There's also the 2/4 guy that impulses when it sacrifices a creature.
However, I would argue that many of the cards you mention don't fit within the deck as it is now: Shaman of the Great Hunt, for example, basically does nothing for the combo game plan, while Vaultbreaker doesn't contribute to the game plan at all. Temur Sabertooth, while great, seems to be too much mana to work. I also don't think that Shaman of the Forgotten Ways fits with the deck either.
The megamorph creatures are more interesting (especially the red one), as is Ancestral Statue, and I think some testing is merited.
Worth the test? There's no testing about it. The current must-include bounce creatures are Man-O'-War and Shrieking Drake. MoW can bounce opponents creatures which is nice and Shrieking Drake comes down for only one and they're both Imperial Recruiter, so Ancestral Statue isn't strictly better than either, but if you're running any other bounce creature (Arctic Merfolk or Dream Stalker), there's basically no excuse not to pull them out and put this guy in. He gets infinite counters on Animar laughably easily, not to mention he's searchable with Eye of Ugin.
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He gets infinite counters on Animar laughably easily, not to mention he's searchable with Eye of Ugin.
And how does he do that? Even if he was able to be bounced with Cloudstone Curio (he's not), these lists feature literally zero ways to tutor for Cloudstone Curio, so to say it's laughably easy doesnt seem right. It's a 100 card singleton format.The all in combo versions probably want him but he's only marginally better than Dream Stalker and co with Animar out miles behind in powerlevel when he's not out. I wouldn't call it an auto include.
Also, Ire Shaman is deceptively underpowered. Most people in this thread say they very rarely use the combat step so the body is irrelevant, and that ability is MUCH worse than draw a card. So often the card might not be worth casting, especially if you paid full price for the Ire Shaman.
Stratus Dancer and maybe Den Protector are the only cards worth testing from the new set IMO, with Temur Sabertooth being the only card I like from FRF because it gives you tutorable alternatives to using cloudstone curio and earthcraft (again, can't be tutored for) to combo with Peregrine Drake and such, whjile providing you with a 4/3 threat that can protect itself if the combo plan fails. Oh, and I like Abzan Beastmaster. A lot. Obviously can get blanked in creature heavy matchups but even there Animar is quite often the largest creature on the board and then you have a better-than-confidant trigger at your upkeep. Against creatureless control decks his trigger is always active and the game quickly becomes about getting him off the board/protecting him.
He gets infinite counters on Animar laughably easily, not to mention he's searchable with Eye of Ugin.
And how does he do that? Even if he was able to be bounced with Cloudstone Curio (he's not), these lists feature literally zero ways to tutor for Cloudstone Curio, so to say it's laughably easy doesnt seem right. It's a 100 card singleton format.The all in combo versions probably want him but he's only marginally better than Dream Stalker and co with Animar out miles behind in powerlevel when he's not out. I wouldn't call it an auto include.
Ancestral Statue is automatically broken with Animar. It's not unstoppable, but it should encourage more people to run Animar in tournaments now. You can even add Purphoros, and Impact Tremors so you can avoid the combat step altogether with Animar and the Statue going infinite.
Ire Shaman: I don't think we want to be using him. He requires 3 counters on Animar to be used for one mana, and he doesn't even draw us the card. We'd be better off with Haru-Onna, same cost ultimately and also dies to Skullclamp while drawing us a card instead of making it available to use only for the turn; she's also castable for green, which is great when you're overloaded with green from Gaea's Cradle. Plus her art is done by Rebecca Guay, automatic plus in my book.
Den Protector: He's not strictly better than Eternal Witness, but he's on par. Witness costs GG with 1 counter on Animar, Protector costs 1G with 3 counters on Animar. The colorless mana there isn't irrelevant (even though we're talking about G here) and I'd argue that 1 vs 3 counters on Animar isn't a big deal since we probably aren't using Witness very early anyway. The main thing, though, is that Witness can be fetched with Green Sun's Zenith and still get her effect whereas Protector can't. All that being said, there's probably room for both to be played because it's such a powerful effect in this deck.
