Let's talk for a minute about the manabase in Legacy. The gold standard is the original dual lands from Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited. These lands are the best ever printed and staples of the Legacy format. On the other hand, the shock lands from Ravnica are extremely similar to the original duals. Actually, they are exactly the same, but they require you to lose a bit of life here and there. An extremely important question to budget Legacy players is how much does the downgrade from the original duals to shocks hurt?

The answer is it really depends on the deck. Taking an extra two damage throughout the game adds up. If you played 100 matches with shocks and 100 matches with original duals, I have no doubt you'd lose more often with shocks. That said, it matters less to some decks than others. Take for example, the Reanimator list posted above. The original deck was running Badlands in the Blood Crypt slot. At the same time, there's a total of four "duals" in the deck, so at most, switching to Blood Crypt could cost you eight extra life points a game, which is a ton. However, the deck has exactly one Red card that it plans on casting in Faithless Looting, so you will rarely need more than one copy of Blood Crypt on the battlefield. Plus, in some games you'll be able to fetch it tapped, or you'll never draw a Faithless Looting and just win on turn one by casting Dark Ritual into Entomb for Griselbrand and a reanimation spell. So in reality, the change from duals to shocks is relatively minor for this build.

Foil template v4
$ 27.54 5.01 tix
Foil template v4
$ 12.11 27.12 tix
Reanimate [TE]
$ 7.49 0.01 tix

The basic idea of Reanimator in Legacy is to resolve one huge threat as early as possible, preferable on turn one. Most of the time this will be either a Griselbrand or a Sire of Insanity. Griselbrand allows you to draw 14 cards, which should find you a combination of mana from Lotus Petal and Dark Ritual and discard spells like Unmask and Duress. You can then use these card to get rid of any answers your opponent may have in hand, and win by attacking with Griselbrand. Sire of Insanity comes with a built in Mind Twist, which triggers on your end step eliminating your opponent's hand entirely, and makes answering the 6/4 almost impossible. As you can see, when things are going well, the difference between taking two life from a Blood Crypt and getting a Badlands for free is nonexistent.

The Good News: If you like playing big creatures fast, Reanimator is the perfect Legacy deck to get started on. Its good draws are very close to unbeatable. Also, Griselbrand and Iona, Shield of Emeria are somewhat playable in other decks and formats, so while many of the cards are only used in Reanimator, some of the expensive pieces have additional uses and can help you build towards other decks and formats.

The Bad News: Reanimator has some of the same problems as Dredge in that it can be disrupted by graveyard hate, although it isn't just drawing dead to Rest in Peace. It's also fairly repetitive. Most of the games will play out the same way, so if you like long, interactive games of Magic, you might want to pass on Reanimator.