in its mana cost, X is 0.Reanimate lets black decks turn a creature in any graveyard into a battlefield threat for one mana. Its low casting cost makes it useful both for dedicated reanimation strategies and for recovering a valuable creature after an ordinary exchange of removal spells.
Entomb is the direct setup partner: it searches your library for a card and puts it into your graveyard, allowing you to choose the creature Reanimate will return. Archon of Cruelty offers a substantial payoff, with an entry trigger that affects an opponent while drawing you a card and gaining life. Reanimate still makes you lose life equal to the creature’s mana value, so returning an eight-mana Archon requires planning around that loss.
You do not always need the largest creature available. Eternal Witness can recover another important card after being reanimated, and an opponent’s graveyard may contain a creature better suited to the current board. Animate Dead provides another reanimation effect in decks that want redundancy, although its Aura relationship introduces different vulnerabilities.
Reanimate is a sorcery and targets the creature card, giving opponents an opportunity to remove that card from the graveyard before the spell resolves. The returned creature enters under your control, but it normally cannot attack immediately without haste. Life is also part of the calculation even when the creature offers an entry benefit: that benefit’s trigger waits until Reanimate has finished resolving, including the life loss. Choose a target that advances your position without leaving you unable to survive the exchange.
