a format where you have to beat Rest in Peace, Speed is more important. In my opinion this is why BR Reanimator took off when it did, because everyone was relying on slower but more thorough graveyard hate. In a format where the primary graveyard hate is Surgical or Faerie Macabre, BR loses a lot of it's value.  There's no way to be faster than Faerie Macabre, and if you combo off and fail you don't reload nearly as well as a deck with Ponder and Brainstorm.

Personally I think the Show and Tell sideboard is the best board plan for both builds, which means if you're trying to get into the deck there's a TON of crossover. Buy one of them and slowly work towards the other, then allow yourself to shift between them as necessary, and you'll be the best prepared reanimator player you can be.