I just recently added Barrin, Master Wizard to my deck to see how well it works for me. Haven't actually played it that much yet, but I did realize that it works well in combination with Gilded Drake in case the game goes long and you have to grind through your opponent's creatures. Sacrificing mana dorks to keep stealing your opponents' commanders is fun, and if you manage to get infinite treasure tokens with Barrin + Dockside Extortionist then there is the option of just gaining control of all creatures on the board in one go with the Drake. Or you could just kill everyone off the treasure tokens if you have Walking Ballista or Reckless Fireweaver.

Thus far, in the comparison between Kiri-Onna vs Barrin, my current conclusions are:

Kiri gives you a win line off of just Imperial Recruiter, has a combo line that only needs three mana, and offers an alternative line of play if you were to use Neoform to get Imperial Recruiter that requires one less mana than the next best alternative. On the downside, running Kiri can put some rougher demands on your mana base, isn't that great of a card on its own, and can be awkward if in your opening hand.

Barrin is cheaper to cast, doesn't put the same demands on your mana base, has repeat utility, and offers combo lines that aren't dependent on Animar as long as your opponents have enough artifacts and enchantments out. However, you miss out on some of the efficiency that Kiri offers, which can make all the difference in some situations.

Considering that my current mana base isn't refined enough to offer the consistent amount of Blue mana that makes Kiri work at its best, and my own personal bias about not wanting all my win conditions to be dependent on my commander, I lean more towards Barrin.

Correction: The Kiri line requires 3 blue lands and a one-shot source of 1 red mana.

I've come to basically the same conclusions so far. The major hangup for Kiri in my experience was having to sequence my fetches in such a was that I could have the R i need for Animar by turn 2, but then have enough painless Islands to win with Kiri shortly thereafter. Even with a full set of duals, fetches and Wood Elves it was often a little awkward in a way that Barrin completely dodges. And fwiw, its not cheap but you can Recruit Barrin, use him to Bounce Recruiter, Recruit Dockside, maka mana, BOunce Recruiter again, and finally Recruit Ballista. Super mana-intensive, but its technically a 1-card win and you don't need Animar.

As an added bonus, Barrin has def proven himself to be more useful than expected in a lot of niche circumstances. I've actually found myself value-casting him in grindier games just to recycle tutor/Draw ETBs or reset a Revoker. That Gilded Drake scenario is super spicy and I hadn't even though of it, so I'm sure there are even more good fringe uses out there. Basically, Barrin feels a lot like Cloudstone used to: a combo enabler that doubles as a decent bounce value engine. The difference is that he's almost always cheaper and easier to use, and he synergizes really nicely with our existing gameplan.

Any chance to test the Oracle? I haven't played with it yet but I'm thinking it'll be a pretty painless way to add a bonus win if we need it.

I intend to get a copy to try, but I'm still trying to figure out in what situations it would be better to go for the Oracle instead of just going for Ballista.

The most likely scenario I can think of is if you or an opponent has Collector Ouphe (or Null Rod / Stony Silence) out at the time you are looking to combo off. Still, casting the Oracle will cost you UU once you draw it. For 1R you would be able to cast Goblin Cratermaker and activate it to kill an Ouphe and then win with Ballista + Painter's Servant + Animar. If you were running Reclamation Sage instead of the Oracle you would only need to pay G to kill a Null Rod or Stony Silence and it would give you another piece of interaction in your list that works with Barrin to net value. And in the end, going the Ballista route leaves you with more of a deck in the end than the Oracle would if you get interrupted.

What sort of situations are you envisioning where the Oracle would be better than Ballista as your win condition?

It would, admittedly, make for a more convenient backup win condition if something happened to your Ballista that left it unavailable. I'm not sure how often something like that happens. Working your way into a combo line with Barrin wouldn't be as easy as an Oracle line would, so I can see why having the Oracle for a bit of redundancy is appealing.

I guess I can't really argue against redundancy. I still run Kiki-Jiki combo in my list as a win condition that doesn't require Animar because I don't like being dependent on my Commander to net wins. Running Barrin now is making me reconsider the inclusion of Kiki but most of my turn 3 wins have been thanks to it, so there is that.

I definitely agree that Ballista is the most efficient, resilient outlet for the deck in almost every game. I see Oracle as a backup for the scenarios you mention, namely when we get our Balllista exiled somehow or in fringe cases where we are up against more artifact hate than we can handle easily. In my case personally, some of the toughest matchups I've had were against a Food Chain guy who kept using Extract etc. to remove my Ballista. There was also a time a while back where 2-3 of the comp decks at my LGS were running Praetor's Grasp, which is just as bad for us but can also give away free wins sometimes (stealing my Drake to steal Animar was later determined to be an equally-devastating play).

