Ancestral Animar

Commander / EDH Competitive RUG (Temur)

bunbunfriedrice

Creature (42)

• 1x Ancestral Statue
• 1x Arbor Elf
• 1x Bane of Progress
• 1x Barrin, Master Wizard
• 1x Beast Whisperer
• 1x Beastcaller Savant
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Bloom Tender
• 1x Bond Beetle
• 1x Cloud of Faeries
• 1x Consecrated Sphinx
• 1x Destiny Spinner
• 1x Dockside Extortionist
• 1x Elvish Mystic
• 1x Elvish Spirit Guide
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Fauna Shaman
• 1x Fyndhorn Elves
• 1x Generous Patron
• 1x Gilded Drake
• 1x Imperial Recruiter
• 1x Kiri-Onna
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Loyal Drake
• 1x Mulldrifter
• 1x Painter's Servant
• 1x Peregrine Drake
• 1x Phantasmal Image
• 1x Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1x Priest of Titania
• 1x Prowling Serpopard
• 1x Raven Familiar
• 1x Rishkar, Peema Renegade
• 1x Siren Stormtamer
• 1x Slithermuse
• 1x Spellseeker
• 1x Spellskite
• 1x Sylvan Safekeeper
• 1x Tinder Wall
• 1x Walking Ballista
• 1x Wall of Roots
• 1x Wild Cantor

Land (30)

• 1x Ancient Ziggurat
• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Botanical Sanctum
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Fiery Islet
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Forest
• 1x Gaea's CradleGC
• 1x Island
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Steam Vents
• 1x Stomping Ground
• 1x Taiga
• 1x Tarnished Citadel
• 1x Thran Quarry
• 1x Tropical Island
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Volcanic Island
• 1x Waterlogged Grove
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills
• 1x Yavimaya Coast

Artifact (4)

• 1x Chrome MoxGC
• 1x Lotus Petal
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mox DiamondGC

Commander (1)

Instant (12)

• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Chord of Calling
• 1x Crop Rotation
• 1x Deflecting Swat
• 1x Fierce GuardianshipGC
• 1x Flusterstorm
• 1x Mental Misstep
• 1x Mystical TutorGC
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Veil of Summer
• 1x Worldly Tutor

Enchantment (6)

• 1x Carpet of Flowers
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Survival of the FittestGC
• 1x Sylvan Library
• 1x Utopia Sprawl
• 1x Wild Growth

Sorcery (5)

• 1x Eldritch Evolution
• 1x Glimpse of Nature
• 1x Neoform
• 1x Sylvan Tutor
• 1x Weird Harvest

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Maybeboard

Instant (3)

• 1x Ancient Animus
• 1x Dispel
• 1x Manamorphose

Land (1)

• 1x Forbidden Orchard

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Gitaxian Probe

Artifact (1)

• 1x Skullclamp

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Competitive EDH Animar Primer

Introduction

Overview

Hello and welcome to the Competitive EDH primer for Ancestral Animar! We've worked hard to develop a great deck and make it available to everyone out there. So read up, share your thoughts, and we'll be happy to help!

Ancestral Animar is a fast combo deck designed for Competitive EDH. The goal of the deck is to cast cheap creatures for value while tutoring into an infinite creature cast combo, typically involving Ancestral Statue, then win with Purphoros, God of the Forge or Walking Ballista. This can be consistently accomplished between turns three and five, and can be protected from interaction using a robust suite of toolbox cards. Effectively, Animar is a creature-based storm deck with a Commander that generates a free Helm of Awakening every time you cast a creature.

Notably, Animar does not want to cast big creatures for beatdown just because Animar lets you “get away with it”. Midrange builds have been proposed using bulkier cards like the Praetors, Dragonlords and other high-impact creatures, but these are often bad draws and ultimately less impactful than just winning. Similarly, Animar is not a big-mana deck, nor does it need to make infinite mana at any point to win. In fact, it’s one of the only cEDH decks that doesn’t run Sol Ring or Mana Crypt. While there is an infinite mana combo with Peregrine Drake, it’s incidental and the Drake would absolutely be run anyway. All the combo lines in the deck are free after a small initial investment, so including sub-optimal infinite-mana lines is unnecessary.

Decklists

This primer is a three-person work, with the following authors: myself (Reddit: /u/bunbunfriedrice), JMCraig (/u/JMCraig), and AlarmedNine (/u/AlarmedNine).

JMCraig's decklist is a slightly slower but more toolboxy list with some extra interactive pieces designed for a wide-open meta.

bunbunfriedrice's decklist is faster, at the expense of a few protection pieces. Better choice for a less interactive meta with a lot of fast combo decks.

AlarmedNine's decklist runs a few extra non-creature interaction pieces. Well-suited to a more stax-heavy meta.

We have also prepared some budget lists both so that newer players can get in on the fun, and to demonstrate how effectively the deck can be played with limited funds, given that no crucial pieces are particularly pricey:

Mid-Budget Animar (~$1000)

Low-Budget Animar (<$500)

In the cases of both of these decks, we lose some of the ancillary combo lines and the high-end protection spells, but keep the core of the deck wholly intact: the Ancestral Statue combo package. We’ve chosen to mitigate the effects of lost versatility by adding some extra draw and protection effects to keep the deck as fast and consistent as possible. The loss of off-color fetches and some good tutors will definitely cause the deck to feel a little rough sometimes, but it should be just as explosive as the real deal, even in the <$500 bracket.

Why should you play Animar?

You get to play lots (and lots) of creatures. This isn’t too common in cEDH, giving Animar quite a different “feel” than almost all other cEDH decks.

