Whenver I've tried Aluren it ends up eating a lot of slots (competes on curve with animar and the bouncers you have to add end up being kinda jank). Kiki on the other hand is a great addition to the deck. the untappers are very reasonable additions to the deck on their own, and Kiki himself can grind value pretty well. Its not as fast as using Kiri-Onna as the decks main non-statue win, but it works well if Animar is getting removed.

Now if your issue is boardwipes more than spot removal, i'd recommend buffing up your suite of counters. the usual 0-1 CMC ones are great (esp with Spellseeker in the deck!), but Glen is the real standout here. she helps you build your board and then protects it. she's my go-to fetch against stuff like mono-W or mono-B decks that lean on wraths. very few decks will be firing wraths faster than you can stop them if you use these cards proactively. more to the point, it should be possible to outrun these kinds of midrangey builds after you counter a big haymaker or two.

If you need more creature hate to beat fatties, Animar is relatively light on options. Clone and Control effects are decent (we're not in removal colors) but there arent a lot of good ones. Gilded drake is the top pick obvi, but i like Ulvenwald Tracker as a piece of cheap, creature-based removal (just slam the opponent's best guy into a powered-up Animar). If you want to run a fatty or two of your own, new-Ulamog is a house, as is old-Kozi (for the Annihilator). Still, your best way to beat these decks is just outrun them. having a combo out is always better than beating down with fatties. Add some cheap draw/tutor stuff and go for speed.

All in all tho, wrath/stax heavy matchups just arent good ones for a creature deck like Animar, esp if theyre bringing some key hate like Torpor Orb/Trinisphere. IMO, the way to win is tempo out your boardstate so as not to eat a wrath while simultaneously not holding back so much that you fall behind to the stax. If that sounds super impractical and draw-dependent, it is! Against my own loaner Mono-B stax deck, which isnt even super well-tuned, I have a pretty poor winrate. The best games are ones where I can just outrun the hate. The only downside to going super deep on speed is that you have to shave protection/interaction pieces, at which point other adaptive combo lists will stomp you. So it's all a matter of tuning for your meta, both in terms of your decklist and playstyle. If you have a decklist or some more info on your meta maybe I can offer more advice!

In a wrath-heavy meta, I think it is worth looking at re-including bounce creatures like Shrieking Drake and Man-o'-War . The bounce creatures, for the sake of putting counters on Animar, effectively count as an extra card in hand for each time you cast them and bounce them back to your hand. They let you play conservatively with your cards, saving you from having to play out your full hand just for the sake of ramping, and as such help cut down on how much card disadvantage you suffer when a wrath lands.

I know that the latest Animar lists have cut the bounce creatures except for Kiri-Onna due do them not doing much on their own but I've rarely been unhappy with Shrieking Drake from a card and mana value perspective, and I think that it has even become more reliable as Animar mana-bases have adjusted to provide as much blue mana as possible. It may not have as much impact in some cEDH metas, but I think that it is a solid inclusion if you know that Animar will have to contend with a significant number of wrath effects.

Really solid point about Drake. I think he at least is worth consideration, if not the 2-3 CMC ones. I like the idea of using him an efficient source of counters esp with the shift in the manabase towards more U.

Thank u both JMCraig and SaberTech for the suggestions!

this is the current paper version of the deck that I'm running right now: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/harvest-animar-4/?cb=1553904107 As I said before, it's still missing a gilded drake and mana basis is not so optmized... I added man-o-war, since it can help me to deal with some stax, but also to combo out when playing 1v1. feel free to give any suggestions abt cut downs and add ins.

decks i usually play against: sisay, scarab gob, thalrand, yidris, breya, meren, atraxa, Daretti Scrap Savant, child of alara (lands), derevi, Xenagos God of Revels, Varolz and, also some monoB that hurts hehe

cheers!

@tlfernan The new Vivien card that is coming out looks like it might be a good meta inclusion for you. 3 mana for a non-creature spell is about as steep as Animar is willing to go, but the fact that it gives all your creature spells flash helps a lot when trying to play around wrath effects. The fact that it can also dig 3 cards into your deck the turn it comes down helps soften the blow of having to pay 3 mana for just one card.

Hmm, Vivien seems like a spicy meta-pick for sure, and def worth trying out if you're looking to keep the Aluren package.

That said, it bums me out that WAR is so deep on Planeswalkers. They're inherently sketchy in cEDH and especially bad in Animar (compared to creatures with the same static abilities, at least). Here's hoping some kind of playable Proliferate-type card is printed. Maybe another Bond Beetle??

There is that 3CMC blue creature that proliferates, but of course it only proliferates each time you cast a non-creature spell. And at 3CMC I guess it would be too slow to do much for Animar even if it triggered off creature spells.

A 1CMC 0/1 that proliferates when it enters the battlefield would be pretty nice to see printed in this set.

