Who is this deck for?
You may like this deck if:
- You like going to the zoo.
- You like creatures in general.
- You like to play a lot of creatures in a single turn.
- You like finding creative solutions to problems, like creatures!
You may want to avoid this deck if:
- Prowess is your favorite mechanic.
- You like being able to see your playmat.
- You like planning ahead and knowing how your deck is going to win.
- You insist Sol Ring needs to be in every deck.
General Overview
Animar, Soul of Elements has a very unique ability. Every time we cast a Creature spell, he gets a little bit bigger and makes all our other spells cost a little less. Sounds OK, right? Wrong! It is absolutely broken! If you pace this well you may be dropping multiple 6+ drops per turn as soon as turn 4. This ability will only trigger if we cast a Creature spell, though, so any other type of spell is just a waste of resources... probably. Just seems risky, not gonna try it. She is also generally difficult to remove once she's entered the field because of her protection from the two most common targeted removal colors.
This deck is, first and foremost, a beautiful glass cannon. Most peoples' decks have artifacts, enchantments, sorceries, instants, and/or planeswalkers to pad out their game plan, but you've gone and done something dumb and decided to make a deck completely out of creatures. So creature hate is gonna hurt. Luckily we have a few surprises to avoid these problems.
When allowed to flow, this deck is an unstoppable engine that can combo or kill through combat.
How and Why We Play What We Play
I've tried to separate the cards into three main headings:
- **The Backbone Category** is comprised of the things that all EDH decks need but are never really super exciting, such as Ramp and Card Draw.
- **The Support Category** is made up of the cards that do not usually lead to a win on their own but help us get there, like Removal, Counters, Resource Denial, and Enablers.
- **The Finisher Category** is pretty self-explanatory, It's the combos or single cards that put and end to the struggle.
Like any reasonable deck, many of the cards serve multiple purposes, so I've done my best to sort them where they will be most utilized but I'll explain some of their less obvious uses as well.
The Backbone
Draw
Coiling Oracle is an amazing card. If a card said "pay two mana: Draw a card", you would play that. This card at it's worst is just that, but it's also potentially a straight ramp spell that comes attached to a creature.
Consecrated Sphinx Really doesn't require an explanation. A four person game will net you a minimum of six extra cards before your turn rolls back around.
Fathom Mage, Primordial Sage, and Soul of the Harvest are perfect draw spells for our game plan, they reward us for playing creatures, which we were doing anyway.
Jori En, Ruin Diver rewards us for playing multiple spells per turn, which we were also planning on already.
Mulldrifter, Sandstone Oracle, and Prime Speaker Zegana all gain us cards upon entering the battlefield meaning they can be easily abused for value. Tishana, Voice of Thunder does the same but with the added benefit of making it so we don't have to discard any, but honestly with the cost reductions going on, having too many cards in hand will rarely be an issue.
Ramp & Fixing
Mana dorks that produce any color mana are great for us because after a few creatures have entered every dork is almost an Elvish Piper. In this category we run Beastcaller Savant (because haste), Birds of Paradise (because turn 2 Animar), and Opaline Unicorn (because free).
Shaman of Forgotten Ways and Somberwald Sage are not quite dorks but are close enough to qualify as extended members of the dork family. They both provide multiple colored mana when tapped but only to cast creature spells. Oh yea, that's everything for us. Shaman also has a secondary ability, but we'll discuss that a little bit further down in the Finisher category.
Directly putting extra lands onto the field per turn is usually the safest way to ramp, as land destruction is not usually super prevalent, and certainly not as common or accessible as creature removal. To this end we have a couple strategies to get this done.
Three of our creatures bring a land with them when the enter the battlefield. Farhaven Elf gets us a basic into play tapped, Solemn Simulacrum also grabs a basic but has bonus of drawing a card upon death, and Wood Elves will bring any one Forest in untapped making him the clear winner of this category.
Oracle of Mul Daya allows us to drop and additional land from our hand or the top of the library each turn! This pulls double ramp duty by not only giving us the chance to cast more, but also helping to make sure our draws are worthwhile if we get into topdecking situations.
