Contagion Engine , Viral Drake , Gigantomancer , Dream Stalker , Wood Elves . Graft creatures are really helped by proliferate and/or Master Biomancer . Cascade will kill your hydras so be careful there. Animar's ability includes a discount on kicker costs so look at those (especially x kicker costs). Soul of the Harvest , Drumhunter & Quicksilver Dagger for card drawing. Gigantomancer especially can be a big suprise, as Animar is just a 1/1 with counters. He gives Animar +6/+6 for 1 mana and can boost your graft creatures or your hydras +7/+7.

Thanks for the advice. I really like the Gigantomancer and Dream Stalker ideas. I'd love to get my hands on some Master Biomancer s. I think I switch out Primordial Sage for Soul of the Harvest . Drumhunter is also a good idea. I'm thinking Inexorable Tide instead of Viral Drake . I don't like infect on principle.

Your land count seems a bit low, you can fix that by throwing in psuedo-land creatures like Simian Spirit Guide , Elvish Spirit Guide , and Pilgrim's Eye .

One thing is that a lot of your creatures have more than one colored mana symbol in their costs. This really hinders Animar, Soul of Elements from reaching his full potential, as you can often drop 6+ creatures by turn 3 with a solid build. Bounce effects and card draw effects are your friends (run both Primordial Sage and Soul of the Harvest , add in as much tutoring as you can (Worldly Tutor , Survival of the Fittest , Fauna Shaman , Summoner's Pact , Sylvan Tutor ) so you can get the cards that really enable your deck.

I'm not sure if you like infinite combos or not, but some infinite mana enablers are Cloud of Faeries Peregrine Drake Palinchron .

There are cards worthy of slots even though they have more than one colored mana symbol. Some of the cards actually worth 2+ colored mana symbols are: Prophet of Kruphix , Vesuvan Shapeshifter (play him face down for free), Slithermuse (evoke), Champion of Lambholt , Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker , Maelstrom Wanderer , Sylvan Primordial , Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger , and Venser, Shaper Savant .

Another thing is if animar gets removed, or you just need some fast counters on him. The two best cards I've found are: Forgotten Ancient and Bounty of the Hunt .

Take a look at my animar build if you want any further ideas, or if you want to know any viable replacements beyond that, ask, there's about 50 cards that I really considered, but they just didn't make the cut.

EDH - Animar the Archenemy

If you ignore the maybeboard it's a solid multiplayer build capable of swinging lethal on turn 2, that can fairly consistently win by turn 4 or 5 (depending on luck/disruption). If you build the deck right, Animar, Soul of Elements can be very explosive.

Not liking infect is fine but creatures are what Animar is about and its hard to find a creature with Proliferate. I am thinking about a deck with tons of counter creatures so I can use Plaguemaw Beast and everybody loves Thrummingbird but thats about it. Borborygmos is a good substitute also. Fact is...Animar is great with so many creatures you can do damn near anything you want. Inexorable Tide worked for me as long as I had Dream Stalker , Shrieking Drake , Keymaster Rogue or Man o War (now I can do it with Cloudstone Curio and recast creatures also). Dream Stalker is the best if you have Evolve creatures (mostly just for Gyre Sage ). Have fun.

The more creatures the better! I find that if a creature has an ability of a sorcery i use then its an easy swap, Come check out my version to see if you get any creative ideas!

i recomment running Fungal Behemoth awesome card to use with the ammount of counters are on creatures in this deck.

I used to run it. While it can certainly be effective I needed room for more hydras as they benefit more from Animar. :)

I think you're confused. Effects that reduce a creature's casting cost has no effect on an X cost. X is what you paid into it, there for is 0 anytime aside from while it's being cast (on the stack). On the stack, X is whatever you paid into it. You can't add to X with an effect reducing a creature's converted mana cost. That's just silly.

I am not confused. You declare X, the cost reduction applies as you cast it.

Could you show me a ruling by chance? I, for the life of me, can't seem to find one on this.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-questions/does-cost-reduction-include-x-costs/