No One Left Behind

Reanimation spells have always lived on a rate curve: pay full price for a Reanimate that discounts nothing, or pay less for something that only reaches a small body. This one writes the discount into the target rather than the caster. Aim it at a small creature and the cost collapses to two mana, a rate that rewards the exact bodies value decks are already recurring: mana dorks, hatebears, saccable fodder with death or enters-the-battlefield triggers. Point it at a fatty and you pay the full five, which is where the design does its balancing. The discount is not a bonus stapled to the spell; it is the spell's entire structure, and the moment you want to cheat something enormous it stops being cheap. That inversion is the interesting move. Most reanimation is priced to make the big return the exciting play and the small return an afterthought; here the small return is the efficient one, and the expensive return is available but never subsidized. It nudges the effect toward a grind-value posture (loop a two-drop, rebuy a death trigger, rebuild a board) rather than the turn-two-Griselbrand fantasy the card type usually chases. The scalable cost also softens the failure state common to every reanimation spell: a dead card in an empty graveyard is bad, but a two-mana one you can hold and cast off the top is far easier to justify running.