Filler description until I trim the deck down enough. I really really need help cutting this deck.
General strategy is play lands, maybe one dork, and cast Animar, Soul of Elements ASAP. From there, power out cheap creatures, try to set up some bounce or draw combos to get animar really huge. From there, we have hopefully three options: attack with animar to kill opponent in 1-3 turns (This is hard to do without trample); or play an AnimarSmash card to double damage or similar (Smash cards are basically a way of circumventing having to attack and get chump blocked); finally, we play a Hydra and swing with him to win.
When playing with Animar:
Colorless mana is almost never an issue, it's normally just a matter of having enough colored mana to play what's in your hand. Getting blue mana, is especially hard.
When you do have a good balance of mana, you tend to be extremely card starved. Good draw engines are necessary or at least bounce engines to continue playing. Not loads of good options here at 3 CMC or lower. Huge loss with not being able to use Ancestral Statue, which is a two card combo to go infinite with animar. Anyway, good bounce engines or draw engines are absolutely necessary.
If you're unable to attack with Animar for whatever reason (chump blockers), it can be really hard to win. Normally his protections let him swing through most of the other good tiny leader commanders, which is nice, but sometimes just killing your opponent can be a pain. Hydras and the smash cards help A LOT with this, so keep that in mind if cutting them. I'm slightly inclined to cut Vastwood Hydra. I am reluctant to because in one game, I cast him and he got killed with a Path to Exile, but I still managed to kill my opponent by putting the counters on some flying creatures and swinging for the win. I do want to swap out at least one hydra for a different hydra that has trample though.
It's frustrating to have very few answers to non-creature permanents, like a Geist of Saint Traft deck using Sundial of the Infinite. My only hope there was to kill Geist, which I did because he has to attack, but was unable to stop the sundial combo because I never drew my one answer,
Ainok Survivalist
. I have counters of course, but they're not that useful afterwards :P.
