As long as Magic: The Gathering has been around, Reanimator decks have been a consistent part of it. The idea of bringing out powerhouse creatures for cheap via dark magic has a timeless appeal, and often translates into a potent strategy to boot. These days, the strategy lives on mainly in Commander, where it’s one of the most popular archetypes in the format. Whether you’re an MTG Reanimator veteran or are just starting out with the deck, these underplayed cards will serve you well.
Death Or Glory
For the most part, reanimation effects in Magic are strictly single-target only. Death or Glory breaks this convention in, appropriately enough, glorious fashion, however, letting you bring back literally half your graveyard with a single five-mana play.
As with cards like Fact or Fiction, your opponent has control over the final result here, which means you need to be able to build two strong piles. Due to this, Death or Glory works best in Reanimator decks with a strong self-mill element, particularly alongside cards like Hermit Druid and Mesmeric Orb. With a full suite of creatures to choose from, you can easily put your opponent in a lose/lose situation.
While it does require setup, the outcome here can be game-winning. If you’re in a combo-heavy deck, you can set things up so that, whichever pile your opponent picks, you’re putting your win into play. You can also just reanimate a bunch of huge threats, possibly with a Haste granter and Craterhoof Behemoth support for a sudden alpha strike. The sky really is the limit with Death or Glory, which is why its current play rate of 3.2k decks and $0.50 price feels disconcertingly low.
Mirror-Mad Phantasm
In addition to running plenty of big creatures and ways to bring them back, Reanimator decks also need cards that fill the graveyard. While it’s expensive, Mirror-Mad Phantasm is one of the very best options in this category. On average, using its activated ability will put half of your deck into the ‘yard, which should be enough to keep you going for the rest of the game.
While you can certainly whiff here and mill only a few cards, since Mirror-Mad Phantasm puts itself right back into play, you can easily roll the dice again. The only real downside of this card is its high mana cost, but Reanimator decks can easily work around that. So as long as you have a way to discard or Entomb it, you should be able to make great use of it.
On top of its general self-mill utility, Mirror-Mad Phantasm also enables a wide range of infinite combos. If you Clone it or grant another creature its ability with something like Agatha’s Soul Cauldron, you can mill your entire deck for just two mana. You can also stack up infinite enters and dies triggers by pairing the card with Wan Shi Tong, All-Knowing and Phyrexian Altar. Considering all these applications and the fact that Mirror-Mad Phantasm is a single-printing mythic, its current $0.70 price tag is surprising.
Diabolic Servitude
Being caught without a reanimation spell is a common problem for Reanimator decks, and one that Diabolic Servitude solves neatly. While you’re initially only getting a Zombify here, and one that exiles the creature on death to boot, the fact that Servitude returns to your hand after use is a major upside. This lets you keep the pressure on turn after turn, where most reanimation effects are one-and-done affairs.
There are certainly downsides here, most notably that exiling your fallen creatures eats into your reanimation options. To combat this, you’ll want to go extra-deep on self-mill in a deck running Diabolic Servitude. Scrabbling Skullcrab and Victor, Valgavoth’s Seneschal are particularly good options, since they top up your ‘yard each time you re-cast Servitude. While it requires a bit more effort than its peers, Diabolic Servitude more than makes up for that in longer Commander games.
Soul Exchange
Four mana has become the standard rate for reanimation effects in recent times, which unfortunately prices most new options out of viability. Cards like these just can’t compete with the Reanimates and Animate Deads of the world, after all. Hidden away in Magic’s notorious Fallen Empires set, however, is Soul Exchange, a card that can very much compete in that arena.
Two black mana to reanimate any creature is an incredible rate, even with the exile requirement tacked on. While this can be an issue, since Reanimator decks really want all their creatures in the graveyard, there are ways to work around it. In decks that produce a lot of tokens, like Slimefoot and Squee, you can simply offer one of those up to diminish the cost. Even better, if you have ways to steal opposing Commanders, you can exile those instead to jack up their Commander tax.
While the last line of text regarding Thrulls will pretty much never come up unless you’re playing something like Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder, Soul Exchange is more than good enough without it. Even if you need to give up a real creature to it sometimes, two-mana reanimation is so powerful that it outweighs the risk. Since the card only sees play in 4.45k decks right now, it’ll likely catch some opponents off-guard, too.
Reincarnation
Green isn’t exactly known for its reanimation effects, preferring to recur things with cards like Regrowth instead. It did get an interesting entry in this category very early on, however, with Reincarnation from Legends. The catch here is that you need a creature to die in order to make use of the card, but that’s not too hard to arrange.
For starters, you can offer up creatures to sacrifice outlets like Altar of Dementia and Phyrexian Tower to enable Reincarnation on demand. These cards are fantastic in Reanimator anyway, as ways of dodging exile-based removal, so including them isn’t a stretch. Since Reincarnation works at instant speed, you can also use it after chump blocking with something like Sakura-Tribe Elder on an opponent’s turn.
This aspect also lets you use Reincarnation to surprise block an opponent, or even win over the top of someone by resurrecting Thassa’s Oracle. All in all, Reincarnation is a unique and powerful reanimation spell, and one that deserves to see use beyond the 2.46k decks it’s in currently.
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