Hi,
Interesting deck; I'm looking forward to trying it out. I was just searching on gatherer, and came across Furious Assault. Could this be useful for this deck - perhaps if Animar is facing a potential fog effect or easy to make blockers? Could be another option to combo off to.
It's a win-more card. The only time you'd win with that is if you were doing an infinite loop, at which point looping Ulamog already wins. Even if you pass the turn w/ all kinds of summoning sickness creatures in play, there's not all that much a permanent-less player can do.
If you're really all that concerned with doing an infinite-combo hard-kill, then run Inner-Flame Acolyte and loop eldrazi shuffles with Survival of the Fittest to give everything haste, then rely on Eldrazi to finish off non-legendary shroud/haste creatures. I wouldn't do it outside of a tournament setting in which overtime and killing instantly suddenly becomes more relevant.
This deck looks so hard to pilot. It feels like your playing Storm in Edh, but with creatures who are oh, so much more vulnerable in comparison to instants/sorceries.
Props on trying something really abstract and new.
Your Imperial Recruiter chains are way more complicated than the deck Chaplin was playing for Legacy. I believe it was Aluren.dec
Interesting, I've always thought of Ezuri as a slam dunk matchup. They lose real bad to eldrazi. The main thing is, as you begin to get better at piloting the deck, you'll be able to more consistently pull off eldrazi loops, which is huge in that matchup. Goblin Sharpshooter is a relevant card, but only in a situation in which you're already able to readily win.
I've tried Anger. It was real bad. If you have Survival of the Fittest out, there's no excuse not to do an infinite combo, at which point haste is largely irrelevant. Yes it's potentially very complicated, but it comes with the territory. Anger is otherwise a dead card.
The big against counter-magic matchups is to utilize various late-game strategies. For instance, Primeval Titan into Gaea's Cradle/Eye of Ugin is game-breaking, and there are many ways to fetch him. Earthcraft, Skullclamp, Gaea's Cradle, Eye or Ugin, Primeval Titan, Trinket Mage, Survival of the Fittest, Cloudstone Curio as well as tutors (sylvan scrying, wordly tutor, sylvan tutor, chord of calling, green sun's zenith, crop rotation) all offer potent control matchup strategies.
The two really big counter-magic tech cards are Insist and Daze.
Imperial Recruiter doesn't exclusively get metamorph and proceed to combo. Especially when you're facing off against heavy spot removal, at lot of times Fierce Empath, Dreamstalker, Peregrine Drake, Trinket Mage etc are all perfectly viable.
Anyway, the big thing with this deck is knowing when/how to capitalize on the game state. Your consistency is largely dependent on your own decisions, many of which aren't going to be inherently obvious. Stuff like tutoring Cloud of Faeries, Simian Spirit Guide, Flamekin Harbinger, Slithermuse, Trinket Mage, Fierce Empath etc can be very powerful when done in the right game state.
Did you two ever meet up on cockatrice to get a consensus of the counter heavy control matchup? since emether is the resident French control expert there really couldnt be any results with more validity than that.
I'm really not sure why there isn't more blue in this deck. After looking at the sample hands, they all lose to lightning bolt. They also all lose to Force Spike. Building a deck that is weak to the best color in the format, and the most dominant one seems like a bad idea. Also, if you know what is good for you, you will cut the eldrazi and other high cmc cards. I know that is how you win "every time", but there are better ways to win.
Someone compared this deck to storm earlier in the thread, it is more like affinity. Storm doesn't lose to sweepers. Which again makes me wonder why you aren't playing counterspells since Pyroclasm is the worst thing that can happen to this deck.
Also you have talked about having enough counters to play Eldrazi for free. If you put that many counters on Animar you will likely be killing with damage. Animar will be huge, and you have played a lot of creatures. If you are putting infinite counters on your general to make them free, the eldrazi is win more.
I'm not saying your deck is bad, but my playtest partner and I play exclusively french and only with real cards. Having watched his list evolve from one with Eldrazi to one without and his win percentage go up, I can only say from experience that they are not needed.
Feel free to post up your version of the deck. Rather than toss stuff out there like add more protection etc, try to actually quantify your proposed changes. With how the deck operates, very small changes make a significantly higher impact than what is typical. As such, stuff life FOW is instantly off the table, and more creative inclusions are favored.
This deck doesn't actually lose too much to sweepers aside from Pyroclasm. Damnation, Wrath Of God, and Day of Judgement are largely underplayed and more often than not both too slow, inconsistent, and are by no means a game sealer. The card advantage density of the deck makes it relatively easy to recoup from a sweeper, and the sorcery status of sweepers largely mitigates their potency.
I think your case against Eldrazi is somewhat thin as well. They both add in another dimension to the deck via Eye of Ugin, Primeval Titan, and Gaea's Cradle, and they enable an efficient way of creating infinite combos, sweeping blockers, and resetting. The difference between locking the game state/winning same turn, and within a turn or two, is huge. Do you have some other creature package proposal?
