Reanimator

The fastest fair-looking deck in the format. You never cast the eight-mana creature — you put it in the graveyard and pay two mana to bring it back. The turn-one setup is real: land into Dark Ritual for three black mana, cast Putrid Imp, discard Akroma, Angel of Wrath, and spend the last two black on Exhume. Lotus Petal covers the hands that are one mana short.

Putrid Imp is the enabler that makes turn one possible. It’s a {B} 1/1 whose ability is “Discard a card: this creature gains flying until end of turn” — the flying is irrelevant, the free repeatable discard is the point. Careful Study does the same job as a spell: {U} to draw two and discard two, which finds a fatty and bins it in one card.

The two reanimation spells trade off differently. Exhume is {1}{B} and each player returns a creature card from their graveyard — symmetric, so it’s best on turn one before they have anything, or after Duress and Cabal Therapy have emptied them out. Reanimate is just {B} and only affects you, but you lose life equal to the creature’s mana value. Akroma is {5}{W}{W}{W}, so a turn-one Reanimate costs you 8 life. That’s usually fine, and sometimes it isn’t.

Akroma, Angel of Wrath is a 6/6 with flying, first strike, vigilance, trample, haste, and protection from black and from red. Haste means she attacks the turn she lands; the protections blank Terminate, Lightning Bolt, Smother and most of what the format kills things with. Three swings ends it.

Symbiotic Wurm is the anti-creature-deck target: a 7/7 that leaves seven 1/1 Insect tokens behind when it dies. Against a deck holding Swords to Plowshares — which exiles rather than kills — you want Akroma; against chump blockers and combat, the Wurm.

Cabal Therapy is the protection spell. For {B} you name a card, they reveal their hand, and every copy of that name is discarded. The flashback cost is sacrificing a creature, and the Putrid Imp that just did its job is the perfect sacrifice — so one Therapy strips two counterspells across two turns.

Reanimator’s ceiling is enormous and its floor is low. Graveyard hate is everywhere — Tormod’s Crypt, Phyrexian Furnace and Withered Wretch all beat the primary plan, which is why sideboards bring Oath of Druids as a completely different angle that ignores the graveyard entirely. On the draw against a discard deck, the hand you were going to win with is often the hand they take.