There are lots of “flex spots” where the optimal inclusion is a combination of preference and a meta call. While there are many essential pieces of the deck, it’s not as tight as, say Doomsday Zur or even Chain Veil Teferi. For example, the deck needs a good chunk of ETB draw/filter cards (like Raven Familiar), and while some are clearly better than others, there is often room for some creativity to put your personal touch on the decklist. There are many lines, and choosing the optimal line is challenging. While occasionally an Animar hand will just “play itself out,” there are usually many decision points simply because there are so many different combos (and tutors for them) in the deck. While Ancestral might be the best option 80% of the time, knowing when to go for the other 20% is really important. The lines are also highly adaptive, as you’re often “chaining” several creature-based draw spells, and what you draw into now affects the play lines that follow.

Why shouldn't you play Animar?

You don’t like depending on your commander. Other than a few incidental corner-case combos involving Earthcraft / Cloudstone Curio / Temur Sabertooth, you rely pretty heavily on comboing with Animar. Your meta is wrath heavy. Recovering from a wrath effect the turn before you combo out can be quite difficult.

One note is that Animar doesn’t have many cards that overlap with most other cEDH decklists, unlike Food Chain-based or Doomsday UBx decks that share up to 50%+ of their card pool. In fact, other than the manabase, some dorks, 3 zero-CMC rocks, and some tutors, not much else would be considered cEDH staples. With that said, most of the non-cEDH staples that are unique to Animar are quite cheap, with the exception of Imperial Recruiter, Earthcraft, and perhaps the Eldrazi. All in all, this fact could either be a pro (variety is the spice of life!) or a con (more cards to obtain) depending on your preference. (Our theory is that this is one reason Animar receives less attention than many other commanders.)

History and Nomenclature

The first well-known Animar build was designed for 1-v-1 games and relied on the Imperial Recruiter line mentioned below. The “Imperial Animar” deck was famously fast and efficient, spawning several attempts to port it over to multiplayer Commander. The big breakthrough came with the printing of Ancestral Statue in Dragons of Tarkir (March 2015), prompting the creation of two prototypical “Ancestral Animar” decks by /u/Cobblepot and /u/infiniteimoc.

Shortly thereafter in January 2016, as the new Animar deck was still being developed, the EDH Rules Committee removed the Partial-Paris Mulligan rule and banned Prophet of Kruphix. To many casual observers, this was the end of Animar, and the deck fell out of the public eye for a year or more. Subsequently, however, several of us have worked together to build, tune, and share a very well-polished, effective Animar deck that mulligans well, wins quickly and consistently, and has responses to a lot of the common hate (which has conveniently faded with the deck’s alleged demise). The printing of Walking Ballista was also a huge help. Hopefully this primer can help rehabilitate Animar’s image, get more new players into the deck, and promote some new research.

Piloting the deck

Objective 1: Turn 2 Animar

Your initial goal is to drop a T2 Animar, then get your first few +1/+1 counters--these are always the hardest--before you go for the combo and win condition.

There are 12 cards that allow for a T2 Animar (see Card-By-Card Discussion: Ramp below). If your starting hand does not include a T2 Animar, you may consider mulliganning, though there are exceptions.

Even if you have a T2 Animar available, there are a few exceptions in which you may want to wait until T3. For example, holding off for a T1 Hardened Scales or T1/T2 Sylvan Library can be the right choice. In some situations, with enough ramp (e.g. Gaea's Cradle and some dorks), you can land T3 Animar and begin chaining counters, potentially even comboing off. T2 Bloom Tender for T3 Animar + RUG immediately available is very powerful.

Objective 2: Your first few +1/+1 counters

After you've dropped Animar, you need your first few +1/+1 counters. Obviously, the name of the game is to pay for as little generic mana costs as possible (ideally zero).

Starting off with Bond Beetle or starting with Hardened Scales is your best bet, but starting with a mana dude is more common. Other excellent choices are Cloud of Faeries, Coiling Oracle, or one-off mana dudes like Wild Cantor or Tinder Wall.

Objective 3: Finding a winning line

After 1-3 counters, your lines start opening up.

Based on your hand at this time, you'll either have a few lines spelled out for you, or you'll have to keep digging.

• Obviously, having Imperial Recruiter or Ancestral Statue makes your path simpler.

• Alternatively, if you have an "alternate combo" available (a non-tutorable one, i.e. Cloudstone Curio or Earthcraft; see Infinite Animar Combos below), that's another viable route.

• Other "route changers" include Glimpse of Nature (in which cases you mostly care about net-zero or net-positive creatures and ETB effects like draw and bounce) and to a lesser extent Skullclamp.

Outside of those cases, at this point your path to victory may not be clear--you'll have to keep playing your hand out and see where it takes you. (Part of the fun of Animar!) Generally, you'll want to start playing draw effects (e.g. Raven Familiar, Sea Gate Oracle) and bounce effects for extra ETB value (e.g. Dream Stalker, Man-o'-War) until you find a tutor. At this point, you'll want to start looking for infinite combos and a win condition.

Objective 4: Infinite Animar

This section describes the many ways to get to an infinite +1/+1 counters on Animar via infinite creature casts. Ancestral Statue is the cleanest path to infinity, but the others have their time to shine as well. Note: Many of these combos can be accomplished with a slightly different initial setup. E.g. Animar (3 counters) + Ancestral Statue simply requires one mana open.

• Animar (4 counters) + Ancestral Statue = infinite ETBs, infinite Animar counters. GG, EZ.

• Animar (2 counters) + Imperial Recruiter + RUG + 28 life = use Imperial Recruiter to fetch Phyrexian Metamorph, copy the Recruiter, fetch Shrieking Drake, use it to bounce the Metamorph, then re-cast Phyrexian Metamorph as a copy of Shrieking Drake, bouncing itself until Animar reaches 21 power. This is the premier combo for 1-vs-1 matches, but there's also a way to make it work in multiplayer (see below). It’s also risky and life-intensive.

