For as long as Magic: The Gathering has existed, so too have Reanimator decks. The strategy of using cheap spells to circumvent the high mana costs of creatures in your graveyard is a time-honored one. While many of the very best reanimation spells are widely-known, there are some hidden gems out there if you know where to look. Dreams of the Dead, for example, is a repeatable reanimation engine that less than 500 MTG players run in Commander. While it certainly has its downsides, this is an old-school classic with potential in spades.
Dreams Of The Dead MTG
Originally, and only, printed back in 1995’s Ice Age, Dreams of the Dead is a truly interesting MTG enchantment. While it’s in play, you essentially gain permanent access to a color-shifted Animate Dead, letting you bring back creatures from your ‘yard for just two mana. By itself, that would be busted, so there are some caveats here.
First of all, you can only resurrect black or white creatures. This is an unfortunate limitation, especially for a blue card, but it can be worked around. Crucially, the card naming these colors doesn’t affect its color identity. This means you don’t need to be fully Esper to run Dreams of the Dead. If you’re in Azorius, Dimir, or any color combination including those two, then you’re good.
The other caveat on Dreams of the Dead is that it makes your resurrected creatures much harder to work with. Each one gets a cumulative upkeep cost for a start, demanding continual mana investment over time to keep around. This is very similar to the drawback on Dance of the Dead, mind you, which sees plenty of play.
Notably, the fact that the creatures reanimated with Dreams are exiled on leaving play is arguably worse. This isn’t just a ‘dies’ trigger, so you can’t bounce the creature back to your hand to get around it. This means you won’t get to enjoy your reanimated creatures for very long in most cases, barring specific interactions.
A Righteous Reanimation Engine
Despite these drawbacks, it’s hard to deny the sheer efficiency that Dreams of the Dead offers. Once you get past the admittedly rough initial casting cost, Dreams of the Dead becomes one of the best sources of repeatable reanimation out there. You can actually get around that cost, too, using the Miracle ability on Aminatou, Veil Piercer, which is doubly synergistic thanks to its Surveil effect.
Once in play, two mana to reanimate any creature is a great rate by anyone’s standards. This makes Dreams of the Dead excellent in any deck that regularly fills its graveyard with quality creatures. Muldrotha, the Gravetide immediately springs to mind here. There are plenty of other great on-color options, too, like Teval of the Balanced Scale and Sefris of the Hidden Ways. Even with the significant drawbacks, bringing your best creatures back every turn is a great deal, letting you take advantage of powerful enters and leaves effects.
It’s also well worth noting that you can use Dreams of the Dead’s ability at instant speed. This is incredibly rare for reanimation effects, especially ones at this low a cost. This allows you to bring in dead creatures as surprise blockers on opponents’ turns. Alternatively, you can leverage powerful enters abilities at instant speed, even on creatures never intended to have Flash. Cheating in an Angel of the Ruins to dismantle an opponent’s engine, or a Boggart Trawler to shut down opposing graveyard decks, is a strong move indeed.
Dream Bigger
If you’re willing to get funky with it, Dreams of the Dead has a lot more to offer beyond the realms of MTG Reanimator decks. For a start, it gets a lot better alongside Blink effects. Reanimated creatures exiled with Commanders like Brago, King Eternal will return as normal, without any cumulative upkeep or exile clause to worry about. This gives you an easy way around the major drawback of the card, which you can also access in the 99 with Eldrazi Displacer or Displacer Kitten.
You can also get more out of Dreams of the Dead using counter manipulation effects. Tidus, Yuna’s Guardian, for example, will let you shift the age counters from cumulative upkeep to preserve your creatures. If you’re not in Bant colors, Nesting Grounds can do the same in colorless. Alternatively, you can bring in Solemnity to avoid accumulating any age counters at all.
Finally, Dreams of the Dead actually has some infinite combo potential. With a Void Maw in play, you can resurrect Priest of Gix for two mana with Dreams, netting three black. Next, sacrifice Priest to Phyrexian Altar for a blue mana, and exile it to Void Maw’s ability rather than Dreams.’ You can then return Priest to your graveyard with Void Maw, and repeat the loop for infinite mana and infinite enters/dies triggers. This is a fairly clunky combo, but the Void Maw/Phyrexian Altar engine is great with Dreams anyway, so it’s not a tricky include.
While it’s not a great fit for every Reanimator deck, Dreams of the Dead has a ton to offer for specific strategies. At only $0.30 a copy right now, there’s little barrier to entry if you want to give this hidden gem a spin yourself.
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