MTG Salvation

I'm going to be picking up the Mirror Mastery COMM precon on release, and I'm looking forward to breaking in Animar, who seems to be getting over-shadowed by Riku, but is easily my favourite of the two. So I'm pretty much just using this space to think out loud and try to get some more ideas going on an interesting decklist for him.

Animar, Soul of Elements URG
Legendary Creature - Elemental
1/1
Protection from white and from black
Whenever you cast a creature spell, put a +1/+1 counter on Animar, Soul of Elements.
Creature spells you cast cost 1 less to cast for each +1/+1 counter on Animar.

The way I see it he's in the perfect colours to abuse a reasonably long list of mechanics and themes wizards has been working with in the past, though I'm going to focus mostly on using the +1/+1 counters aspects:

Evoke
This one's already present in the precon, though no Mulldrifter is a strange choice. Works well for casting out cheap creatures quickly to pump Animar, and get the ball rolling. Examples include:
Spitebellows
Aethersnipe

Graft
Seems like an obvious choice to both pump Animar (and everything else), speeds the process on ramp as well (through Animar), and often provide additional benefits for creatures with +1/+1 counters on them.
Llanowar Reborn
Plaxcaster Frogling
Cytoplast Root-Kin

Proliferate
Infect optional, works to pump the majority of creatures we might run in addition to our general, and can provide some side benefits as well, depending on your meta.
Tezzeret's Gambit
Thrummingbird

Bloodthirst
Something we'll be seeing again shortly, it's probably a little secondary in comparison to some of the above mechanics but it provides some more options, and comes in to play effects. In addition to generally being attached to creatures with a lot of colourless mana in their costs. They work with the graft stuff once they're used up, and benefit from Proliferate. Some of it won't be worth running but there are a couple I'm interested in testing out:
Skarrgan Firebird
Petrified Wood-Kin

Devour
Same boat as Bloodthirst really, promotes some synergy, works with graft stuff, benefits from proliferate, and gives us some interesting citp effects. With a bit more variety though.
Skullmulcher
Mycoloth
Dragon Broodmother

Gating
Non-keyword mechanic that pops up from time to time but was most notable in Invasion block. Provides generally undercosted creatures, with the drawback of having to bounce one already in play (eg: Horned Kavu) The guys are all over invasion block, and generally on multicoloured cards. The pool of playable ones in our colours is a little shallow but it's hard to pass up gems like Shivan Wurm.

Everything else that uses +1/+1 counters
And good lord are there a lot of them. Phantoms, with the additional bonus of surviving damage based board wipes (Phantom Centaur), Hydra's and other Ivy Elemental-esque creatures (Apocalypse Hydra), Forgotten Ancient type effects (Taurean Mauler, Hamletback Goliath), Triskelion and it's buddies Pentavus, and Triskelavus who have the added benefit of winding up free, even Arcbound creatures which might be a harder sell, but still provide some interesting options, and some strong cards (Arcbound Reclaimer, Arcbound Ravager) Spikes and they're myriad abilities (Spike Feeder, Spike Worker).

First Pass list:

Second Pass:
Couple changes, outlined an ideal manabase of sorts, aka an expensive one




Comments/ideas/suggestions/amusing anecdotes?

I love the concept. Very tight and synergistic and lots of surprise win cards. I almost like this more than my own Riku list.

I'll chime in on a few card choices to improve your quality a bit:

Relic of Progenitus nukes your own yard and is a nonbo with Genesis. I would recommend Loaming Shaman (whom you will often cast for :symg:) (OR Scavenging Ooze, a new Commander card) as a replacement, but if not him then something like Tormod's Crypt or Scrabbling Claws.

Your deck needs some way to refill your hand and get some gas. If you can afford it, Glimpse of Nature was made for this Commander. Also, Primordial Sage, who is much more affordable. Some Animar routes involve lots of artifacts and just playing their entire deck out for nothing, then dropping a Concordant Crossroads for the win. That said, I LOVE that you've included the two Eldrazi as a reward for pumping up Animar. Don't cut them!

You should look for more ways to get Doubling Season out there since your deck basically explodes with it on the table. You can play Gamble and get not-unlucky, or you can Intuition for Eternal Witness, Regrowth and any card you want, including Doubling Season. Intuition is sick with Genesis and Body double as well, so it's a solid tutoring package worth considering.

Fable of Wolf and Owl is pretty meh. Try Avenger of Zendikar or the new Hornet Queen that was spoiled from the product if you really want more tokens. They are guaranteed, they don't care if you play red spells and they are even more busted with Doubling Season.

Chord of Calling is like fifty times better than Green Sun's Zenith in here too. The instant speed AND the convoke mechanic really put it miles ahead.