In your first sample hand, on your opponents turn 3 if they play a pyroclasm, it is a 4 for 1 and your board position is 2 lands.
In your second hand, you do nothing until turn 3. Any counterspell wrecks you. As does spot removal. Instant or sorcery speed doesn't matter because you pass the turn back to them tapped out.
I can continue if you need me to make my point more thoroughly. FoW should really be an auto include in every blue deck. It is a free counterspell. It answers everything. And since you have so much "card advantage density" it should not be a problem.
An Eldrazi in your opening hand is the same as mulliganing. You cannot cast the card and so it is useless. This is the same as having a Cruel Ultimatum in your opening hand while playing 5cc during Lorwyn-Shards standard. Until you hit 7 mana you are playing with 6 cards. Which meant that it was worth mulliganing a 7 card hand with Cruel U unless the rest of the hand was really good since there wasnt really a loss in cards in hand. The same principal applies here. Having a card that in uncastable without Animar in play and having a lot of counters on Animar means that you have a dead card, except for when you are already winning.
I also wouldn't play Eye of Ugin or Primeval Titan. Eye of Ugin can't provide mana and it costs 7 mana to activate. Primeval Titan costs 6. All it does then is accel you. Do you need the mana at that point? If you can cast six drops what about playing a creature to increase the clock that you already have because of all the cheap creatures you have been playing? If you untap turn 4 with Llanowar Elves, Animar (2 counters), Elvish Visionary, and a face down Fathom Seer in play. You can play an Inferno Titan and wreck an Edric deck. Or you could drop a Glen Elendra Archmage and stop every control deck from doing anything.
Also you focus a lot on your Cloudstone Curio combos and the cards you include to make it function. What about when you don't draw Cloudstone Curio? How good are those other cards then? What if they were counterspells like FoW which backs up my first scenario described in the above paragraph very well.
Pyroclasm isn't really a 4-1... It either gets Animar and potentially a 1 drop, or it doesn't kill Animar, takes out 2-3 creatures, and isn't an out. Yes it's good against Animar, but it'll rarely get full value.
In this deck, Daze is virtually a FoW, and it doesn't involve pitching a card and damaging the tempo.
The cards that focus on Cloudstone Curio are all consistently good in a curio-less scenario, and while executing a skullclamp-based curio combo, the sheer volume of card draw generated by Skull clamp let's you basically pick up your deck. In a theoretical situation in which you're executing a full-deck combo, it is perfectly viable, albeit more complex, to use Survival of the Fittest chaining clones, untappers and bounce effects and resets to cast infinite ulamogs. The addition of Cloudstone however add's consistency, and in of itself combo's nicely with the majority of the deck outside of infinite situations. Is there some specific card you're referring to that's focused exclusively towards curio?
Primeval Titan's 6-drop status makes him a prime target for Fierce Empath, for which there really aren't that many comparable targets. In any small-chain scenario, the simple act of casting prime-time into Eye of Ugin/Gaea's Cradle generally leaves you able to both search and cast an eldrazi on the next turn and creates an unrecoverable game state for your opponent. Mid-combo, cheating gaea's cradle into play with primeval titan is the de-facto method for enabling full reach via skullclamp, as well as enabling quirion ranger (bloom tender mainly), gush, cloud of faeries, earthcraft, fathom seer, peregrine drake, and clones.
Eldrazi are just amazing... their utility is really unmatched in here, and I'm certain that any full-fledged pilot would agree. Eldrazi are what separate Animar from being a glass cannon creature deck beckoning sweepers with being an absolute steamroller. Single handily they break any game state, and lock victories.
Take a while, and start focusing on learning how to perform a full-stack skull clamp combo. it's a real perspective changer to say the least.
When would taking out animar not be full value? When does this deck actually hit five mana to cast animar twice and in what world would you have extra mana to get him out of a range of a second red sweeper? He just illustrated how you would be left nothing on the board untapping against a deck that now only has to wait patiently for you to throw a five mana animar into a mana leak because your deck has no other consistent gameplan.
Daze is nothing like force of will in any deck. Explaining the power level of force of will seems extremely unecessary. When you have fow in your hand, you have a near guarantee you will untap with an animar. Your deck has no such guarantee nor any sort of contol over what happens to your bored. Sitting there crossing your fingers will lead to a lot of losses.
The point hes trying to make is that all your amazing loops involving skullclamp, earthcraft, curio, ect are all pieces that are absolutely untutorable and to say that youre able to always go off with these things in a deck that literally gets torn to shreds (which has been proven by your sample hands) by any form of dedicated disruption is dumb really.
you dismiss every possible change by telling people that they don't understand how to play the deck or that they don't have your amazing Mulligan technique. Youre not a God among magic players, you dont have the heart of the cards, and this deck will never post any results anywhere because in reality, its just a bunch of gatherer queries for "creatures with function x" and stuck them in a list. This is made evident by jesters original posting of an animar thread very shortly after he was spoiled and hardly any changes have been made since the decks initial creation which means that none of this is backed by actual playtesting, just BS made up deck philosophy.
