The 44 Best Reanimation Cards in Magic Ranked

Last updated on May 11, 2026

Goryo's Vengeance | Illustration by Randy Vargas

Over the course of a game of Magic, one zone naturally fills with cards as turns go by. That begs the question: Why not use the graveyard to your advantage?

That’s right, today we’re looking at reanimation effects and how to reanimate cards. Which reanimation spells and abilities are a necromancer’s dream? Let’s dive in and find out!

What Are Reanimation Cards in MTG?

Dread Return | Illustration by LJ Koh

Reanimation cards in MTG allow players to put one or more permanents from their graveyard straight onto the battlefield. This term comes from the old card Reanimate, which works only for creatures, and also requires a life payment.

Reanimation applies to not only creatures, but also artifacts, enchantments, planeswalkers, and more. But mainly creatures. For the purposes of this list, I’m only considering cards with the “return from graveyard” text, or sometimes “put into play from the graveyard” text, not cards that allow us to play cards and lands from graveyards.

#44. Back for More

Yes, it’s expensive, but Back for More gives you an instant-speed reanimation effect added to a fight effect. It can be devastating depending on the target you choose, be it Phyrexian Obliterator or Screaming Nemesis. Or maybe you get a Vampire Nighthawk, so you can remove something and gain some life in the process. Definitely a more casual approach to reanimation.

#43. Artisan of Kozilek

Artisan of Kozilek is a monster of a creature at 9 mana. It comes in as a 10/9 with annihilator 2 and has an on-cast ability to return a creature from your graveyard to the battlefield. This isn’t anything crazy on a technical level, but a massive beater that brings a friend even if it’s countered is usually pretty good.

#42. Abuelo’s Awakening

Abuelo's Awakening was an important part of Omniscience decks before being banned in Standard, allowing you to cheat the 10-mana enchantment into play by paying just 4. Yes, it returns as a fragile spirit, so it’s better to follow this spell with a proper Omniscience from your hand to ensure the cheating process gets going.

#41. Exhume

Being a common reanimation spell warrants its use, at least in formats like Pauper. Exhume is a good combo when you can use your turn 1 to loot a big creature into the graveyard with cards like Consider or Faithless Looting, not to mention premium ones like Entomb. Another nice synergy is using cards that cycle for cheap like Troll of Khazad-dûm. The worst aspect of this card is that these days, other decks can have a cheap cycler available and also benefit from the effect.

#40. Life // Death

Life / Death is basically a 2-mana Reanimate, which is, of course, so much worse than the 1-mana spell. For 2 mana, you get other effects that are better like Animate Dead. This card at least offers added flexibility with the Life half, and sometimes you can finish the game this way.

#39. Kaya’s Ghostform

Kaya's Ghostform is a 1-mana enchantment that doesn’t necessarily bring a creature back from the graveyard immediately, but instead returns the enchanted creature to the battlefield when it dies or is put into exile. It’s like a preemptive reanimation.

All in all, it just provides a worse version of umbra armor. That’s good enough to hang around the bottom of this list, and it’s only up from here!

#38. Emeria, the Sky Ruin

Emeria, the Sky Ruin is a nonbasic land that can tap for white and reanimates a creature card in your graveyard if you have seven or more plains in play. It’s not too special, only functioning in mono-white Commander decks.

The tapped entry is a serious downside here because mono-white decks usually play a low curve, and it’s a major hindrance if you fail to play a mana rock or a turn-1 creature beacuse this is your only white source.

#37. The Cruelty of Gix

The Cruelty of Gix is a 5-mana black saga from Dominaria United. It has a few different options including getting rid of a creature or planeswalker in an opponent’s hand, tutoring any card into your hand from library, and reanimating a creature from any graveyard.

Thanks to the read ahead mechanic, this can (at worst) do any one of these immediately upon entry. It’s a decent, versatile card, but it isn’t the best value in terms of reanimation if you immediately read ahead to the third chapter.

#36. Patriarch’s Bidding

Patriarch's Bidding is a 5-mana sorcery that has each player choose a creature type, then everything of a chosen type in a graveyard returns to play. You'll need to protect your graveyard. This is an A+ in typal decks but has serious drawbacks outside of that strategy.

If you play this against a typal deck, you might as well concede.

