Grave Endeavor

Two d10 rolls, one instant, two payoffs that draw from the same random pool: the choose-one clause is where the tension lives. Whichever number you assign to reanimation, the other becomes your drain, so every cast asks which half you need more right now. Roll a 9 and a 3 and you decide between a returned creature wearing nine counters against a three-point swing, or a creature back with a modest +3/+3 alongside a nine-point life shift; the dice are identical, the outcomes read completely differently. Because the counters land as the creature enters, this sidesteps the usual reanimator drawback of returning a body that needs a turn to matter: even the low roll arrives already grown, and the high roll can turn a small graveyard target into a genuine threat. The drain scales opposite the counters, so the spell hedges its own variance: a smaller return still buys a large life swing, and a large return costs the drain but hands you board presence. It is a design that treats dice as a resource to allocate rather than a coin flip to survive, closer to a modal spell whose modes are chosen after the roll than to a gamble. The mana keeps it a top-end play, but the instant timing is the real separator: reanimation can resolve as a combat trick or an end-step ambush, something the sorcery-speed reanimation it competes with cannot offer.