Great Whale is a 7 drop creature that upon entering untaps seven lands. That in itself isn't bad, it basically is a retroactively free spell. So how is that ramp? Because we don't pay full price for creatures. So we pay 2 blue to untap all those lands. I bet we could make this go infinite if we tried. More on that later.
And Rounding out ramp we have Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger makes our lands tap for double mana he does some other stuff too. More about this in the Stax section.
In addition to creating extra mana, sometimes you just need the right mana. Gatecreeper Vine and Sylvan Ranger will get us a basic of the needed type to our hand.
Vizier of the Menagerie seems like he was purpose built for our deck. He allows us to play creatures right off the top of our library without giving away any intel AND he lets us use any color mana to pay for creature spells! If you have him and Oracle of Mul Daya out at the same time, can you just imagine how much stuff we're flooding the board with!
The Support
Counters, Protection, & Removal
We all know and love (or hate, depending on which side you're standing) Counterspell, It's a classic, it's powerful, it can change the outcome of game for only , and most importantly, It's not a creature, so we aren't going to use it. So why bring it up? Because we're gonna do some weird science and give it legs! or uh, tentacles? and uh a snake body? YEA!
Draining Whelk and Mystic Snake are Counterspell on a creature. With Animar's cost reductions they almost cost just the same as the Instant version.
Voidmage Husher is a very close mimic of Stifle but we get to bounce it back to hand for the cheap price of playing another spell so we can counter again.
Siren Stormtamer gives us a 1 drop visible deterrent to our opponents.
Morph cards are particularly useful since our Commander has a reasonable possibility of casting them for free and are great for ambushing our adversaries. Stratus Dancer is another counter and Willbender will redirect a harmful spell back onto one of our opponents. By running several morphs in the deck, it's hard for the regulars in the meta to know what can happen when our face down cards flip.
Sometimes, despite our countering efforts, something unpleasant resolves onto an enemy battlefield. When this occurs, we aren't counted out just yet. We can try to remove them.
Green is pretty proficient in removing troublesome non-creature permanents, to this end we run Acidic Slime, Bane of Progress, Reclamation Sage, and Terastodon.
Blue gives us access to a couple interesting removal options. Man-o'-War can serve a couple purposes for us. First it can be used to return an opponents problem creature to their hand, slowing them down a turn, or it can bounce one of our own creatures so we can net some extra value from an Enter The Battlefield trigger.
Phyrexian Ingester lets us exile an opponent's creature and in so doing makes itself that much stronger.
And sometimes, we can't counter something, and we can't remove it, all hope seems lost...except we have just a couple more tricks.
Archetype of Endurance makes it so none of our creatures can be targeted by our enemies. That alone is amazing, but its work is not done. He also makes it so that all of our opponents' creatures can be targeted by anything!
Boardwipes are one of the few things that can actually slow our engine down. In the event of a boardwipe, Stalking Vengeance is walking talking mutually assured destruction. With how much power we usually have out, someone will have to think long and hard before they destroy our creatures.
We like to play counters, but honestly who likes to play against them? I certainly don't, but what're ya gonna do? Surrak Dragonclaw suddenly appearing out of nowhere sure can help. Let's read this guy together. Flash, that's aweome. Can't be countered, super cool. Creature spells you control can't be countered, wait what!?! Other creatures you control have trample, This card is busted! I dare say almost as busted as Animar!
Stax
I'm honestly not sure if "Stax" is the appropriate term to use here, but it's as good as I could come up with. Basically what we're doing in this category is forcing our opponents to play the way we want them to. That usually equates to them running hobbled in some fashion while we pull ahead.
Our buddy Archetype of Endurance is a pretty obvious, but maybe a bit too nice, example of this strategy. He gives us the benefit of hexproof while removing the potential benefit of hexproof from everyone else. It's really good... but we can be meaner.
Ruric Thar, the Unbowed is a pretty cool dude, just look at that sweet axe-hand! But what makes him really cool is he punches any player directly in the face with aforementioned axe-hand for 6 damage anytime they play a non-creature spell. Yes that does include us. Good thing we don't like non-creature spells either.