The reason I'm only now bothering to add a backup outlet to the deck (I had resisted wasting our precious slots for a long time bc we don't have many good CA engines and need every draw to count) is bc Oracle is the first combo outlet that's also a decent card all on its own. Not like Barrin, who can surprise us in niche cases outside his combo, but a card I legit never feel bad value-casting while we build up. Oracle's presence in the deck is extremely minimal since it's AT WORST Omenspeaker (a card I'd almost considered playing myself), and on average gives us 3-4 "scries". If it didn't have the "you win" effect, it'd still be a good budget addition to the deck or something to test out when you need a boost of speed.

It's also worth noting that "You win the Game" is effectively the strongest wincon you can get. There are times where infinite pings don't get there, but "You Win" is pretty much the ultimate play, regardless of boardstate. Oracle works pretty well with our existing combos (Statue+Whisperer, Barrin+Dockside+Elvish Vis, the Multi-tutors) while giving us an alternative wincon to Ballista which covers all it's weaknesses (artifact hate, activated-ability hate, hexproof, damage prevention).

So yeah, I wouldn't try to set up Oracle wins intentionally unless you really need to. Sometimes you'll just draw into a nutty hand where you can win just as easily with either outlet, but more often than not you'll only want to shoot for Oracle if you're off Ballista for some important reason. In probably 90% of games Oracle's just a B-grade filtering card, but it adds a bit of flexibility to the deck for almost no appreciable cost, so I'm happy with it.

Yeah, if you need the backup as a meta call then I won't argue with that. I had my mind geared more towards a baseline build. And in testing I have run into a few situations where having the Oracle as an option would have made things a lot easier. It takes some of the pressure off of having to really plan ahead with your mana and plays when dealing with an active Glimpse of Nature or Beast Whisperer.

The topic of Extract actually brings up a point of conflict between my personal deck-building philosophy and proper cEDH deck building. Outside of Animar, I take into consideration something I like to call the "Sadistic Sacrament rule". The basic idea is that I have three opponents, so if each opponent manages to take care of one of my deck's key cards will I still have a viable game plan for winning? When testing a list I'll take out my three best cards and see how well the deck manages to still compete. The nature of the cEDH format and deck building makes the rule less relevant, but it tends to help me a lot when building casual or 75% style decks.

And as a side note, putting together a combo with Barrin and Extortionist is a lot easier than I was expecting, especially if you can space them out over two turns. It's hard to goldfish hands that center around the Extortionist though, because in reality its effectiveness is dependent on the board state.

In regards to having Animar stolen with Gilded Drake, that's one of the reasons I've always run both Phyrexian Metamorph and Phantasmal Image in my list. Just clone the drake and take Animar back. After having a Drake used on me, I've used Kiki-Jiki to make me a new drake every turn to take Animar and their other important creatures.

Extract Effects can be a total pain for us, so yeah, I agree, it's good to have a couple layers of combo potential. Running both Statue and Barrin+Dockside as easy infinite cast-combos feels really good, and having Ballista and Oracle as outlets has been going pretty well in testing (Oracle's not usually relevant, but she's never a burden). One of my fav things about running Kiki for a while was that if the deck's main gameplan kept taking heat, i could always pivot to the Kiki plan and win that way without relying on any of my other support stuff if i didnt need to.

On the other hand, adding too many combos can definitely be a waste of slots. In my casual Sydri I run Sydri+Reservoir, Future+Top, Citadel+Top and Thopter+Sword+Urza and it feels a little bulky. In a comp deck I'd be running better tutors and interaction so I could really double down on the good stuff. Animar is far from the most slot-efficient deck out there (Bond Beetle is a house for us, lol) but even there I'm all about shaving mediocre combo-only cards. With cEDH-level support, I've found that you almost always only need a single good wincon, and shaving the cunkier pieces frees up room for even more card quality. The fact that Oracle is an almost "free" inclusion is the main reason i'm so keen on it.

On another note, I'm glad your experience with Barring has been the same as mine. Dockside is obviously a premium mana-generator for the deck (i usually goldfish it conservatively as 3 treasures before turn 4, then 4 treasures after) but I had a lot of trepidation ordering and sleeving up an old, memey and utterly-unplayed card like Barrin and calling it a wincon. Needless to say, Barrin and the combo have both pleasantly surprised me. For such a clunky card, Barrin is a surprisingly solid value piece in our shell, moreso than anywhere else in cEDH i'd bet.

