Reanimate – Tempest —> Final Fantasy
Date Reviewed: July 3, 2025
Ratings:
Constructed: 4.83
Casual: 5.00
Limited: 3.50
Multiplayer: 4.33
Commander [EDH]: 4.42
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
One-mana spells might be expected to be comparatively weak on average to make up for the speed and flexibility you get in casting them. Maybe that’s true if you could measure it over every single Magic set ever made, but I feel like a lot of them punch well above their mana cost. Think of a card like Lightning Bolt, or even its brother Shock; heck, think even of a seemingly questionable card like Thought Scour. Reanimate might have them all beat on this metric, though. It is a yardstick for many players’ journey through assessing Magic cards as a whole: the life loss clause seems like it might be prohibitive at first, but you soon realize that in the right deck it is absolutely irrelevant. Consider this: that loss was considered worth it when the nastiest reanimator target was Verdant Force, and now we have Griselbrand. It even scales well to multiplayer formats, which I am almost positive was not exactly what they had in mind when they originally designed it.
Constructed: 5
Casual: 5
Limited: 3
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4
Reanimate is, in many ways, the spell for getting things out of graveyards and making them undead. One mana is the cheapest version of the effect we’ve seen, and while it does come with a life loss rider afterwards, you start with way more life than you do mana, and this can even hit an opponent’s graveyard in a pinch. Most decks using Reanimate are going to want to hit their graveyard, admittedly, but flexibility is nice, and this is certainly quite flexible.
That this costs one mana has made it a long-desired spell in Legacy Reanimator as the deck’s Plan A; you may lose 8 life to get that Griselbrand into play, but he’ll probably make it back in short order. It even pairs beautifully with Entomb to set up the play…while other reanimation spells also cost 2 mana and can curve off of Entomb, you can still do both in one turn if you’re so inclined. Make no mistake: this is probably the most powerful single-target reanimation spell, and it is well worth the life loss.
Constructed: 5
Casual: 5
Limited: 3 (has always been a tricky play here, since you lack set-up tools and the creatures aren’t as efficacious in a vacuum)
Multiplayer: 4.5
Commander [EDH]: 4.75
Thijs
Ah yes, one of Legacy’s favorite cards. How many people have sat across from someone reanimating Atraxa on turn 5 and gone ‘here we go’. I love this card. It’s one of those rare instances where you immediately go ‘I think this would work in a lot of decks’.
Its first conception came in Tempest, the first set in the Rath Cycle. The flavor text is a quote from the infamous Volrath, saying “You will learn to earn death”. What he meant by that, who knows, but the line combined with the pretty grim artwork (by Robert Bliss) makes it a frightening and impressive card.
Of course, the life loss looks like a drawback at first, especially when you think about the massive creatures you’ll be reanimating. But don’t forget, life can be a resource in the right hands. And with someone who is a master of Dimir behind the wheel, trust me, they know what they’re doing.
Constructed: 4,5
Casual: 5
Limited: 4,5
Multiplayer: 4,5
Commander [EDH]: 4,5
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