If you're interested in my take of the deck, check it out

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/do-you-like-animar-and-losing-friends/

JMCraig

All you need to do to add a change log is add it to the description. I've made code for you to add below:

Add this:

===accordion
===panel:Change Log | 23/May/2018 | Click Here
Cut:

[[card:Earthcraft]]

[[card:Rishkar, Peema Renegade]]

3 Pain Lands

[[card:Forest]]

[[card:Island]]

[[card:Lotus Cobra]]

Added

[[card:Green Suns Zenith]]

[[card:Sylvan Safekeeper]]

[[card:Tarnished Citadel]]

[[card:Exotic Orchard]]

[[card:Thran Quarry]]

[[card:Dryad Arbor]]

[[card:Grove of the Burnwillows]]

[[card:Mox Amber]]
===endpanel
===endaccordion

This is what it will look like:

Any thoughts on battlebond so far this card: spellseeker looks great to me it tutors for a number of options and has an etb animar trigger. Tutor creatures just seem to be great in animar. I was curious what your thoughts on the other spoiled cards were so far as well.

@Majestic_Clown: Thanks for that! I'll add it.

@thefallan: Spellseeker is in, no doubt. easy pick. it gets several of our best tutors and counterspells. I love it! Still brainstorming what to cut. Stormtamer is a solid pick bc Spellseeker allows us to get a counter, but I'll try out some stuff.

Curious, why is Dryad Arbor still in the deck?

Truly seems useless as Animar doesn't benefit from it and you're wasting a land drop that turn. Do you feel that you need a 1/1 chump blocker that often?

It's a turn 1 fetch from GSZ, which enables Animar on turn 2. Also allows you to use fetch lands to get a creature, which is rarely relevant but kinda neat (Soul of the Harvest, Clamp). Basically with GSZ in the deck already the benefits outweighed the drawbacks.

Chump blocking is irrelevant with all our creatures, and I'm rarely pressed for animar counters, so those factors didn't influence my decision; the only real downside is playing an effectively ETB-tapped land. sucks, but we can afford one if the potential upside is faster animar casts.

@ JMCraig Have you found that after piloting Animar and other cEDH decks that it has become a little more difficult to enjoy playing less powerful decks?

I feel like Animar has spoiled me a bit in regards to how a deck should operate. Every time I build a new deck for my more casual LGS environment the deck feels slow and clunky. And lets not even talk about trying to play a commander that has a CMC of 5 or more. Those decks get Mana Vault and Grim Monolith as auto-inclusions because then I feel like I can get the commander out at a reasonable speed at least some of the time. I also miss Animar's consistency when I am trying out a new deck.

Animar has become my baseline standard for how I think a deck should play out, and I think it has given me some unrealistic expectations.

Well i prefer higher-powered games and I like tuning my decks to compete, obviously. Whether you can find a way to have fun at as lower power level is a bit of a personal thing, but in my case i've been building a fairly casual Phage edh for a while now and enjoying it. the trick was to set some rules like "nothing over "$5" and "<3 tutors" then do my best in that environment. Since I love the deckbuilding aspect of cEDH, this was still a pretty enjoyable project.

On the other hand, the level performance will never be the same. If you want a fast, efficient cEDH deck, you're gonna be overpowered for the casual tables, and pubstomping isn't really fun for anyone. You can replicate the experience of tuning a cEDH deck for your meta with cheaper/weaker cards, but you can't replicate the feeling of actually playing it. A lot of players prefer it this way, and if you want to play cEDH you'll have to find other people to play with.

So what I would recommend is trying to build the best $200 deck you can for casual games. really go all out on research and tuning, scope out the meta, and play smart. If that's still not doing it for ya, find people who want to play cEDH, or look into other formats/venues.

We're in the unique position of wanting to play a casual format as competitively as possible. That's not a bad thing, at all, bc Magic is a big enough game to support all kinds of players, but we have to accept that we'll have to adapt or keep looking for people whom play the way we do.

