If there were other creatures with Mutate in the deck then you could get multiple triggers. Each time you Mutate the same creature, all "when this creature mutates" abilities that card has will trigger. Gemrazer doesn't even need to be the top card of the stack since whatever the top card of the Mutate pile is has all the abilities of all the other cards below it. But if Gemrazer is the only card with mutate in the deck, you will only ever get the one trigger.

I keep hearing people say that they would take out Caustic Caterpillar for Gemrazer because the Caterpillar will always end up costing you 3 mana total to cast and destroy something, but I honestly think that people underestimate the value of the Caterpillar only being 1 cmc. Being able to start with a 1 cmc creature to start putting counters on Animar makes it much easier to be able to go from dropping Animar on turn 2 to playing 3+ creatures turn 3, which increases the chance of being able to threaten to combo off turn 4. The more viable 1 cmc creatures the deck has, the greater the chance one will be in your hand to help get that ramp train started, and the Caterpillar is a 1 cmc creature with a very relevant ability that gets around Torpor Orb and similar effects. There is also value in just playing it and letting it sit on the field to potentially make opponents wait a turn or two before playing their important artifacts.

Right, unless the deck doubles down on Mutate i guess it's a 1-shot Rec Sage effect. I agree that caterpillar should keep his spot too, even if it's an extra mana. it can be triggered at instant speed and over multiple turns, plus its a perfect turn-3 first cast. 1-drops are super important IMO for exactly that reason.

So far I'm thinking of cutting Revoker for Guardianship, Cratermaker for Gemrazer (maybe, it's super meta-dependent) and maybe trying Tishana in place of either vizier or Clamp. I'm also considering Loyal Drake and Slithermuse, but I haven't found enough cards I really want to cut. maybe Shared summons?

I've seen talk on Discord that, in the face of cards like Notion Thief and Narset, Parter of Veils being more prominent these days, people have been cutting back on cantrip creatures in the deck. I'm not sure how I feel about that, since cantrip creatures contribute a lot to the storm-like aspect of the deck. People seem to drop Sea Gate Oracle and Raven Familiar pretty frequently, but those actually get around Narset and Thief. Wall of Blossoms is also a card that a lot of people feel ok cutting, so swapping that out for Loyal Drake is an option.

People seem to have mixed opinions on Siren Stormtamer. That could possibly be replaced with Fierce Guardianship. You run back into the discussion regarding the value of 1 cmc creatures in Animar with that one though.

There's the question of if you need a second recursion card in the form of Den Protector if you could just replace it with a free counterspell like Fierce Guardianship to help protect your stuff to begin with. Although, being able to flip it at instant speed to get Fierce Guardianship back for a second cast is pretty nice.

Phyrexian Revoker is a meta flex slot, but being able to use it to proactively shut down Hermit Druid or Nomads en-Kor in Hulk decks is useful for buying time, and hulk decks are pretty prevalent.

Animar's list has gotten pretty tight by this point. Cuts are hard.

True, giving us a new card every set for the last few years has really tightened things up! I think I'll have to see how my local/online meta shakes out with the way things are going and make some tweaks according to that.

Basically i agree tho: cantrip guys are pretty crucial IMO, as are 1-drops. Narset/Notion are nasty cards, but we are still somewhat limited in our topdecks and need all the smoothing we can get. I'd rather adjust my meta hate than the core of the deck personally. Still, there aren't any easy cuts left!

Ok, so is as I have comprehend. Thanks

One consideration, I find Barracuda of the Tide an interesting card to cast any cart at instant speed like glimps that I lastly find hard to optimize over the fact that is nearly irrelevant to combos.

Toughs!?

Baracuda's pretty solid, but we do already have access to Dosan/City of Solitude, and i think those would create far fewer surprise blowlouts. Plus our uncounterable guys like Serpopard/Spinner seem like they fill a very similar role with a bit less risk.

What about the new Parcelbeast? Is it worth a slot?

