After 10 years away from the game, I came back thanks to playing around on a MtGO free trial. Since then I've found a couple of different programs that allow you to play with whatever cards you want, so I've been using that to make Standard decks and get a feel for the game again.
I have done a little research to see what kinds of decks people are playing with, and many of them seem fun, but they're not necessarily enjoyable. So I took some of what I've seen and some of what I know, and the deck ideas started up.
As Recurring Nightmare was one of my favorite decks of all time, I initially started toying around with Reanimator decks, but there's so much hate against those decks right now that I wanted to keep the feel but remove the weakness. After a lot of looking, bouncing creatures with exile became the engine. Running multiple colors is easier these days with all of the shocklands and such, but it's harder to get all of the different colors that you want at a given time is harder for every color you add. So I've reduced it down to just two colors for this version.
Naturally, it can't do everything that Recurring Nightmare can do, but it does have the ability to shut the opponent down and provides a reasonable amount of ramping power and card advantage. Once Conjurer's Closet hits the board, I have a true engine for bouncing creatures which shuts things down real quick, but the closet isn't required and the deck can function just fine without it.
Artifacts
2x Conjurer's Closet
Creatures
3x Acidic Slime
2x Archaeomancer
2x Avacyn's Pilgrim
2x Mwonvuli Beast Tracker
2x Somberwald Sage
2x Soul of the Harvest
3x Sylvan Primordial
2x Thragtusk
Spells
3x Bramblecrush
4x Cyclonic Rift
3x Farseek
3x Ghostly Flicker
2x Unexpected Results
2x Urban Evolution
Lands
1x Alchemist's Refuge
4x Breeding Pool
6x Forest
4x Hinterland Harbor
3x Island
2x Simic Guildgate
3x Verdant Haven
