Rakdos Joins Up

The reanimation half is the entrance fee; the payoff is what happens after. Returning a creature with two extra +1/+1 counters is generous, and it comes without the small-creature clauses that usually police white recursion, but those counters aren't just a size bonus: they matter most on the second ability, which reads a legendary creature's power at the moment it dies and turns it into direct damage to an opponent's face. Pump the target, sacrifice or trade it, and the enchantment converts that power into a burst of reach the board couldn't otherwise generate. The legendary-only condition is the restriction that gives the second ability its shape: it isn't an aristocrats sacrifice payoff that fires on any creature death, so the deck has to commit to a critical mass of legends, and the counters exist so the biggest of them hits hardest when it leaves. Read together, the two lines describe a compact loop: return a beefed-up legend, then convert its death into damage, ideally the same creature you just recurred. It treats the graveyard as ammunition and the sacrifice as the fuse, with the enchantment sitting between them, closing games from the top of the curve rather than by grinding the board. The damage is dealt, not drained: no life gained back, no incidental attrition, just a number pointed at a single opponent.