• Animar (counters vary; 3 for morphs) + Cloudstone Curio + any two morph or Eldrazi creatures = infinite ETBs, infinite Animar counters. This one is a little trickier to set up given that the tutor suite is mostly limited to creatures. Cloudstone lines are typically a good approach once you draw my Cloudstone naturally, then sculpt your hand around it. Notably, Cloudstone also works as a fantastic value engine for recycling cast/ETB triggers. The best possible line usually involves using a morph and Ulamog to bounce one another, building a huge Animar and exiling all opponents’ permanents. Or morph + Kozilek to draw your deck.

• Earthcraft + Island + Shrieking Drake / Dream Stalker / Man-o'-War = Infinite ETBs. Throw Animar into the mix for infinite Animar counters. When using Shrieking Drake, this is the one combo that doesn’t necessarily require Animar to deal infinite damage. As with Cloudstone lines, Earthcraft isn’t easy to tutor into, but is a fantastic alternate wincon if you draw into it or get one of your main combo pieces exiled. Similarly with Cloudstone, Earthcraft is great on its own and can lead to many early, mana-efficient lines.

• The “big” Recruiter line, pioneered by /u/Wolfman29 on Reddit and tuned collaboratively on /r/CompetitiveEDH, is a little more complicated. It has the advantage of also tutoring for Walking Ballista to end the game, not just get an infinite Animar. Buckle in:

• • Prerequisite: Animar (3 counters), Imperial Recruiter, 4-6 life to pay, and RGUUU available. Additionally, UUU of this needs to come from untapped non-pain lands (the RG can be from anything, e.g. moxen, dorks, lands). Here’s the line:
• • Cast Imperial Recruiter tutoring Phyrexian Metamorph. (R)
• • Cast Phyrexian Metamorph copying Imperial Recruiter tutoring Fierce Empath. (R + 2 life)
• • Cast Fierce Empath tutoring Hoverguard Sweepers. (RG + 2 life)
• • Cast Hoverguard Sweepers bouncing itself and Phyrexian Metamorph. (RGUU + 2 life)
• • Re-cast Phyrexian Metamorph copying Imperial Recruiter tutoring Peregrine Drake this time. (RGUU + 4 life)
• • Cast Peregrine Drake untapping your lands. (RGUUU + 4 life, then untap)
• • Cast Hoverguard Sweepers bouncing itself and Peregrine Drake, floating any additional mana before untapping. Repeat this infinitely.
• • With the big combo line, you’ll generate infinite of each color you have beyond UUU in (non-pain) lands. E.g. if you have lands that can produce UUUX, you’ll be able to make infinite of whatever color X is. But notably, it doesn’t really matter if you can’t make infinite mana, as long as you have 2 more life to spare or R available somewhere (even as one of the three U-producing lands). If you only have UUU in lands (say UR dual, UR shock, UG dual), you’ll still get an infinite Animar, then with Hoverguard + Drake in hand, cast Hoverguard bouncing something + Recruiter (or something + Metamorph), cast Drake untapping lands, then use the R from one of your three lands to cast Recruiter (or 2 life to cast Metamorph as Recruiter) for Ballista to win (infinite Ballista is free). Given some more flexible mana, you can also bounce and re-cast Imperial Recruiter and/or Fierce Empath to tutor and cast whatever you want to win. While expensive and risky, this line can be very useful in long games as it’s a 1-card line to end the game. The downside is that we have to run Hoverguard Sweepers in the deck (and not all lists do), but luckily it’s actually a decent card on it’s own with a lot of potential synergies in the deck.

Objective 5: Winning

Now that Animar is arbitrarily large, it’s time to win. There are two types of win conditions: actual win conditions and effective win conditions. Notably, an infinite Animar by itself, while it can often take out players one at a time (especially with Nulamog double spot removal), is not considered a viable multiplayer win condition. This is part of the reason “big creature” Animar decks are suboptimal for multiplayer cEDH.

The two actual win conditions are Purphoros, God of the Forge and Walking Ballista. Both are pretty self explanatory. While Purphoros looks like the more robust choice, it’s actually Ballista. Purphoros is soft to exile removal, but with Ballista you don’t even give your opponents priority before putting the ping counters on the stack, and thus Ballista (when used as the win condition) is essentially immune to all removal. While we’ve briefly toyed around with the idea of cutting Purph, the redundancy is welcome, and we note that Ballista is also an enabler, as a free first or early Animar counter and can be used to kill utility dudes in a pinch.

The effective win conditions (or win condition enablers) are Primordial Sage, Soul of the Harvest, and Glimpse of Nature. (For non-Ancestral combos, there are a few more enablers, e.g. Kozilek in Cloudstone combos, or any drawing creature in Peregrine Drake combos.) You use them to draw into your actual win conditions. While the latter two are not “you may” effects, you’d really have to not be paying attention to deck yourself. You’ll quickly draw into a tutor for Purph (after which you only need 20 casts), or Hardened Scales to speed up the process for Ballista.

Combo Lines

The following Recruiter (and sometimes Spellseeker) lines are "one card win" lines with Animar on board.

Weird Harvest

Weird Harvest opens up several new lines. Keep in mind these lines can begin with Weird Harvest itself, Spellseeker, or Recruiter.

For each line, there is a cost based on the number of post-Harvest counters on Animar.

The simplest line is with X = 2 for Ancestral Statue and Walking Ballista. Total costs are based on the following mana-efficient post-Harvest line: cast Ballista (X = 2), infinitely cast Statue, last Statue bounces Ballista, and cast infinite Ballista for the win. One small caveat is that this opens you up to Ballista removal, so if you have enough post-Harvest mana/counters to start, just start by casting Statue and then cast Ballista in the end. At that point, Ballista removal doesn't matter because you can hold priority after Ballista resolves and remove all +1/+1 counters from it without ever passing priority.

