Gurmag Angler

Seven mana for a 5/5 is a rate no one would build around if the number were real. Delve is the conversion mechanic that turns that price into a lie: each card exiled from the graveyard pays for one generic, so in a deck that fills its yard fast (cantrips, fetchlands, cheap spells burned through by the third turn) the printed cost collapses toward a single black mana, and the body arrives well ahead of when its size suggests it should. The design lives in that gap: a bloated cost on the card face, an aggressive one in practice, the difference closed entirely by how much you have already spent stocking your graveyard. Delve also makes the body immune to graveyard hate applied after the fact and gives spent resources a second use, but the structural cost is genuine: every card you delve away is a card your other delve spells, flashback, and escape effects can no longer reach. The graveyard becomes a shared pool, and this is among the cheapest, most efficient ways to drain it for a clock. Where a true reanimation payoff asks you to cheat a haymaker into play, this asks only for a yard full of spent paper and one swamp, and hands back a creature large enough to trade up, block early aggression, and close a game in four swings. It is the workhorse a graveyard deck reaches for when it wants a body, not a bomb.