Pointed Discussion

The ultimate reanimator card! Shallow Grave is a close second place. Cheap and effective! 5/5

I like this old card XD Love being able to bring back the grave yard creatures specially when I can even pick from my opponents grave XD

@applecorn
The "problem" with Exhume isn't most often a problem if it's played right. With a decent reanimator deck you should get a creature up at least during the second turn, often even during the first. If your opponent isn't playing an anti-reanimation deck, I hardly see a chance he/she would have a more effective bomb creature than you in his/her graveyard - as getting the best monster into graveyard and up from there is the main focus of your whole deck.
The biggest problem with Animate Dead is that it's an aura. When you're playing reanimation, you'll be paying the price of having big creatures hit the table soon in a fewer numbers of them. Your first-turn monster will be drawing all possible removal on it, and that's not a good thing. With Exhume, Reanimate and such, you'll be mostly able to get around that with shrouded or otherwise protected creatures, but Animate Dead doesn't offer that chance. No matter how well protected the creature is, you can simply pop off the aura, sending it back into graveyard. That's why I'll be rather paying 9 life, or risking my opponent getting a creature onto table too, for Inkwell Leviathan agains't my opponent's blue deck, than leave it fragile for an answer as simple as Boomerang.

The updated text for this card is absurd.

What's next? "Flame Slash deals 4 damage to target creature. Flame Slash no longer target the creature after the damage is dealt. Flame Slash changes from a "sorcery" to "sorcery card in your graveyard." That creature, if its toughness was 4 or less, changes from a "creature" to a "dead creature that is no longer alive and as a direct result in its owners graveyard," unless the damage was changed from "effective damage" to "essentially nothing at all" by a damage-prevention effect, or regeneration or what have you. Whatever caused that effect, however, may or may not change to "a card in its owner's graveyard."

What's with the rules text? Why didn't they just make it work like a reverse Journey to Nowhere? I thought the point of Oracle was to make rules concise. The new text is somehow every bit as convoluted as the old text.

Very effective reanimation with not much of a draw back. Combos well with putrid imp to get your big creatures to the graveyard fast.

This is definitely up in the top 3 reanimator cards. Reanimate, Animate Dead, and I like corpse dance, or diabolic servitude.

Hi, Sun Titan! :D

Can Tallowisp fetches this card?

@Cyberium

No. "Enchant creature" cards are always auras and always say explicitly "enchant creature" in the oracle rules text for them. This card functions more like Journey to Nowhere.

Bestfriends with Worldgorger Dragon, a Swamp, and an Oona/Ambassador Laquatus

it could say that as it is cast, return a creature card from your graveyard to play and enchant that creature. then it wouldnt need to switch what it enchants as it never enchants till its in play.

Oh, how they must be sweating over how to correctly rule old cards which used to be just intuitive!

Run it in a discard deck. First turn Ostracize, second turn steal your fatty...

Solid Reanimation spell, but I much prefer Exhume or Reanimate over this.

Exhume isn't all that hard to deal with as long as you have some form of graveyard hate at your disposal. Make room for Relic of Progenitus, a few Bojuka Bog, Withered Wretch, Gravestorm, or if your feeling ballsy, just Reanimate your creatures.

animate dead is awesome. it's funny seeing all the comments about new reanimation cards. dance of the dead is another good one that no one seems to remember. dance of the dead, people! i used it with meekstone to abuse the untap ability or colossus of sardia. old-school renanimation.

Works great with Phage the Untouchable. LOL.

@Kirbster
The oracle text is never meant to make the text concise, just update it to the modern wording while maintaining the original intent. This card was always weird, because it requires you to enchant something that can't be targeted/enchanted/attached to until the spell has already resolved to put it into play. In one version they tried to be clever and hide it with "enchant dead creature," but then you had to explain why you couldn't move it to another "dead creature" with Crown of the Ages and similar unintended consequences. As something that breaks the act of enchanting in half, there is pretty much no wording that will be pleasant without invoking little-used, counter-intuitive rules.