Stratus Dancer: I don't know how to feel here. Protection for the combo in this deck is always tricky. I suspect we'll hear stories on both ends of the spectrum for this guy. Personally I doubt I'll be running him.
URGImperial AnimarGRU BRGProssh, Tokenmaker of KherGRB WURNarset NostalgicRUW UBR"I like your deck better" JelevaRBU UBlue BraidsU GAzusa, Lost but RampingG
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There are going to be many opportunities where you can just tutor for the statue instead of Recruiter and one shot people. Crazy.
Perhaps we should call this deck Ancestral Animar now
@PopeJP is probably right about Ire Shaman though it also can be played for free with 3 counters to simply add a counter to Animar which is not nothing. I think that is the primary reason for playing Stratus Dancer. At the very least add a free counter, but at most protect combo for 2.
The others I mentioned are good but perhaps overpriced. I'd like to point out that Vaultbreaker does in fact do SOMETHING for the combo, by letting us loot and put a counter on Animar per turn for 1 mana. Is it worth it? Probably not but I'm going to test it anyway, as I run some fringe cards that most don't (Gitaxian Probe).
Ya so Ancestral Statue is nuts in this deck. Animar with 4+ counters gives infinite Animar. Very scary stuff, that probably should be one of the updates
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Statue is indeed nuts. Winning with an infinite Animar is really easy without committing that many deck slots to comboing out. I feel like you could focus on winning with statue and cut all the slots related to the eldrazi package to allow you to protect this new, more efficient combo piece better. With survival out you just pay one more G to get Painter's Servant and a second G to get Spellskite and it's pretty much over. Glimpse draws the deck, so on and so forth. Exciting times for Animar brewers, very surprised to see no innovation here yet!
I don't think the inclusion of Ancestral Statue means it's time to do away with our old package. Once you've hit about 4 counters on Animar you're basically ready to start comboing out anyway, Statue just provides a shortcut to the infinite counters. But having an infinite/infinite Animar doesn't matter if they have blockers, and the whole deck is designed to dig and dig and dig until it finds what it needs to win. Including Painter's Servant expressly for the purpose of making Animar unblockable is pretty silly considering, once you've got the combo rolling, you can just bounce all of their dudes with Man-o'-War or destroy them with Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre. The deck is already insanely good at what it does, Statue just happens to be a nice way to shortcut through some of that sometimes, but it's just another cog. It's far less tutorable than many of the other key creatures so to try and make a move to relying more heavily on it doesn't seem like a good move. In my experience with him, there are times when I don't even bother to get him because by the time he's tutorable to me, I've already got infinite Ulamog set up. He doesn't change the way the deck works or beg for innovation, he just fits in really nicely with what's already in place.
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Thinking that is Painter's Servants only function is pretty silly, but that was just an example of its efficiency. You even stated yourself that "once you get the combo rolling...unblockablity is useless because you can just waste another tutor to find a creature to remove blockers." Servant gives Animar protection from all colors, setting up the combo and ensuring it's a one hit kill, and even being colorless to bridge the gap between 2 and 3 counters making it much easier to go off with the statue. All that and it only requires one additional deck slot beyond statue instead of cards that the deck struggles to cast without it's general in play, miles ahead of your opponent.
It's not really a shortcut, it's a win condition on its own. The fact of the matter is you can only loop eldrazi with curio out, so why is it always talked about like that's what happens every game? You have to draw it, cast it, resolve it, protect it, AND then have the other pieces to go along with it INCLUDING having Animar in play, and youre saying you do that before you have time to tutor for statue, so you drew all those pieces naturally, the odds are against that. Not saying it's bad to run curio, but that's a terrible argument as to why Statue isn't the premier combo piece here. Recruiter/Green Sun's Zenith--->Fierce Empath get eldrazi and not statue, but what other tutor's are you talking about?
I guess nobody wants to even discuss or think about innovation.
