MTG Salvation

I don't think this has been mentioned yet, but Amonkhet brought us Vizier of the Menagerie. It's basically the most insane card Animar could ever possibly wish for.

Vizier of the Menagerie {3}G
Creature — Naga Cleric 3/4
You may look at the top card of your library. (You may do this at any time.)
You may cast the top card of your library if it's a creature card.
You may spend mana as though it were mana of any type to cast creature spells.

Vizier into Oracle is the most satisfying combo ever.

If you have 1 creature + Survival + Sylvan/Worldly, you can survival into Vizier, then combo with tutor without needing a card draw; then tutoring into something like Imperial recruiter is completely insane, as even if you don't have any gas, Vizier + shuffles gives you options and the Peregrine drake untap gives you options.

Also highly recommend Rishkar, Peema Renegade. Turning online Animar/Wall of Roots/Arctic Merfolk & +2 as potential mana tappers can gain you net 2+ mana, and sets up targets for Wirewood Symbiote

Updated list:

Last call?

Jester831
lrp8800a
PST

Jitte tilts games from time to time, sure, but generally it's slow, predictable, and you can out maneuver it. It doesn't steal the game single handedly, we still win most of the games involving Jitte anyway, and none of our worst matchups are improved by anti-jitte tech.

Any ideas for improving our matchup against Jace?

The new mulligan rule disproportionally favors Animar. Where our opponents would be inclined to mulligan simply in hopes of getting some small set of specific answers, we can basically keep any balanced hands. There's also a much higher risk threshold. Really, we don't need to mulligan all that aggressively at all, and even seemingly mundane hands routinely pull off extraordinary early kills. We win the numbers game, statistically.

Regarding your struggles w/ Mono Red, Aramille, it's a little unconventional, but if you adopt a more mid-range strategy, and focus more on ramp / card advantage / efficiency rather than simply going all in w/ Animar, then their tempo/burn strategy falls apart. Never forget that you win the war of attrition.

Quote from Dc2k »

It´s somehow the same I thought when I first see the card in spoilers. Plus the fact that in some scenarios, the card can outperform ulamog, as it "removes" 4 blockers instead 2. It can overcome prosh with 8 tonkens... Animar + Statue combo, Elder Deep Fiend, Statue bouncing, Elder deep Fiend to tap all the blockers (8 in total).

Well, first of all, Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre is still arguably a bit better than Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, for reasons I've mentioned previously. Nor do I do think Ancestral Statue belongs in the deck. That said, if the argument was that maybe Elder Deep Fiend could prevent something along the lines of a wrath, I think there are some holes in that strategy, namely opportunity cost. Every conceivable scenario I can think of in which Elder deep Fiend would be a reasonable strategy is predicated on missing earlier lines of play that could've resulted in a better outcome. To be completely blunt, I have never and will never add cards simply for the sake of dealing with blockers; it has always been a non-issue that's been exclusively vocalized by players who aren't quite yet well versed enough to manage consistent combos, and focusing on this point is moot considering it doesn't affect any hard match ups.

In any case, think about the match ups that are difficult, why they're difficult, and what kinds of strategies we can employ to address said match ups. That gives us a frame of reference against as we're contemplating changes. Strategy based arguments are the best.

We're not exactly doing great against Jace. Thoughts on that matchup?

Jester831 / Jester831
Hash: 00ts4l3l

Jester831 / Jester831
00ts4l3l

I've been doing a bit of post-cradle testing, and honestly this ban isn't too terrible for us.

Back in the day, the combo was a lot harder to pull off. Our strategy was underdeveloped, and we simply didn't have has many tools, nor did we fully take advantage of the ones we did have. The principle combo has always essentially been: 1) Get Animar online, 2) Get card advantage / mana engines online, 3) Draw our way into an infinite combo. It was very easy to end up in a situation in which Cradle was our lifeline, and we were largely dependent on being able to utilize clamp / Ugin / Kozilek in order to bridge a gap in the combo in which we otherwise wouldn't have the gas to proceed without a reset.

A lot has changed since then, both with the advent of new tools and massive strides in combo strategy. The Cradle as a lifeline scenario has long disappeared, and the combo simply doesn't have consistency issues once online anymore. In modern Animar, we would usually get Titan -> Cradle + Ugin because the {2} cost reduction on Ugin is surprisengly relevant, the ROI was always there, and most importantly because all roads still point towards Artisan of Kozilek.