The fact that the new Vivien gives creature spells flash and digs into the deck on the turn it enters for just 3 mana is a sweet deal, but I think that in fast cEDH metas it's just that little bit too slow. However, assuming you take 1 turn to uptick her, she can dig you 6 cards deeper into your deck over the course of 3 turns and still stick around to let you play your combo and interactive creatures at instant speed. There's also something to be said for Animar being able to step outside its usual sorcery-speed play style. And if you are playing in a meta where the level of interaction tends to often slow things down, that extra digging power seems worthwhile. At the very least, I think that the card can potentially do more for the deck than, say, Loyal Drake . In the end though, I have a hard time justifying its inclusion in a baseline Animar list because playing it early will probably unnecessarily cost you 1 turn until you can combo off. I would need a strong meta reason to include it.

I think a more Aluren-style list that plays at instant speed could be really cool for sure.

Hows the new Fblthp looking? Blue Elvish Visionary is worth a slot to me, even if all the other abilities are useless.

I'm liking him. Right now. I been playing sans green for a bit. I'm a bit behind on the Wild Harvest variant.

All in I think all the variants will be able to use him. He is Visionary

Cut myself off.

He is Visionary number 2, plus he feeds Amber in a color that we want to use.

I think that the question is what comes out for him? People who run Priest of Titania will probably want to keep the Visionary, but without any elf-relevant cards I think that Fblthp has more relevance to the deck by being blue and legendary. Has using Wall of Blossoms as a blocker ever felt relevant when playing against Tymna the Weaver decks? If not, Fblthp might be better because his 1 toughness means that he dies to Skullclamp. What else in the deck feels less valuable than having another cantrip creature?

Yea off the top Priest and Oracle are my intital thoughts. Possibly a "hatebear" like scooze, or cratermaker. I'm not facing many Hulk decks, nor and hate ie Spirit of the Labyrinth. So those are another possiblity.

I'll be cutting ScOoze for sure. the number of GY decks that can't play around it is going down. Consult can play around it, Frog can play around it, Hunlk can play around it ETC. without many old-school Buried-Alive GY combos or GY-value decks around it feels a lot weaker. Plus then I can keep the max number of good cantrip creatures, who add a lot to the deck.

I was trying to think of a way that Fblthp's other triggers could ever be relevant in Animar, and people in the Discord mentioned that playing him off the top of the deck with Vizier of the Menagerie would allow you to draw 2 cards off Fblthp. It's a pretty specific situation, but it is one thing that Fblthp can do that Visionary and Blossoms can't on top of being able to power Mox Amber .

Oh wow, you're right. definitely a niche play, but its really neat.

Saber nice line. Meanwhile I have mashed a pile for Homonculi Staff

@AlarmedNine I've seen a bunch of Homonculi Staff stacks on Reddit. I think it's awesome that people looked Fblthp and thought to themselves, "...I can combo with that."

Thoughts on Iron Bully, Pollenbright Druid, Merfolk Skydiver? Bloom hulk is def too expensive.

I don't really like an of those. The card that interests me the most is Neoform. I'm not quite sure on the line for it yet. I was thinking something to do with the old recruiter line. It does put our 3 drops into statue into Ancestral Statue, which is solid and doesn't exile itself so Ewit can get it back if necessary.

Neoform is a fantastic Animar card. We don't need a specific line for it bc it does everything. It's a cheap creature tutor that facilitates every other combo line and interactive play we use. my only gripe is that i wont be able to get my foil for a month!

Oh, regarding the proliferate guys: this effect isnt very useful to us past 1 CMC. since every creature gives us a counter anyway and we only need 3-4 to go off, its better for the deck to focus on small creatures with their own relevant abilities. Hence no VErderous Hulk/Deepglow Skate etc. Even Ironshell Beetle/Scrounging Bandar are a bit ineffective.

Yeah, I'm going to need to fit Neoform in. You can grab Neoform with Spellseeker and then sac the Spellseeker for Ancestral Statue . That's a pretty decent alternate line if you either don't have the mana or think that it's too risky that turn to choose and cast Weird Harvest.

Taking a 2 drop and turning it into Rishkar, Peema Renegade should help spread around a significant number of counters to ramp you, but that's the least powerful synergistic interaction that Neoform offers. Most of the time you are going to be using it to go from a 2 drop into one of your tutor creatures or a 3 drop into either Ancestral Statue or Glen Elendra Archmage .

You can also use Neoform to go from a 2 drop into Eternal Witness , return Neoform to your hand, and then cast it again sacrificing the Witness to get to Ancestral Statue. It costs you one more mana than Eldritch Evolution does at that point, but hey, options are options.

Yea I like the flexibility of it. Turning a dork into a hatebear or the line SaberTech mentioned are all good.

Overall I will be picking this card up. WAR has been very kind to us. Can't wait to see what happens next.

People on the discord have been pointing out a new combo line with Neoform.

(Starting with Animar with 2 counters) Imperial Recruiter (R) > get Spellseeker (U) > get Neoform (UG) > sac Spellseeker to get Ancestral Statue > bounce statue a bunch of times > bounce Recruiter with statue and recast it (R) > get Walking Ballista > cast Ballista for the win.

Total Mana Cost of Combo Line: RRUUG

Honestly, if you don't have the budget or cards to build a perfect mana base for a Kiri-Onna build, I think that running a Kiki-Jiki build with the Neoform line as backup is a viable option. You'll want to play Neoform in the baseline build anyway, so you aren't even really giving up slots to additional combo support cards.