Thinking that is Painter's Servants only function is pretty silly, but that was just an example of its efficiency. You even stated yourself that "once you get the combo rolling...unblockablity is useless because you can just waste another tutor to find a creature to remove blockers.
That's correct, I did say that and nothing you've said about Painter's Servant disproves my point. The important difference between Painter's Servant, who would in fact make Animar unblockable, and MoW/Ulamog who serve a similar function in that scenario, is that MoW/Ulamog serve great purposes outside of just removing blockers. "Bridging the gap between two and three" isn't enough of a function to ignore the fact it does nothing else pre-infinite, particularly since it can't even be Skullclamp fodder.
"Just one slot" is not a good argument. One slot means a lot. I want every card in my deck to either keep me producing mana, draw me cards, tutor, or ramp (one-drops only, Bloom Tender exception for being the nut).
How much have you played this deck? Do you know how efficiently and easily it can go infinite the turn after you drop Animar? Your example of Recruiter/GSZ->Fierce Empath->Eldrazi makes me question your experience with the deck, as I find that is very rarely the right line of play. Not calling you a bad player, this is just a deck that takes even good players a lot of practice to master.
Ancestral Statue is awesome for helping to get there. It's automatic infinite counters on Animar and when it's done it lets your bounce another one of your creatures to re-use its effect. I'm always happy to draw it and I even tutor it off of Eye of Ugin sometimes, hand/board depending. I acknowledge the fact that if you've already hit Glimpse of Nature it can draw you your deck, but any time I resolve Glimpse of Nature I end up being able to draw my deck anyway. Ancestral Statue makes this deck better, just like recent printings of guys like Den Protector and Rattleclaw Mystic made the deck better, but that doesn't mean somehow the whole vision of the deck needs to be "innovated."
I guess nobody wants to even discuss or think about innovation.
Not to be rude, but please don't say this kind of thing for your own sake. It makes you sound like an upset player who's mad that all the people over in the Modern forum pointed out that his seven card, twelve mana infinite combo is probably not going to be good in the format.
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@Lemonbuster, do you have a decklist in mind? I think that'd be really helpful to the discussion.
I've been testing a combo-capable goodstuff Animar, with Rofellos, Llanowar Emmissary, Oracle of Mul Daya, and Priest of Titania. Basically, it's goodstuff but with a lot of tutors for combos + more little creatures. It's quite a bit slower than the original Animar, which is a pretty big problem, but at the same time it's more resilient.
One key benefit of running the Eldrazi package is that it gives you a back-up plan outside of Animar - it's possible to ramp up with Rofellos/Prime Time/Oracle to 9-10 mana, after which Eldrazi can just be hard cast. It also lets you force a concession on the same turn you cast Animar, by destroying all of their lands. Painter's Servant lets us do neither of these things.
I'll try testing Painter's Servant with Scarecrone, though. I mean, we play Spellskite, and that's a card that can't be clamped either. Painter's Servant seems to be an almost strict upgrade to Spellskite when it comes to ending the game, and might even be better for protecting Animar (though it doesn't really serve to disrupt your opponent like Spellskite does).
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Throwing in Painter's Servant and calling it innovation doesn't actually make it innovation. A slight improvement on a deck isn't innovation.
That it is not. Although painter's servant was just the one card I claimed that in conjunction with statue enabled instant wins, I never once said that would be the only change to such a diverse tutor package that the deck currently has.
The important difference between Painter's Servant, who would in fact make Animar unblockable, and MoW/Ulamog who serve a similar function in that scenario, is that MoW/Ulamog serve great purposes outside of just removing blockers. "Bridging the gap between two and three" isn't enough of a function to ignore the fact it does nothing else pre-infinite, particularly since it can't even be Skullclamp fodder.
MoW/Ulamog don't serve that purpose. At all. They can deal with one permanent the turn you are going off. Once. You need help in the form of Cloudstone curio or some other bounce enabler, so i'll ask again, why are we always discussing as if curio is always in play? It's blatantly clear that going off with statue and using your last tutor for servant is infinitely better than finding Ulamog/MoW because you don't need to spend a single additional mana or have a specific card to proceed directly into 'win now' phase, with your win con having protection from all colors.
