GG dude! Always happy to see Glen and Safekeeper watching your back; they're some of my favorite guys in the deck (GSZ is there almost just for Safekeeper!)

Creature removal is a meta call I've been thinking about for a while. it hasnt been to relevant for me, but you have a few options:

• Inferno Titan: very powerful, but expensive. I'm not a fan of paying that much, esp if you may want to use this when you're already at risk. that said, the attack trigger gets around Torp/Hushwing.
• Flametounge Kavu: potentially really favorable cost-to-damage ratio, but its not cheap, and fails to ETB negators.
• Grim Lavamancer: repeatable, cheap and evades the usual hate! needs to to have at least a modest GY tho.
• Gilded Drake: cheap, and has no extra restrictions. only downside is that it fails to universal effects like ETB negators.

So I maindeck Gilded mainly bc it synergizes so well with the rest of the deck and at worst its just a cheap cast. Lavaman would be my next pick, just bc even at worst its an Animar counter for just R. it also really shines when we're behind on board, unlike the other red options. only downside is the lack of haste and the limited damage (though it does cover most relevant bears).

I'd recommend you give him a shot, if your meta calls for it. with the meta you described, and your record tho, it may be overkill!

And yeah, C18 doesn't have too much gold for us, or most cEDH decks. I'm pretty confident the Drake is a winner tho. he did well in testing last night.

JMCraig, what did you cut for Gilded Drake?

He's been there from the start! All my recent changes are in the log. The most recent cuts were Ainok and Metamorph in favor of better consistency to dig up our good answers.

Ohhhh, if you're referring to Loyal Drake, I'm testing him in Dream Stalker's slot. The bouncers are super synergistic when theyre good, but they need you to already have a solid ETB effect on board or else they're terrible. Same issue I've always had with clones. Sheiking Drake gets a pass bc 1CMC is worth a lot, and Man-o-War can clear opposing blockers, but Stalker is jut a bit more situational than I'd like.

I am feeling pretty stupid. Sorry about the mistake.

Lol fair. if i still used peregrine drake i could just go full tribal!

Thanks for sharing this great deck list and keeping us updated with the changelog. I do want to discuss some points:

• Sylvan Tutor vs Chord of Calling: I really love the flexibility of casting chord as an instant. I haven't tested sylvan yet, but since the target comes on top of the library at sorcery speed, your opponents have a turn to react and set up. It's the same with Brutalizer Exarch, but he is more flexibel with his removal option. Chord let's you set up a combo at the opponents end step and it's also great for responding to enemy removal (safekeeper).

• Only 3 counterspells: in my experience, what really hurts Animar is a mass removal. Besides pact and force, I run Swan Song, Spell Pierce and Stubborn Denial. Maybe it's a meta game call, but I always fell safe to pump out creature spells with a counter as backup.

My list is a lot different then yours, it's too much to discuss every card, but I do want to mention 2 of my favorites:

• Emrakul, the Promised End: great "finisher" spell. She doesn't win on the spot, but usually "mindslavering" an opponents turn will lead to a win later on.

• Tishana, Voice of Thunder: Best card draw. Early she is easier to cast then "good ol' Kozi" and most of the times you can draw more then 4 cards. I haven't seen the "annihilator bonus" of Kozi in a long time, even though I run Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots. He kind of always gets removed when he shows up :)

Hey, welcome! I've had a fair bit of experiemce with these cards, so I'll chime in, but I know a few of the other pilots on here have opinions too

Sylvan vs chord: honestly not a real dichotomy here. Sylvan is a staple for the deck; 1 CMC for a tutor is too good a rate to pass up. yes,they can see it coming, but the deck is super linear, so they'll probably already know (yes, its statue). and If they're not already prepared for it a turn early, then they're losing either way. we run a very linear deck. Chord is good as an instant, and the convoke can infrequently come in handy, but its always been too expensive and awkard for me to get much use out of it. Finally, we actually run a crazy amout of topdeck manipulation for a creature combo deck. Stuff like Dark Dweller Oracle, Vizier, any ETB-draw guy, Vig and the enchantresses all make topdeck tutors much faster.

Counters: you're missing the most important one, Glen. I play in a fullon cEDH meta, and have never needed more counters than I play now. It's all about knowing when to tutor into Glen and when not to. remember, you're not gonna be the fastest deck at a cEDH table most of the time, so you cant just gun for combo every time. and holding up extra mana for a 1CM counter can be a total waste unless it also advances your gameplan like Glen does. I agree that wipes hurt us, but most decks run 0-1 of those, and glen is aperfect way to catch them before they hit us. Or just let Animar eat the wipe then pivot to a different wincon like Kiki.