Modern Animar is much more efficient. Comboing with cradle would usually result in us having a comical amount of mana, an army of creatures, and enough fodder to whimsically pick up the last 40-60 cards in our library without stoking the flames. Absolute overkill status.

So what's changed that has made Animar so much more efficient?

Sidisi's Faithful
Gurmag Drowner
Beastcaller Savant
Woodland Bellower
Faerie Imposter

I've long touted Artisan of Kozilek as being an absolute powerhouse, and each of the above has significantly increased Artisan's potential:

Peregrine Drake is our primary mana engine. Bouncing Drake via Imposter & friends is very inefficient. Strategically killing off Phantasmal Image only to recur isn't much better, however it's certainly viable to make lemonade in the process by cloning Wirewood Herald. Sidisi's Faithful & Gurmag Drowner to the rescue: suddenly we can clamp Peregrine Drake / it's doppleganger, sacrifice to extort, get a "free" clamp trigger, setup recursion, and get a trigger on top. Suddenly Imposter & friends do bat***** crazy things with Artisan. It's beautiful.

So basically Sidisi bouncing Artisan = {u} instead of {u}{u} to accomplish the Peregrine trigger, optional +3 card advantage via exportion + clamp. The alone makes Ancestral Recall look weak, but it gets so much better.

There are so many excellent ways to get to this point too, even if you're mana challenged in one way or another. It's just a matter of picking the situationally best route.

Some examples:

Chord of Calling -> Sidisi's Faithful / Empath / Recruiter
Empath -> Artisan
Imperial Recruiter -> Metamorph -> Peregrine Drake
Imperial Recruiter -> Metamorph -> Empath
Empath -> Woodland Bellower -> Wirewood Symbiote
Woodland Bellower -> Empath -> Artisan
Wirewood Herald -> Empath
Primeval -> Eye of Ugin -> Artisan

Once you've got some Artisan synergy going, there are so many options.

Artisan + Metamorph + Bouncer: Artisan returns Metamorph / bouncer, return metamorph to hand, recast metamorph to return Artisan, clamp, rinse & repeat.

Beastcaller makes Symbiote much more dangerous, as you're guaranteed an untap target, and beastcaller can be cloned by Phantasmal or Metamorph then later bounced to generate extra mana / tempo / generate card advantage. This makes Woodland Bellower less clunky, which in turn affords us another pathway to Artisan.

Anyway, the point of all this is just to say that we've already solved all of the problems that Cradle previously had addressed, and that the loss of Cradle has a negligable affect on our capacity to combo once online. The biggest downside is that we can no longer strategically blindside control opponents by dropping cradle from the hand. Against control, Primeval into Ugin is as effective as always, and maybe we'll lose fewer games by virtue of not inadvertently blowing ourselves out when cradle going offline we can't Ugin.

Really, we're fine so long as the deck has Artisan of Kozilek, Fierce Empath and Peregrine Drake. All other cards are expendable.

IMO here's where the banning leave things:

- Animar becomes more difficult to master, resulting in less representation. This makes it much less likely for the rules committee to ban Animar.
- Those who've mastered the deck die a little inside as more cruft seeps in to compensate for a lack of intimate understanding. More Ancestral Statue despite being told it's awful. Sad life.
- RIP Tasigur. It was by far the weakest multi-color/blue control deck against Animar to have existed. Gone are the days in which you could crush Tasigur for 20 consecutive matchups. Really going to miss that.

It's hard to predict where the meta will go from here. If I were to bet, I'd say Animar remains a fringe tier-1 deck, stays on the red list, but receives less play by virtue of accessibility and thus never quite becomes ban worthy. In other words, business as usual friends.

Tl;DR: Swap cradle for a forest. Master Artisan of Kozilek

Quote from Ben729 »

I'm embarrassed because I don't saw Jester831. Normally we have to catch us yesterday... But he were absent.

Yea this was my bad. I've been traveling, and wasn't on for long enough

Won 2-0 against LaPince

Replays here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0B_1P_D1yGIp2VkEycUpZNjJtejg

R2, Jester831 vs Ixidor: 2-0 (Jester831)

Replays available:
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0B_1P_D1yGIp2czZ1dTZVUEtkMEU

I'm going to start putting together a replay library to demonstrate different match ups, strategies and combos. Words have somewhat failed me in explaining how the deck functions. Take a look - I'll be adding to it regularly going forward.