A full value pyroclasm is to basically wrath... of the various ways to do a T2 Animar, 60% leave a mana creature in play susceptible to Pyroclasm. I straight up said Pyroclasm was good, and just killing Animar is absolutely fine. They aren't however going to realistically hit animar and 3 other creatures with Pyroclasm. Getting 5 mana isn't hard at all... this deck an obscene amount of mana producing cards.
Skullclamp also tutors off of Trinket Mage, which is easily retrievable via Survival of the Fittest, Sylvan Tutor, Wordily Tutor, Imperial Recruiter and Chord of Calling. So yes, there are tutorable combos, and it's not a deck contingent on drawing the nuts, nor is it solely dependent on having Animar in play.
I dismissed the Eldrazi, Primeval Titan and Eye of Ugin changes because they are beyond amazing in the deck, and there was never any proposal of a similarly potent package.
I'm not entirely sure how you quantify absolutely no changes, because between the 30+ revisions of the deck, the original and current list differ by a good 35%. I do not know in which world a 35% change wouldn't be considered substancial. That's all play testing mate.
Lemonbuster their is no need to call out Jester in the manner in which you did. No reason at all, obviously jester has put real work into the deck and to say otherwise is disrespect. Putting togeither any primer is time consuming. you can disagree but back it up by actual cuts in a decklist. Animar most likely has room to evolve and their could be a chance your suggested changes are correct. However either way If you test 1v1 edh regularly then post results from testing and help evolve the deck to the next level. Post your suggested changes and start again from their.
Jester please stop misusing the word quantify. It means to give quantity to. So if I have some cards and then I say I have 2 cards, then I quantified them. It doesn't mean validate. But I guess since I'm not a full-fledged pilot how would I know?
Daze is not FoW. Not even close. I can pay 1 and my spell resolves. It doesn't help counter the sweepers you need it to and the tempo of bouncing a land can be significant. That's not to say that Daze shouldn't be in the list.
I'm telling you from experience losing to Animar that you do not need Eldrazi or Primeval Titan to win. High converted mana cost spells are the reason that you cannot beat counterspells. Go under them, because you cannot go through them. I would go as far to say that the Eldrazi ARE THE REASON this deck is described as a glass cannon by some. You do not need to combo to win.
In my testing when I lose to Animar it is usually via damage. I have played UB Sygg, Doran, Zur, Ruhan, and Grand Arbitor. All of those decks are paper and without proxies. I can say that I have probably played more games against Animar than anyone else, but I have only goldfished it a few timess. The only time I ever lose to a combo is when late game it just kind of happens and I didn't leave counter mana up. You can't beat heavy blue decks with your deck, and you can't beat red decks with it. You stomp the GWB decks.
If you want to improve your matchup against the blue decks the best way to do that is to add more blue to your own deck, especially counterspells. If you provide a clock and back that up with disruption you have a winning game plan.
Combo doesn't work in the french meta because it gets stomped by the control decks. That is just how it is, not only in edh but in magic in general. You need an alternative game plan.
You plan on winning turn 4-5 but one disruption spell of any kind tends to set you back quite a bit. Counterspells are a way to make sure that what you want to resolve does and what you don't want to resolve doesn't. Blue is the best color in magic and you are not utilizing it to it's potential. This deck should be GUr.
As someone who has played every sanctioned format I feel like I have a grasp of what is good and what isn't. There is a better version of your deck and it has counterspells. Animar swings for a lot. If you play him turn 2 he can attack for 4 or more on turn 3. He can easily deal 21 general damage by turn 6. You don't have to win with general damage either, as he is just part of the assault. You do not want to eliminate combo from your deck altogether, but the combo piece you need is Palinchron it goes infinite by itself with Animar in many cases. It also plays nicely with Cradle. The best part is when you use it to generate infinite mana it also gives infinite counters to Animar. Which should win games by itself.
You don't have to listen, but not playing FoW is absolutely wrong. If you ignore everything else I say forever I don't care, but please do yourself a favor, and everyone reading this thread, by playing FoW.
And while Lemonbuster was overly harsh there, he makes valid points. When I first read this thread I couldn't help but wonder why you discounted everything he said. He was one of the first posters on your thread and offered nothing but help, you consistently replied with negativity. If you disagree with someone's opinion that is one thing, but to talk down to them is another. Especially when you fill your arguments with big words and misuse them. It takes a very wise man to admit he is wrong.
I think Animar (aggro/control) might be the best deck in the format. It is hard to beat when built correctly. I can only offer advice though since my playtest partner doesn't want his list on the internet.
TL;DR: Trim the fat. Lower your curve. Play more counterspells. Every card should have a purpose and that purpose probably shouldn't involve a combo with a noncreature spell. Play FoW.
