Died, Destroyed, Discarded, and Exiled vs Returned to X

Eyris6

I've been considering picking up Sarkhan now that he's available, and doing some reading on him I noticed that it was suggested in the Sarkhan thread ( https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/47953/sarkhan-the-mad-official-thread/p2 ) that Dark Petition will place discarded creatures onto the battlefield. I don't have access to that card to test it, but I do have Necromantic Summons and a level 26 Liliana1 with her 3rd ability. And indeed, in a test Story Mode game, I was able to discard a card and then have it placed on the battlefield with either Necromantic Summons or the 3rd ability. Since Red plus Black has even more easy ways to discard than just Black, this has significantly upped my assessment of Sarkhan. But just to check, I have some scenarios to clarify:

1) The last creature you discarded can be placed onto the battlefield with Dark Petition, Necromantic Summons, Liliana1's 3rd skill - yes/no?

2) If you get Despoiler of Souls discarded and have at least 3 mana in another card, does it get placed on the battlefield - yes/no?

3) Cycling or just trashing cards exiles them and thus none of these return effects will affect those cards - yes/no?

4) Any other non-obvious but potentially powerful Standard synergies related to this that I've missed?

Thanks!

Eyris6

Follow-up: does Embalm work when the creature is discarded? Based on Oketra's Attendant I assume so. Red/Black only has 1 Embalm creature anyway, but worth checking.

Sirchombli

1. yes. If it goes to the graveyard for any reason, you can reanimate it with petition. 

2. Despoiler has to be on the battlefield to trigger. Basically, unless the card has some effect from the graveyard, you can imagine creatures as being completely blank. 

3. You're correct. Exile sends cards to the exile zone. Destroy and discard both put the card in your graveyard. 

4. I've never really tried reanimator in standard. There's demon of dark schemes. It's a mythic, and it requires energy to activate, so you would have to configure your deck in a way that may be less than ideal. Scrap heap scrounger comes back from the yard when one of your creatures in play dies. Liliana is a good choice for that type of deck because you're not going to mind discarding cards to her first ability. 

Dodecapod

1)  Yes; Dark Petition, Necromantic Summons, and Liliana's 3rd ability (along with a few others like Dread Wanderer and Demon of Dark Schemes) all have effects that depend on the graveyard, which iirc includes cards that were:

-Discarded
-Destroyed (including via sacrifice effects like Sarkhan's 2nd ability)
-Replaced
-Any but the first copy of a reinforced creature that was bounced (e.g. playing Anchor to the Aether or Roil Spout on a stack of 3 Prized Amalgams will cause one copy to go to the hand or library and the other 2 to go to the graveyard)

2)  No; Despoiler of Souls' ability only triggers if it's on the battlefield and isn't disabled when it's destroyed, so discarding it won't allow it to enter play directly (incidentally, replacing Despoiler won't trigger its ability either).

3)  Yes; the exile zone is separate, and currently only Shadow of the Grave and Gideon 3's 3rd ability can retrieve cards from that zone.  Cycled cards are all exiled with the exception of Oketra's Attendant, and non-cycling cards which have been moved from the hand to the trash bin are all exiled without exception.

4)  The respective power levels for each of these options are debatable and would often depend on the rest of the deck, but Winds of Rebuke, Bomat Courier, Scrapheap Scrounger, Gather the Pack, Fleshbag Marauder, and Loyal Retainers are a handful of possibilities that would tend to function effectively in a reanimator deck, depending on the specific PW and color combination (naturally not all of these would work with Sarkhan specifically).

5)  Yes; discarded creatures go to the graveyard, which is where Embalm abilities trigger from.

As a side note regarding Sarkhan in general, he's primarily useful for his color combination, but his mana bonuses at level 60 are a bit outdated now, and his 2nd and 3rd abilities, while potentially powerful, are also inflexible and situational, so in most cases other PWs should probably take priority if you have limited crystals and/or runes to go around.

With that said, best of luck if you decide to go for him; drawbacks aside, he's definitely capable of running some unique and fun decks in colors no other current PW has access to, so while he isn't always the best PW to prioritize, he certainly isn't the worst either.

DumasAG

Gideon 3 does this, but on steroids. His third ability returns the last three exiled creatures, but because you can exile things from your hand at any time with no restriction, you basically just need to get to his third ability then toss three big things out of your hand and use the ability. It's crazy easy if you're playing in legacy, just use 4 gem-change supports to get multiple matches every turn, some draw cards plus journal, and 3 big things.