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir let's us play our super sweet creatures at literally any time, abusing the hell out of our ETB efftects and giving us psuedo-haste in the process. He also says that our opponents cannot play anything at instant speed
Urabrask the Hidden Gives our creatures haste and makes our opponents creatures come in tapped, putting us a turn ahead and them a turn behind all in one card.
Void Winnower just stops opponents from half their spells and using half their creatures. You have no idea how many spells have even costs until this guy has entered the field.
Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger is possibly the meanest of our arsenal, he won't make you any friends, but he will ramp you and eliminate our opponents' ability to play the game.
Playing any of these cards will give certainly make you a Public Enemy #1, So timing is everything. Don't drop any of these unless you feel you can fend off the hate. Alternatively strategically dropping these at less than perfect times can help to force an opponents hand and make them waste counters or removal, leaving them vulnerable to a later strike.
Cascade, Regrowth, & Tutors
This is a unique subsection. These cards get us something that get us some things that we didn't already have.
Tutors will allow us to find a specific creature from deep within our library to plan for the future. I only run a couple because usually there are enough avenues to victory that we don't frequently need a specific card to succeed. Fauna Shaman is incredibly powerful, early or late in the game. Drop something you don't need this minute and grab exactly what you do. She's incredibly nice for the simple fact that in our deck it is a repeatable ,restriction-free tutor. Fierce Empath has an ETB tutor ability that will only grab us a creature with a high CMC, but that isn't a bad thing. High CMCs don't scare us, and you can grab quite an array of options. Most of our Stax category can be found this way, or a Craterhoof Behemoth to finish things out. Or grab a Draining Whelk so that everyone knows you're holding a counterspell. Deterrents are often just as useful as the actual spell.
We're also running a couple Regrowth-type effects. Den Protector is another of our sneaky morph creatures. She is the morph equivalent of Eternal Witness, returning any card from our graveyard to hand when she flips. Artisan of Kozilek returns a creature from the grave directly back into play when CAST. Cast is the most important word on this card. By saying cast, it means this is not an Enter the Battlefield trigger. This means two things to us. First, that the effect will trigger regardless if the Eldrazi is countered, which is nice. But, it means that it is not easily abused by making copies or cheating it into play, which is less nice. But despite this debatable downside, It is an amazing card that on it's own can wreck someone's board with his Annihilator ability.
Last part of this section goes to creatures that bring random cards from our library into play through the mechanic "Cascade" or a similar function. Bloodbraid Elf and Maelstrom Wanderer actually use cascade which upon being cast, there's that important word again, we'll reveal cards from the top of our library until we find a cheaper creature and that also gets cast for free. We get to do that twice in the case of the Wanderer.
Genesis Hydra is a less efficient creature version of Genesis Wave. It will allow us to do a selective cascade off of a limited amount of cards. The main difference between this effect and cascade, is that you will not be casting the creature selected from the hydra, so it will not put another counter on Animar like cascade will. The upside, though, is Animar will take care of most of the casting cost for .
Rashmi, Eternities Crafter is a unique card, she's sort of like a once-per-turn cascade version of a Coiling Oracle. Whenever you cast that first spell each turn, which unfortunately means you won't get the benefit the turn she enters, you reveal the top card and cast it for free if it's a creature that cost's less than that first one, if not put into hand. Not bad either way.
Haste & Getting Damage in
What do we do with all of these creatures that we've managed to erupt all over the table? Wait for a finisher before we do anything? I think not! We have a few cards that are likely to put the pressure on our opponents fairly early and keep it up until we can close things out for good.
Maelstrom Wanderer and Urabrask the Hidden, both give all of our creatures Haste so that as soon as they enter just start hammering in on the opponents without relevant blockers.
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir gives our creatures flash, so we can leave mana up and cast our creatures right before our turn starts, making it seem like our creatures can tap as soon as they enter the field.
card:Xenegos, God of Revels doesn't have the width of the others but he makes up for it with style and resiliency. He can give our most relevant new arrival haste and double it's power for one hell of a first appearance. Xenagod is also an indestructable enchantment most of the time, making him near impossible to remove.
We also have a few combat tricks to make sure that damage gets through. After a few creatures follow her entrance, Champion of Lambholt makes most of our opponents' creatures unable to block our horde. Shaman of the Great Hunt rewards creatures that get through by making them bigger each time they do. Which feeds into his second ability by giving us more creatures that meet the criteria to draw cards. Surrak Dragonclaw's trample anthem will help some damage sink in even if blockers step in.