Vanilla (unprotected) line

X = 2 for Ancestral Statue and Walking Ballista

Total cost (including Harvest):

• 0 counters: (10GG)
• 1 counter: (6GG)
• 2 counters: (3GG)
• 3+ counters: (2GG)

Counter-protected lines

X = 3 for Ancestral Statue, Walking Ballista, and Gaea's Herald/Prowling Serpopard

Total cost (for Herald; add (G) for Serpopard):

• 0 counters: (8GGG)
• 1 counter: (6GGG)
• 2+ counters: (3GGG)

Spot removal-protected lines

X = 3 for Ancestral Statue, Walking Ballista, and Sylvan Safekeeper

Total cost:

• 0 counters: (7GGG)
• 1 counter: (4GGG)
• 2+ counters: (3GGG)

X = 3 for Ancestral Statue, Walking Ballista, and Spellskite

Total cost:

• 0 counters: (9GG)
• 1 counter: (5GG)
• 2+ counters: (3GG)

X = 4 for Ancestral Statue, Walking Ballista, Spellskite, and Phyrexian Revoker

Total cost:

• 0 counters: (8GG) - note this is chepaer than without Revoker!
• 1 counter: (5GG) - note this is the same as without Revoker!
• 2+ counters: (4GG)

Note these lines only really protects you from black/white removal (Path/Swords), since other instant removal could just target Animar before casting your protection.

Kiri-Onna

Imperial Recruiter lines involving Phyrexian Metamorph to get a double-bounce trigger off of Kiri-Onna were originally pioneered on Reddit, but had the major disadvantage of being gated by U-producing non-pain lands. More recently, a newer line has been discovered. Brace yourself.

(Note: costs are in parenthesis; mana remaining in pool is in brackets.)

First off, let's define a "Kiri-copy" as:

1. (U) Kiri-Onna bouncing Phyrexian Metamorph
2. (P) Meta as Kiri bouncing Kiri
3. (U) Kiri bouncing Meta-Kiri as Kiri
4. (P) Meta copying anything

A Kiri-copy costs UUPP (P is Phyrexian blue mana). It starts and ends with Meta on board and Kiri in hand, and it has the net effect of getting getting a copy (ETB trigger) of something already on board.

Three-land Kiri line (with Peregrine Drake and Wood Elves)

Prerequisites:

• 2 counters on Animar
• Recruiter in hand
• UUUR + 18 life
• 3 non-pain lands (two U-producing and one U/G-producing)
• Tropical Island and/or Breeding Pool in library (add 2 life if only Breeding Pool)

STEP 1: Get Peregrine Drake into play. Start with UUUR in pool from lands or elsewhere.

• (R) Recruiter for Meta [UUU]
• (P) Meta as Recruiter for Kiri-Onna [UUU]
• (UUPP) Kiri-copy Recruiter for Peregrine Drake [U]
• (U) Drake [UUU]

STEP 2: Get Tropical Island into play. At this point, Meta is on board and Kiri is in hand.

• (UUPP) Kiri-copy Drake [UUUG]
• (UUPP) Kiri-copy Recruiter for Wood Elves [UG]
• (G) Wood Elves for Tropical Island [UU]
• (UUPP) Kiri-copy Drake [UUUU]

STEP 3: Infinitely Kiri-copy Drake for infinite Animar counters, this time paying UUUU instead of UUPP.

Repeat:

• (UUUU) Kiri-copy Drake [UUUU]

STEP 4: Get Walking Ballista and win!

• (UUUU) Kiri-copy Recruiter for Ballista []
• Ballista []

Alternate lines:

• If you start with both Tropical Island and Breeding Pool in library, this line can be adapted (with more life, of course) to start with one pain land by folding in another Kiri-copy of Wood Elves.

• If you start with 4 U-producing lands, you can skip the Wood Elves parts and end up only paying 6 life.

Dockside Extortionist line

Prerequisites:

• 2 counters on Animar
• Recruiter in hand
• UURR + 6 life
• Opponents with 4 or more artifacts and/or enchantments
• (No land requirements at all)

Here's the line:

• (R) Recruiter for Metamorph [UUR]
• (P) Metamorph Recruiter for Kiri-Onna [UUR]
• (UUPP) Kiri-copy Recruiter for Dockside Extortionist [R]
• (R) Dockside Extortionist and crack Treasures [UUUU]

Repeat:

• (UUUU) Kiri-copy Dockside Extortionist and crack Treasures [UUUU]

NOTE: At this point, if X >= 5, you can make infinite mana by netting a Treasure token each Kiri-copy. You can fetch protection, but it doesn't help much because counterspell could have already stopped us and Ballista isn't prone to removal.

From there, just Kiri-copy Recruiter for Ballista and go for the win!

Neoform

Neoform is a new addition that opens a new Recruiter line.

Prerequisites:

• 2 counters on Animar
• Recruiter in hand
• RUUG + 4 life

The line:

• (R) Recruiter for Metamorph
• (2 life) Metamorph copying Recruiter for Spellseeker
• (U) Spellseeker for Neoform
• (UG) Neoform Spellseeker for Ancestral State
• () Ancestral bouncing Ancestral for infinite Animar
• () Ancestral bouncing Metamorph
• (2 life) Metamorph copying Recruiter for Ballista
• () Infinite Ballista for the win

The total cost is RUUG. Relative to lines starting with Recruiter, Kiri-Onna costs UUUR but has additional land and life total requirements, and vanilla Weird Harvest costs RUGG2. So Neoform is generally easier than Kiri in that it doesn't have as many requirements.