#35. Tergrid, God of Fright

Here’s another 5-mana reanimation card, but this time it’s Tergrid, God of Fright, a god creature that lets you reanimate permanents that your opponents discard or sacrifice. It’s a great built-in value engine and works incredibly well in discard decks, earning itself the infamous “Game Changer” status.

#34. Astelli Reclaimer

I like that Astelli Reclaimer works as two reanimation tools. When you warp it, you get something small back since you’re spending only 3 mana. Later in the game, if you cast it for the full 5-mana creature, you get up to a 5-mana permanent back. While you’re not cheating anything heavy into play, it can be powerful to get a good saga, planeswalker, or even a strong value creature on top of your 5/4 flier.

#33. Whip of Erebos

The good ol’ fashioned Whip of Erebos lets you tap it (and pay ) to reanimate a creature for a turn before exiling it. This black artifact also gives all your creatures lifelink.

This isn’t the most powerful god artifact but it’s certainly good, and the reanimation ability can provide some generic value in non-sacrifice or reanimation strategies.

#32. Guardian Scalelord

With backup, Guardian Scalelord adds the evasion of flying to give you a chance at a safe attack. Another important pair of words on this card is “nonland permanent“, and I'm sure you know of great artifacts, enchantments, and planeswalkers that cost less than 3 and want a second chance.

#31. Unearth

Unearth is a classic reanimation spell for creatures with a mana value under 4, giving you a great tempo advantage. It also has cycling, so it can be useful even if you don’t have an appealing target.

#30. Emptiness

Emptiness is what happens when you put an Unearth effect on an evoke ability. The card is super solid, and the complete package gives you a good creature back, a removal spell, on top of a 3/5 elemental creature. It’s almost never dead a card, as there’s often a value creature to bring back or an opposing creature to kill or shrink. The only bad thing I have to say about this card is that the mana can be clunky.

#29. Dread Return

Dread Return is a 4-mana sorcery that reanimates a single creature from your graveyard. It also has flashback for the cost of sacrificing three creatures, which probably isn’t that much of a cost in the first place.

This card is decent overall. It’s nothing too crazy, especially compared with what’s coming, but it's better than everything before it on the list.

#28. Sevinne’s Reclamation

One of the best flashback cards in the game, Sevinne's Reclamation doesn’t restrict you to creatures specifically, but it restricts you to permanents with a mana value of 3 or less. It also has flashback and reanimates two targets when cast from a graveyard.

This is great in white and Selesnya enchantment decks that don’t have access to the vast majority of reanimation but have a few critical pieces to reanimate if needed.

#27. From the Rubble

Repeated reuse of your creatures and no additional cost: These are excellent traits for reanimation. Yes, it's overpriced for the first one, but controlling From the Rubble for two turns is worth it if you've built your deck around a short list of creature types.

#26. Coalstoke Gearhulk

With Coalstoke Gearhulk you’re getting a nice, big body, and getting to reanimate up to a 4-drop until the end of turn. The reanimated creature also gets to attack, and this synergizes with efficient creatures, creatures with additional downsides when cast, or simply creatures that have good enter effects. You can also target a creature in an opponent's graveyard and get a swing before exiling it for good.

#25. Sheoldred, Whispering One

The first iteration of Sheoldred, Sheoldred, Whispering One reanimates something from your graveyard on your upkeep and forces opponents to sacrifice a creature on their upkeep. That’s a very powerful mechanic overall, and it holds up despite the hefty mana value on this card. Reanimation targets that then continue reanimating other cards are quite strong for these strategies.

#24. Restoration Seminar

Resolve Restoration Seminar once and you're guaranteed to bring a permanent back every turn, so long as your graveyard remains stocked. It's very hard to interact with paradigm spells outside of burning a counterspell every turn, you just have to get over the hump of resolving the first 7-mana spell and ride the value every turn thereafter.

#23. Aberrant Return

Aberrant Return is an interesting reanimation spell, in that it was made with Commander in mind, but it also works in a 1v1 game. You can get three creatures back from your own graveyard or from your opponent’s in a 1v1 game, but that’s clunky at 6 mana, you’ll have more juicy targets in a 4-player pod, especially with mill decks. Regardless, it’s nice that all targets can come from the same graveyard, which rewards deckbuilding with a lot of possible targets.

#22. Splendid Reclamation

Splendid Reclamation is a 4-mana sorcery and a one-shot catch-call reanimation spell to bring back all your lands. They come into play tapped, but pairing this with some kind of mass land destruction leaves you with everything you had and your opponents with nothing.