The Finishers
ETB Abuse and Infinite Combos
We have an over abundance of creatures that do cool things just by showing up to the party, like that one super chill dude from high school. Clearly you want these dudes at the party, but what's even better if they just keep showing up. So we provide the the right booze and ... cheerleaders... or something? Ok, so this analogy is burned up already. What I'm getting at is we have creatures with Enter the Battlefield triggers and we want to make them do their thing as many times as possible.
We have a couple guys specifically in the deck to make these ETB effects as valuable as possible.
The first two names on the list are synonymous with infinite combos and general bad behavior.
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker requires little more than a quick glance in his direction to accidentally fall into an infinite combo. But he does have a soft side that is merely cracked instead of broken. Pair him with any creature with an ETB effect and you'll will have a minimum of Double Value. I say minimum because often enough you'll come across a wacky string of events that leads to so much more. We are going to want to lean into these strengths if we can. To this end, we're running two cards, that while useful in their own right, are mostly there to do busted things with Kiki.
Pestermite and Zealous Conscripts untap a creature when they enter, so...
- Tap Kiki to make a copy of pestermite or conscripts
- Copy enters targetting kiki
- Kiki untaps
- Repeat steps 1-3 ad nauseum
- and just like that, you have an arbitrarily large number of 2/1 flying faeries or 3/3 warriors with haste. Kill all oponents
Deadeye Navigator is frequently cited as the most likely creature to be banned, but it hasn't happened yet, so let's abuse it! Deadeye's non-tapping flicker ability is an enabler to so many degenerate things, but my favorite recipes involve using him to create infinite mana by pairing him with Great Whale.
To a lesser extent we have a few less effiecient abusers in the form of clone effects like Progenitor Mimic and Vesuvan Shapeshifter and bouncers such as Man-o'-War, Roaring Primadox, and Ancestral Statue.
Ancestral Statue is a card of amazing import because it can be used to bounce itself an infinite number of times as long as you have four counters on Animar. By doing this you can put an infinite number of counters on Animar. But the best use of this involves card:Purphuros, God of the Forge.
Purphuros is fantastic in this deck all on his own because everything we're doing puts a creature on the field. If you're able to bounce the statue while you have Purphuros in play, you win.
Combat & Commander Damage
Occasionally, well laid plans and fancy combos will not close out the game... sometimes you just gotta punch someone right in the face (figuratively, of course, although the literal punch would almost certainly also end the game).
This turn of events should not be scorned because it isn't as elegant, because it can be effective given the number of creatures we're likely to have, but we still might need a nudge or two to make it a viable table kill.
At this point, everybody knows Craterhoof Behemoth. He enters and all 10 of our creatures get +10/+10 and trample. That's 100+ attack power on the minimum side. But it's likely that we'll have more than 10 creatures and those creatures are likely to have more than 0 power at that time. So it's not impossible for us to have 10x that much attack power. Not to mention if we're able to bounce and recast Craterhoof, or make a Kiki copy, or a Deadeye flickering. It's unlikely that craterhoof will not end the game. But he's not the only face-smashing helper.
Pathbreaker Ibex is an Overwhelming Stampede that is triggered every time it attacks. But it's likely you'll only need to do it once.
If you cannot manage to get either of the those two into the fight, we have one more card that will make things much easier to punch through to victory. Have you ever heard of a spell called Biorhythm? Probably because it's on the Official EDH Banlist. It's a super broken effect that can just remove people from the game. Remember earlier when I said a mana dork would appear in the finisher section? Shaman of Forgotten Ways lets us remember this forgotten way so fondly. Sure his activation cost is a bit high, but oh so satisfying.
And if all else fails, don't forgot you have a probably very large Animar, Soul of Elements that cannot be blocked be black or white creatures that only has to get in for 21 damage per player. You can send her after one player while the rest of the horde falls upon another hapless victim.
Thank you very much for reading. I hope I've made an Animar player out of you. Help more people see this and give it an upvote if you enjoyed it.
Go forth and conquer