Emether, I think that's a pretty fair assessment. My observations include a lot of dubious competition (that is, suboptimal builds, non-established decks, etc.), and, really, any highly tuned deck with tons of redundancy should steamroll the aforementioned decks. Just because I beat a Jenara enchantress build doesn't mean I now boast a positive matchup vs. Jenara, eg. =P
My deckbuilding philosophy is that we should aspire to make a build that has favorable matchups vs. everything. In order for this deck to shore up its obvious weakness to the best blue and red builds (oh GOD, Nin must be a nightmare for this deck), I don't really see how FoW, Daze, Dispel, Misdirection, Spell Pierce, and Sylvan Safekeeper would be so bad as to kill the deck's tempo, as it's so unnecessary in this mid-range tempo-heavy meta to win on turn 4 or to multi-cast Eldrazi. Most decks that are going all-in (or almost entirely in) on their general (counter-spell heavy decks included) aren't casting their general the very first chance they get but rather keeping mana open as a backup. I just watched Nin vs. Wydwen where this was the case, both of which would be eaten alive if they hadn't taken so many precautions to protect their general and to make sure they resolved.
And if we're talking (viable) combo decks, Evergreen plays all the best discard spells to make sure he can resolve Iname through control decks (and to hit GY hate, of course). Given the versatility of these cards, it's not as if making your opponent send something straight to the GY for cheap is a bad play in general; likewise, counterspells have their purpose for stopping that one little Snap from making you lose the game as well as hindering your opponents from getting closer to their win conditions.
I used to play Sisay as an all-in combo deck. I doggedly refused to play any control cards whatsoever, not even Swords to Plowshares. The deck stomped the piss out of everything it faced in the 1v1 default rules meta (to be fair, I played a lot of anti-blue hate!), but it became obvious extremely quickly that I needed to change the combo nature of the deck significantly when I ported the deck over to Cockatrice for the French meta, given that I had neither access to discard or counter magic. With access to blue, Animar has potential. Right? I'd have to see it for myself if the addition of countermagic would somehow kill the deck. Getting Animar to be huge and swinging for lots of damage seems strong enough, if we're concerned that the chains won't be infinite. Infinites are unnecessary in the French meta (and clearly too risky) and aren't something to go all in on.
I've got a lot of respect for the deck and for what I think is a potentially great tournament contender, but until its weaknesses are addressed (and, indeed, admitted to), no one is ever going to take this thread seriously, Jester.
Should Cthulhu whale be an additional arsenal to our cause?!? We already got drawer and vindicate... although having 15/15 body is nasty as it is... and his cmc is castable...
I've been contemplating that as well. I'm pretty sure though that the answer is no though, purely because of his CC.
10 counters on Animar marks a very curious point, a sort of bridge, between an upper and lower chain. Generally, at this point, you either stall out or go infinite, with very little in between. Emrakul is then either irrelevant to a lower chain, in which you're unlikely to cast him however can cast Kozilek etc, or is irrelevant to an upper chain in which you're probably able to just loop ulamog.
The single exception however is Imperial Recruiter. For players new to the deck, it's sometimes hard to recognize when it's actually viable to combo off of Trinket Mage and they tutor Imperial Recruiter more frequently. In french particularly, with the 30 life total as opposed to the 40 life total of non-french, there isn't really much buffer life for Imperial Recruiter, making Emrakul's 18 life tax preferable to Ulamog's 28.
IMO, it's probably not worth running Emrakul solely because he's irrelevant to imperial-less combos.
As far as current testing goes, I've been looking into more cards for the control matchup in particular. I've been testing Gitaxian Probe, Insist, Daze, Disrupt, Divert, Cursecatcher, Edric, Kira, Wirewood Herald, Gaea's Herald, Spell Pierce.
Of these, Insist, Disrupt, Divert, Kira, and Spell Pierce haven't been very impressive, whereas Cursecatcher, Gitaxian Probe, Daze, Gaea's Herald, Wirewood Herald and Edric have all been pretty good.
The wydwen matchup in particular is just very painful, however other matchups against Edric, Zur, Ruhan etc have been better. I'm not sure there's really all that much that can be done against Wydwen without overly damaging the deck. The other control matchups aren't nearly as bad, with most being even somewhat favorable.
Those all seems like good cards to test. Cursecatcher is fantastic and is good both on turn one or the turn after Animar. Wydwen does seems like a rough matchup, but a lot of their removal cannot deal with Animar if it resolves, so there is hope.
Emrakul is probably too much, like you said. Which is unfortunate because that card is stupid good. On the flip side, it is almost impossible to lose if you hard cast her.
Oho that does sound pretty broken. What's really interesting too is that it's a potential out to an on the board Vedalken Shackles, or Jitte. I'm pretty sure that just get's slammed in the deck. Yay unbans?
I'm not quite sure how relevant the unblockability will be, being as lethal commander damage only really happens in one shot with imperial, which caters more towards non-french or with an infinite combo, at which point they have no permanents. Not to mention annihilator...
I'm just excited to bash on some Jitte's and Jaces. Good times.
You saw all those comments that Jester simply ignore because he knows his weakness and fails to address or fix it. What a guy, right? Best Animar player I've seen.
