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When I first began playing magic the gathering there were two cards that worked well in a reanimator deck. The first was animate dead, which gives the creature -1/-0 and the other was dance of the dead, that gave the creature +1/+1 and you had to pay to untap it. Both of these were one black and one colorless mana but had the disadvantage of being creature enchantments meaning that now you creature could be killed by a disenchant. In more recent years the idea of auras for this has largely gone away but the price has also gone up as people recognized that you put huge creatures into the graveyard without paying for them.

Makeshift Mannequin is an uncommon instant from the Lorwyn expansion set of magic the gathering. It costs one black and three colorless, making it twice as expensive as those creature enchantments that I used in past, but that isn't all. This creature also comes into play with a a mannequin counter on it, and so long as that counter remains the creature is killed if it is targeted by any spell or ability. This makes it considerably worse than those less expensive spells of the past. But there are a few small advantages.

The first of these is that it can only be targeted by things that can kill creatures. This is a major point because in general most of the spells that your opponent has which can target the creature are likely to kill it. It is of course possible that your opponent will have giant growth or creature enchantments but even those are often able to kill bigger creatures and so being able to do so while targeting it is valuable.

Another worthwhile point is to pick creatures that have a high value in dying as well as being an expensive creature that can do some damage. This will generally make the opponent less likely to want to kill it and you less bothered by the fact that it is killed. There are a few of this type of creature but not a lot.

In limited it is considerably less likely that your opponent is going to have spells to target it that they wouldn't want to use on others, but it is also far less likely that you will have ways to put creatures into the graveyard without casting them so it is less likely that you'll have a monster in the graveyard but with a limited number of good creatures getting one back is more useful as well, even if in a wakened fashion.

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