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Animar Creature Combo Lines [cEDH]

Commander / EDH Combo Counters Infinite Combo RUG (Temur) Sacrifice Tap/Untap

Flamelord

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Lands (26)

Tutors (8)

Worse Combo Pieces (7)

Interaction (13)

Draw (11)

Mana Dorks (7)

Finishers (2)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Animar, Soul of Elements

Ramp (12)

Combo Pieces (7)

Tech (6)

Sideboard

Other (9)

Maybeboard

Cut cards for additional consideration (11)

Likely Adds (improvements) (6)

Potential Tech (5)

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Draw Adds (1)

This is a bit of a mish-mash of different types of Animar, Soul of Elements creature-combo decks because I couldn't pick which one I wanted to stick to. Through a variety of semi-interchangeable creature combos all outlined in the below details we can quickly ramp up, and play a few 1-2 card win conditions with Animar supporting everything as he reduces all of the costs of our creatures making a few of the combos possible in the first place.

There are some restrictions on manabase due to budget items but things like cradle and original dual lands will eventually be added to the deck. It's probably a bit Janky. Big shoutout to the Animar cEDH community and primers for the core combos this is built around.

This combo is the staple of the deck for a fast and hard to stop win. With Animar's creature reduction cost and Spellseeker we can find Weird Harvest which is the end-all-be-all to a deck that combos off using nearly exclusively creatures. Resolved with = we can get Ancestral Statue + Walking Ballista and complete a couple lines based on preconditions:

Animar with 2 counters (requires at least additional mana):

  1. Cast Walking Ballista for = 1 and gain one counter on Animar
  2. Cast Ancestral Statue for the remaining mana in our pool. Use Statue's ability to return itself to hand and gain 1 more counter on animar now totalling 4 counters
  3. Cast Ancestral Statue infinitely now that it's cost is reduced to 0 until you have enough counters to kill all opponents with Ballista damage
  4. With the last Ancestral Statue cast return Ballist to hand.
  5. Cast Walking Ballista for = whatever is needed to end the game removing counters to deal damage.

Animar with 3 counters does the same as the above without needing the additional to cast both Ballista and Statue as Ballista for = 1 goes from 3 -> 4 counters on Animar to get the 0 cost Statue

The best benefit of Harvest is that with ample mana we can get additional support creatures for our combo that synergize well with having a few counters on Animar. Items like Spellskite, Destiny Spinner, and the more costly Prowling Serpopard offer some counter protection for only an additional mana + casting cost from Weird Harvest. We want to be careful about giving too many creature tutors off of Harvest to our opponents. But if we're going for the win then and there it most likely won't matter anyways. Not to mention all of our opponent's selections will be revealed to us.

So this combo is much weaker than the mainstay Animar Harvest the deck is built around. However, it can start from a creature of CMC 1 or any CMC above that using Prime Speaker Vannifar to cycle through to a creature of effectively any mana cost greater than 1 which provides great utility. Using the line we can immediately push into the highest creature cost in the deck of 5 CMC or stop along the way depending on what we're looking for including potential instant-win creatures like Imperial Recruiter, Spellseeker, or just whatever the game situation dictates. Not only is this good in slower games where stax pieces that restric mana usage as well as limiting the amount of cards that can be played it's also helpful as a "setup then combo" type item investing the 4 or less mana for vannifar on the prior turn and baiting out removal to protect more important pieces or just winning the game after we get to our next turn.

The actual sac, tutor for cmc + 1 line is a follow:

CMC creature -> Corridor Monitor -> Deceiver Exarch or Pestermite -> Breaching Hippocamp -> CMC creature

The simple play is depending on how much open mana and how many counters exist on Animar would be to push to 4 CMC for Ancestral Statue to do the typical infinite creature cast triggers and use one of a storm outlet or some ETB damage effect to kill our opponents. Considering that effectively every combo in this deck is creature focused this also allows finding Kikki-Jikki, Mirror Breaker at 5 CMC. But considering all of our untap effect creatures are CMC 2-4 this isn't always the cleanest outcome as we'd need to use all of the untaps just to get to a Kikki that doesn't actually combo off and win. In certain situations it can still work but it's nice to have options.

