Exploring Legacy Reanimator Sideboard Options

Legacy Reanimator rewards decisive deckbuilding. The strategy can produce an enormous threat on the first turn, yet opposing decks are prepared with graveyard hate, free countermagic, fast combo, and permanent-based disruption. A strong sideboard must preserve Reanimator’s speed while giving it enough flexibility to play a longer game.

The best choices depend on your colours, maindeck discard, reanimation targets, and expected metagame. A blue-black list has different tools from a black-red build, while an Esper version can access powerful answers that are unavailable elsewhere. Sideboarding should improve your post-board plan without turning the deck into a clumsy midrange pile.

Sideboard Package	Main Strength	Main Cost	Useful Against
Surgical Extraction and Faerie Macabre	Efficient graveyard interaction	Narrow in some pairings	Reanimator, Dredge, Loam
Thoughtseize, Duress and Unmask	Clears hate before committing	Costs cards or life	Control, combo, prison
Force of Negation and Flusterstorm	Protects key spells for free or cheaply	Weak against resolved permanents	Blue decks, Storm, Show and Tell
Echoing Truth and Chain of Vapor	Flexible answers to hate pieces	Temporary or card-disadvantage effects	Leyline, Ensnaring Bridge, tokens
Toxic Deluge and Dismember	Handles creature pressure	Life loss and sorcery speed	Delver, Death and Taxes, creature decks

Defining Your Post-Board Plan

Game one Reanimator usually aims to assemble a discard spell, a reanimation effect, and a suitable creature. After sideboarding, opponents often bring in several cards that specifically target the graveyard. Your plan should therefore answer a simple question: are you still trying to win immediately, or are you prepared to trade resources and reanimate later?

Against blue control, keeping a high density of discard and protection is usually correct. Against aggressive creature decks, a few expensive or situational reanimation targets can leave the deck vulnerable. Trim cards that are impressive only when the perfect sequence comes together, then add interaction that helps you reach a second or third attempt.

Creature selection also affects sideboard plans. Archon of Cruelty is a reliable general-purpose threat, while Griselbrand can end games rapidly when life totals and countermagic permit. Atraxa, Grand Unifier provides cards and a strong body, whereas Serra’s Emissary can dominate creature-heavy matchups. These targets should support the matchup plan rather than simply filling the graveyard.

Fighting Graveyard Hate

Surgical Extraction is one of the cleanest answers to opposing graveyard decks and can also protect your combo by removing a key card from an opponent’s graveyard. It is especially useful after a discard spell reveals a narrow strategy. Faerie Macabre has a different advantage: it cannot be countered by ordinary countermagic and can disrupt a reanimation attempt without spending mana.

Ravenous Trap is powerful when an opponent places several cards into the graveyard in one turn, although its condition is less reliable than Surgical Extraction. Leyline of the Void offers a dramatic effect from the opening hand, but it can interfere with your own reanimation plan and create poor topdecks. Nihil Spellbomb is easier to cast and replaces itself, making it a reasonable option for slower black builds.

Avoid overloading your sideboard with graveyard hate that is useful only in the mirror. Legacy contains many decks that use the graveyard incidentally rather than as their main engine. A small package of flexible cards is often stronger than a pile of narrow answers.

Protecting the Combo Against Blue Decks

Thoughtseize and Unmask are central to Reanimator’s plan because they remove Force of Will, Surgical Extraction, or a permanent hate card before you invest in a reanimation spell. Duress is safer when life totals matter, though it cannot take creatures. The right mix depends on whether your local opponents lean towards blue control, combo, or creature decks.

Flusterstorm is excellent against cheap instants and sorceries, including countermagic, discard, and opposing combo pieces. Force of Negation lets you interact while tapped out, which matters when you are trying to cast Reanimate or Exhume on the critical turn. Mystical Dispute is more specialised but can be efficient against a field full of blue decks.