By the time of the Dark, they had figured out that this problem was weird enough that they tried to avoid it in the future: Dance of Many is an enchantment that leaves play if the token it creates leaves play, and the token leaves play if the enchantment does. Essentially the same thing they tried here, with the unnecessary change of subtype removed.

worldgorger dragon, infinite combo

leonin relic-warder, a less epic infinite combo.

@bijart_dauth: That wouldn't work right, either, because with that wording, if this got countered while you were casting it, it'd actually get better. The "as you cast it" would still trigger, since a spell is cast even if it's countered, but the "when this leaves the battlefield" never would, since it never entered the battlefield to begin with. And it wouldn't give the reanimated creature the power penalty, either.

@Kolmastoista
The problem with Exhume is that's "all players." Do you really want that Lhurgoyf back out that you finally got Dark Banishing on? Reanimate could hurt too, if you want Draco. Even in a lifegain deck, that is a huge Loss of Life. Remember Life cannot be prevented or redirected. Necromancy, Beacon of Unrest and Rise From the Grave look good as other options.

When you enter the room, if you're in the room, you lose "you are an entrant of the room" and gain "you are an occupant of the room" until you leave the room. If you would leave the room, return the room to its owner's occupancy. And please lock the door. :)

T1 thaughtseize your fattie
T2 animaite your fattie
T3 try and not lose a friend

Getting reprinted in the upcomming Graveborn premium deck.

I like finding new ways to re-do the good old strategies in less degenerate ways, letting me have fun playing with good old awesome stuff, AND the other guy has more fun than people are used to against these kinds of cards. My most recent discovery?

Animate Dead, from Premium Deck Series: Graveborn.

Why do I like it so much? Why do I rate it higher than any other spell of it's kind? Actually, for basically the opposite reason as other people would. It's not the disadvantages of the other cards I'm worried about. Those drawbacks are negligible. And that's my beef with them.

Animate Dead is the best because I think it's well designed. I think it makes good games more than the other cards like it. It is a card that does exactly what a Reanimator Deck wants to do: get out a dead creature for cheap mana, which can be exploited any number of ways- but it does it using an enchantment aura that has a symbiotic relationship to the card you're Reanimating. This is much better to me than other similar cards because it sets up your deck to be easier to interact with.

Being vulnerable to such a huge swath of common cards (Demystify, Disenchant, Naturalize) means that it's not the end of the world for your opponent even if you have Akroma, Angel of Wrath or something silly like that. The sideboard against an Animate Dead deck is way easier to build than against a Dread Return deck, or god forbid a for-real FORCE OF WILL Legacy Worlds-viable deck.

If I wanted to, I could look up 'Legacy Reanimator World Championship decklist' and find out what the most efficient build is. I'm not out to win a bajillion dollars though- I'm just out to build a reasonably powerful deck that does something cool, while also making sure the other guy has no reason to ragequit.
I am VERY pleased with the Duel Decks, Premium Decks, and Event Decks because they give me a good base to work with to meet my special criterion of 'fun'. Now that they have produced one of the most degenerate archetypes ever in an actually relatively fair pre-con, it give me hope that with proper attention to detail, the same treatment can be given to just about any deck, up to and including Mono Blue Control.

If we say that Force of Will is, in some sense, 'Blue Entomb' as far being immensely fast, powerful and a super staple of the color, along with being degenerately efficient, then I want to find out what the
'Animate Dead' is of Mono-Blue Control, so I can try my hand at really building a fair version of a 'Jace, the Mind Sculptor Duel Deck'. Does anyone else think this is possible?

Fleshbag Marauder to get rid of a creature, then play mimic vat and finish with reanimate dead. FTW

When 70% of your deck is in the grave yard because of dredge and you cast this and bring back Sheoldred, Whispering One and Lord of Extinction, the game will just end...