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Reanimate

Sorcery

Put target creature card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control. You lose life equal to that card's mana value.

CMC
1
Mana cost
{B}
Color identity
B
Rarity
uncommon
Set
Archenemy
Price
$11.49
EDHREC rank
#58
Buy on TCGplayer
Reanimate card art
Reanimate puts any creature from any graveyard onto your battlefield for one black mana — the life payment is the cost, not a drawback, and in most games it's irrelevant against the swing of stealing an eight-drop on turn one. K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth can pay that life with Phyrexian mana instead of life, and Terra, Herald of Hope turns the whole sequence into a reusable engine.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Terra, Herald of Hope

Terra, Herald of Hope

82.9% of decks · synergy 0.65

Terra, Herald of Hope mills aggressively and wants the best creatures in every graveyard, so Reanimate doubles as both payoff and recursive threat recovery at a cost that scales cleanly with Terra's life-gain subtheme.

03
Celes, Rune Knight

Celes, Rune Knight

77.5% of decks · synergy 0.60

Celes, Rune Knight fills the graveyard fast and needs ways to convert that pile into board presence; Reanimate is the one-mana answer that immediately converts a discarded threat into an attacker.

04
Sauron, Lord of the Rings

Sauron, Lord of the Rings

80.5% of decks · synergy 0.56

Sauron, Lord of the Rings creates Armies and wants overwhelming board presence quickly — Reanimate lets the deck skip the casting cost on any titan that was answered or milled earlier in the game.

05
Raffine, Scheming Seer

Raffine, Scheming Seer

68.1% of decks · synergy 0.52

Raffine, Scheming Seer connives constantly, which means premium creatures end up in the bin regularly; Reanimate retrieves them for a single mana, turning every connive discard into a delayed tempo gain.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern not legal
pioneer not legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

In Commander, Reanimate is a staple — one mana to put any creature in any graveyard directly onto your battlefield is the best rate reanimation has ever had, and the life loss almost never decides a 40-life game. Legacy is where it also earns a real reputation: reanimating an Atraxa or Griselbrand on turn one through Entomb or Careful Study is one of the format's most consistent game-ending lines. Vintage allows it and it sees fringe play there, mostly in the same shell. Modern, Pioneer, Standard, and Pauper are all off the table — either banned by omission or simply not legal — so if those are your formats, the card doesn't exist for you.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

Animate Dead and Dance of the Dead are the closest substitutes, both under $1, attaching as enchantments rather than giving clean permanent ownership — the creature returns with a slight power reduction and leaves if the enchantment is removed, which is a real downside but rarely matters when you're reanimating something worth seven or eight mana. If you need a sorcery-speed one-for-one that doesn't leave a vulnerability, Persist runs around $0.50 and covers creatures already in your own graveyard, though it won't touch opponents' piles the way Reanimate can.

Price Context

Current price

$11.49 mid tier

At $11.49, Reanimate sits in the mid tier — expensive enough to feel like a purchase decision, cheap enough that it's not a barrier for anyone building a serious black deck. It's been reprinted multiple times and the price reflects stable, high-demand equilibrium rather than scarcity, so this is roughly where it lives.

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Sources

Mentioned

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.