Card by Card Discussions

Combos

• Ancestral Statue, Walking Ballista, Purphoros, God of the Forge, Soul of the Harvest, and Primordial Sage: These cards comprise the core of the deck. Statue plus any of the other four will effectively win the game through infinite damage. Notably, making Animar arbitrarily large is also an easy way to KO at least one player, especially given protection from black and white.

• Hoverguard Sweepers, Man-o'-War, Dream Stalker, and Shrieking Drake: These cards allow you you to scoop up a creature either for value, or as part of a combo with something like Recruiter or Earthcraft.

• Peregrine Drake and Cloud of Faeries: Useful for making mana as part of a creature chain, and incidentally for making infinite mana in some combo circumstances (i.e., the multiplayer Recruiter line).

• Phyrexian Metamorph: Part of the multiplayer Recruiter line, but surprisingly synergistic in a lot of other applications.

• Cloudstone Curio: Useful for bouncing value pieces, and particularly great with morphs and Eldrazi. This is one of our best non-Statue wincons.

• Earthcraft: The key piece in the Shrieking Drake combo, allowing you to untap an Island with the bounce trigger on the stack. It even lets you speed up the typical value lines before you combo off. Just remember to fetch appropriately!

• Eternal Witness and Den Protector: Important redundancy for the combo lines. Rather than playing a ton of expensive counters, I have often found it useful to push through as early as possible and recover as needed.

Ramp

Animar contains two primary kinds of ramp. The first kind enables you to cast Animar on T2, which is crucial to getting started sooner than other decks. The second kind of ramp in Animar is designed to maximize the number of creatures cast per turn once Animar is on board. The highest priority goes to spells that make mana the turn they are cast, making them effectively “free” or mana-positive.

• Type 1 Ramp (allowing for T2 Animar; 12 total): Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox, Lotus Petal, Utopia Sprawl, Wild Growth, Birds of Paradise, Arbor Elf, Llanowar Elves, Fyndhorn Elves, Elvish Mystic, Tinder Wall, and Wild Cantor.

• Type 2 Ramp (post-Animar): Rishkar, Peema Renegade, Wood Elves, Lotus Cobra, Bloom Tender, Rattleclaw Mystic, Beastcaller Savant, and Wall of Roots. Shout out to Bloom Tender, who is often strong enough to warrant delaying from T2 to T3 Animar.

• Hardened Scales: This is an unusual case in that it often slows the deck down a turn by replacing a dork as the optimal Turn One play, precluding the T2 Animar. Despite this, the extra counters effectively accelerate the deck enough on subsequent turns that Hardened Scales pays off immensely. Combined with Rishkar, Peema Renegade, Walking Ballista, and Scavenging Ooze, the deck even has some cute incidental +1/+1 counter synergies!

• Bond Beetle: This little guy gets special mention because he’s not a mana-producer in the traditional sense, and many Animar decks leave him out, but he’s a fantastic card for the creature storm approach. In fact, one litmus test for a good Animar player is how much they love Bond Beetle!

Tutors

• Fauna Shaman and Survival of the Fittest: These are the best tutors in the deck because they’re repeatable. Either one of these will easily get both halves of a combo.

• Trinket Mage: This is one of three ETB tutors in the deck. It made the list after Walking Ballista was printed, but it can also fetch up Skullclamp for raw draw power or a Mox to make it effectively free.

• Imperial Recruiter: The second ETB tutor is a pretty well known one! This guy fetches up almost all the deck’s best cards including wincons (Ballista), draw power (Mulldrifter), Interaction (Glen, Skite, all the techy stuff like Revoker and Gilded Drake) or even plain old ramp (Rishkar, Bloom Tender, Tinder Wall). Unfortunately, there is currently no simple line to Recruiter into Ancestral Statue (if only statue had 1 less power!). Needless to say though, Recruiter is most famous for the one-card wins he can pull off. Oh, and his price!

• Fierce Empath: The third ETB tutor is the most narrow, but is a great way to stabilize a rocky boardstate with an Ulamog or set up some Draw power with one of the “enchantress” style creatures. You can even fetch up Brutalizer, whom we’ll cover later.

• Eldritch Evolution: This card was a fantastic addition to the deck, and likely needs no introduction. The ability to turn a spent ETB creature into a Statue or other value card for a reasonable, fixed cost is just plain fantastic.

• Fabricate: This card was always the worst good way to find Statue, but with the introduction of Ballista it can now fetch both halves of the deck’s best wincon, or Cloudstone or just a Skullclamp for value.

• Worldly Tutor and Sylvan Tutor: These are pretty essential to a creature-based combo deck.

Draw

• Kozilek, Butcher of Truth: When we said that Animar isn’t a big-creatures deck, we weren’t lying! This card works in the deck because it’s often a cheap-to-free draw four, which is super useful once Animar has a lot of counters and you’re looking for a wincon. It’s also sometimes useful to have the graveyard shuffle effect, particularly with Fauna Shaman / Survival of the Fittest.

• Mulldrifter, Raven Familiar and Sea Gate Oracle: These are a little pricey, but draw and filter multiple cards.

• Coiling Oracle, Elvish Visionary, and Wall of Blossoms: These cards aren’t flashy or individually powerful, but they’re just plain value.

• Sylvan Library: Animar rarely pays life for stuff, so we can usually just draw three every turn. The correct play is often to jam Animar on Turn Two then follow up with Library so as not to lose too much tempo and prevent running out of steam.

• Glimpse of Nature: There’s a reason this thing is banned in Modern, and Animar uses it even better! Notably though, this is one of the deck’s few non-optional draw effects, so be sure not to draw yourself out! But unless you have Purphoros, Ballista, Hardened Scales, etc. all near the bottom of your library you’ll be fine. While it sometimes serves as a combo piece, it’s often best as a value engine leading into a combo attempt the following turn.

• Skullclamp: In many cases, the creatures in this deck are not incredibly useful on board once their ETB effects have been spent. Clamp turns Elvish Visionary and Fierce Empath into more value.