Make sure to float mana before casting an Armageddon.

#21. Living Death

Living Death (no, not Living End) is a 5-mana sorcery that basically swaps the creatures in play with the creatures in graveyards. It’s a big swap that leaves sacrifice decks ahead. Just make sure to know what’s coming across the table!

#20. Shallow Grave

Shallow Grave allows you to get a creature from your grave into play with haste until the end of your turn. There’s a catch: It must be the top card from your graveyard (yes, Mirage had nonsense restrictions like this). But you can do worse for 2 mana.

#19. Corpse Dance

Corpse Dance is a 3-mana Shallow Grave with buyback. With some mana left to spend, you can get a creature again and again, every turn. This can be very useful if you have cards like Spirited Companion or Ravenous Chupacabra, so you'll have guaranteed value every turn.

#18. Goryo’s Vengeance

Although very similar to other reanimation effects, Goryo's Vengeance is a little better in the sense that you choose the creature you want to return, although with the downside that it only works for legendary creatures. Awesome with Griselbrand, but it’s useless with cards like Archon of Cruelty or Woodfall Primus.

#17. Finale of Devastation

One of Magic's best green sorceries, Finale of Devastation is one of the few green reanimation spells on this list. It costs and allows you to tutor out creatures from your library and graveyard. It even gives them a massive buff if you paid or more for X.

#16. Moment of Reckoning

Moment of Reckoning is expensive, I’ll give you that. But the amount of value this 7-mana card provides is also huge. You get to choose four times between a removal effect and a reanimate effect. It’s not a very flashy 1v1 card, but an excellent control commander card, similar to Casualties of War. The times where you can’t get enough targets to destroy or reanimate will be few and far between.

#15. Victimize

Victimize is another 3-mana sorcery that requires you to sacrifice a creature in the process. In exchange you get two creature cards from your graveyard reanimated into play tapped. This is great value for just 3 mana.

Unfortunately you can’t reanimate the sacrificed creature thanks to the ordering of effects, and sacrificing a creature isn’t part of the actual cost of this card.

#14. Daretti, Scrap Savant

Daretti, Scrap Savant is an infamous red planeswalker that loves messing around with artifacts. Its ultimate gives you an emblem which has you return artifacts from graveyard to the battlefield on the end step. That synergizes well with its other abilities, but it also offers great protection if you’re an artifact-based deck.

#13. Goblin Engineer

Goblin Engineer needs no introduction. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s among the strongest red ETB effects and a cheap, effective combo piece for reanimating artifacts for other combos. It does this well and efficiently, which makes it quite strong in Eternal formats.

#12. Grave Researcher

Grave Researcher is the closest we’ll have to actual Reanimate in formats like Standard or Pioneer. You’ll need to do some work because it doesn’t enter prepared, and sometimes this creature dies before it can do any gravedigging. On the plus side, in a typical BG graveyard-matters deck, you can effectively reanimate every turn.

#11. Persist

Persist is close to being an all-timer reanimation spell at 2 mana, but the -1/-1 counter matters and targeting only non-legendaries severely limits the types of targets you'd want to bring back. It's effective in formats that don't have Reanimate or Animate Dead, and can serve as a tertiary backup for those in something like Vintage Cube.

#10. Necromancy

Necromancy has a gigantic wall of text. All you really need to know is that it reanimates a creature. If you cast it at a time a sorcery couldn’t be cast, it’s sacrificed at the end step.

This is great generic creature reanimation at instant speed, and it works well in defensive situations or when the creature you’re reanimating is something with immediate impact like Griselbrand.

#9. Reveillark

Reveillark isn’t the most powerful reanimation card on rate, but it’s an effective combo piece in Commander. A lot of combo creatures have low power, and this is conveniently costed at 5 mana to work well in many different Birthing Pod combo lines.

#8. Mikaeus, the Unhallowed

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed is a great reanimation piece thanks to how it functions in various combos that run Protean Hulk as an initiator. It works well specifically with Walking Ballista and other cards to infinitely ping enemies.

#7. Sun Titan

Sun Titan, one of the best giants in MTG and among the very best white creatures, is similar to Reveillark in certain combos, but it offers better generic reanimation for white decks. It’s as great a staple in mono-white hatebears/stax decks as a way to replenish your board and return the right stax piece for the problem when played.