"Just one slot" is not a good argument. One slot means a lot. I want every card in my deck to either keep me producing mana, draw me cards, tutor, or ramp (one-drops only, Bloom Tender exception for being the nut).
It actually is an excellent argument when the opposition sees the point being made. Having only dedicated slots for statue/recruiter/drake/metamorph/servant towards winning the game with animar out it greatly reduces the amount of dead draws when you arn't in a position to win the game as the traditional lists would include additional cards in their 'win package' such as ulamog, curio, MoW, ect so in reality devoting less slots to 'winning' gives you more slots dedicated to protecting your combo pieces and board state. Ulamog/MoW/Curio don't do any of those things you listed, while cutting them would actually give you more room for those things while lowering the amount of dead draws.
Not to be rude, but please don't say this kind of thing for your own sake. It makes you sound like an upset player who's mad that all the people over in the Modern forum pointed out that his seven card, twelve mana infinite combo is probably not going to be good in the format.
I don't even know what this means. Youre saying statue+animar isn't efficient enough? We don't all have to netdeck Jesters list, and there are different ways to build the deck. Shooting down discussion that at the very least has viable reasonable points is not the way to find innovation. And trust me, there is plenty to be found.
In regards to the comment about how much i've played the deck and the tutors I specified, I was saying that Recruiter, Fierce Empath, GSZ finding Empath grabbing an eldrazi are the only three plays that are able to find eldrazi but not statue, although you claimed statue was considerably less tutorable than an eldrazi. I forgot about the Eye of Ugin of course, but it seems like you read what you wanted to out of that comment just like the entirety of my post.
Also, I run both servant and spellskite and would never cut either.
Sorry for the double post but, what do you guys think of Evolutionary Leap? Being able to use it at instant speed makes it versatile in that it can be used in response to removal or end of turn. Opponent plays a wrath? sac all your creatures and refill your hand. Looks like Survival, probably plays a lot more like a bad skullclamp, that never hits lands.
Of course, a bad skullclamp still sounds pretty good...
Although this card functions differently and a little subpar compared to its Grandpa (Survival of the Fittest), and seems to be also quite relevant, adding another non-creature card in our Animar list is deemed to be critical.
But I firmly believe this card deserves some testing.
I could see the color issues coming up but any damage reduced from an opponents sweeper sounds great. I do like that cradle can tap to sac your whole team in a pinch, that's a nice bit of synergy.
@simonflo by critical do you mean adding another noncreature spell is hard to do? If so, I agree. With so many creatures in the deck and a lot of great noncreature options, deck space is very tight.
I'm not sure how many people are running Reclamation Sage, but Caustic Caterpillar is a cheaper Viridian Zealot that while it will always cost three mana total, is a much better card when playing against opponents that don't have a lot of targets for it because you can use it to start fueling Animar or pitch it to clamp/evolutionary leap cheaply. When youre actually getting beat by an enchantment or artifact, three mana is generally still worth it to get you out of a bind. It's not strictly better than Reclamation Sage but I do like it here if youre running any artifact/enchantment hate to begin with.
Yeah, by critical, I meant hard-to-do and hard-to-include
Caustic Caterpillar is fine in a sense that it seems appropriate in the Animar curve, but still Reclamation Sage is way better. I like the redundancy idea though, most especially Jitte and the Swords are sticking around still.
Reclamation Sage is the better magic card but I think if I had to pick one for Animar i'd go with caterpillar. Of course, I'm not running Sage at the moment anyways. That could easily be wrong though, it just seems like I had her in my hand with no targets a lot and whenever I was getting beat by an artifact or enchantment (Aether Flash is a nightmare) I didn't have a tutor anyways.