Interaction

• Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger: This guy is a lot like Kozilek in that it’s a powerful cheap or free effect that happens to be attached to a giant creature, not the other way around. Notably, it can be added to the 1-v-1 Recruiter line by fetching up Fierce Empath, or looped with Cloudstone for serious value.

• Brutalizer Exarch: We were seriously skeptical of this guy at first; he looks quite bad on paper. A mediocre tutor, mediocre interaction, and a huge CMC smell like a bad recipe. And yet, both of those things are fantastic for the deck and tend to be most relevant once Animar is already powered up. The versatility really makes this guy work.

• Ainok Survivalist: This is how we deal with Torpor Orb. Being a Morph creature is just gravy! The deck needs some number of artifact/enchantment removal spells, but this is the only one that’s truly irreplaceable.

• Glen Elendra Archmage: The longer you play Animar, the more you love Glen, because she’s the cheapest and most consistent way to protect your stuff from Wraths, Counters and discard. In many matchups, tutoring up Glen early on will be a very smart move.

• Spellskite: Much as Glen protects you from Wraths, Skite will protect you from point removal (more so than Animar’s built-in Protection). As an added bonus, it’s also often free to cast.

• Force of Will and Pact of Negation: The most we’re willing to pay for a Counterspell (besides Glen) is nothing, so don’t expect to see Swan Song or Mana Drain here. But while holding up mana for a 1-2 CMC Counterspell is usually a frustrating tempo loss, holding up Force or Pact is pretty painless and often crucial in a strong meta.

Land

• Gaea's Cradle: The deck doesn’t rely on making tons of mana since cost-reduction is a key part of the plan, but Cradle is still a useful tool in any creature deck, and Animar is one of the best at abusing it.

• Fetches, Shocks, and Duals: These need no explanation, but it’s worth mentioning that in a deck trying to cast a 3-colored spell on Turn Two, having a good mana base is a huge plus. These should be a high priority pickup for budget players!

• Painlands: We spent a really long time determining the best set of non-fetchable lands for Animar, and settled of Pains simply because always enter untapped. Filters were usually too much trouble to keep feeding, Checks were usually good but not on Turn One, and Fastlands were just the opposite of Checks. Plus, since the deck doesn’t spend its life as wantonly as some others, the Pain is pretty negligible.

• Basics: we hate basics. They can pretty badly mess up an otherwise good opening hand, but they’re necessary for Earthcraft and pretty solid against Blood Moon (although it’s fun to watch the Blood Moon player get salty when you cast Statue and Ballista totally unimpeded).

Optional inclusions / Flex spots

• Crop Rotation: This is a somewhat controversial choice. JMCraig likes it because Cavern of Souls is a very low-cost way to handle some of Animar’s worst matchups: Counterspell-heavy decks. A smart player also once told me that any deck which wants to play Cradle probably also wants another Cradle!

• Cavern of Souls: Good opponents will always try to counter Animar, especially on his second or third cast, and Cavern prevents this. Sure it makes colorless mana for everything else (except Mulldrifter!), but even if it becomes effectively useless once Animar lands, it will have still been incredibly relevant, and will usually stick around for any subsequent re-casts.

• Gamble: This is a very powerful but risky card for the deck. While it’s not always reliable, it’s probably the best way to retrieve a hard-to-find noncreature like Earthcraft or Cloudstone. Just remember to play it before your land drop!

• Temur Sabertooth: With a functional casting cost of GG and activation cost of 1G, this guy may strain the mana-base. In exchange, he essentially does a poor impression of Cloudstone Curio: with a value ETB like Recruiter or draw he can be very productive, and with Peregrine Drake he can make infinite mana/counters. Something unique he offers is bouncing Animar to dodge a Wrath effect in corner cases. While he can be a lot of work, he provides some versatility that’s enough to make it into some lists. This is one of very few Magic cards that I (bunbunfriedrice) think is bad on paper but excellent in practice.

• Vizier of the Menagerie: A relatively new option with a lot of potential. 4 CMC hurts, but he does a lot of work to keep you from running out of gas, plus he has synergy with Worldy Tutor-type topdeck tutors. The ability to turn pain lands into non-pain lands also makes the Sweepers line easier. As a brand new card as of writing this primer, it still needs testing.

• Acidic Slime: Another high-CMC interactive card. This slot could easily be filled by Reclamation Sage instead, but Slimey has some added versatility and the ability to leave a blocker behind, which comes in handy sometimes.

• Reclamation Sage: This is a classic Animar card: Recruiter target, cheap to cast, and able to handle stuff like Cursed Totem, Pendrell Mists, and Back to Basics effects. Ainok Survivalist often supplants it due to the latter’s ability to destroy Torpor Orb, however. Acidic Slime also competes for this slot, as does Caustic Caterpillar.

• Nantuko Vigilante and Caustic Caterpillar: As with Rec Sage, Ainok Survivalist is the top choice for this role, but these are fine too. It’s often a meta choice based on how many problematic artifacts/enchantments (or just Torpor Orbs) you see.

• Scavenging Ooze, Gilded Drake, and Phyrexian Revoker: These are the cheapest, narrowest aspects of the toolbox, and most likely to be dead in the wrong matchups. Nevertheless, each one absolutely destroys certain decks against which we would otherwise have a bad matchup, and some combinations of these cards (or other meta-specific toolbox creatures) should be in the mainboard of any Animar deck. Ooze does a great job neutering graveyard combos like Bomberman, Worldgorger, and Buried Alive while also shutting off some whole decks like Meren and Ghave. Gilded Drake steals problematic Commanders and other creatures without allowing them to go to their owner’s Command Zone. Revoker shuts down a surprisingly large number of threats like Breya, Yisan, Hermit Druid, and Planeswalkers while also being effectively free. None of these three will be useful in every matchup, but each of them will be game-savers when they’re relevant and at worst serve as cheap counters for Animar.