Contagion Engine would be a pretty good one-player wrath that superbuffs your team anytime for 4 mana. It gives you something to do lategame if you're out of gas.

Woodfall Primus is sickening with Oran-Rief, the Vastwood. He's almost impossible to kill without Swords/Path. I would find a spot for him. You could use the disruption anyway.

Glen Elendra Archmage is probably better than Mystic Snake here because her cost can be reduced much farther with only one colored mana symbol in it. She will protect you from wraths that will punish you for overextending, which is what Animar is begging you to do.

If you want another I-WIN card, Triumph of the Hordes will be a real all-star for you. Perhaps in place of Rancor.

With 37 Creatures, you're getting into Lurking Predators viability. I would strongly consider getting free guys. It's got to be better than at least something in here.

Can you afford a Gaea's Cradle? Not that you need it, you're practically playing with one as your general. A lot of playgroups will let you get away with a gold-bordered version (like mine :)). It gives you some redundancy in case Animar eats a Chaos Warp or something.

Hope you find those card choices helpful. Good luck!

Aluren in this deck is pretty good. It always lets you play animar for free. Also forgotten ancient is another cars I will be running in my version of this deck. Oran-rief, the vastwood is another great card. If running this you may as well run woodfall primus. Palinchron is another card I will run simply because it's an infinite combo

Cloudstone Curio will play well with this deck. Elvish Visionary or Coiling Oracle for massive draws every turn was my first thought but you could do much more.

Made some changes to the list based on recommendations. Feel pretty silly for letting Lurking Predators slip my mind, obvious inclusion, thanks for pointing it out.

Morph Creatures!!
These are so broken with animar. When he has three counters, they are free! This may not seem like much, but throw in Cloudstone Curio or Tidespout Tyrant and suddenly we go crazy. With a certain Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre thrown in, we then get to destroy all permanents
Palinchron, Priest of Urabrask and Cloud of Faeries are all nutty, with the last two requiring some bouncer.
All the bounce creatures, a la Shrieking Drake and Man-o-War should be run as well IMHO.

The way I am building this deck is a very very strong combo deck. It just goes totally nutters, drawing my whole deck with Glimpse of Nature, making infinite mana off of Palinchron and the like or Earthcraft and otherwise just going crazy.
Im in love with the card, and it needs to be abused!!

Also, Wild Pair can get crazy with all the creatures being cast, Inexorable Tide is great and so on. There is just so much nutty stuff to do.

All that being said, I can not emphasize morph creatures enough. They go crazy with Animar.

I could see running a couple morph creatures, but I'm not really sold on them with animar, sure they wind up in play for free, but then I have to unmorph them at full price, and when compared to just running big artifact creatures/eldrazi I can get a much better creature for a greatly reduced cost.

I may include Palinchron, if I can find one, he seems fun, but I don't have much interest in making Animar in to a combo deck. What you're describing sounds much more like a 1v1 deck than a multiplayer one. And far to reliant on keeping your general available and leveled up (so to speak). Don't get me wrong it sounds strong/entertaining, but it's not my kind of playstyle for multiplayer. I'm a sucker for synergy.

I'm thinking Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir and/or Vedalken Orrery/Leyline of Anticipation would be well worth a spot in here somewhere. The triple U on Teferi concerns me, but his second ability is pretty damn strong, even if it does paint a target on his head.

Cloudstone Curio should probably find it's way in there somewhere. I don't think I'm running enough of the Citp effects to really get the benefit from it, but it's probably still strong enough to hold the spot. Speaking of which FTK should probably find it's way in here.

Edit/Sidenote: Vigor needs to make his way in here somehow. Compiling a longer list of obvious misses and other optional cards, altering the list to drop some subsets of stuff and build towards more synergy overall. New considerations include:

Ashling the Pilgrim Screams to be run, makes for some good synergy and a nice boardsweeper/kill spell. Also somewhat hilarious with:

Vigor. Belongs in here, enables lots of synergy, and is generally a cool guy.

Experiment Kraj, hard to pass up, hard to reduce the cost on too, but he seems like a strong choice for synergy in this deck.

Strength of the Tajuru, seems like a good choice for ramping with Animar, and beefing up some tech fellas.

Novijen Sages, are taking Etched Oracle's place in the list, seems like an easier way to refill in case of a wipe, and less conditional than the Oracle.

Novijen Heart of Progress, another tech land, relevant, and handy to have in a pinch.

Evolution Vat, is something to consider, might be a bit slow for the deck, but something to consider at least. Similarly Rings of Brightearth could be something to use.