There is the feature match of Animar Vs. Jenara from the DTC folks last week. I had to rewind a few times to pick up on some of the commentators finer points but they were pretty entertaining. One of the games you get to see a prime example of how broken Painter's Servant is in this deck. Instead of doing nothing like some claim, it hands down steals the game, turning Animar into a mini-progenitus and leaving an opponents Gilded Drake stranded in hand, which in my opinion would have changed the momentum of that game rapidly.
I won that tournament, thanks for mentioning, though as you already pointed out - it was a sort of a goodstuff version. As there isn't "goodstuff" thread I hope nobody minds hijacking this one... Anyway I was a long time player of Jester's combo version and I really liked it, though after couple of months (years even) playing the deck I feel like there was time for change. Funny thing is - I never tested the deck (so it's quite a pile) before the tournament itself and there are many questionable inclusions. For example I really hated Glimpse of Nature and it shouldn't be in the deck I think. I also wanted to test Evolutionary Leap badly, but never drew it so no opinion on this one. Suffice to say that I got pretty lucky throughout the tournament and picked only one loss in second round to the guy playing Prime Speaker Zegana (then I met him in the quarterfinals, where I fortunately beat him). Just a few days after tournament I already swapped Glimpse of Nature for Cloudstone Curio and I consider cutting one land to trim it down to 33 lands (there were some games, where I felt I got somewhat flooded, though more testing is probably necessary). Another package I initialy don't like is Kiki+Conscripts+Pestermite combo.
For anyone interested here are my opponents: Round 1: Geist of Saint Traft (opponent mulled to 5 on the first game and on the second I lured counterspell with Reclamation Sage and then Imperial Recruiter comboed him out); Round 2: Prime Speaker Zegana (got beated badly both games mainly due to mana flood); Round 3: Maelstrom Wanderer (Opponent died quickly both games to some combo shenanigans); Round 4: Rafiq of the Many (I had quick starts in both games I won due to mana accelerant on T1 > Animar T2, then it was somewhat easy); Round 5: Captain Sisay (failed really hard in game one and lost - opponent had Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite in game, games two and three I managed to beat him); Round 6: Tasigur, the Golden Fang (I mulled to 5 cards, opponent even Thoughtseized me and countered something – yet he lost :), game two I stole Tasigur with Gilded Drake and built quite a board with Gaea's Cradle and multiple activations of Tasigur per turn); Quarterfinals: Prime Speaker Zegana (intense games, in the deciding game I comboed him out one turn earlier before he would kill me); Semifinals: Tasigur, the Golden Fang (same opponent as in the 6th round, managed to win again - one win was goes to Earthcraft+Dream Stalker combo other game was won by Magus of the Moon (he played only 5 basics). Finals against Vendilion Clique (lost first game with mull to 5 and too few lands, comboed him out on second game, in the last game he survived two attacks of Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and slowly crawled back to game - he had True-Name Nemesis equipped with Umezawa's Jitte, but I finally managed to kill him with Painter's Servant and 1000/1000 Animar).
It is funny that with what is basically untested pile of bargage cards I won even though I know the deck is far from finished.
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However, I would argue that many of the cards you mention don't fit within the deck as it is now: Shaman of the Great Hunt, for example, basically does nothing for the combo game plan, while Vaultbreaker doesn't contribute to the game plan at all. Temur Sabertooth, while great, seems to be too much mana to work. I also don't think that Shaman of the Forgotten Ways fits with the deck either.
The megamorph creatures are more interesting (especially the red one), as is Ancestral Statue, and I think some testing is merited.
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And how does he do that? Even if he was able to be bounced with Cloudstone Curio (he's not), these lists feature literally zero ways to tutor for Cloudstone Curio, so to say it's laughably easy doesnt seem right. It's a 100 card singleton format.The all in combo versions probably want him but he's only marginally better than Dream Stalker and co with Animar out miles behind in powerlevel when he's not out. I wouldn't call it an auto include.
Also, Ire Shaman is deceptively underpowered. Most people in this thread say they very rarely use the combat step so the body is irrelevant, and that ability is MUCH worse than draw a card. So often the card might not be worth casting, especially if you paid full price for the Ire Shaman.