So has cEDH spoiled me with respect to casual EDH? not really, but that's mostly a matter of perspective. Keep building, playing, and being open minded!

Hmm, I think that using the word "powerful" may not have been the best word to use for what I was trying to get across in my last comment.

What I was trying to say is that I've kind of gotten used to all the aspects of play that a reasonably tuned Animar deck can do well. Access to two strong colors, a cheap commander that can hit the board early and multiple times in a game, a commander with built in protection from two of the colors with the best spot removal, massive mana ramp potential, versatility in possible win conditions, multiple efficient combo options, and strong consistency with interlocking lines of play. Animar isn't the strongest or fastest deck, and it's commander dependency makes it a little vulnerable, but it does a lot of things really well and is generally a solid pick. Even if I took out the combos to play with a less competitive group and just spammed creatures and ETB effects it would still still be a strong deck due to all the other advantages the deck has. All of that is why I feel spoiled after having piloted Animar.

I do have more casual decks that I enjoy playing, such as my Grimgrin deck, and I get a lot of enjoyment from playing silly games with pleasant people where crazy stuff happens. It's just that when I go to build a new deck I'm often subconsciously using what Animar is capable of as my measuring stick for what I would like my new decks to also be able to accomplish. It's a ridiculous expectation, every commander and deck has their owns pros and cons, but it's an expectation that I have a hard time shaking off.

And thank you for always being so open to questions. Going by your past responses, it seems like you make an effort to be approachable and pleasant when chatting with people here. Considering some of the other discussions that I've read and been involved in online, I just want to say that it is something that I appreciate and find commendable.

Glad you're getting a lot out of the discussion! I know Animar isn't in the top tier of the meta anymore, but I still enjoy playing the deck and want to make sure everyone else out there has a chance to build and play the best Animar deck they can! And for what it's worth, in the average 4-man game, even with other cEDH decks, you can definitely maintain a ~25% winrate due to how multiplayer shakes out.

A big part of the reason I have so much fun with Animar is exactly what you say; he does a lot of little things well. he enables a 1-card combo, he's cheap, he gives us two good colors, he provides a ton of incidental value, and he protects himself. That's why the deck leans on him, of course; because he can do so much. In fact, one of the main things I notice when working on other people's Animar decks is that they take Animar's ramp/protection for granted. Whenever people run unnecessary 12-drops and no countermagic I always warn them that Animar will do a decent job of supporting a greedy deck, but a smart player will always be able to shut you down just by killing him. So the trick is to rely on Animar for his combo potential, but also build an otherwise strong, reliable deck around him. It's a good lesson; don't lean on a few potentially busted plays to make the deck work.

That's why I'm always happy to chat on here; because Animar has a lot of potential for research, building a tuning, not to mention what goes into actually playing the deck. So again, glad you're enjoying the ride! keep chiming in and I'll always be happy to discuss new ideas.

Out of curiosity, which of the 0-1 CMC instants i'm considering do you think would be good inclusion, now that Spellshaper enables a few new lines? I'm looking at shaving a land for one of:

• Noxious Revival
• Autumn's Veil
• Crop Rotation
• Nature's Claim
• Pyroblast

Veil is the most unique effect I could consider, but I do love Recursion in the deck. WHat do you think??

Noxious or Nature's are the top contender's there for sure. Especially in cEDH you need to be able to take care of stax pieces or a foodchain and claim is a commonly used card in the meta. Noxious is a damn fine card as well. The others on the list don't seem as much needed. But if you do find yourself wanting an extra counterspell effect, you should probably go for flusterstorm since it crushes combo decks on their storm turn and often is an uncounterable counterspell due to the earlier turn low mana production of cEDH.

I'm a big fan of your deck by the way and have pretty much copied mine off yours. Sucks that Animar can't quite cut it in cEDH like it used to but it's still very fun to play it in high power metas.