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0B_1P_D1yGIp2WlVQeklRMC1WbEE

The new vancouver mulligan rule is pretty good for us. Animar has a very wide spectrum of acceptably good hands, and even vanilla hands that don't do anything before T3 can pull off T4 kills deceptively often. We can be both greedier in our keeps, and more conservative, than most decks. Don't be overly dismissive of meh hands, especially against match ups that aren't tempo based.

Quirion Ranger, while quite good, is anti-synergistic. We love having a lot of lands in play so that we can reap the benefits of Peregrine Drake. Tempo-wise, it's actually worse than Memnite and Wild Cantor.

Priest Of Titania isn't as good as Rofellos nor Bloom Tender. It's simply awkward. It doesn't make sense to T1 an elves and not T2 Animar, and doing a T2 Priest into only T3 Animar + Elves gives you a lot of firepower for T4, but also leaves you more exposed without enough to show for it, and doesn't increase the chance of a T4 kill measurably enough to warrant. With Rofellos, you have the option of skipping the combo entirely in favor of ramp, value & friends, and with Bloom tender you can do obscene things the same turn you cast Animar. Either will dramatically impact your opponents strategies, and allow you to catch them off guard.

Sylvan Scrying and Crop Rotation just don't have the value. I'd rather use turn 2 on something like Gatecreeper Vines and have guaranteed mana in the face of disruption, as well as a body to mitigate the risk of edicts, and to synergize with. I generally don't like having an early cradle simply because it makes disruption so much more punishing and is miserable if you don't have the hand to support it.

Whisperwood Elemental seems misguided. If you're anticipating a wrath, either kill them before they can lay eggs, take a trip to value town, or don't overcommit. We're already way above average as far as being able to readily recover from sweepers.

Sword of Fire and Ice also seems misguided. The added protection is irrelevant: burn's only an issue when your opponent is opportunistic, otherwise it's reasonable to either adopt a different strategy, or to opportunistically cast Animar and ramp him to 3-4 counters to safeguard against things such as: Sudden Demise, Lightning Bolt, Electrolyze, Flame Slash, Fiery Confluence, Fire // Ice, Slagstorm, Anger of the Gods, Char, Psionic Blast. You're still just as susceptible to the same things that Animar already is, only now you've lost your tempo advantage.

@RivenVII I keep an up to date list here:
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/imperial-animar-13-01-13-1/

Here are my replays for R1:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B_1P_D1yGIp2WlVQeklRMC1WbEE&usp=sharing

Quote from ouild »

That's my point : for simplicity's sake, derivatives (not different) builds could be discussed here, without someone asking you to get away as soon as you mention a card that is not part of the "official" build...

Straw man argument much? I was only replying to your comment on renaming the deck, and hadn't mentioned anything regarding what's discussed herein. In fact, I've previously supported a broader discussion:

Quote from Jester831 »

Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that all Animar decks should be discussed in my thread. What I try to accomplish with Imperial Animar is a systematic combo, which requires fundamentally different deck building guidelines. Where in my approach, I shy away from a lot of truly powerful cards that simply make sense don't given the constraints, I think there is a place for both value oriented combo builds, and for midrange good stuff builds.

From the perspective of sheer explosiveness, resilience and consistency, it's mine and many other's opinion that Imperial Animar is a pound-for-pound better approach, however in a lot of ways, if that's the only conclusion, then we're stymieing the growth of value combo variants, and midrange good stuff variants. In that regard, it's important to expand the discussion, as it's distinctly possible that what matters more is having a different matchup spectrum that is more suited to the metagame than simply having the best overall win rate.

That said, I do believe that there's a large issue with players simply not understanding how Imperial Animar works, and then making derivative decks with a lot of win-more fluff at the expensive of tempo, consistency, and most importantly chain-ability: the very sought after ability to make the combo go unabridged without requiring staples. From the outside perspective of someone watching the combo, it might seem lucky for the Imperial Animar player to pull off complex 30+ card combos, usually without any mana to spare, before finally digging into an infinite loop to close the game, however, it's consistently reproducible and is completely driven by skill and discipline.

What I'd like to see is a discussion in which people understand how the combo works fully, and either contribute to it, or, alternatively, contribute towards the progression of other strategies. It is definitely important to nourish other strategies, and I apologize for any role I've made in taking away from the development of that.

Quote from ouild »

To prevent further confusions, this thread shall be renamed "Jester's All-in Animar" or something, as there are many other Animar combo builds, all of them including Imperial Recruiter and some of them being more efficient in real competitive environments.

Perks of inventing a new unique combo deck: you get to name it. Flag's been planted. I'm not going to rename the deck simply because there are other, mostly derivative, builds out there.