Emrakul: frankly, this doesnt win the game on its own in a 4man pod, so I'm not seeing the benefit. leading to a win in a few turns is a profoundly less powerful effect than just winning, and there are already card i'm not playing that could facilitate the latter. for example, chord in that slot gets me a wincon right now. Hell, I could even add back Cloudstone, Earthcraft or even Aluren, all of which are wincons that interact better with our primary gameplan than a massive creature that relies too heavily on having Animar in play to be worthwhile. If i need a big monster finisher, it's almost more worthwhile to use Jin to ruin everyones hand, or even sphinx to draw a million cards. being occasionally free doesnt really make this kind of effect worthwhile to me.

Tishana: yeah, this can be a ton of draw for 2 mana. in fact, with animar, tishana and 5 other creatures (assuming thats how animar got 5 counters) you could draw 7. but when you're not casting with animars bonus, she's a horribly dead card. in fact, i often need draw most when I'm in trouble on board, which is exactly when she's at her worst. so the ceiling is high, but the floor is unplayable. If you can consistently cast her for two without having her sit in had for too long then def run her, but she was always too dead for me at critical times. also, Library and Clamp have always been better draw for me! Kozi is just a roleplayer.

Glad to have your input man!

@JMCraig On the topic of card draw, I've been meaning to ask how your testing with Loyal Drake went.

And yeah, the value of particular cards can really depend on how many people are running full cEDH lists or just strong pub-stomp decks. Toxic Deluge is played reasonably often in the cEDH meta, and most blue decks run Cyclonic Rift in case the game actually goes long, but other wraths are pretty scarce. I occasionally also see Fire Covenant pop up in some lists. It's hard to justify playing a 4+ cmc wrath spell in cEDH because most decks don't play a lot of creatures and cEDH decks can often threaten to just win the game on turn 4 instead of spending that mana on wrathing the board.

Have any cEDH focused groups like the Lab Maniacs or people on the cEDH Reddit written an article detailing how cEDH differs from a strong pub-stomp meta? That would be an interesting discussion to have because the cEDH meta really is a unique beast when it comes to EDH. The difference is kind of like the difference between the Modern and Vintage formats, and you can see it in how cards like Mental Misstep are actually a viable option to run in cEDH due to the low CMC cards that are usually run. Mental Misstep would be a complete waste of a card slot in less competitive metas because its range of possible targets would be too narrow. Faerie Macabre is another one of those cEDH meta cards that you aren't likely to see in other metas. There are enough degenerate graveyard interactions in cEDH that being able to get the faerie's free removal ability at instant speed from hand can make it a reasonable deck inclusion depending on the decks your group runs, but in other EDH metas the overall game impact that the card has probably wouldn't be enough for it to stay in a deck for very long. It would be really neat to read a comprehensive article that digs into the different deck-building philosophies that define cEDH.

Loyal Drake has been pretty good. It's not super powerful, but its pretty good, and its rarely terrible. I'll prob keep it in the deck.

I'd certainly be interested to see a good guide to tuning decks for various levels of competition. It's 100% true that you will expect very different forms of interaction at different levels. Importantly though, i think the advice will need to be heavily deck-dependent. Something like UBx storm will want different tech than Animar or Gitrog or Tana/Tymna stax. Some decks only need a few tweaks (Animar is probably among them) while others basically won't function (super teched-out stax/control, etc).

Animar, for one, can probably still survive in more midrangey, creature-combat pods just by comboing out fast, and having some minimal interaction set up for stuff like Wrath or Damnation. I've somewhat accidentally found myself stomping pods every now and then when an opponent or two swears their deck is unbeatable, but it usually goes well for me. against mediocre decks, even if we get wrathed, we're usually faster to set back up and combo out just by vitrue of tutor density and spell efficiency. blowing the board then dropping Jace's Phantasm just isnt strong enough to beat a nicely tuned Animar deck.

The more cEDH builds, even if they are weakened a little for less competitive play, will probably still have a higher than average win ratios due to their lower mana curves and more focused deck design. But it's also possible for a cEDH deck to get tripped up in other metas due to having to contend with some cards that they normally don't consider an option from a cEDH perspective. I played one game where my opponent kept a sub-optimal hand just because it had Imprisoned in the Moon, which went a long way to hindering my Animar that game.