For a 3-colour deck, you fail to appreciate the best colour of EDH.
Go, Jester.
At least listen the person who insisted that you use more blue cards such as Force of Will.
Really, because I sort of feel like actively testing Force of Will, Daze, Insist, Gaea's Herald, Kira, Edric, Disrupt, Divert, Painter's Servant, Spell Pierce, Gitaxian Probe, Wirewood Herald, Glen Elendra Archmage and others does pretty much show that I'm listening to suggestions, even if I'm critical of them.
I had many more counters in my original build, even including Force of Will. There are certainly decks in which Force of Will is the absolute nuts, and I run it in the majority of my decks. It's just less than stellar in this particular deck, which doesn't mean there're no other viable options.
Even if Animar has a bad matchup to Wydwen, and probably Nin (haven't seen too many nin decks to test), being able to walk over the majority of the format is still a compelling reason to run the deck. Players are also encouraged to adapt it for their meta, which is a big factor as well.
I'm skeptical that it walks all over the major decks in the format, if Emether's testing is correct, it has bad match-ups with pretty much all of the blue decks in the format. And when a lot of the top tier deck is blue that is a little bad for the deck.
I think if you're considering testing Painter's Servant you might as well play Grindstone since you're often going for Trinket Mage anyways.
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I'm skeptical that it walks all over the major decks in the format, if Emether's testing is correct, it has bad match-ups with pretty much all of the blue decks in the format. And when a lot of the top tier deck is blue that is a little bad for the deck.
I think if you're considering testing Painter's Servant you might as well play Grindstone since you're often going for Trinket Mage anyways.
Sorry, but they banned Grindstone in exchange for unbanning Painter's Servant.
Dream halls doesn't actually work that way. It circumvents mana cost, not casting cost, meaning that you still pay your commander tax. Also, Eldrazi, being colorless, are not cast-able via Dream Halls.
@Feaor: The number of counters and the play strategies between all the blue decks in French are substantially different. Wydwen is a special case in that it doesn't ever tap out and basically runs the full anti-animar package. Aside from the insane quantity of counterspells, spot removal, and bounce effects, Wydwen also runs Umezawa's Jitte, Jace, Maze of Ith, Piracy Charm, Consume the Meek, Venser and Vedalken Shackles. That's some serious hate. The difference between a matchup against wydwen and say, Edric, is like comparing night and day. The notion that animar strictly loses to all blue decks is completely absurd.
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Interesting deck; I'm looking forward to trying it out. I was just searching on gatherer, and came across Furious Assault. Could this be useful for this deck - perhaps if Animar is facing a potential fog effect or easy to make blockers? Could be another option to combo off to.
If you're really all that concerned with doing an infinite-combo hard-kill, then run Inner-Flame Acolyte and loop eldrazi shuffles with Survival of the Fittest to give everything haste, then rely on Eldrazi to finish off non-legendary shroud/haste creatures. I wouldn't do it outside of a tournament setting in which overtime and killing instantly suddenly becomes more relevant.
Props on trying something really abstract and new.
Your Imperial Recruiter chains are way more complicated than the deck Chaplin was playing for Legacy. I believe it was Aluren.dec
EDH
BWG Doran Suicide Tempo BWG
BUW Sharuum Midrange Control BUW
I've tried Anger. It was real bad. If you have Survival of the Fittest out, there's no excuse not to do an infinite combo, at which point haste is largely irrelevant. Yes it's potentially very complicated, but it comes with the territory. Anger is otherwise a dead card.
The big against counter-magic matchups is to utilize various late-game strategies. For instance, Primeval Titan into Gaea's Cradle/Eye of Ugin is game-breaking, and there are many ways to fetch him. Earthcraft, Skullclamp, Gaea's Cradle, Eye or Ugin, Primeval Titan, Trinket Mage, Survival of the Fittest, Cloudstone Curio as well as tutors (sylvan scrying, wordly tutor, sylvan tutor, chord of calling, green sun's zenith, crop rotation) all offer potent control matchup strategies.
The two really big counter-magic tech cards are Insist and Daze.
Imperial Recruiter doesn't exclusively get metamorph and proceed to combo. Especially when you're facing off against heavy spot removal, at lot of times Fierce Empath, Dreamstalker, Peregrine Drake, Trinket Mage etc are all perfectly viable.
Anyway, the big thing with this deck is knowing when/how to capitalize on the game state. Your consistency is largely dependent on your own decisions, many of which aren't going to be inherently obvious. Stuff like tutoring Cloud of Faeries, Simian Spirit Guide, Flamekin Harbinger, Slithermuse, Trinket Mage, Fierce Empath etc can be very powerful when done in the right game state.
Someone compared this deck to storm earlier in the thread, it is more like affinity. Storm doesn't lose to sweepers. Which again makes me wonder why you aren't playing counterspells since Pyroclasm is the worst thing that can happen to this deck.
Also you have talked about having enough counters to play Eldrazi for free. If you put that many counters on Animar you will likely be killing with damage. Animar will be huge, and you have played a lot of creatures. If you are putting infinite counters on your general to make them free, the eldrazi is win more.