A huge part of this deck is the use of Kiri-Onna and Phyrexian Metamorph with a series of our other creatures that makes it a staple combo in the deck. Effectively Kiri is a more costly Man-o'-War that has the ability to also remove opposing creatures or generate additional value with the benefit of Animar's reduction of cost.

The main focus of this is having 4 Mana: and 2+ counters on Animar. The Start of the line is to play Imperial Recruiter finding Phyrexian Metamorph copying Recruiter finding Kiri-Onna. When Kiri ETBs Metamorph is bounced back to hand and then replayed copying Kiri-Onna which bounces the original Kiri back to hand.

Written in order (because i'm bad and need it spelled out for myself):

Preconditions: Animar with minimum 2 counters and available with more than 8 life

  1. cast Imperial Recruiter finding Phyrexian Metamorph
  2. cast Phyrexian Metamorph as Imperial Recruiter finding Kiri-Onna
  3. cast Kiri-Onna returning Phyrexian Metamorph to hand
  4. cast Phyrexian Metamorph as Kiri-Onna returning the original Kiri-Onna to hand
  5. cast Kiri-Onna returning both Phyrexian Metamorph and herself to hand (utilizes the "cast a spirit return Kiri to hand" to return both)
  6. cast Phyrexian Metamorph as Imperial Recruiter finding Peregrine Drake or Dockside Extortionist (whichever applicable)
  7. cast Drake or Dockside and generate 3 mana to be mana-neutral. Gain . 4+ is net gain
  8. cast Kiri-Onna returning Phyrexian Metamorph to hand (using mana from step 7, 2 remains)
  9. cast Phyrexian Metamorph returning Kiri to hand
  10. cast Kiri-Onna returning both Phyrexian Metamorph and Drake/Dockside to hand (using mana from step 7, 1 remains)
  11. cast Drake/Dockside reloading the 3 mana used to continue the combo

Generating Infinite cast triggers for an infinitely sized Animar to copy Imperial Recruiter one last time finding Walking Ballista to end the combo and the game.

We can win without Ballista. Using these same loops having 4+ lands (Drake) out or generating 4+ treasures with Dockside we net infinite mana and can re-cast the Imperial recruiter to find a few of either an ETB Draw, ETB +1/+1 counters for huge creatures, ETB Graveyard Recursion allowing for us to infinitely cast our instants and sorceries or whatever else is needed at the time to win.

If we can't go full combo you can use a more lightweight version of the loop using + Creature Cost (if an additional creature is needed for ETB) with Kiri on the field to play Metamorph bouncing Kiri and replay Kiri bouncing Metamorph + some other creature. This can be used offensively with our own ETBs or defensively to clear the board.

While Imperial Recruiter is not exclusive to one line I feel it's an injustice to our smiling tutor friend to not give him more credit. Recruiter is used in several different lines all of which can funnel int different win conditions making him a true all-star giving access to both Kiri, Harvest, and Kikki-Jikki lines with ease. Not even to mention he tutors for quite literally all creatures in the deck minus 5: Terror of the Peaks, Archaic, Serpopard, Hippocamp, and Statue.

Neoform Line: costs + with 2 counters on Animar

  1. cast Imperial Recruiter finding Phyrexian Metamorph
  2. cast Phyrexian Metamorph to copy recruiter and find Spellseeker
  3. cast Spellseeker to find Neoform
  4. cast Neoform targeting Spellseeker to find Ancestral Statue
  5. Loop Statue for free as we've netted 3+ counters playing all of these creatures generating infinite cast triggers
  6. Last Statue cast returns Phyrexian Metamorph to hand
  7. cast Phyrexian Metamorph as Imperial Recruiter finding Walking Ballista and win

Harvest Line: costs + for X creatures off of Harvest. Requires 2 counters on Animar

  1. cast Imperial Recruiter finding Spellseeker
  2. cast Spellseeker to find Weird Harvest
  3. + to find Ancestral Statue + Ballista + any necessary defense creatures (note they add to the overall cost of this if not colorless in their casting cost)
  4. Play out the rest of the Harvest line

You can also get a little more funky here and Recruiter into Metamorph first if you have a little extra mana and need more counters. but Recruiter + Spellseeker is more lightweight.

Kikki-Jikki: costs with 2 counters on Animar and having access to an untap creature like Pestermite, etc.