I think something that may increase a cEDH deck's odds against less competitive decks is that less competitive metas tend to not run as many cheap, instant speed interaction and removal spells, which gives cEDH decks a higher average chance of going off without interruption. But even cEDH decks need to be somewhat wary if the game manages to drag on to the point where everyone has 6+ mana available to them. cEDH decks shine in the early turns, but that advantage drops a bit if the less competitive decks live long enough to play their own flashy spells. I mean, instant speed removal is still instant speed removal, even if its 3 mana for a Beast Within instead of just one mana for a Swords to Plowshares.

Yeah, good point; many cEDH decks begin to lose out when there's more mana on board; if you have Dispel and your opponents are using Time Stop etc, you're playing their game. That's the main reason fast combo is so good for a mixed meta. if we can combo off on turn 3-4, there's no way to beat us with big 7-mana sorceries and dragons and shit.

Actually, longevity is one thing I've been attempting to address with this deck lately. The reason I like Oracle and Vig and a few other cards is bc when the game gets grindy, we can use these kinds of parity-breaking effects to stay in it. With Clamp/Oracle, all your early dorks and spent ETBs become fresh topdecks, and with Vig every topdeck is a tutor. it gives us real legs past turn 6. Now, I'm not about to add Consecrated Sphinx and Vorinclex to the deck, but if we can keep our slim combo wincon relevant as long as possible were gold. even late game, winning outright beats doing something powerful every time.

How often do games go into a grindy late game for you? This may just be may significantly lower game time in cEDH metas talking, but from the experience I do have I've found that someone usually wins by the end of their eighth turn at the latest.

Conceptually, I understand that most cEDH decks only have a small selection of win-cons that the deck is focused around, so if each deck gets its first serious attempt at a win stopped then it might take the game a while before someone else is in a position to try to win again. I just find that with all the tutors that fly around it still doesn't take too long to be ready for a second attempt.

Am I just overestimating cEDH deck consistency, of perhaps I'm underestimating the amount of removal and counters that get used in a game?

Love your list! Very finely tuned build here. Appreciate your comments and explanations of cuts.

Would love your input on a few tweaks I've found vastly help Animar run smoother.

Burgeoning, especially in a multiplayer game, is truly phenomenal. In your opening hand, you can untap on turn 2 with 3 or 4 lands in play. Do you find it's not worth the slot?

Venser, Shaper Savant - I replaced Man o War with this, mostly because it interacts with spells, has flash, and still does what Man o War does. UU is a bit harder, granted.

My meta is definitely not as cEDH as yours! But your Animar has risen to the challenge. Keep up the good fight.

@JMCraig I do not run in a "real" cEDH meta, but the level is progressing very quickly. So I can not justify all your card selections from a "competitive" point, but I do find myself often in a position where the deck can not come back from an early removed Animar. Casting him(?) again for 5cmc is often too slow to come back. So I try to protect him as good as possible. Running Swiftfoot, Greaves and more counters helped a lot.

My problem with solely relying on statue is that an infinite Animar doesn't win on the spot either. You need a Ballista or something else do benefit from it. Attacking one opponent with a large Animar is not enough. And without Animar the Statue is also useless (at least very slow engine to get multiple etb triggers). Casting Emrakul cheap from a "medium pumped" Animar really does a lot of work. Even in a 4 man pod, you can waste a lot of resources from your opponents and have an easier time waiting for the combo.

Tishana is only good when the board is full, yes, but usually you can not cast Kozilek when you don't have a pumped Animar either. And this normally means you have at least some creatures on the board. The 7cmc make her easy to cast. When I play a Fierce Empath with some creatures and animar in play I can often cast Tishana on the same turn as often as turn 4 and draw 4-5 cards. She is also tutorable with Recruiter.

So what is your backup plan besides Kiki + Pestermite/Exarch? Purphorus + Drake without Earthcraft/Aluren doesn't seem to work. Also without Curio you can not loop Eldrazis to win. Or am I missing something?

Really appreciate the discussion. Thanks man!

Daedronus,

This is a very land-light deck and Burgeoning will mostly only drop one or two lands maximum for a card. It also doesn't put counters on Animar, can't be tutored for, and is a bad draw at any time except turn one to drop a turn two Animar. Carpet of Flowers more consistently ramps this deck into a turn two Animar and still doesn't deserve a spot because just getting a turn two animar by spending a mana isn't enough, it normally has to either be free like Lotus Petal, Chrome Mox or the similar effects or be a creature like Birds of Paradise.

Venser, Shaper Savant is not useful in the same way Man-o'-War is, being that both can bounce themselves, but Man o' War can do it for half the mana, putting twice the +1/+1 counters that Venser will on Animar. This is a huge difference when you need a number of counters to cast a game-winning spell by turn 4 or trying to win right there.

helldanno due to Animar, Soul of Elements having protection from white & black, that means I assume you are running into blue/green/red removal.