Finally, cloning the drake is definitely my go-to as well. I used to be a little hesitant to run too many clones since their value is super conditional, but the quality of creatures both in our deck and in the meta at large is looking better than ever. ripping off a Dockside or Tymna is absolutely worth it, and duplicating our own Sphinx is such a dirty play. Also for the record, Barrin is a solid way to recover our Animar as well!

Cloning a Beast Whisperer can go a long way too.

It also dawned on me that even if you don't have infinite counters on Animar, if you can manage to get 8 or 10 counter on him it makes Barrin + Walking Ballista a legitimate threat on the board. At the very least, they will make it very difficult for your opponents to keep their creatures around.

And yeah, I know that keeping the three cards in deck for the Kiki combo is clunky. The unfortunate truth is that I don't get to play cEDH games that often. Usually what happens is a tell people that I have the deck and sometimes they will all pull out their best decks and want to take a shot at it. When you play outside the cEDH meta, there are a lot more wrath and non-black/white removal spells to ruin Animar's fun. Having the Kiki combo lets me catch people off guard because they think I'm down and out for a while after a wrath clears my board. That's also the reason why I don't have Mental Misstep in my list currently, it's a lot worse outside of the cEDH meta.

If I ever find myself a regular group of cEDH people to play with on a regular basis I'll switch out the clunkier pieces of my deck, but for now I find that they give me a bit more resilience when dealing with metas consisting of mostly highly tuned casual decks.

By the way, I felt that with the current version of my deck it was pretty optimized so I tried experimenting a bit with the deck and I gotta say:

I think Stunt Double is an underrated pick, even if it's at 4 mana. I think the ability to copy your opponents' best creature (like my usual target of Tymna), or even protect Animar from Gilded Drake.

I just wanna know what you think of it. It may be clunky but it has potential as well

I def tried out Double when it released, since its a pretty unique effect at instant speed. Ultimately I found it a bit to situational for 4 CMC, but the meta has changed a lot since I first tested the card. Cutting either of the other two clones would prob be the way to go, but since they each have a unique niche (colorless costs for combo lines or just being 2CMC) it'll be a tight fit. I'd be curious to try him out, maybe in the Phantasmal Image slot.

What about Yorvo, lord of Garenbrig from

Well, you could definitely make Yorvo pretty beefy in this deck, but I'm not seeing any utility other than that. Animar himself is already a big beater most of the time, even compared to what you might see in more casual pods. Even if the deck ran more +1 counter synergy, which we dont, i'd still struggle to see the value in a super color-intensive midrange beater like Yorvo

If you want to dig deeper into the +1 counters synergies, there's a lot of spicy stuff like Hardened Scales, Riskar, Ironshell Bttele/Scrounging Bandar etc you could do tho. Ultimately, this list is just more focused on the combo package than beefy beaters.

Could someone explain how walking ballista wins with animar’s infinite counters. I’ve always been told animar can’t reduce Or pay for X costs.

You can indeed use Animar to reduce the cost for which you're casting Ballista. Animar's ability reduces the cost of the Ballista, so you can cast for a huge value of 2X without needing any extra mana. It works since you're not using Animar to pay that mana, simply to reduce the cost of the Ballista.

From the comprehensive rules:

107.3a "If a spell or activated ability has a mana cost, alternative cost, additional cost, and/or activation cost with an {X}, [-X], or X in it, and the value of X isn’t defined by the text of that spell or ability, the controller of that spell or ability chooses and announces the value of X as part of casting the spell or activating the ability. (See rule 601, “Casting Spells.”) While a spell is on the stack, any X in its mana cost or in any alternative cost or additional cost it has equals the announced value. While an activated ability is on the stack, any X in its activation cost equals the announced value."

And from Animar's rulings on Gatherer:

"To determine the total cost of a creature spell, start with the mana cost or alternative cost you’re paying, add any cost increases, then apply any cost reductions. The converted mana cost of the creature remains unchanged, no matter what the total cost to cast it was."

So you define the XX CMC of Ballista on the stack, then Animar reduces it. Announce half the number of counters on Animar, and you don't have to pay any mana, but Balllista still enters with all his counters.

It's a little complicated, but I proise it works! Hope this explanation helps.

Question for any other Animar players trapped inside goldfishing games lately: How has Force been running for you folks? I've found it increasingly clunky in the deck with our gradual shift into more green stuff. I think Animar is dangeroulsy close to the minimum number of blue cards we can get away with and still play Force consistently. I'm leaning towards keeping it for now bc it's saved my ass in countless games, but Veil of Summer seems like a very compelling replacement these days. What are your thoughts?

I gave up FoW a while ago due to its inconsistency. I just found it a dead card in my hand too often because I didn't have another blue card to pitch to it and I didn't have 5 mana to spare to cast it.

