Reanimator

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Reanimator is an archetype of deck which receives its name from the card Reanimate. While there are many variations, the archetypal Reanimator decks focus on getting powerful, expensive creatures into the Graveyard, then placing them into play through Reanimation effects, generally well before the creature could be cast normally. Reanimation effects are predominant on Black cards, but are also present in White and Red.

While it is mostly associated with the Legacy deck "Reanimator", many decks in many formats have implemented the strategy — although not all receive the name "Reanimator", which is usually only assigned to very dedicated builds.

Reanimation is one of Magic's strongest strategies and can be used in casual or competitive play.

In this page you will find also the most prominent decks from some archetypes that are either Reanimators or have reanimation built in them.

Overview

There has been some debate amongst players on whether Reanimator is an Aggro deck or a Combo deck, based on two points of view:

  • While it does Combo, it needs to Aggro the opponent to win; and
  • While it needs Aggro to win, the deck doesn't exist without the Combo.

Both statements are valid, but since the latter bears more weight to it, it is more accepted as a combo deck than an aggro deck, though some players may be inclined to refer to Reanimator deck as an Combo-Aggro strategy.

The most conventional and most straightforward strategy of Reanimator is to cheat a creature into play by putting it into play frothe graveyard. However, there are many considerations that a Reanimator player must take into account when constructing their deck. The primary questions are:

  • How can the graveyard be filled: Discard / Mill / Tutoring?
  • What creatures will it be filled with, and what do they do?
  • How can the creature be reanimated: Spell / Enchantment / Creature Effect?
  • Once reanimated, how will the game be won: Pure Combo / Aggro?
  • How much is reanimation important to the deck; can it win without it, and is it mandatory at all?
  • How will the combo be protected: Discard / Countermagic / Jam through it?

Depending on how these questions are answered, this can influence color choices, overall tempo, and availability of sideboard cards.

Reanimation is generally focused on creatures, but there are some cards that allow for other types of cards to be brought back from the graveyard:

While reanimation can help the pull the player far ahead of their opponents, it has a substantial vulnerability to graveyard hate, which further impacts deckbuilding decisions.

Notes on Playing a Reanimator Deck

Reanimator is a powerful strategy, and variations of it are prevalent in many formats. Because of this, most other decks in a given format will commonly have ways of interacting with the graveyard to disrupt reanimation, usually in the Sideboard. The exact cards that the Reanimator player faces will vary from format to format, and which deck they are facing. For example, in Commander, one is less likely to face Surgical Extraction versus more perpetual graveyard hate, while in decks with Urza's Saga, they may have a Soul-Guide Lantern in their maindeck to tutor out.

Dealing with Hate Permanents

A "hate permanent" is a permanent that specifically targets a key aspect of the core Reanimator strategy. This includes potent graveyard hate, such as Relic of Progenitus, Tormod's Crypt, and Leyline of the Void, or cards that prevent creatures from entering the battlefield in ways relevant to reanimation, such as Containment Priest and Grafdigger's Cage.

The Reanimator player's answers to this on how they chose to build their deck:

  • Use a Bounce spell to remove it from play on the intended combo turn
  • Use a Destroy/Exile Spell to deal with it for good
  • Use Ratchet Bomb to destroy it eventually

The first option is available with a Blue color splash.

The second is available with Green and White color splash for artifacts and enchantments. A Red will grant access to to artifact removal, but not enchantment removal. With Feed the Swarm, Black does have an inherent way to deal with enchantments. Black is inherently well-equipped to deal with creature-based hate effects, so barring hate creatures that also have Protection from Black (Sanctifier en-Vec), a further color splash is not inherently necessary.

The third option takes more time as it requires a few turns to set up, but is worth consideration as it is mana-efficient and gets around Protection from Black and Hexproof or Shroud. Additionally, as Mono-Black Reanimator builds tend to focus control and stability over speed, it is synergistic in them more times than not.

Defending from Spells

Many decks will try to combat reanimation effects on the Stack, especially if their counter-graveyard permanents are not already in play. While this includes countermagic, the most prevalent stack-based tool against Reanimator in many formats is using Surgical Extraction, Faerie Macabre, or Agatha's Soul Cauldron to exile the targeted monster from the graveyard, causing the reanimation spell to fizzle as it no longer has a legal target.

The three main ways of dealing with hate spells are:

  • Use Discard Spells to proactively remove them from the opponent's hate
  • Use Counterspells to counter their interaction
  • Just brute-force your way through

The first option is the most likely to happen since discard is already part of the strategy in most decks.

The second is only available with a Blue splash.

And the third may involve some mind games and access to multiple combo pieces in hand — as well as finding the right opportunity.

Dodging Hate Permanents

Instead of answering hate permanents directly, one can instead consider circumventing them:

  • Ramp and cast the creature
  • "Put creature into play from hand" spells

The first is available in Black with Dark Ritual and Lake of the Dead. Despite not being able to cast creatures from other colors, powerful black creatures can be cast: Grave Titan, Massacre Wurm, Archon of Cruelty, and Griselbrand.

