Animate Dead

The original reanimation spell, and the source of templating problems that have shaped every reanimator card printed since. The card spent years as a rules headache: an Aura that targets a creature card in a graveyard, then has to stay attached to something on the battlefield, with a sacrifice clause that fires when it leaves. The current oracle is the third or fourth attempt to make that sequence work cleanly within the layers system, and the shape it landed on (enter, swap the enchant clause, return and attach, sacrifice on leave) is now the template Necromancy and Dance of the Dead share. The -1/-0 is the balancing dial, and a small one: two mana to put any creature from any graveyard onto the battlefield prices the effect well below what its raw power would suggest, and that gap has anchored Reanimator decks across the eternal formats that allow it. The sacrifice trigger is where the rate gets sold back. The creature is not yours forever; it is yours until the Aura dies, which means every piece of enchantment removal doubles as a removal spell for whatever you reanimated. That fragility is the cost the card pays for its rate, and it is the design lesson every subsequent reanimation Aura has had to either accept or work around.