I'm not saying your deck is bad, but my playtest partner and I play exclusively french and only with real cards. Having watched his list evolve from one with Eldrazi to one without and his win percentage go up, I can only say from experience that they are not needed.
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The big test cards I've been considering lately are Insist, Daze, Divert and Flusterstorm. Of these, I'm leaning towards Daze and Flusterstorm as being the prime candidates.
This deck doesn't actually lose too much to sweepers aside from Pyroclasm. Damnation, Wrath Of God, and Day of Judgement are largely underplayed and more often than not both too slow, inconsistent, and are by no means a game sealer. The card advantage density of the deck makes it relatively easy to recoup from a sweeper, and the sorcery status of sweepers largely mitigates their potency.
I think your case against Eldrazi is somewhat thin as well. They both add in another dimension to the deck via Eye of Ugin, Primeval Titan, and Gaea's Cradle, and they enable an efficient way of creating infinite combos, sweeping blockers, and resetting. The difference between locking the game state/winning same turn, and within a turn or two, is huge. Do you have some other creature package proposal?
In your second hand, you do nothing until turn 3. Any counterspell wrecks you. As does spot removal. Instant or sorcery speed doesn't matter because you pass the turn back to them tapped out.
I can continue if you need me to make my point more thoroughly. FoW should really be an auto include in every blue deck. It is a free counterspell. It answers everything. And since you have so much "card advantage density" it should not be a problem.
Flusterstorm is very good, as are Spell Pierce and Dispel.
An Eldrazi in your opening hand is the same as mulliganing. You cannot cast the card and so it is useless. This is the same as having a Cruel Ultimatum in your opening hand while playing 5cc during Lorwyn-Shards standard. Until you hit 7 mana you are playing with 6 cards. Which meant that it was worth mulliganing a 7 card hand with Cruel U unless the rest of the hand was really good since there wasnt really a loss in cards in hand. The same principal applies here. Having a card that in uncastable without Animar in play and having a lot of counters on Animar means that you have a dead card, except for when you are already winning.
I also wouldn't play Eye of Ugin or Primeval Titan. Eye of Ugin can't provide mana and it costs 7 mana to activate. Primeval Titan costs 6. All it does then is accel you. Do you need the mana at that point? If you can cast six drops what about playing a creature to increase the clock that you already have because of all the cheap creatures you have been playing? If you untap turn 4 with Llanowar Elves, Animar (2 counters), Elvish Visionary, and a face down Fathom Seer in play. You can play an Inferno Titan and wreck an Edric deck. Or you could drop a Glen Elendra Archmage and stop every control deck from doing anything.
Also you focus a lot on your Cloudstone Curio combos and the cards you include to make it function. What about when you don't draw Cloudstone Curio? How good are those other cards then? What if they were counterspells like FoW which backs up my first scenario described in the above paragraph very well.
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In this deck, Daze is virtually a FoW, and it doesn't involve pitching a card and damaging the tempo.
The cards that focus on Cloudstone Curio are all consistently good in a curio-less scenario, and while executing a skullclamp-based curio combo, the sheer volume of card draw generated by Skull clamp let's you basically pick up your deck. In a theoretical situation in which you're executing a full-deck combo, it is perfectly viable, albeit more complex, to use Survival of the Fittest chaining clones, untappers and bounce effects and resets to cast infinite ulamogs. The addition of Cloudstone however add's consistency, and in of itself combo's nicely with the majority of the deck outside of infinite situations. Is there some specific card you're referring to that's focused exclusively towards curio?
Primeval Titan's 6-drop status makes him a prime target for Fierce Empath, for which there really aren't that many comparable targets. In any small-chain scenario, the simple act of casting prime-time into Eye of Ugin/Gaea's Cradle generally leaves you able to both search and cast an eldrazi on the next turn and creates an unrecoverable game state for your opponent. Mid-combo, cheating gaea's cradle into play with primeval titan is the de-facto method for enabling full reach via skullclamp, as well as enabling quirion ranger (bloom tender mainly), gush, cloud of faeries, earthcraft, fathom seer, peregrine drake, and clones.
Eldrazi are just amazing... their utility is really unmatched in here, and I'm certain that any full-fledged pilot would agree. Eldrazi are what separate Animar from being a glass cannon creature deck beckoning sweepers with being an absolute steamroller. Single handily they break any game state, and lock victories.
Take a while, and start focusing on learning how to perform a full-stack skull clamp combo. it's a real perspective changer to say the least.
Daze is nothing like force of will in any deck. Explaining the power level of force of will seems extremely unecessary. When you have fow in your hand, you have a near guarantee you will untap with an animar. Your deck has no such guarantee nor any sort of contol over what happens to your bored. Sitting there crossing your fingers will lead to a lot of losses.