The second option is available in blue with Show and Tell, and in Red with Stronghold Gambit, Sneak Attack, and Through the Breach. There is also the less popular option to use Quicksilver Amulet, which will not require any additional colors.

Using Another Strategy Entirely / Juking

As an alternative to dealing with hate permanents, some players will leverage their Sideboard heavily to gain access to a different strategy in order to threaten their opponent from a different angle and be more resilient to anti-graveyard effects. The most common plans center around either brutally controlling the game with discard spells and then resolving a creature to eventually reduce the opponent's life total to 0, or introduce another combo such as creating multiple Pack Rat tokens.

These are the most popular alternative strategies:

In Legacy

Legacy and Vintage are arguably the birthplace of the deck. The reason is due to how old the original reanimator cards are, with some dating from as early as the Alpha edition like Animate Dead.

In Legacy, Reanimator and reanimation strategies are present in these decks (with their color variants):

  • Reanimator (Mono-Black, Black-Red, Black-Blue, Black-Green, Black-White)
  • Tin Fins (Mono-Black, Black-Red, Black-Blue, Black-Green, Black-White)
  • Dredge (Mana-less / 5-Color)
  • Oops, All Spells!
  • Cephalid Breakfast (Black-Blue)

Due to the plethora of possible decks in Legacy, the list is comprised of the most notorious strategies on competitive play.

Legacy Reanimator ("OG Reanimator")

With the lesser usage of:

Primary reanimation targets include:

The choice for the inclusion of other colors will give some support of the player's choices for deckbuilding:

  • Mono-Black: Greater overall focus, as well as greater ease of including same-color midrange and tempo plans
  • Red splash: Greatly improved speed with Faithless Looting, with some added selection
  • Blue splash: Selection and draw with Ponder and Preordain, and enabling through Careful Study. Also gains access to counterspells, chiefly Force of Will.
  • Green / White splash: Easier access to means of dealing with artifacts and enchantments

The most common variants is Black-Red, followed by Black-Blue. Green and White splashes are only relevant when it comes to sideboarding, and as most Legacy Reanimator decks run Lotus Petal for increased speed, they can gain access to the requisite colored mana for powerful Green and White cards like Serenity and Nature's Claim without having to extend to another color, or even utilize Show and Tell as a potential juke, allowing for Reanimator to access these effects without having to slow down or dilute their mana base to support another color that is otherwise not assisting their gameplan.

Tin Fins

Due to the deck's strategy it is mandatory to use Griselbrand as the primary reanimation choice - and draw many cards. One of the following moves is to reanimate Children of Korlis to regain the life (and keep drawing in a loop).

Then it is possible to use Emrakul, the Aeons Torn to shuffle the Graveyard into the Library and reuse Lotus Petal and Dark Ritual. This may enable infinite mana and an infinite Storm count which can be used to reanimate or even cast Emrakul, the Aeons Torn.

Then, a player can either win from Storm with Tendrils of Agony or an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn attack.

Dredge

Dredge will focus on self-milling with the Dredge effect and secondarily use reanimation if needed. The impact of the reanimation may vary from the Mana-less version to the 5-Color version.

Oops, All Spells! (also known as All My Spells)

The deck tends to be all-in in the reanimation plan with Thassa's Oracle, but some players opt for a secondary Goblin Charbelcher plan.

As a curiosity: this deck receives its name from the effect of self-mill from Undercity Informer and Balustrade Spy. These cards make a player mill until they find a land, however "Oops, All Spells!" - all cards in the deck are lands and the entire deck is milled.

Cephalid Breakfast

The deck self-mills with Cephalid Illusionist being targeted infinitely either by Nomads en-Kor or Shuko, puts 3 Narcomoeba into play and uses them to pay for Dread Return into a Thassa's Oracle.

Legacy Honorable Mentions

As expected from the "home" of Reanimator, there has been plenty of experimentation undergone with the deck over the years. And one can better understand the evolution of the strategy if they see how it looked before. Therefore here are some examples of the experiments done with Reanimator over the years:

In Modern

Modern also has some strong reanimation strategies and, with the printing of Unmarked Grave and Persist, it acquired a Black-centered Reanimator deck of their own.

The format has the following Reanimator and reanimation strategies:

  • Reanimator (Mono-Black, Esper, Black-Red)
  • Gifts Reanimator (Esper)
  • Instant Reanimator (Grixis, Esper, Black-Red)
  • Oops, All Spells!
  • Dredge (5-Color)
  • Death's Shadow (Grixis, Black-Red)

Modern Reanimator

Similar to its Legacy counterpart, the deck has the same plan. But the tutor (Unmarked Grave) has a limitation: it only allows for nonlegendary tutoring. Because of that, the best targets are Archon of Cruelty and Grave Titan.