I was very surprised to see Mox Amber in your list. IMO that card is a huge trap. The only deck I've really seen that actively wants it is Sissay.

Which instant spell to go with is probably a meta call. Autumn's Veil would be useful in a control heavy meta since it acts kind of like a mini Silence for the turn you want to combo off, while Nature's Claim gives you a cheap answer to cards like Torpor Orb and Blood Moon in a meta where you are expecting to see a decent number of stax decks.

I found Crop Rotation underwhelming when I ran it, but with Spellseeker making it easier to find it would make getting Gaea's Cradle or Cavern of Souls easier. It's nice, but not necessarily as useful as the Veil or Claim.

Pyroblast is fun, but aside from being a potential counterspell what good targets are there for its other option? Laboratory Maniac comes to mind. What other blue permanents do you think you might be tempted to aim the Pyroblast at? You have to weigh the number of good targets against just playing one of the better blue 1 mana counterspells instead.

Noxious Revival offers some more resilience and Animar is pretty good at being able to grab a card of the top of its library if you need the recovered card the same turn you cast the Revival. On the other hand, you do already have Eternal Witness and Den Protector, does the deck need more graveyard recovery than that when compared to possibly running more countermagic? I'll have to leave the answer to that up to your experience because you have far more cEDH games under your belt than I do.

And I know that you are looking to keep your chosen spell to a 1 CMC option, but with Spellseeker now a thing I think that it is worth bringing up Abrade again as a possible main-deck or sideboard option. Abrade can deal with both Torpor Orb and Hushwing Gryff, along with other worthwhile creature targets like Hermit Druid and Laboratory Maniac.

On the other hand, Nature's Claim can hit Eidolon of Rhetoric, which is a big plus in its favor. If you are strictly keeping to spells with a CMC of 1, then I would probably take the Claim over the Veil because it gives you the option of dropping Ainok Survivalist to make room for the Spellseeker.

@Allergymedsandcats: I've had a lot of success with the Mox, actually. I agree that most cEDH builds dont want or need it, and that Sissay is prob its best home, but there are some decks that legitimately need their commander on board at all times, and in those builds its basically free mana. For animar, any extra speed we can get immediately after casting is great in the deck. There are some awkward times when it's dead on board after animar bounces or something, but by then we usually have plenty of mana to recast. the value of the card comes in pushing us through the initial mana bottleneck into the later phase of the game where everything we do becomes incredibly cheap. I'm disinclined to use Claim, ehich is a great card I've played in several other decks, only because its a fairly redundant effect in the deck. We have Caterpillar, Ainok, Brutalizer and Ulamog for generic permanent removal, all of which have other tutors in the deck and advance the primary gameplan. for that reason i'm leaning more towards a more unique a versatile effect like Autumn's veil or pyroblast which I had discounted earlier for not fitting very well into the deck, but would feel a lot more natural if they had a 1-mana creature tutor supporting them. Fluster is an interesting pick too, but its only downside is that it can't be used proactively nearly as well as some other options here.

@Saber: Agreed on Pyro and crop. both feel a little narrow and underwhelming. Nox is def redundant, but i'm also not against emphasizing what the deck does well over adding new niche cards. One of our strengths is being able to fight countermagic purely by regrowing our threats and coming back the same/next turn, which is a natural role for Nox. Plus its free. Claim is a really good defensive option, but i'm a little worried that it'd basically be a more easily counterable version of an effect we don't want to see every game anyway. and Ainok is still ideal as a free creature,a bluff with Den Pro, and a Cloudstone combo piece. Abrade falls under the "too much mana to hold up/not use on a tutor" umbrella. It's definitely strong and flexible, but for 2 mana i may as well be running Drain or Bane of Progress.