Stratus Dancer and maybe Den Protector are the only cards worth testing from the new set IMO, with Temur Sabertooth being the only card I like from FRF because it gives you tutorable alternatives to using cloudstone curio and earthcraft (again, can't be tutored for) to combo with Peregrine Drake and such, whjile providing you with a 4/3 threat that can protect itself if the combo plan fails. Oh, and I like Abzan Beastmaster. A lot. Obviously can get blanked in creature heavy matchups but even there Animar is quite often the largest creature on the board and then you have a better-than-confidant trigger at your upkeep. Against creatureless control decks his trigger is always active and the game quickly becomes about getting him off the board/protecting him.
Because it can bounce itself?
EDIT: That's huge. There are going to be many opportunities where you can just tutor for the statue instead of Recruiter and one shot people. Crazy.
Den Protector: He's not strictly better than Eternal Witness, but he's on par. Witness costs GG with 1 counter on Animar, Protector costs 1G with 3 counters on Animar. The colorless mana there isn't irrelevant (even though we're talking about G here) and I'd argue that 1 vs 3 counters on Animar isn't a big deal since we probably aren't using Witness very early anyway. The main thing, though, is that Witness can be fetched with Green Sun's Zenith and still get her effect whereas Protector can't. All that being said, there's probably room for both to be played because it's such a powerful effect in this deck.
Shaman of the Forgotten Ways: It's a cute formidable ability, but I'd run Somberwald Sage before I ran him. And I don't want to run Somberwald Sage.
Stratus Dancer: I don't know how to feel here. Protection for the combo in this deck is always tricky. I suspect we'll hear stories on both ends of the spectrum for this guy. Personally I doubt I'll be running him.
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@PopeJP is probably right about Ire Shaman though it also can be played for free with 3 counters to simply add a counter to Animar which is not nothing. I think that is the primary reason for playing Stratus Dancer. At the very least add a free counter, but at most protect combo for 2.
The others I mentioned are good but perhaps overpriced. I'd like to point out that Vaultbreaker does in fact do SOMETHING for the combo, by letting us loot and put a counter on Animar per turn for 1 mana. Is it worth it? Probably not but I'm going to test it anyway, as I run some fringe cards that most don't (Gitaxian Probe).
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It's not really a shortcut, it's a win condition on its own. The fact of the matter is you can only loop eldrazi with curio out, so why is it always talked about like that's what happens every game? You have to draw it, cast it, resolve it, protect it, AND then have the other pieces to go along with it INCLUDING having Animar in play, and youre saying you do that before you have time to tutor for statue, so you drew all those pieces naturally, the odds are against that. Not saying it's bad to run curio, but that's a terrible argument as to why Statue isn't the premier combo piece here. Recruiter/Green Sun's Zenith--->Fierce Empath get eldrazi and not statue, but what other tutor's are you talking about?
I guess nobody wants to even discuss or think about innovation.
That's correct, I did say that and nothing you've said about Painter's Servant disproves my point. The important difference between Painter's Servant, who would in fact make Animar unblockable, and MoW/Ulamog who serve a similar function in that scenario, is that MoW/Ulamog serve great purposes outside of just removing blockers. "Bridging the gap between two and three" isn't enough of a function to ignore the fact it does nothing else pre-infinite, particularly since it can't even be Skullclamp fodder.
"Just one slot" is not a good argument. One slot means a lot. I want every card in my deck to either keep me producing mana, draw me cards, tutor, or ramp (one-drops only, Bloom Tender exception for being the nut).
How much have you played this deck? Do you know how efficiently and easily it can go infinite the turn after you drop Animar? Your example of Recruiter/GSZ->Fierce Empath->Eldrazi makes me question your experience with the deck, as I find that is very rarely the right line of play. Not calling you a bad player, this is just a deck that takes even good players a lot of practice to master.
