Rubberball Animar

Commander / EDH* Casual Combo Eldrazi Infinite Combo Multiplayer RUG (Temur)

MrTomDawson

5 drop (5)

• 1x Acidic Slime
• 1x Garruk's Packleader
• 1x Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
• 1x Peregrine Drake
• 1x Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir

4 drop (12)

• 1x Ancestral Statue
• 1x Beast Whisperer
• 1x Birthing Pod
• 1x Elgaud Shieldmate
• 1x Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1x Mystic Snake
• 1x Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1x Purphoros, God of the Forge
• 1x Riverwise Augur
• 1x Spellbreaker Behemoth
• 1x Venser, Shaper Savant
• 1x Vizier of the Menagerie

0 drop (32)

• 1x Ancient Ziggurat
• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x Cascade Bluffs
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Fire-Lit Thicket
• 1x Flooded Grove
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Forbidden Orchard
• 2x Forest
• 1x Grove of the Burnwillows
• 1x Hinterland Harbor
• 2x Island
• 1x Karplusan Forest
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Mountain
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Rootbound Crag
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Shivan Reef
• 1x Steam Vents
• 1x Stomping Ground
• 1x Sulfur Falls
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills
• 1x Yavimaya Coast

1 drop (7)

• 1x Arbor Elf
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Burgeoning
• 1x Elvish Mystic
• 1x Hardened Scales
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Siren Stormtamer

2 drop (14)

• 1x Beastcaller Savant
• 1x Destiny Spinner
• 1x Fauna Shaman
• 1x Hydroid Krasis
• 1x Ilysian Caryatid
• 1x Incubation Druid
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Rattleclaw Mystic
• 1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1x Survival of the Fittest
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Sylvan Caryatid
• 1x Sylvan Library
• 1x Utopia Tree

6 drop (6)

• 1x Brutalizer Exarch
• 1x Conduit of Ruin
• 1x Consecrated Sphinx
• 1x Deadeye Navigator
• 1x Primordial Sage
• 1x Soul of the Harvest

3 drop (17)

• 1x Callaphe, Beloved of the Sea
• 1x Cloudstone Curio
• 1x Elemental Bond
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Fierce Empath
• 1x Gadwick, the Wizened
• 1x Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
• 1x Laboratory Maniac
• 1x Manglehorn
• 1x Pir, Imaginative Rascal
• 1x Prowling Serpopard
• 1x Reclamation Sage
• 1x Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
• 1x Shaman of Forgotten Ways
• 1x Silumgar Sorcerer
• 1x Somberwald Sage
• 1x Wood Elves

10 drop (2)

• 1x Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
• 1x Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger

7 drop (2)

• 1x Palinchron
• 1x World Breaker

8 drop (1)

• 1x Tidespout Tyrant

11 drop (1)

• 1x Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre

Commander (1)

---

This deck has now become full-on combo. It began as a deck able to pivot between aggressive combat-based gameplay and combo finishes, but over time it's evolved to make the combo central, and almost never actually attacks anyone. I'm going to break down the deck by component sections (ramp, answers etc) before discussing the combo options.

Early Turns

Ideally we want a turn two Animar, but realistically this is not always possible. If we don't draw our fastest opening hand for casting the Commander the opening play is to drop a mana dork or a Wood Elves style creature that will bring us a land. The ramp slots have a few different purposes:

• Birds of Paradise; a T1 accelerant which is also a creature (making it a less useless topdeck later if we need to rebuild Animar's counters) is good, the fact it opens all our colours is better.
• Rattleclaw Mystic is the go-to mana dork, who can be played for free as a Morph if it ever becomes necessary.
• Beastcaller Savant has Haste as an added bonus and the restriction to only creature spells hurts us less than most decks.
• Sylvan Caryatid is slower, but the bonus Hexproof makes it harder for savvy opponents to disrupt our acceleration with well-timed removal.
• Utopia Tree is basically another Sylvan Caryatid
• Wood Elves are usually there to find our dual land because it's consistently the hardest colour to have by T2. Sakura-Tribe Elder hunts for our lonely basic Mountain. Burnished Hart was considered but rejected since by the time he becomes free to cast we don't really need the acceleration any longer.
• Hardened Scales is not ramp per se, but it's such a good T1 play that we will often choose to play it before our mana dorks as it benefits Animar so greatly.
• Burgeoning has a better rate of return, under ideal circumstances, than Exploration does, which explains why it makes the cut over it's younger brother - Burgeoning is an easier path to a T2 Animar than Exploration.
• Shaman of Forgotten Ways is two mana of any colour, which is pretty good when we're playing it for with Haste.
• Somberwald Sage is a better Shaman of Forgotten Ways most of the time, since almost every spell we want to cast is a creature.