I think personally I'm still leaning towards Noxious because rather than being a new tool that's inaccessible to most of the deck's usual lines, it'll let us reuse the tools we already have. By giving us access to the whole graveyard it's rarely a dead option, even if it comes down to just recycling a fetch land at a critical time. Plus there are some insanely techy plays like putting garbage n top of an opponent's deck in their draw phase when they were counting on a Vampiric/Mystical tutor, which just feels so good when you nail it. Oh, and I cant even overstate the value of being free. holding up mana in this deck is unusually backbreaking, since so much of what we do is old-fashioned mnainphase magic.

I think that one of the reasons I don't rate Noxious Revival as highly is because I'm not used to playing games that go long enough for a card like it to be overly relevant for me. My games tend to end before I get more than a couple fetch lands into my graveyard. Most of the time, cards like Eternal Witness and Den Protector don't net me a lot of value. I tend to play more 1v1 than pod games though, so that skews my perspective. Being able to snipe an opponent's Mana Vault to slow them down by a turn or deal with their silver-bullet answers for slowing me down is the more common situation that I have to deal with. So within those first 5 turns of the game, I find Nature's Claim to be more mana efficient than the Ainok Survivalist, and being able to have that sort of effect be tutorable off of Spellseeker strikes me as being a relevant point in terms of deck consistency.

I hadn't thought of using Noxious Revival offensively as a means of disruption though. I can see how it would be useful for messing with graveyard based combo decks or slowing the opponent down a turn by putting something irrelevant back on top of their library.

Yeah, definitely a meta call. I play against a few spikier, more controlling pods so having a way to try again after Statue is countered has been very relevant.

I think Nox and Claim are definitely the two best picks, and which of them I end up with will likely be meta-dependent.

This is exactly why I've moved my build away from aiming at just Statue for the win con. While it's an outstanding single card combo, being able to present yourself with 2 completely separate lines will drastically improve your win %s.

I'm a very big fan of Trophy Mage as it opens up the Cloudstone Curio lines a lot more. If you're curious the deck list - Animar, Soul of Combos - Turn 3 Win

@ ToffMcSoft One of the main reasons that I still run Kiki combo in my list is because I have a personal deck design bias against being completely commander reliant for my win condition. In my case, it cuts a little into consistency because I'm making space for another combo instead of doubling up on similar effects. Earthcraft + Shrieking Drake + Purphoros, God of the Forge is a combo that doesn't require Animar but the deck can't tutor for Earthcraft, which means you are out of luck unless you draw into it. As a backup, I found it to be very unreliable.

In the end though, the main Animar hoser cards like Torpor Orb, Hushwing Gryff, and Eidolon of Rhetoric are going to to make your game miserable whether you have a backup combo or not. And as long as an opponent has an adequate counterspell ready it won't matter what combo you go for. If that's a case, it's not surprising that an optimized list will focus on the combo that needs that least amount of pieces together to win, which in Animar means Ancestral Statue.

All that being said, I think that it's a good thing that Animar can support variations of the list at a competitive level, like you putting more emphasis on the Curio and me running Kiki. Having that sort of variance is a slight advantage to Animar decks overall, because it keeps opponents guessing as to which threats may or may not be in your deck and what you might be capable of pulling off under particular circumstances. It's only an advantage when playing people who don't already know your particular list, but I'll take whatever tiny advantage I can get.

So it's no secret that I play in a relatively established meta with mostly the same dudes i've know for years, and as a result I'm able to lean pretty hard on my Statue. generally speaking I know how to read the games and play around the hate. For someone looking for a secondary wincon, there are a few decent options tho:

Earthcraft: almost untutorable, forces you to run extra basics basics, still requires 2+ pieces on board.

Cloudstone: again, mostly untutorable (no, trophy mage with one target isn't worht including. we're tight on slots as it is), and requires a few colorless/morph guys to work. also often needs animar. The upside is that it can be a great grindy card in some matchups.