Gifts Reanimator

The strategy comprises of casting a Gifts Ungiven in the opponent's End Step for only two cards. Both cards will go to the Graveyard, one being a creature and another being Unburial Rites.

Instant Reanimator

This deck uses discard to put the creature in the Graveyard to reanimate. It also plays Through the Breach as another way to give it haste.

The deck was inspired by Legacy's Tin Fins and has a similar strategy. In the most popular versions, the deck draws many cards with Griselbrand and uses Nourishing Shoal (exiling something like Worldspine Wurm) to keep drawing cards. Then closes the game with Borborygmos Enraged. But the banning of Simian Spirit Guide affected the strategy and slowed it down.

There is a version with Necrotic Ooze and another version that uses Griselbrand to draw many cards and chain Fury of the Horde effects.

The most common creatures used in this deck are Griselbrand and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. Nonetheless, there is the strategy to use Narset, Enlightened Master and chain Fury of the Horde effects.

An Esper or Black-White version of the deck is also found using Obzedat, Ghost Council.

Oops, All Spells!

While the deck doesn't have access to Dread Return, it exploits Salvage Titan in conjunction with Sword of the Meek, Narcomoeba and Vengevine to bring forth an army of Vengevines. It also has the capability of casting Thassa's Oracle for the win.

Dredge

Similarly, Dredge doesn't reanimate a creature with Dread Return, which is banned in Modern. It also tries to exploit either Vengevine or Prized Amalgam, Bloodghast. They also tend to use Creeping Chill and Conflagrate along with their self-mill.

Death's Shadow

This ended up being optional, but it's worth mentioning that reanimating a Death's Shadow happens from time to time.

Modern Honorable Mentions

There is a strategy that became somewhat popular in Modern before the advent of the newer Reanimator versions. They used to focus on Footsteps of the Goryo into an Ashen Rider or Woodfall Primus to gain value of the spell's downside. It also resorted to Lingering Soul for support.

In Vintage

Vintage has the same card pool as Legacy with the addition of some powerhouses like Black Lotus. It has about the same decks as Legacy, but there are two Vintage decks that use reanimation with quite some efficiency that were not mentioned before:

  • Dragon Reanimator (also available in Legacy)
  • Dredge (with the powerful Bazar of Bagdad) - but Dread Return is very optional in this one.

Dragon Reanimator

The deck intends to produce an infinite loop with Worldgorger Dragon and the enchantment that reanimates it. The infinite loop will either produce infinite mana, infinite damage or even end the game in a draw,

In Legacy, the list has the same base and will exploit the same interaction of the Dragon-enchantment cycle. Only that it doesn't have access to Black Lotus, the Moxen and etc.

In Pioneer

Pioneer has yet to show a big Reanimator deck, but there are cards to probably do so.

There are players testing brews from time to time with cards like:

Pioneer has Ashen Rider and Atraxa, Grand Unifier as notable targets for reanimation.

In Historic

Same as Pioneer, there is yet to be a big Reanimator deck in Historic, but the players that brave in this quasi-uncharted territory tend to experiment with:

Historic has a good card pool with Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, Serra's Emissary, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite as good reanimation targets.

In Commander

Commander has a great card pool. It has access to almost everything in the game.

So a great way to summarize the capabilities of Reanimator and reanimation in Commander is: everything described in all formats above and much more.

Examples of Commander Reanimator Cards

Bear in mind these are but some of the cards available for Commander play (not to forget the ones mentioned in the other formats above).

Examples of Commander Reanimator Targets

Notes on Commander Play

Commander is a very wide format with an extensive card pool. It allows the players to experiment a wide range of strategies and cards and, for that reason, this is only a fraction of that which the Commander format allows the players to play.

If one were to explore each and every possible commander play this section would be even longer than this.

With that in mind the author of this page encourages any willing reader to see for themselves the wide variety of strategies available for their Commander deck and use this as but an inspiration.

There is a world of competitive plays and an even bigger universe of casual plays. The best strategy in Commander is the one the player feels comfortable playing with their playgroup. And so, this author leaves it up to the player to see for themselves and decide what their strategy will be.

The Card Market and Impact on Decklists

Reanimator is, in general, a very democratic deck or strategy to be played. The traditional Reanimator strategies from both Legacy and Modern are available in Mono-Colored options.

This means a player that wants to experience competitive play is more likely to afford the required cards with a not-so significant impact on the performance.

In Legacy the deck's lack of need for Reserved List cards makes it one of the best options for beginners in the format to play on equal footing against decks that require many Reserved List cards or the OG Dual Lands.

Thus a player can choose to play a more "colorful" version of the strategy - with fetchlands and dual lands. Or they can choose to play the Mono-Black version which is still very strong (and capable of winning tournaments).

In Modern, the choice to stick to Black is elaborated in this video by professional MTG player Jim Davis.

In conclusion, this deck has many versions for the players to choose from and has good range of budgetary options for those willing to give competitive play a try.

See also

External links

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