• Vizier of the Menagerie is not ramp either, but it makes colour fixing easy and gives us access to an additional card, which is not to be sneezed at.

Mid-game

This is mostly about either setting up the late game with tutors (see section below) or getting engines (also below) onto the board, and hopefully with a good starting hand we will hit the mid-game running but about turn 3/4, slightly ahead of the rest of the table. However, this is also a good time to head off threats or problems, so it's a good time to cast our removal;

Acidic Slime is a versatile classic, and takes care of most problems (while also being a creature, helping set up the late-game).

Duplicant is a (usually) free removal spell that ticks up Animar, with the added bonus that it exiles its target.

World Breaker is a better Acidic Slime, costing one less and triggering all of our draw engines to boot.

Brutalizer Exarch pulls double-duty here; if we don't need the tutor effect, we can tuck a troublesome permanent.

Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker is great for this stage of the game, being basically a second use of whichever ability we have used already (though note it doesn't work with World Breaker or any of the other on-cast Eldrazi triggers).

Late game/combo plays

The core combo plays either involve Tidespout Tyrant, Cloudstone Curio or Ancestral Statue with sufficient counters on the commander to either cast and bounce and re-cast the big colourless Eldrazi for effect or repeatedly bounce the Statue with one of our engines in play:

Lashweed Lurker bounces every nonland permanent our opponents control to the top of the library

Artisan of Kozilek returns every creature card from the 'yard direct to the board

Kozilek, Butcher of Truth is massive card draw and protects against wipes or drawing our entire deck by reshuffling the graveyard into the library

Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger is unlimited double Anguished Unmaking without the life loss

Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre is unlimited Vindicate alongside the ability to reshuffle the graveyard into the library

Emrakul, the Promised End allows us to keep taking a player's next turn, granting them another, and then taking that one too. Essentially infinite turns, except we're playing with someone else's deck.

Mockery of Nature allows us to explode all the artifacts and enchantments in play.

Draw engines

To draw the entire deck, we use a bunch of ETB effects from enchantments or creatures, which once we go infinite (or even cast a bunch of creatures at once) we draw either all of or just a "shitload" (technical term) of our cards:

Elemental Bond works with almost all our creatures, most notably Ancestral Statue which goes infinite by itself.

Temur Ascendancy works with most creatures but also grants hast, vital if we're going for beatdown or hoping to chain together mana dorks.

Garruk's Packleader is another Elemental Bond with the bonus upside of being a creature to put an extra counter on Animar

Primordial Sage/Soul of the Harvest are basically the same card for our purposes, since we don't have to worry about the cast requirement of the Sage

Laboratory Maniac is not a draw engine, but uses the engines to win the game once we've got a source of unlimited draw available. Essentially we draw the entire library (ensuring that we keep available), cast the Maniac, then bounce another creature to trigger the draw engine of the day, and win. The other variation of this combo is to do the exact same thing but keep up for Purphoros, God of the Forge, and then repeatedly bounce creatures for infinite damage.

Tutors

The count for tutors is relatively low as originally the deck was a Primal Surge build with no non-permanents. Surge didn't make the cut, but the deck has remained extremely creature-heavy in hopes of building Animar up as fast as possible. The relatively low tutor count is due to the high count of draw engines, meaning in an ideal situation we won't need to search when we can just draw heavily into until we hit what we need. Mostly our tutors find creatures, so can at least get our backup Tidespout Tyrant to set up a loop, but primarily they exist to search out Eldrazi to start to combo off;

Conduit of Ruin finds our Titans/other useful colourless Eldrazi as well as reducing their cost, and we have instant access to the tutored card with Garruk's Horde in play. Added benefit of being wholly colourless so we can bounce it to tutor up everything we need.