Against Red Removal, Blasphemous Act type effects are unaffected by Lightning Greaves/Swiftfoot Boots, so I assume this isn't your problem. Against Lightning Bolt effects stuff like Spellskite, Sylvan Safekeeper, Glen Elendra Archmage, Force of Will, Pact of Negation, and Mental Misstep can counter as well as just putting a few counters on Animar, Soul of Elements. Against Chaos Warp, we still have Spellskite, Sylvan Safekeeper, Glen Elendra Archmage, Force of Will, and Pact of Negation, though you could run some cards like Swan Song and Dispel can be flex slots. They also happen to slow your opponents down if they try to combo out.

Against Blue Removal, which I assume is your problem, Chain of Vapor, Into the Roil, Rapid Hybridization and Cyclonic Rift can still be blocked with Spellskite, Sylvan Safekeeper, Glen Elendra Archmage, Force of Will, and Pact of Negation, but also can be blocked by some of the flex slots I talked about prior.

Green removal is pretty much just Beast Within and Song of the Dryads and is generally rare, but if it is really hurting your, Spellskite, Sylvan Safekeeper, Glen Elendra Archmage, Force of Will, and Pact of Negation can stop them all, and Caustic Caterpillar, Brutalizer Exarch, Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger can deal with Song of the Dryads type effects.

The point is, I don't see your reason for Swiftfoot Boots or Lightning Greaves, they are two mana non-creature permanents that protect things at sorcery speed, unlike the rest of the answers.

Now while I respect your opinion in your meta on the use and capability of Emrakul, the Promised End, in this deck it commonly reduces it's cost by 1-3 mana, and can be reduced by 4-7 on a mid-sized Animar, Soul of Elements like you said, so 5-10 mana on normal by turns 5-6, or mid game. Even saying it costs is pushing it and if that is the case, you should run it if your meta is overrun with decks that are ruined by it. However due to the top tiered decks normally running a high number of instants that can be used to disable their own ability, think Chain of Vapor, they could commonly stop you from ruining themselves too bad in response to the ability before their turn. Rarely can it do more than a Word of Command because of stuff like that. Even if it just killed target player, like you said about swinging in with a swoll Animar, it doesn't win you the game to kill one player.

Again, that is only the reason that it isn't good enough for JMCraig to toss it in with the goal of this for cEDH decks, but if it works in your playgroup, do it! I have only the best wishes for you and your Animar deck!

You want a backup-backup plan I think was that second-to-last line? I don't understand why you think that is nessecary, but I will go over the plan:

Main Plan : Animar + Statue + Outlet = Win

Backup Plan : Kiki-jiki + Untapper = Win

We have a backup plan, why do you assume we need another?

You seemed to argue for Tishana over Big Kozi, but Kozilek, Butcher of Truth does have other use in the deck, and I would argue is better with a pumped Animar than Tishana. It can be free if you need a wincon and have Ancestral Statued Animar, Soul of Elements to infinity and beyond and just need to win, but don't have much more mana, Kozi is free, also with Survival of the Fittest you can fetch him and discard him to reshuffle your yard back in if you couldn't otherwise get back a card. Due to the discard being the cost, you could then fetch out a card that was in your graveyard when you fetched, making a really cool Primal Command effect for and a Survival of the Fittest.

Arguing Tishana can be fetched with Fierce Empath is fair, no arguement here, and it is even a decent option, but Imperial Recruiter has a ton of much better options, like Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker to copy the recruiter fetching Deceiver Exarch and winning the game. I can't think of a game I have ever played with Animar in which I wished I had a tishana to fetch with Imperial Recruiter. But yes, it isn't technically wrong.

The last thing I want to cover was one of your first points, about the lack of outlets to win with Ancestral Statue, with Purphoros, God of the Forge and Walking Ballista being the outlets of choice, if you have found problems tutoring tehm out, try also running Reckless Fireweaver. It doesn't combo with Man-o'-War or Shrieking Drake, but is still very useful.

@Sabre, regarding game length: yeah, things get grindy between turns 4-8, as you noticed. That actually is what i'd call a drawn-out game. Thing is, i have a pretty small, inbred meta and we know one anothers decks very well, so we usually have the tools necessary to interrupt one another, and know when to interact and when not to. its often impossible to bluff bc we're very experienced with one anothers decks and playstyles. when games are that close, we can burn one another out pretty quick.