• Faerie Impostor and Arctic Merfolk: These are the the worst of the Shrieking Drake effects due to mana cost and/or finicky requirements. Depending on the deck and meta, we still could understand their inclusion for pure redundancy.

• Slithermuse: Heard of Ancestral Recall? This card is often better. At the same time, it’s conditional draw, and therefore it doesn’t make all lists. This is another card I (bunbunfriedrice) am a big fan of.

• Green Sun's Zenith / Chord of Calling: These are fine inclusions, but relatively lackluster compared to most green-based cEDH decks. By contrast, Eldritch Evolution offers a fixed cost which makes it the best one of these effects.

Notable exclusions

• Kiki lines: Every single way of using Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker in Animar involves the use of overcosted cards with little application outside of the combo and requires a high initial mana investment. Notably, they all require lots of red, which the deck isn’t designed to produce primarily. (Ideally, you want all your lands to produce green + something else. You typically only need a single red source the entire game.) The Hoverguard Sweepers line is much more powerful and compact for a similar cost. Trust us, that RRR is not something you want to pay.

• Deadeye Navigator / Palinchron: Much like the various Kiki combos, the “Groan Combo” is just too high on the curve and requires the inclusion of too many mediocre cards to be relevant. By the time we could abuse either of these we should already be winning.

• Sol Ring / Mana Crypt: These two are often considered some of the only true cEDH staples, but they don't make the cut here. The deck consists mostly 1-2 CMC cards, making colorless mana is relatively useless once Animar gets going. You often go games without paying for a single generic mana cost. Furthermore, these cards don’t appreciably accelerate the initial cast of Animar himself, making them even more redundant. Cheap, colored-mana rocks are always welcome, but colorless mana is rarely something Animar rarely has a need for.

• Paradox Engine: While it has a powerful synergy with mana dorks, Paradox just doesn’t play into Animar’s game plan. We have no way to cheat it out and most of our dorks are tapping for G anyway. In other words, it’s too high on the curve and the deck should likely be looking for a combo finish by the time Engine would be relevant.

• Aetherflux Reservoir / Reckless Fireweaver: These are potent extra wincons for the deck, particularly in the case of the Fireweaver, which is trivially easy to cast early on, despite lacking Purphoros’ protection and synergy with Cloudstone lines. Both, however, lost their luster with the printing of Walking Ballista, which enabled the inclusion of the Trinket Mage package, dramatically streamlining the deck.

• Deepglow Skate: A new one from the recent Commander expnasion, which appears to have some Animar synergy right off the bat. BUT it's a trap! Skate works best when you have Animar at 4 counters, effectively pushing him to 9. The problem is that by the time Animar gets to 4, you're in range for Statue and any other wincon, and making Animar bigger is just overkill. It'll happen incidentally during your combo attempts too, so there's no reason to devote an over-costed card to this specific purpose. We'd recommend another tutor or draw effect in this slot, since the main objective is to find and execute a combo once Animar reaches four power.

Matchup Guide

Combo matchups

Against opposing combo strategies, Animar’s game plan is to race out a combo of its own as fast as possible, knowing that the opponent will possess minimal interaction. Ramp, draw, and tutors will be particularly relevant, and the mulligan should enable a T2 Animar, ideally with a win condition to follow by T4 to T5. It can be useful to toolbox up the one card that most hinders the opposing combo if it won’t be possible to race.

Some of the decks we’ve had personal experience with include:

• Breya Doomsday: Typically a close race, but if we can get Scavenging Ooze online early we are solidly favored.

• Paradox Sisay: We’re faster and they lack blue for Counterspells, so we’re solidly favored. Phyrexian Revoker is just gravy.

• Ghave Combo: A well-known non-blue combo deck with pieces we can all see coming. Fast and powerful, but not a hard matchup. Again, Revoker does work here, as does Gilded Drake if the timing is right.

• Leovold: Let Sheldon handle this one.

Midrange matchups

Midrange is typically a good matchup for Animar as long as we can play around Wrath effects. Animar’s native protection from good removal colors goes a long way here. Watch out for: RUG-colored spot removal (Song of the Dryads / Beast Within, Chaos Warp), Wraths (Glen is here mainly for this!), Counterspells.

Some of the decks we’ve had personal experience with include:

• Yisan: Yisan is an interesting mix of stax and combo, roughly evening out to Midrange. As with most midrange decks we typically just want to outrun Yisan, but Phyrexian Revoker and Gilded Drake are excellent options as needed.

• Meren: Another staxy deck with combo elements, and a fairly easy one to outrun. Void Winnower is a total pain, but we can typically outrun her as well. Gilded Drake also helps quite a bit here.

• Maelstrom Wanderer: A fairly bulky, slow deck by comparison to Animar, with the added penalty of semi-random topdecking and curve issues. No particular cards are present in the Animar deck to suit this matchup, but we’re still strongly favored.

Stax and control matchups

If Combo decks generally represent even matchups and Midrange is favorable, then stax is much tougher by comparison. These games are grindier, and we need to mulligan with that in mind, hopefully with a way to tutor up some protection or General-specific hate. The “Control” decks in this section are generally characterized by lighter stax elements (taxes, etc.) and heavier Counterspell and removal packages. Watch out for: Torpor Orb (doesn’t stop Animar from getting a counter, but shuts of most of the deck), RUG-colored spot removal, countermagic.

Some of the decks we’ve had personal experience with include:

• Chain Veil Teferi: A very powerful deck that will typically tutor up Cursed Totem or Torpor Orb as soon as possible. Phyrexian Revoker is a godsend here, and Cavern of Souls is a great way to ensure Animar lands. Survival of the Fittest can help us sneak under a lot of tax effects and artifact/enchantment removal is particularly valuable as well.