Kiki: this is the good one. It's fully tutorable, and only needs two pieces to go off. There's no restriction made on your deckbuilding either (triple red isnt as hard as people think). Most importantly tho, all three pieces (pester, exarch, Kiki) are relatively useful on their own. Kiki may be bulky, but not much moreso than Curio, and he can keep cranking value out of reusing stuff like ETB tutors. Hell, your recruiter can even do work in this combo. All you have to do to make it work is find room for three mediocre cards in the deck, which is cheaper than either of the above options. Although Saber makes a great point that many of our possible alt wincons are victims of the same hate as Statue, this may be the least so by virtue of being the least Animar-reliant (but he does help if you've got him!)

With all the cool stuff we've been getting for the deck lately, and the fact that my group is getting better at killing my Commander, I've been thinking a lot about this lately. That's why I cut Earthcraft, and while a bought a set of kiki combo pieces a while ago. I think I'll try them out this weekend and see how it goes!

rough cut list:

• Cloudstone
• Stormtamer (spellseeker is effectively the better version, bc it gets Pact/Misstep)
• Some meta hate like ScOoze, or maybe even an Enchantress effect

Add:

• Kiki
• Exarch
• Pester

As always, Props to Saber for forcing me to consider Kiki in a more favorable light. Told you I was working on it!

I wasn't trying to push for Kiki's inclusion in this list but I stand by my decision to keep it in mine. Like I said though, I'm completely aware that my decision to do so is based mostly on my own deck-building biases.

I think that Eldritch Evolution was a huge boon to making Kiki more viable in Animar. It tipped the scales in my decision on whether or not to keep the combo package in. I also like the support that Birthing Pod and Zealous Conscripts offer Kiki, but they are high on my "possible cuts" list.

I've had to put it off for a while now, but once I'm able to get my hands on a Sylvan Tutor I plan on revising and restructuring my deck more.

Yeah, even with Kiki I think Pod is a bit clunky. Conscripts is a fun combo piece and has some minor utility elsewhere, but Drake gets that job done better in my opinion. Evo is a fantastic piece in the deck tho, and def helps speed kiki along.

My main reasoning is twofold:

first, our tutoring suite is only getting better. We have Spellseeker and Evo now, and with the Ballista/Fabricate/Trinket Mage package added in as well, our main Statue line is looking more efficient than ever, which means we don't have to dedicate as many deck slots or as much mana to making it effective. Our draw and interaction packages have improved as well, allowing us to support more aggressive combo lines.

Second, I've been reevaluating the "sacred cow" backup lines in the deck, namely Cloudstone and Earthcraft, and despite only appearing to require a single slot each, they both have some real baggage, as described above, which Kiki does not.

So with that in mind, i think it's time to review and retest the deck as just Statue+Kiki, and cut the Earthcraft and Statue pieces.

I agree that Birthing Pod is a bit clunky, but it is also a card that your opponents have to answer quickly. A lot of Animar's utility creatures are at 2 CMC, creatures that tutor are at 3 CMC, and combo cards are at 4 and 5 CMC. If you can cast and activate the Pod on the same turn, you are likely to be advancing your board state in a significant manner. Running Kiki combo means that you can go straight from a 2 CMC creature to Pestermite, untap the Pod, then trade in the Pestermite for either Glen Elendra Archmage or Ancestral Statue all in one turn. The Archmage also gains extra utility in that you can use Pod twice on the same turn to grab Zealous Conscripts (used to untap Pod) and Kiki. If Spellseeker is in the deck, you would also be able to Pod into Spellseeker to grab Glimpse of Nature or a counterspell, and then Pod Spellseeker into Ancestral Statue the next turn to hopefully win.

Pod is still a bit situational though, and if I cut the Conscripts then I think that I would lose about half the reason to run Pod. That's why the both of them are high on my "Possible Cuts" list.

And regarding Cloudstone Curio; while I agree that it is difficult to tutor for, I don't really see it as a card with much baggage. You don't need morph creatures in the deck for it, because cards like Cloud of Faeries, Peregrine Drake, and Beastcaller Savant can set up infinite loops with it as well. But it is still a card mostly dependent on Animar to achieve infinite combos, so if you are looking for a fast combo that doesn't need Animar as a component then the Curio doesn't help much in that regard.