#6. Eerie Ultimatum

Here’s one amazing Abzan card, Eerie Ultimatum. It’s a whopping 7-mana sorcery with a lot of different pips, but its effect of returning any number of permanents with different names from your graveyard to the battlefield is unparalleled.

This ultimatum can obviously have easy combo potential with graveyard decks, especially with effects from cards like Entomb, but it works well in essentially any permanent-based deck.

#5. Karmic Guide

Karmic Guide makes up for what it lacks in generic reanimation potential with its incredible functionality in combos. It comes in at that crucial 5-mana slot for Birthing Pod combos, and it doesn’t have any limits in what it can reanimate. Echo‘s barely a downside here, since reanimation decks and flicker decks can work around it easily.

#4. Metamorphosis Fanatic

As a 6-drop, Metamorphosis Fanatic is nothing to get exicted about. We've got similar ETB reanimators at this cost, and Karmic Guide already beats it as a 5-drop. But it's absurd when cast for its miracle cost, putting way too much lifelinking stats on board for a mere 2 mana. You need to set it up, but you can also just naturally spike it off the top for an instant boardstate.

#3. Dance of the Dead

This giant wall of text means that Dance of the Dead is actually an Animate Dead card that gets creatures from any graveyard with a +1/+1 bonus. There’s a little side-effect that you must pay to untap that creature. That’s a minor drawback: Most of the time, the Reanimate value is in the huge bonus you get from the enters effect or the creature’s passive abilities.

#2. Animate Dead

Animate Dead has animate in its name, and it’s one of the best and oldest reanimation spells. One of Magic's best black enchantments and best black ETB cards, it offers strong value that’s easy to understand and build around, and it even works well in generic decks that lack a reanimation or graveyard focus.

#1. Reanimate

I can’t think of a more deserving card than Reanimate itself. It’s simple: One mana to reanimate a creature with the only actual drawback being the life lost in the process. That life can occasionally mean something, but it’s always worth the exchange if you’re reanimating something incredibly game-altering.

Best Reanimation Enablers and Payoffs

The best way to pay off reanimation is bringing back something incredibly powerful ahead of when it should normally enter play. Reanimating is all about getting more out of the spell than what you put into it.

In the common example of Griselbrand reanimator decks, big Griz fulfills both tasks. It’s a massive creature that comes out on turns 1 to 3 on average, and it brings immediate and assured value in drawing you seven cards. If it didn’t draw cards or have an impact once entering play then you’re just getting a big body for cheap. Atraxa, Grand Unifier has usurped Griselbrand as the reanimation creature of choice in many decks and formats.

Other common reanimate targets are Archon of Cruelty and Omniscience.

Reanimation is often enabled by cards that put key reanimation targets in our graveyard. The most played is Entomb. For 1 mana, and at instant speed, you can search for any creature in your library and immediately put it into your graveyard, then follow with a reanimation spell. Cards like Buried Alive and Vile Entomber serve a similar purpose.

Cards like Sidisi, Brood Tyrant fill your graveyard at a consistent rate, so you have more possible targets for reanimation. Free discard outlets like Putrid Imp or red cards like Faithless Looting can also be used to enable reanimation.

How Do Reanimation Cards Work?

Reanimation cards return cards from the graveyard to the battlefield. When these explicitly say “return” it means that it’s moving those cards from zone to zone. Nothing is being cast.

There are a few cards that don’t follow this “return” clause in my rankings, but they’re included because they have the same end result as traditional reanimation.

Does Reanimating Count as Casting?

No, reanimating doesn’t count as casting because reanimation cards return permanents from the graveyard to the battlefield. They don’t make them castable or playable.

Can You Return Tokens from the Graveyard?

No, you can’t return tokens from the graveyard because tokens stop existing once they hit the graveyard. There's no window between when a token enters the graveyard and when it leaves the game where you could reanimate one.

Does Returning from the Graveyard Count as Casting?

No, cards that return others from the graveyard don’t cast them or make them free, unless explicitly stated.

Wrap Up

Malakir Rebirth | Illustration by Marta Nael

I enjoyed researching this and was surprised to see a few cards I had basically forgotten about. Hopefully I’m not alone in having my interest in them reanimated!

What did you think of my rankings? Did you agree with my placements, or do you have some suggestions? Let me know in the comments below or over in the Draftsim Discord. And check out The Daily Upkeep newsletter to stay up to date on all the latest MTG news.

Until next time, stay safe and stay healthy!