• BUG, Grixis, or American Control: Plenty of value-oriented control lists can be brewed up with Commanders like Tasigur, Nekusar, or even Narset that aim to lock the board down and win using some powerful, compact combo. In these matchups, We must again tailor our strategy to the long game and mulligan with some protection in mind. Wraths pose a real threat, so Glen is often a good early-game tutor target rather than a combo piece. Cavern is crucial here. Depending on the general, some combination of toolbox cards like Phyrexian Revoker and Scavenging Ooze can be essential to neutralizing the slower competition.

• Atraxa Planeswalker Stax/Control: This is a pretty bad deck even with a fair amount of money invested, and yet it inexplicably keeps popping up in the meta. It’s not particularly interactive, so Animar has a pretty clear path to victory.

Additional Material

Sample hands

• Example 1: Bloodstained Mire, Birds of Paradise, Command Tower, Cloud of Faeries, Beastcaller Savant, Trinket Mage, Ancestral Statue. This hand is pretty much the gold standard. You can cast Animar on T2 by fetching Taiga and casting Birds of Paradise on T1, then kill the table on T3 by chaining Faeries into Beastcaller into Trinket fetching Ballista and going off with Statue. Your next three draws are just freebies!

• Example 2: Scalding Tarn, Llanowar Elves, Mana Confluence, Taiga, Bloom Tender, Worldly Tutor, Purphoros, God of the Forge. Here’s a slightly less ideal hand that wins wins on T4, this time using Purphoros as an outlet.

• Example 3: Polluted Delta, Lotus Petal, Sylvan Library, Taiga, Riskar, Peema Renegade, Sylvan Tutor, Spellskite. This is a weird one. You can either cast Animar T2 using the Petal, or use it to cast Library T1 and follow up with the Taiga on T2, but there’s no guarantee of casting Animar T3. I personally would keep this, casting Animar on T2 and Library T3, then hope to dig into some good stuff. Sylvan Tutor will likely be able to get Statue by T5, and Spellskite may or may not be relevant, but at least it will be free. It’s reasonably safe, but not necessarily fast. If that Sylvain Library had been a Survival of the Fittest, this would’ve been a snap keep!

• Example 4: Ancient Ziggurat, Forest, Utopia Sprawl, Tinder Wall, Wall of Blossoms, Fauna Shaman, Dream Stalker. This is another slower one, but you can cast Animar on T2, then follow up with Fauna Shaman on T3. Tinder Wall is a fine source of ramp here, and Dream Stalker is probably just Shaman food.

• Example 5: Shivan Reef, Birds of Paradise, Island, Imperial Recruiter, Brutalizer Exarch, Skullclamp, Ancestral Statue. Now things are getting Complicated. Statue and Recruiter are great cards, and the two of them should pretty much guarantee a chance at a win. BUT there’s no green mana here! No Turn Two Animar, no guarantee of Animar landing at all. Brutalizer Exarch and Skullclamp aren’t doing much for this hand either.

• Example 6: Forest, Reflecting Pool, Yavimaya Coast, Chrome Mox, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, Walking Ballista, Force of Will. These are good cards, but this is a terrible hand.

Assorted Tips and Tricks

While not as difficult to pilot as Doomsday Zur, there are some tips and tricks for playing Animar that can make or break a multiplayer game.

• Tip 1: If you have infinite Animar available (let’s say via Ancestral) and win condition available (in hand, via tutor, or via infinite draw), you generally want to play the win condition after making Animar arbitrarily large. For example, if you can combo out with Ancestral, don’t drop Purphoros until you first have a huge Animar, then drop Purph, then repeat Ancestral for the kill. This way you’re withholding as much information as possible until as late as possible. Savvy opponents know that an infinite Animar by itself isn’t enough to win, and they might hold back on removing Ancestral (who is the softest to removal in the combo) and they’ll wait to respond until after they see the win condition. This way, even if they remove the win condition (or Ancestral after dropping Purph), you’ll still have your arbitrarily large Animar. This tip is especially useful with Walking Ballista, because (as opposed to Purphoros) you don’t have to pass priority after Ballista hits the table until all the ping triggers are on the stack. If you have Ballista and an infinite Animar, and they don’t have a counter, it’s too late!

• Tip 2: Sometimes, if the stars are not quite aligned, you’re a mana or two short of being able to combo out on a given turn. Figure this out before you start dumping creatures to build counters, revealing information with a tutor, or perhaps even going infinite with Ancestral. Figure out your sequencing and mana requirements for the combo turn and consider doing as little as possible this turn and as much as possible the combo turn. Withhold information and fly under the radar. Example: It’s Turn 3. You have 3 untapped lands, 3 Animar counters, and a hand containing Ancestral, Birds, Fabricate, and your fourth land. In this case, consider simply passing the turn. You can’t win this turn; so, why paint a target on your head with an infinite Animar? Assess your situation, e.g. Can you KO one opponent? If so, is that worth the risk of revealing lethal to the other opponents? Based on your assessment, consider withholding Birds and Ancestral until the following turn, where you can drop both, tutor for Ballista, and steal victory. Note this tip is generally true of all combo decks, but it’s especially important to Animar as you “chain” creature draw spells and have to reassess your direction many times throughout a turn.

• Tip 3: This is more of a rules thing, but Animar’s counter do indeed reduce the cost of casting a creature with morph face-down.

Date added	9 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	6 - 0 Mythic Rares 64 - 0 Rares 14 - 0 Uncommons 14 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.06
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Treasure
Folders	Animar, Reference, Animar, Animar, Animar, Interesting Decks, Competitive EDH, Good Animar Lists, edh, Competitive