Sage of Fables is another card draw option, probably should find room for it.

Spikeshot Elder/Spikeshot Goblin, could both work to deal a lot of damage at will. Reusability on Elder makes it the more likely choice.

Blade of the Bloodchief Easy synergy, almost an auto-include for Animar, cheap to cast, and certainly worth finding a spot for.

Your list looks good so far. Have you done any testing with it?

Here is my list that looks good to me, at least on paper. No testing yet. I did not focus so heavily on creature bouncing like the other lists. I tried to focus "a tad" less on beefing animar up and shift some of that focus to protecting your army and card draw.

I squeezed in 14 creatures for Aluren and tons of bombs or clones. I also made room for a handful of card draw spells and/or creatures. Annd the basic lamp ramp /mana fixing spells.

It seems like Eldrazi Monument will do wonders for Animar lists. We has an abundance of creatures to sac to it and it protects our army from "most" board wipes



Thoughts? I'm fairly new to EDH, so I'm all ears!

I'm working on a list now, these are all great ideas, and I see quite a bit of redundancy. however, heres some things I came up with that I didn't see yet.

Future Sight / Magus of the Future : These both seem amazing, as you can likely get a stack of creatures at the top of your deck (40-55% creature deck) and hopefully cast straight through them off the top. Both/Either combo great with...

Cream of the Crop : Even without the Future/Cream combo, you can always benefit from fixing the top of your deck. Remember to stack any search ETB triggers on top of this so you search, then order.

Kamahl, Fist of Krosa : Overrun on a stick seems amazing here. Turn your ordinary army into game enders. Seems better then other options because it ups the creature count.

Sages of the Anima : If you are really dedicated to the creature plan, you can play this and ensure you draw plentifully. Only recommended after you have hit a solid number of lands, or in conjunction with Oracle of mul daya/Future sight/magus

Not much to add, I myself am building Animar EDH (I'm making it douchey because it's designed to take out douchey/be the archenemy in archenemy)

infinite summon combos, or infinite mana combos are fun. throw in a priest of urabrask. extra mana (priest+glitterfang+cloudstone curio)

pandemonium is fun as well.

also, if you run enough manafacts/ mana dorks, or just a bunch of artifact creatures, it's fun to use mass land destruction when you get animar big :3

Quote from KingZydrate

infinite summon combos, or infinite mana combos are fun. throw in a priest of urabrask. extra mana (priest+glitterfang+cloudstone curio)

Yeah thats basically what I'm doing
My playgroup is really competitive anyway, and I already have a few fun decks, so I figured I would go crazy with the combos.

bumping this because it has gotten lost on page 2. Everyday multiple Animar threads are popping up. We need to stay focused and just talk on 1-3 total threads (or 1 thread with the 3 strategies)

Seems like there are 3 Animar archetypes:
1. Regular Animar with combo shenanigans
2. Affinity for Artifacts Animar
3. Mass Land Destruction Animar

My brew (a few posts above) fits into category 1

I've done ~9 games of 1v1 testing against a mono-black casual/competitive (but not pro) deck and had good results in my favor.

Our deck has to be careful about over-extending, which is difficult since that is what the deck tends to do. We overextend, they wrath, leaving us with essentially nothing.

We need card draw and wrath protection. Green creatures such as Regal Force Garruk's Packleader Primordial Sage Masked Admirers Heartwood Storyteller and even Lead the Stampede Glimpse of Nature . Then a lot of our creatures tutor for more creatures. Great card Advantage

Wrath protection. Genesis helps you recover. Eldrazi Monument protects all your dudes. Mystic Snake and Draining Whelk are both creatures with FLASH that counter spells.

And Aluren is an MVP in this deck. If its not in your deck, add it asap. IMO, these decks should be creature heavy with 45. Make 1/3 of your creature base (15) as three drops for Aluren It ensures free creature plays to pump Animar and get your combo-ball rolling. Is your Animar dying often and getting too expensive to cast? Aluren lets you cast him for FREE no matter how many times hes died. Neat, huh?

Aluren is such a house with this guy. For a combo deck, at least. I'd be tempted to build the entire deck around it and have a storm finisher if I could find some ways to tutor for it in these colors. Gamble is the first thing that comes to mind but there must be others. I know you can Intuition for any two of Regrowth, Eternal Witness and Body Double and make the third card whatever you want to tutor for. If one or both of your Aluren guys is bounce outlet like Aether Adept or Man-o'-War then you can easily go infinite from there. There are Momir Vig decks in the database that do this one can go off of as a reference.

If you're looking for Wrath protection, Caludron of Souls is a real winner. It's a nonbo with Animar himself but the rest of the deck LOVES it.