I've actually been thinking about the viability of running Stifle, although its viability will likely be meta dependent. It's cheap enough to run at 1 mana and can stop both a Hulk death trigger and a Thassa's Oracle trigger. Countering the Oracle trigger after the opponent has resolved their Demonic Consultation is one of the best ways to kill the opponent with their own combo, although it is also the riskiest point to try to stop them. Still, it's a 1 mana counter option for Animar that has a bunch of other relevant targets.

Veil of Summer is great though. It can perform like a 1 mana defensive counterspell that cantrips, or you can test the waters by casting it preemptively and if it resolves it will be much harder for your opponents to do anything to stop you from comboing off.

Stifel's a great card; I played it in Esper storm with Zur but had to cut it for space when i went to 4C. I think Animar may have room for it though, and not just because Nimble Obstructionist is so bad by comparison. I think I'll swap Force for Veil and maybe try out Stifle in a few decks too. the card is such a spicy bit of tech.

Kiri is out, but the combo section still mentions her, just replace her with the wizard?

Right, I discussed that a bit in the comments and in the changelog, but you got the gist of it; I just found that Barrin+Dockside did a better job as a backup combo in my games. Their combo doesn't have the same land-restrictions, and barrin himself seems like a better value card outside the combo itself. We can still win off a 1-card recruiter line, which is more mana-intensive and simultaneously more flexible than with Kiri. Shared Summons and Harvest also work well as backup 1-card wins with Barrin of course (you can either 5-mana Harvest for both pieces and an outlet, or Shared for Dockside and Spellseeker, cast both to make mana and tutor Harvest, then Harvest for Barrin and an outlet, which is super spicy).

Some lists still have Kiri in the main board, and I still consider her a totally viable choice, I just personally like Barrin. The two are equally viable IMO, it's just a matter of how you want to set the deck up (lands are an important consideration, as is whether to run Shared Summons and Metamorph), how you like to play, and what your meta looks like (My Dockside sees a TON of artifacts and enchants).

I'd recommend at least trying it both ways and seeing which combo you like. Kiri may still be a good pick for the blind/Cockatrice meta bc it can be faster if you sequence your lands well, but Dockside is a solid pick too, and worth consideration for the deck. Good luck with it!

Wow, Fierce Guardianship is a strong card, arguably moreso than Force of Will/Negation for this deck. We def want Animar to be in play at all times, so this is basically a free Negate for the deck 90% of the time we'd want to cast it. I'll def be slotting one in ASAP.

Yeah, Commander 2020 has been very nice to Animar in regards to the new interactive/defensive options it is giving up. Since we usually want Animar out turn 2, Fierce Guardianship and Deflecting Swat are both often just going to be free spells for us. I like that Deflecting Swat can let us redirect Chain of Vapor to one of our cantrip creatures, or it could let us redirect someone else's removal to get rid of annoying cards like Hushbringer or Torpor Orb. And since it can also redirect abilities, I'm looking forward to the day when I can send someone's Aetherflux Reservoir activation back to their face.

Slippery Bogbonder is another viable defensive option, although with the other two spells already I don't think it is necessary.

Ikoria gives us Gemrazer as a way of giving Animar a bigger body, a counter, and a removal effect that gets around Torpor Orb all for the cost of just GG.

Spoilers aren't even done yet and that is already four very viable options for Animar. Usually we are happy to just get one. None of them are potential win-cons but free-to-cast protection/interaction options are very much appreciated.

Oh, and Gemrazer also gives Animar both Reach and Trample on top of a bigger body. That is nothing to sneeze at given Animar's explosive aggro potential.

I'm definitely interested in Deflecting Swat too. It's a little trickier to evaluate than just a free counterspell, but I'll test it out for sure, and it seems really promising.

Bogbender is such a fun card. Bogles was my first (meta) Modern deck, so I'm personally a fan, but I'm not convinced it deserves a slot on top of all our free spells, Veil, Skite/Painter and Syvan Safekeeper. The biggest Issue Animar has is Wrath/Whipflare type effects, which this doesn't help much with. Still, its such a spicy pick!

Gemrazer seems really promising too. Repeatable removal is always nice, and it beats Caterpillar and ties Cratermaker on price. Force of Vigor is arguably the most efficient pick for this slot, and Bane is the most powerful, but having more viable cheap creature options is really nice. The added keywords are a real nice bonus too

One question guys, sorry.... I don't know if I have missed something but mutate doesn't say when you attack but when it mutates. So how is it a repeatable ability!?

Thanks in advance.

Hmm, i was under the impression that if you put it on top you could trigger Mutate again somehow, but I think youre right that it's not possible. Mutate is super hard for me to evaluate