If you see the Curio as a "sacred cow" in the deck and opt to remove it, you may also have to look at Peregrine Drake as well. Peregrine Drake is fantastic as a type of "ritual" effect in Animar and can net you ridiculous amounts of mana, but it looses a significant part of its win potential without Curio. So if you label the Curio as a Sacred Cow, then I think you'll have to do the same for Peregrine Drake.

I've been testing Kiki as a replacement for Curio for the last few days. Some 1v1 games against my buddys Grix control, then a bunch of games tonight against mostly Grixis storm and Breakfast Hulk. The storm guy has a lot of solid answers for Animar, and having a backup that wasnt as awkward as Curio won me a few games I would've lost otherwise with Animar dead in the command zone.

I say Earthcraft and Curio are the deck's Sacred Cows mainly bc they have always been in the list since I started playing, everyone who has ever seen an Animar deck knows theyre good, and everyone who has an Animar deck plays them. But im not convinced they're that good, and after a lot of shitty draws I'm starting to question their value in the deck. I had always considered Kiki a little too clunky, but as I discussed before, I think the deck supports it now more than ever, and if the meta calls for an alt wincon, it may be the best one.

I've also had a few interesting grindier games when my wincons were being contered but I was able to use Kiki to clone good ETBs for value. This was increasingly my primary use for Curio in the deck, and I think he handles it a bit better.

Drake was one that had crossed my mind as well. It's a fantastic gas piece when I'm stinging together a long storm turn, but even with the recent cuts im not convinced high-CMC ramp is what the deck needs. If i could replace it with a good draw ETB i might just do that.

Another thought I had: how many Enchantresses do you use? I've been using both Prime sage and Soul, but they're not cheap. I think we need the draw and having Statue outlets that work well on their own is great, but 6CMC stings. def low on my cut list, but something to look carefully at.

Oh also, general query to other Animar players: what good draw creatures am i missing? I have always found Slithermuse a little too conditional, and I really want to avoid playing Riverwise Augur (4 CMC is really high). Maybe Foul Emissary??

I've only been running Primordial Sage and Glimpse of Nature as my "enchantress" effects. I find that I frequently use Fierce Empath to tutor for the Sage, so that kind of counts as having two in the deck, and Spellseeker can tutor Glimpse of Nature. My deck runs Phantasmal Image, and I've often used it to clone the Sage to get some extra card draw power.

I had forgotten that Foul Emissary existed. It's an interesting option and might be worth testing. It's better than some of the other options that come to mind.

I've seen some Animar lists that opt to run Windfall for card draw, and considering that Animar is easily capable of burning through its hand I don't think that Windfall a horrible inclusion. It's not an ideal one, but it's workable.

Solid point about Spellseeker replacing an enchantress by getting Glimpse. Same amount of mana too. I do like having both though, bc they turn a topdeck Statue into an easy win (often redundant) and they'll help power through a situation when I'm out of gas. May be worth replacing one tho.

Foul is a decent cantrip for the deck, but the issue I always had was the ability to miss with it. I hate that.

Windfall is an interesting one. I often found that it was bulky to cast and sometimes fed my opponents more counterspells, but thats not inherently a problem with our deck. The main issue was that, as a mainphase combo deck that operates relatively tight on mana, we aren't in a position to slam a couple mana-positive rocks and keep going like proper Storm decks. "Windfall, then pass" is basically the worst thing we can do in a strong pod.

But since I do love wheeling, I like the Whirlpool (Whirlpool Warrior, Whirlpool Rider) guys in this slot bc we can always use them as a cheap animar counter as needed. the fact that they're not inherently card advantage blows, but they can sure speed up a shitty boardstate easily enough. All for 1CMC, which beats 3 by far! I may be retesting these guy, actually.