Shiroi87 the 3 mana draw a card per turn at best? Loyal Drake is that for one and isn't worth it, doubtful xD

Yeah, I'm not seeing a home for Parcelbeast in the deck either. We have a lot of better, cheaper card advantage engines, and like SynergyBuild says, there are some great ones we don't even have room for already. We'd have to go pretty deep on untapping/mutate syngergies before this guy becomes appreciably better than something like Slithermuse, IMO.

What about song of creation? Too risky?

Yeah, unless we hold it until late enough the we can guarantee a few followup casts, theres a real risk that we have to cast it, pass, and basically Mind Twist ourselves. At almost any point in the game, Beast Whisperer/Soul of the Harvest/Prime Sage is a much safe pick, not to mention Sphinx/Tishana. This card falls into the same category as other expensive, big draw cards, but unlike the other ones, it takes a bit of setup and has a real downside. And frankly, if we have to save it until we have 6+ mana and a few good cards in hand, I'd rather be using a big tutor and just winning.

Also worth noting that although we get 2 draws, they're mandatory, not "may", which means we'd need to kill this thing before we win. Not too hard since we'll be holding our whole deck and have stuff like Dockside for mana and Caterpillar for removal, but its something to consider. It's a downside i don't mind on Glimpse bc it starts at 3 mana cheaper and you can easily just let it run out, but it takes more effort with Song.

This new spoiler seems to me like it would be great in this deck. But I’m no expert thoughts? Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy

Thats tricky card to evaluate, but super interesting. I'm basically thinking out loud here, so jump in when i miss stuff!

First, it's a conditional mana-adder at 2 CMC, which is above rate. We're running around 17 things that would be affected by it too, so he could easily make back the mana that was spent to cast him early on and generate a big pile of mana for something like Harvest later. Still, I've ended up cutting comparable cards like Rishkar and Priest of Titania just because I needed more interaction and early-game draw rather than big mana, so I personally wouldn't be leaning towards this guy based on his first effect. Still works well in the deck tho.

His second ability isn't one that we'd activate very often unless we had infinite colored mana to spend, sort of like Thras or Urza (although he's at 7 colored mana, which is nontrivially harder to get to than 4-5 colorless). So assuming his ability is just a mana outlet and not a value play, that means we need a mana combo to feed into him. I'm currently running Dockside+Barrin, but the Kiri combo would work too, and if you're running p-Drake for that line, there are prob a handful of other worthwhile tricks you can use. With enough mana it's possible to use Recruiter to fetch Barrin, bounce Rec to fetch Dockside, make mana, and bounce Rec to fetch Kinnan and win. My issue is, Ballista is already a mana outlet, but he also works with animar in a way that Kinnan doesn't. Kinnan just converts mana into draws, which is something we already can do with out tutor lines or ballista himself. He's basically a mana dump for a deck that isn't built to make mana.

So where would he fit in Animar? In my list, the easiest swap would prob be Thassa's Oracle, which is just a combo outlet with some marginal value, much like Kinnan himself. I've had moderate success with Orcale, mainly as an OK draw effect but also once or twice when my other combos are getting hated out with extreme prejudice. In those cases, Oracle is relevant bc she wins the game in a unique, powerful way (she just says "you win") once you set up infinite blinks/draws etc. Kinnan draws you your deck and plays out your non-Human creatures (Killing Ballista in the process, amusingly), which USUALLY gives you the win based on one of the existing combos in the deck. The play would have to be some tricky way of reanimating Ballista (eWitt and Den Pro are humans, lol) or of blinking Thassa's Oracle a couple times, both of which would be very possible, especially since I'd likely have Barrin+Dockside handy if I have infinite mana. In other words, Kinnan's main role in my build would be to set up my existing wincons, so I'd have to keep Thassa's Oracle and Ballista in the deck of course to take full advantage of him. At that point of course, it'd be more convenient to simply with with our existing lines, since they're all basically 1-card self-tutored wins anyway. Kinnan can sub into man of them, but he's not necessary there, and rarely makes things any faster or easier. Adding Purph effects back in would make a difference, but they're mostly overkill IMO.