The point hes trying to make is that all your amazing loops involving skullclamp, earthcraft, curio, ect are all pieces that are absolutely untutorable and to say that youre able to always go off with these things in a deck that literally gets torn to shreds (which has been proven by your sample hands) by any form of dedicated disruption is dumb really.
you dismiss every possible change by telling people that they don't understand how to play the deck or that they don't have your amazing Mulligan technique. Youre not a God among magic players, you dont have the heart of the cards, and this deck will never post any results anywhere because in reality, its just a bunch of gatherer queries for "creatures with function x" and stuck them in a list. This is made evident by jesters original posting of an animar thread very shortly after he was spoiled and hardly any changes have been made since the decks initial creation which means that none of this is backed by actual playtesting, just BS made up deck philosophy.
Good day
Skullclamp also tutors off of Trinket Mage, which is easily retrievable via Survival of the Fittest, Sylvan Tutor, Wordily Tutor, Imperial Recruiter and Chord of Calling. So yes, there are tutorable combos, and it's not a deck contingent on drawing the nuts, nor is it solely dependent on having Animar in play.
I dismissed the Eldrazi, Primeval Titan and Eye of Ugin changes because they are beyond amazing in the deck, and there was never any proposal of a similarly potent package.
I'm not entirely sure how you quantify absolutely no changes, because between the 30+ revisions of the deck, the original and current list differ by a good 35%. I do not know in which world a 35% change wouldn't be considered substancial. That's all play testing mate.
Daze is not FoW. Not even close. I can pay 1 and my spell resolves. It doesn't help counter the sweepers you need it to and the tempo of bouncing a land can be significant. That's not to say that Daze shouldn't be in the list.
I'm telling you from experience losing to Animar that you do not need Eldrazi or Primeval Titan to win. High converted mana cost spells are the reason that you cannot beat counterspells. Go under them, because you cannot go through them. I would go as far to say that the Eldrazi ARE THE REASON this deck is described as a glass cannon by some. You do not need to combo to win.
In my testing when I lose to Animar it is usually via damage. I have played UB Sygg, Doran, Zur, Ruhan, and Grand Arbitor. All of those decks are paper and without proxies. I can say that I have probably played more games against Animar than anyone else, but I have only goldfished it a few timess. The only time I ever lose to a combo is when late game it just kind of happens and I didn't leave counter mana up. You can't beat heavy blue decks with your deck, and you can't beat red decks with it. You stomp the GWB decks.
If you want to improve your matchup against the blue decks the best way to do that is to add more blue to your own deck, especially counterspells. If you provide a clock and back that up with disruption you have a winning game plan.
Combo doesn't work in the french meta because it gets stomped by the control decks. That is just how it is, not only in edh but in magic in general. You need an alternative game plan.
You plan on winning turn 4-5 but one disruption spell of any kind tends to set you back quite a bit. Counterspells are a way to make sure that what you want to resolve does and what you don't want to resolve doesn't. Blue is the best color in magic and you are not utilizing it to it's potential. This deck should be GUr.
As someone who has played every sanctioned format I feel like I have a grasp of what is good and what isn't. There is a better version of your deck and it has counterspells. Animar swings for a lot. If you play him turn 2 he can attack for 4 or more on turn 3. He can easily deal 21 general damage by turn 6. You don't have to win with general damage either, as he is just part of the assault. You do not want to eliminate combo from your deck altogether, but the combo piece you need is Palinchron it goes infinite by itself with Animar in many cases. It also plays nicely with Cradle. The best part is when you use it to generate infinite mana it also gives infinite counters to Animar. Which should win games by itself.
You don't have to listen, but not playing FoW is absolutely wrong. If you ignore everything else I say forever I don't care, but please do yourself a favor, and everyone reading this thread, by playing FoW.
And while Lemonbuster was overly harsh there, he makes valid points. When I first read this thread I couldn't help but wonder why you discounted everything he said. He was one of the first posters on your thread and offered nothing but help, you consistently replied with negativity. If you disagree with someone's opinion that is one thing, but to talk down to them is another. Especially when you fill your arguments with big words and misuse them. It takes a very wise man to admit he is wrong.
I think Animar (aggro/control) might be the best deck in the format. It is hard to beat when built correctly. I can only offer advice though since my playtest partner doesn't want his list on the internet.
TL;DR: Trim the fat. Lower your curve. Play more counterspells. Every card should have a purpose and that purpose probably shouldn't involve a combo with a noncreature spell. Play FoW.
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My deckbuilding philosophy is that we should aspire to make a build that has favorable matchups vs. everything. In order for this deck to shore up its obvious weakness to the best blue and red builds (oh GOD, Nin must be a nightmare for this deck), I don't really see how FoW, Daze, Dispel, Misdirection, Spell Pierce, and Sylvan Safekeeper would be so bad as to kill the deck's tempo, as it's so unnecessary in this mid-range tempo-heavy meta to win on turn 4 or to multi-cast Eldrazi. Most decks that are going all-in (or almost entirely in) on their general (counter-spell heavy decks included) aren't casting their general the very first chance they get but rather keeping mana open as a backup. I just watched Nin vs. Wydwen where this was the case, both of which would be eaten alive if they hadn't taken so many precautions to protect their general and to make sure they resolved.