Post-board games reward patience. You do not always need to expose Entomb immediately. Holding it until the opponent taps low, or using discard to map out the turn, can make a single reanimation spell much more likely to resolve. This is especially relevant in a Sydney or Melbourne event where experienced control players expect the obvious window.

Removing Enchantments and Artifacts

Permanent graveyard hate is often more difficult than a single Surgical Extraction. Leyline of the Void begins on the battlefield, while Rest in Peace can shut off both graveyards as soon as it resolves. Ensnaring Bridge, Chalice of the Void, and Deafening Silence can create similar problems from different angles.

Echoing Truth is a popular answer because it handles Leyline, multiple tokens, and a range of troublesome permanents. Chain of Vapor costs less and can remove an enchantment before a combo turn, but its drawback gives the opponent an opportunity to copy the effect. Brazen Borrower provides a threat after bouncing a permanent, although its mana cost is significant.

White splash versions gain access to Serenity, Wear // Tear, and Prismatic Ending. Serenity can clear several artifacts and enchantments during the upkeep, but it requires careful timing because it may also destroy your own permanents. Red builds may prefer Shenanigans or Meltdown when artifact-heavy prison decks are common. Choose answers that match the cards you actually expect to face.

Surviving Creature Pressure

Fast creature decks can punish Reanimator when the opening hand contains too much setup and too little interaction. Fatal Push answers many early threats, while Dismember can remove larger creatures without requiring black mana. Snuff Out preserves your mana for the combo but costs four life, which can be dangerous when using Reanimate.

Toxic Deluge is valuable against wide battlefields and creatures that are difficult to target individually. It is less attractive when your own reanimated creature is central to the game plan, so sequencing matters. Collective Brutality can kill a small creature, strip a spell, and provide life gain, but its escalate cost makes it less explosive than a dedicated removal spell.

Some reanimation targets solve creature matchups naturally. Serra’s Emissary naming creatures can lock out combat damage, while Archon of Cruelty stabilises the board and pressures the opponent’s hand. Sideboarding should account for these targets before adding too many generic removal spells.

Adjusting For Australian Events

Australian Legacy communities can have a different rhythm from larger overseas circuits. A weekly event in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, or Perth may draw a compact group of familiar players, so local knowledge becomes valuable. If the same pilot regularly brings Death and Taxes, Cephalid Breakfast, or a prison deck, a flexible answer can outperform a theoretically optimal card for a broad international metagame.

Travel and availability matter as well. Players may need to order specialised cards from interstate or overseas, and postage in Australian dollars can make a ten-card sideboard surprisingly expensive. Building around widely available cards such as Thoughtseize, Surgical Extraction, Echoing Truth, and Dismember can make testing easier before committing to premium pieces.

The local “arvo” tournament or late-start weekend event may also leave less time for long sideboard debates between rounds. Keep a written plan for the common matchups, including cards to remove and the role you are adopting. For streamed games and broader Legacy discussion, the Legacy community provides a useful place to follow events, strategy, and deck developments.

Testing The Sideboard In Practice

Goldfishing reveals whether a sideboard makes the deck too slow, but it cannot show how often a card is stranded in hand. Test against realistic post-board opponents and record which cards were useful, which were never cast, and which hands became keepable because of the new configuration.

Pay attention to functional overlap. If you have four discard spells, three Forces, and several situational counters, you may be protecting the combo well while lacking an answer to a resolved Leyline. Conversely, a sideboard packed with bounce spells can leave you unable to fight through a blue opponent’s countermagic.

A useful sideboard guide should describe roles rather than rigid swaps. “Become a slower discard-and-protection deck” is more valuable than memorising the same five cards for every blue matchup. Revisit the list after several events, especially when the Australian metagame shifts because of a new set, a ban announcement, or a popular tournament result.

Build your sideboard around the opponents you expect, test every card in real games, and keep your reanimation plan focused. Then take the tuned list to a local event, share the results with the Legacy community, and keep refining the package as the format evolves.