That's all assuming I just swap him into my existing list. As his own commander (of a fullon Scepter/Bloom Tender+Freed infinite mana list) he'd be much more relevant, as he would be if i were to dedicate more slots to making infinite mana. That's never been the best route for the deck to go though, and I don't think gaining another outlet tips the balance too much. The question then is whether a solid mana accelerator plus a mediocre win enabler adds up to being worth a slot. IMO, we don't need wither of those effects badly enough to justify the inclusion of Kinnan. That said, I'm still going to experiment with the card, and it's almost inevitable that I'm missing some unique interactions that may make him more compelling. I look forward to seeing what people come up with!

Question to anyone playing Animar these days: are you running Mana Crypt? I've been testing out a bunch of new stuff and it seems to have a slot in a lot of lists. I've added some bigger ramp like Rish and Priest of Titania to fuel bigger Harvests/Tishanas etc, but is Crypt really a shot? is it even remotely useful after our first cast or two? I'm skeptical!

Offhand, it does help make Weird Harvest and Shared Summons more accessible at earlier turns. Some lists run Chord of Calling too, so that's 2 more free mana into that. It doesn't help get Animar out turn 2, but it does make some starting hands a little smoother if you don't have a 1 cmc creature to get the counters rolling and are instead having to start with a 2 cmc into a 3cmc creature. It can also make it a lot easier to recast Animar in a timely manner in games where Animar eats removal early.

The big drawback is that there are lots of instances where the colorless mana quickly becomes useless, and then it is just sitting there potentially hurting you without being a benefit.

Considering its price tag VS its potential benefits VS all the turns where it is likely doing nothing beneficial, I think it's one of the easiest cEDH staple cards that can be cut from the list to save on cash without really hurting deck performance.

People on Discord have been saying that they like Sea-Dasher Octopus. Since most of the spot removal that can target Animar are blue bounce spells, if you have mutated the Octopus onto Animar then the Octopus gets bounced back to hand too. And if you mutate the Octopus onto Animar and choose it as the top card then not only does it still keep all of Animar's abilities but it also no longer counts as a legendary creature. That's lets you clone it and the clone will have the abilities of both the Octopus and Animar. It is now possible to have two Animars on board without running something like Spark Double, and both on those Animars can potentially draw you cards to boot.

Regarding Crypt: yeah, it's def not as core to the deck as any other expensive stuff we play, and less useful to us than to most cEDH decks. I only ended up cutting it back in the day because more often than not itd get me maybe 2-3 mana before becoming totally useless or even actively painful. With some of the more recent iterations of the deck though, it seems like the playstyle has shifted a bit towards holding back and letting the table develop, then going all in on a big turn with stuff like Sphinx/Tishana, Multi-Tutors, clones, etc. I think that style is actually better suited to cEDH games these days since everyone has much more efficient combos and theres no need to play all your pieces out on board one at a time over several turns. Crypt would allow us to do stuff like hold Animar back at 2 counters, bait out some interaction, then pop off with a statue or Harvest once the coast is clear using Crypt as a boost of extra mana. It basically "hides" our boardstate for 1-2 casts worth of mana. Re-casting Animar is also a nice benefit, but probably more niche. I have to do some more testing I guess and see how smoothly the deck can cast the bigger threats I've added.

Reagrding Octopus: Hmm, thats some incredibly spicy tech. Feels a lot like Oakhame Adversary, but with the benefit of those Animar interactions you discuss. I'll def have to scoop one up and try it out!

Are you going to consider Thieving Skydiver for this deck? New additions from Zendikar Rising. For a blue, you get to steal an opposing mana rock, which seems pretty dang good to me.

we've been discussing it a lot on the Discord. so far, the general opinion seems to be that the main thing to steal is a colored mana rock like Diamond, given that off-color rocks like signets/talismans/Chrome and colorless ones are generally not what we need. Furthermore, most of the non-mana artifacts are either universal stax pieces (Totem, Orbs, Trinisphere) or are likely to win a game on the spot, and therefore can't be stolen (scepter, Citadel, Reservoir). So that means we should evaluate Skydiver as a a slightly unpredicatble ramp piece with some interesting upsides. If your build of the deck needs more ramp, its a solid inclusion, but not a staple pick. and obviously if you have a lot of artifact decks in your meta, it may be more relevant to you.