@Daedronus, regarding burgeoning (and exploration too): the 1 CMC extra land enchants are very interesting and powerful cards in the deck, but there's a big caveat. namely, yo untap with 4 lands, you'd have had to have kept a 4-land hand, which is a terrible idea. If I can use Wiuld Growth to get Animar on turn 2 just as easily and have room for a couple other creatures in hand, the game will go much better. not to mention that we have some mild untap synergy in the list already. so basically i want to avoid playing too many extra lands, and if the payoff is just more lands its not too compelling. I'd rather have more cheap creatures in play turn 3 than more lands, for example. The goal is to maximize the deck for creature casts, which are our main gola all game, even after generating more mana is totally irrelevant. Burgeoning/Exploration become irrelevant almost immediately after your first cast, once mana is already not a limiting resource anymore. I'm very open to being proven wrong here, but how often do you find youself with plenty of lands and nothing to cast? thats the kind of inefficiency i'm trying to tune out of the deck. I suspect my fellow cEDH pilots will agree.

@Daedronus, regarding Venser: its the 4 CMC and UU that bug me to some degree, but mainly i hate having to hold mana up. thats not whatAnimar wants to do. We can def use Venser like a bad remand if we want, but once we have a couple Animar counters, the goal is almost always "find a wincon and win" not "counter something or do a value bounce". techy bounce spells are fine in the mainphase for 1CMC, but if i hold up 2CMC, theres a risk that my opponenent/s dont do anything relevant and I just wasted that mana. animar hates that.

@helldanno: between staue and Kiki, I've never needed another wincon, basically. And midgame beats from Emrakul are always inferior to casting statue once you have a "medium pumped" Animar too. Tish seems like a viable alternative to Kozilek if you want one, but I prefer Kozi just bc he can be cast on his own and still give me some draw and iommediate board control. This slot is flexible tho. I certainly do not run the full Aluren, Earthcraft or Curio combos, just bc between Statue and Kiki i've never had a problem winning. I played several of these cards for years, and the number of times i won by Curio or Earthcraft were negligible. Kiki, however, started putting up numbers as soon as I added him. Therefore He stayed (and is a Recruitable one card combo, BTW) but the others did not. Regrading Wraths; if your meta really has so many that you cant surviv by getting an early glen, then def play some more counters. I've never needed them tho. must be a meta thing!

@SynergyBuild: you saved me a lot of time; this is pretty much exactly what I wanted to say! I specifically like highlighting some of the more unique uses for Kozi. He may not be an allstar in any one aspect, but hes a very capable role-player, and does a lot of interesting little things for us.

Hey, I have a quick question. I have been building/refining and playing animar for around three years now, and in the C19 update I noticed that you took out Phyrexian metamorph. My question is why would you drop the card that lets you win when you draw imperial recruiter? Most people treat recruiter as a win on the spot card, so Why would you take out the card that actually lets you win on the spot

DreadSpud, I think Dark-Dweller Oracle came in around that time, which is basically Skullclamp #2, and the metamorph can't compete. With Imperial Recruiter lines and Phyrexian Metamorph, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker/Deceiver Exarch has replaced them, as the line is more compact and instantly wins.

I like the metamorph kill personally because you only need animar w/ 2 counters, one red source, and one blue source to kill your opponent versus the kiki kill which costs a lot more mana.

DreadSpud, what line are you using?

The metamorph kill sacrifices most of your life to wing into one guy with a big (non infinite) Animar. Thtas quite a gamble even in duel. Statue and Kiki are no-risk ways of winning, and Kiki is actually also a 1-card win with recruiter. Frankly, Recruiter is oversold as a 1-card win for the deck; its a solid enabler, but your best lines don't revolve around recruiter unless you put a ton of mana into it (Rec>Empath>Brutalizer for Statue is painfully time consuming but works, at least).

So if youre doing a lot of 1v1 matches you may want to keep Metamorph, but in multi he was a mediocre value card in like 90% of games or more. he's just a victim of the deck growing and evolving to find better, more efficient wincons.

Oh, the Shrieking Drake line that isn't infinite, I meant a win-con line, not a near-kill a player line.

You can cast Rec, get metamorph, copy rec to get Shreiking Drake, then cast it to bounce the metamorph. this sets you up to spam metamorph for free until animar hits 18, cast copying Rec to get empath (19) cast empath to get Ulamog (20), clear blockers with ulamog (21) then swing. it's VERY life intensive tho.

yeah, that line is the reason Rec built up a reputation in the deck, but its very risky in multiplayer, and I don't think we really want to rely on it these days. Duel/French/MTGO 1v1 may be a different world, but it's not work it to me.