Agadeem's Awakening // Agadeem, the Undercrypt

The distinctness clause is where this reanimation spell stops behaving like every other X-scaled recursion effect. It is not "return X mana value of creatures" and not a single fatty pulled back from the yard; it demands that each returned creature sit on a different rung of the mana-value ladder, none higher than X. Cast it for X equal to three and you can raise a one, a two, and a three, but never two twos. That constraint quietly rewards a curve-diverse graveyard over a pile of identical bodies, steering the effect toward toolbox reanimation rather than a wide swarm of the same dork. The second face is what pays for the ambition. Mass reanimation has always carried the flooding tax: draw it when the graveyard is thin and you are holding a dead expensive sorcery. Stapling the payoff to a black source that enters untapped for three life (tapped for free) means the "dead card" downside is answered by making the dead card a land you would have played anyway. The seam in the deal is small and deliberate: the life payment at the door, and the guessing game of whether you want the untapped source now or the reanimation later. What used to force you to accept mana-flooded copies as the cost of admission now simply becomes a black-producing land when the yard is empty.