Fierce Empath/Brutalizer Exarch are also primarily for finding Eldrazi, but can also search out Tidespout Tyrant to get the combo rolling.

Sanctum of Ugin doesn't really kick in until after we're casting fatties, but once we drop the first one it allows us to go and find the second combo piece.

Survival of the Fittest/Fauna Shaman are classics, with the added benefit of letting us discard an Eldrazi Titan if we need to shuffle the 'yard back into the library.

Trophy Mage/Drift of Phantasms find our Cloudstone Curio.

Momir Vig, Simic Visionary doesn't work with our colourless creatures, but is an excellent early play for searching out utility creatures.

Woodland Bellower is very narrow in application, but can perform several extremely useful functions; it can find Prowling Serpopard/Gaeae's Herald for when we're about to go off, Fierce Empath to grab us an Eldrazi, Eternal Witness to recur key cards, Fauna Shaman for a tutor engine and any number of mana/ramp creatures.

Protection

The deck's main weakness is the fragility - it's essentially a Storm deck powered by three (sometimes four) cards; Cloudstone Curio, Tidespout Tyrant, Animar, Soul of Elements and to a lesser extent Ancestral Statue. To protect our combo, we run the following;

Lightning Greaves/Swiftfoot Boots/Elgaud Shieldmate (the latter being a creature is a huge bonus) are primarily for Animar but can also be used to protect the Tyrant from spot removal

Gaea's Herald/Surrak Dragonclaw/Spellbreaker Behemoth/Prowling Serpopard/Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir prevent those pesky control mages from interfering once we start to go off

Silumgar Sorcerer/Mystic Snake/Venser, Shaper Savant and Draining Whelk are our counterspells with a dual utility of bulking up Animar a little further.

Asceticism grants mass hexproof to the squad.

Glen Elendra Archmage gives an on-board counter we can hold up as a threat.

Change log history

As of 20.06.2018, major updates and changes were made, so the old changelog was removed to show only changes at and beyond this date:

Land:

OUT - Forest x 1

IN - Dryad Arbor

CMC1:

OUT - Llanowar Elves, Elvish Mystic

IN - Siren Stormtamer

CMC2:

OUT - Drover of the Mighty, Harabaz Druid

IN - Earthcraft, Utopia Tree, Dire Fleet Daredevil, Sylvan Library

CMC3:

OUT - Drift of Phantasms, Temur Ascendancy, Trophy Mage

IN - Kira, Great Glass-Spinner

CMC4:

OUT - None

IN - Birthing Pod, Panharmonicon, Aetherflux Reservoir, Phyrexian Metamorph

CMC5:

OUT - Asceticism, Surrak Dragonclaw

IN - None

CMC6:

OUT - Woodland Bellower

IN - Deadeye Navigator

CMC13:

OUT - Emrakul, the Promised End

IN - None

Changes - 27.06.2018

OUT - Dire Fleet Daredevil - this card just didn't do enough. Since the deck tends to run so fast and tries to squeeze the most out of every turn, there was rarely spare mana to cast an exiled card, leaving this as just a bad piece of graveyard hate.

- Duplicant - again, just not doing enough. Rarely did I find I actually needed the spot removal, as the deck looks to operate faster than the rest of the table and deploy threats before opponents have problematic cards on board.

- Draining Whelk - bad draw in the early turns, still lackluster later on. Rarely do I have  to spare when going off, and generally Gaea's Herald or Prowling Serpopard are in play by that point to protect the combo.

- Great Whale - a very useful card in the early build-up, but I don't know that three versions of this effect are strictly necessary.

IN - Riverwise Augur - the deck really needs more draw/card filtering for the early turns, as there's often a stumbling block once the opening hand has been played out. Hopefully this will better ensure a smooth transition into the mid-to-late game.

• Jori En, Ruin Diver - casting two spells a turn is no hassle at all for the deck, so I'm testing this for a little extra early-turns draw.

• Elvish Visionary, Wall of Blossoms - overall pretty weak cards here, but at the very least they put a +1/+1 on Animar while replacing themselves.

Date added	7 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	13 - 0 Mythic Rares 56 - 0 Rares 15 - 0 Uncommons 11 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.69
Tokens	Morph 2/2 C, Spirit 1/1 C, Thopter 1/1 C
Folders	Possibles, Current EDH decks, Commander