So the basic idea for a reanimator deck is to dump giant creatures into the graveyard and cheat them out with spells. To facilitate this you need cards like:
These cards help you dig through your deck for the pieces or chuck the giant creatures into the graveyard or both.
The follow up to chucking big things into your graveyard are some reanimator spells like:
These will bring things back from the dead and generally faster than hard casting them.
So what makes a good reanimator target? Well basically anything that is big and bomby. Some of the better ones in my cube are:
- Nefarox, Overlord of Grixis
- Sepulchral Primordial /Artisan of Kozilek- these have the added benefit of bringing something else along when they come out.
- Myr Battlesphere
- Shipbreaker Kraken
- Sphinx of Uthuun
- Captain of the Watch
- Victory's Herald
- Moldgraf Monstrosity
- Pelakka Wurm
- Ulamog's Crusher
- Dragons
These creatures are all from different colours so reanimator decks tend to be at least 2 colours and most likely 3 and maybe even 4. Some of the better combinations are Black/Blue cause blue gives you lots of card draw and some large creatures as well as the most options of throwing stuff into your graveyard. Black/White gives you lots of reanimation options and lots of good early stuff to keep you alive. It does lack in ways to dump stuff into the graveyard though. Black/Green gives you ways to abuse your graveyard even more. Cards like Jarad's Orders, Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord, Varolz, the Scar-Striped and the scavenge creatures provide more things to do with the stuff in your graveyard in addition to reanimation. Not to mention green provides a lot of mana fixing so you can easily go 3 or 4 colour reanimator.
The biggest drawback to a deck like this is that the early game tends to be slow and there is a great danger to just flat out dying before you can get the deck going. This makes removal spells and resilient creatures a high priority.
This deck is not an obvious choice to make but it's quite fun cheating out giant creatures and smashing face.