Ancestral Statue is awesome for helping to get there. It's automatic infinite counters on Animar and when it's done it lets your bounce another one of your creatures to re-use its effect. I'm always happy to draw it and I even tutor it off of Eye of Ugin sometimes, hand/board depending. I acknowledge the fact that if you've already hit Glimpse of Nature it can draw you your deck, but any time I resolve Glimpse of Nature I end up being able to draw my deck anyway. Ancestral Statue makes this deck better, just like recent printings of guys like Den Protector and Rattleclaw Mystic made the deck better, but that doesn't mean somehow the whole vision of the deck needs to be "innovated."
Not to be rude, but please don't say this kind of thing for your own sake. It makes you sound like an upset player who's mad that all the people over in the Modern forum pointed out that his seven card, twelve mana infinite combo is probably not going to be good in the format.
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I've been testing a combo-capable goodstuff Animar, with Rofellos, Llanowar Emmissary, Oracle of Mul Daya, and Priest of Titania. Basically, it's goodstuff but with a lot of tutors for combos + more little creatures. It's quite a bit slower than the original Animar, which is a pretty big problem, but at the same time it's more resilient.
One key benefit of running the Eldrazi package is that it gives you a back-up plan outside of Animar - it's possible to ramp up with Rofellos/Prime Time/Oracle to 9-10 mana, after which Eldrazi can just be hard cast. It also lets you force a concession on the same turn you cast Animar, by destroying all of their lands. Painter's Servant lets us do neither of these things.
I'll try testing Painter's Servant with Scarecrone, though. I mean, we play Spellskite, and that's a card that can't be clamped either. Painter's Servant seems to be an almost strict upgrade to Spellskite when it comes to ending the game, and might even be better for protecting Animar (though it doesn't really serve to disrupt your opponent like Spellskite does).
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That it is not. Although painter's servant was just the one card I claimed that in conjunction with statue enabled instant wins, I never once said that would be the only change to such a diverse tutor package that the deck currently has.
MoW/Ulamog don't serve that purpose. At all. They can deal with one permanent the turn you are going off. Once. You need help in the form of Cloudstone curio or some other bounce enabler, so i'll ask again, why are we always discussing as if curio is always in play? It's blatantly clear that going off with statue and using your last tutor for servant is infinitely better than finding Ulamog/MoW because you don't need to spend a single additional mana or have a specific card to proceed directly into 'win now' phase, with your win con having protection from all colors.
It actually is an excellent argument when the opposition sees the point being made. Having only dedicated slots for statue/recruiter/drake/metamorph/servant towards winning the game with animar out it greatly reduces the amount of dead draws when you arn't in a position to win the game as the traditional lists would include additional cards in their 'win package' such as ulamog, curio, MoW, ect so in reality devoting less slots to 'winning' gives you more slots dedicated to protecting your combo pieces and board state. Ulamog/MoW/Curio don't do any of those things you listed, while cutting them would actually give you more room for those things while lowering the amount of dead draws.
And this is where we disagree, everything you do after you get an infinite Animar with statue is the definition of win-more.
I don't even know what this means. Youre saying statue+animar isn't efficient enough? We don't all have to netdeck Jesters list, and there are different ways to build the deck. Shooting down discussion that at the very least has viable reasonable points is not the way to find innovation. And trust me, there is plenty to be found.
In regards to the comment about how much i've played the deck and the tutors I specified, I was saying that Recruiter, Fierce Empath, GSZ finding Empath grabbing an eldrazi are the only three plays that are able to find eldrazi but not statue, although you claimed statue was considerably less tutorable than an eldrazi. I forgot about the Eye of Ugin of course, but it seems like you read what you wanted to out of that comment just like the entirety of my post.
Also, I run both servant and spellskite and would never cut either.
Of course, a bad skullclamp still sounds pretty good...
But I firmly believe this card deserves some testing.
@simonflo by critical do you mean adding another noncreature spell is hard to do? If so, I agree. With so many creatures in the deck and a lot of great noncreature options, deck space is very tight.