And if we're talking (viable) combo decks, Evergreen plays all the best discard spells to make sure he can resolve Iname through control decks (and to hit GY hate, of course). Given the versatility of these cards, it's not as if making your opponent send something straight to the GY for cheap is a bad play in general; likewise, counterspells have their purpose for stopping that one little Snap from making you lose the game as well as hindering your opponents from getting closer to their win conditions.
I used to play Sisay as an all-in combo deck. I doggedly refused to play any control cards whatsoever, not even Swords to Plowshares. The deck stomped the piss out of everything it faced in the 1v1 default rules meta (to be fair, I played a lot of anti-blue hate!), but it became obvious extremely quickly that I needed to change the combo nature of the deck significantly when I ported the deck over to Cockatrice for the French meta, given that I had neither access to discard or counter magic. With access to blue, Animar has potential. Right? I'd have to see it for myself if the addition of countermagic would somehow kill the deck. Getting Animar to be huge and swinging for lots of damage seems strong enough, if we're concerned that the chains won't be infinite. Infinites are unnecessary in the French meta (and clearly too risky) and aren't something to go all in on.
I've got a lot of respect for the deck and for what I think is a potentially great tournament contender, but until its weaknesses are addressed (and, indeed, admitted to), no one is ever going to take this thread seriously, Jester.
Sorry, bro.
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10 counters on Animar marks a very curious point, a sort of bridge, between an upper and lower chain. Generally, at this point, you either stall out or go infinite, with very little in between. Emrakul is then either irrelevant to a lower chain, in which you're unlikely to cast him however can cast Kozilek etc, or is irrelevant to an upper chain in which you're probably able to just loop ulamog.
The single exception however is Imperial Recruiter. For players new to the deck, it's sometimes hard to recognize when it's actually viable to combo off of Trinket Mage and they tutor Imperial Recruiter more frequently. In french particularly, with the 30 life total as opposed to the 40 life total of non-french, there isn't really much buffer life for Imperial Recruiter, making Emrakul's 18 life tax preferable to Ulamog's 28.
IMO, it's probably not worth running Emrakul solely because he's irrelevant to imperial-less combos.
As far as current testing goes, I've been looking into more cards for the control matchup in particular. I've been testing Gitaxian Probe, Insist, Daze, Disrupt, Divert, Cursecatcher, Edric, Kira, Wirewood Herald, Gaea's Herald, Spell Pierce.
Of these, Insist, Disrupt, Divert, Kira, and Spell Pierce haven't been very impressive, whereas Cursecatcher, Gitaxian Probe, Daze, Gaea's Herald, Wirewood Herald and Edric have all been pretty good.
The wydwen matchup in particular is just very painful, however other matchups against Edric, Zur, Ruhan etc have been better. I'm not sure there's really all that much that can be done against Wydwen without overly damaging the deck. The other control matchups aren't nearly as bad, with most being even somewhat favorable.
Emrakul is probably too much, like you said. Which is unfortunate because that card is stupid good. On the flip side, it is almost impossible to lose if you hard cast her.
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I'm not quite sure how relevant the unblockability will be, being as lethal commander damage only really happens in one shot with imperial, which caters more towards non-french or with an infinite combo, at which point they have no permanents. Not to mention annihilator...
I'm just excited to bash on some Jitte's and Jaces. Good times.
You saw all those comments that Jester simply ignore because he knows his weakness and fails to address or fix it. What a guy, right? Best Animar player I've seen.
For a 3-colour deck, you fail to appreciate the best colour of EDH.
Go, Jester.
At least listen the person who insisted that you use more blue cards such as Force of Will.
EDH
BWG Doran Suicide Tempo BWG
BUW Sharuum Midrange Control BUW
I had many more counters in my original build, even including Force of Will. There are certainly decks in which Force of Will is the absolute nuts, and I run it in the majority of my decks. It's just less than stellar in this particular deck, which doesn't mean there're no other viable options.
Even if Animar has a bad matchup to Wydwen, and probably Nin (haven't seen too many nin decks to test), being able to walk over the majority of the format is still a compelling reason to run the deck. Players are also encouraged to adapt it for their meta, which is a big factor as well.
I think if you're considering testing Painter's Servant you might as well play Grindstone since you're often going for Trinket Mage anyways.
Sorry, but they banned Grindstone in exchange for unbanning Painter's Servant.
@Feaor: The number of counters and the play strategies between all the blue decks in French are substantially different. Wydwen is a special case in that it doesn't ever tap out and basically runs the full anti-animar package. Aside from the insane quantity of counterspells, spot removal, and bounce effects, Wydwen also runs Umezawa's Jitte, Jace, Maze of Ith, Piracy Charm, Consume the Meek, Venser and Vedalken Shackles. That's some serious hate. The difference between a matchup against wydwen and say, Edric, is like comparing night and day. The notion that animar strictly loses to all blue decks is completely absurd.