Random Encounter

The gamble is baked into the shuffle. Milling four off the top of a freshly randomized library is a variance engine dressed as a payoff: hit four creatures and swing for a haste-fueled beatdown, or turn up four spells and pour six mana into nothing. That deliberate volatility is the whole conceit, mapping a dice roll onto the top of your deck, and it separates this from the reanimator toolbox effects that reach into a graveyard for something known. Here you don't choose the bodies; the library does. The end-step bounce reins in what would otherwise be a free army: whatever lands is a one-turn rental, so the card wants creatures that pay you the moment they enter or the moment they attack, not permanents you hope to keep. Enters-the-battlefield triggers and haste-driven damage are the real currency, since everything returns to hand before your next upkeep. Flashback doubles the roll rather than fixing it: the same shuffle-and-mill happens again from the graveyard at a steeper price, so a red deck built around randomness gets two swings at a high-roll instead of one guaranteed medium outcome. Most reanimation rewards you for stacking the deck; this one rewards you for embracing the fact that you can't, which is a rarer and more honest bargain to build around.