I'm not sure how many people are running Reclamation Sage, but Caustic Caterpillar is a cheaper Viridian Zealot that while it will always cost three mana total, is a much better card when playing against opponents that don't have a lot of targets for it because you can use it to start fueling Animar or pitch it to clamp/evolutionary leap cheaply. When youre actually getting beat by an enchantment or artifact, three mana is generally still worth it to get you out of a bind. It's not strictly better than Reclamation Sage but I do like it here if youre running any artifact/enchantment hate to begin with.
Yeah, by critical, I meant hard-to-do and hard-to-include
Caustic Caterpillar is fine in a sense that it seems appropriate in the Animar curve, but still Reclamation Sage is way better. I like the redundancy idea though, most especially Jitte and the Swords are sticking around still.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByJMbh6-9BI&index=2&list=PL6LYHA0wab5auOX1oDvgVfF3HhHGewiOF
There is the feature match of Animar Vs. Jenara from the DTC folks last week. I had to rewind a few times to pick up on some of the commentators finer points but they were pretty entertaining. One of the games you get to see a prime example of how broken Painter's Servant is in this deck. Instead of doing nothing like some claim, it hands down steals the game, turning Animar into a mini-progenitus and leaving an opponents Gilded Drake stranded in hand, which in my opinion would have changed the momentum of that game rapidly.
I won that tournament, thanks for mentioning, though as you already pointed out - it was a sort of a goodstuff version. As there isn't "goodstuff" thread I hope nobody minds hijacking this one... Anyway I was a long time player of Jester's combo version and I really liked it, though after couple of months (years even) playing the deck I feel like there was time for change. Funny thing is - I never tested the deck (so it's quite a pile) before the tournament itself and there are many questionable inclusions. For example I really hated Glimpse of Nature and it shouldn't be in the deck I think. I also wanted to test Evolutionary Leap badly, but never drew it so no opinion on this one. Suffice to say that I got pretty lucky throughout the tournament and picked only one loss in second round to the guy playing Prime Speaker Zegana (then I met him in the quarterfinals, where I fortunately beat him). Just a few days after tournament I already swapped Glimpse of Nature for Cloudstone Curio and I consider cutting one land to trim it down to 33 lands (there were some games, where I felt I got somewhat flooded, though more testing is probably necessary). Another package I initialy don't like is Kiki+Conscripts+Pestermite combo.
For anyone interested here are my opponents: Round 1: Geist of Saint Traft (opponent mulled to 5 on the first game and on the second I lured counterspell with Reclamation Sage and then Imperial Recruiter comboed him out); Round 2: Prime Speaker Zegana (got beated badly both games mainly due to mana flood); Round 3: Maelstrom Wanderer (Opponent died quickly both games to some combo shenanigans); Round 4: Rafiq of the Many (I had quick starts in both games I won due to mana accelerant on T1 > Animar T2, then it was somewhat easy); Round 5: Captain Sisay (failed really hard in game one and lost - opponent had Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite in game, games two and three I managed to beat him); Round 6: Tasigur, the Golden Fang (I mulled to 5 cards, opponent even Thoughtseized me and countered something – yet he lost :), game two I stole Tasigur with Gilded Drake and built quite a board with Gaea's Cradle and multiple activations of Tasigur per turn); Quarterfinals: Prime Speaker Zegana (intense games, in the deciding game I comboed him out one turn earlier before he would kill me); Semifinals: Tasigur, the Golden Fang (same opponent as in the 6th round, managed to win again - one win was goes to Earthcraft+Dream Stalker combo other game was won by Magus of the Moon (he played only 5 basics). Finals against Vendilion Clique (lost first game with mull to 5 and too few lands, comboed him out on second game, in the last game he survived two attacks of Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and slowly crawled back to game - he had True-Name Nemesis equipped with Umezawa's Jitte, but I finally managed to kill him with Painter's Servant and 1000/1000 Animar).
It is funny that with what is basically untested pile of bargage cards I won even though I know the deck is far from finished.