  1. cast Imperial Recruiter Finding Kikki-Jikki, Mirror Breaker or an untap creature (Pestermite or Corridor Monitor)
  2. Assuming you have access to the other half of the combo to cast Kikki and the untap creature
  3. Create infinite hasty creature tokens of the untap-creature

This is a much worse line than the others but it's won games before and will in much slower grindy games that don't support strong board states or certain stax pieces. This is not the primary combo and serves more as a fall-back option than anything else.

Admittedly, most of these should probably be cut in favor of more agressive draw, interaction, or support for the better combos. But I don't have the heart to do it. This deck started out like 6 years ago as an "Animorphs" deck and it feels like it's losing it's heart removing some of these pieces. Not a competitively viable choice, but my choice none the less.

Infinite Animorphs: requires Animar with 3 counters + or less counters and more mana

  1. cast Cloudstone Curio or have it on board already
  2. / cast any of the 4 morph creatures in the deck face down Vesuvan Shapeshifter, Den Protector, Stratus Dancer, Willbender
  3. cast any of the 3 morph creatures no played in the previous step. Triggering Cloudstone Curio
  4. Use Cloudstone Curio trigger to return a morph creature to your hand. Note this reveals the morph creature that the card was in this case
  5. Infinitely bounce morph creatures generating enough counters on Animar or enough cast triggers to Walking Balllista, Brain Freeze, or Purphoros, God of the Forge your enemies to death.

Infinite Cast triggers with Earthcraft: Requires , NO counters on Animar, and 1 basic Island

  1. cast Earthcraft with one or the basic Island
  2. Cast Shrieking Drake and responding to the Drake's ETB ability tap drake with Earthcraft to untap the basic Island
  3. Repeat for infinite cast triggers on drake. Combine with Beast Whisperer for draw, Purphoros for damage, or Brain Freeze for storm mill.

This is an interesting combo as it can be leveraged with other creature bounce combos in the deck to net a lot of mana that may not be available in other cases. With Statue this nets infinite with enough counters of whatever basic land types are open. Kiri-Onna loops can be more efficient using the same philosophy as tapping those creatures is not relevant to the combo. Just interesting ways to gain more value for only 2 as an investment as well as the drawback of having basic lands in the deck.

I play in a pretty blue-heavy meta so having a bunch of counters that don't typically fit in Animar as a primer has become necessary. Strong counters like Force of Will, Pact of Negation, and Fierce Guardianship offer free counters in pinch situations as well as strong spots to protect Animar as he is central to the deck's performance. Beyond this there are other counters like Mana Drain and Muddle the Mixture which offer us some additional benefit on cast or flexibility with an alternate option.

Because the deck is so creature heavy we would be remiss if there were not ways to protect our creature combos or make our creatures un-counterable or untouchable after casting. Cards like Destiny Spinner, Spellskite, Prowling Serpopard offer this protection where other items like Veil of Summer give us some protection from a few common colors of removal in EDH and cEDH.

As a more "fun oriented" option which is surprisingly efficient with Animar in play with a few counters Wandering Archaic   can be reduced to 0 cost with enough counters and also offers the threat to our opponents that any instant and sorceries they play will likely be copied by us if they don't pay a decent fine of this is very helpful for counter protection as holding open 3 Mana in a format full of 0 and 1 and 2 drop counters while also building their win conditions is not always easy. Countering a counter with a copied counter always feels good.

This is par for the course for a creature-focused deck. We run a flurry of elf mana dorks like all of LLanowar, Fyndhorn, Mystic, and Arbor elves with other options that benefit greatly like Priest of Titania. Rishkar, Peema Renegade turns Animar into a mana source when he's on board as well as bumps up the amount of counters we have by a likely 2 each cast

Including a few rocks like Lotus Petal and Chrome Mox our goal is to get Animar out by turn 2, build up a couple counters by turns 3-4 and win around turn 5 or earlier depending on draw and other game conditions.

Fun tech things that can be done include Green Sun's Zenith for = is a fun way to get dryad arbor out on turn 1 with another green source. Cloud of Faeries is an at worst free with 2 lands and even better with one counter on Animar. Priest of Urabrask is another way to net mana, albeit only red, with 1+ counters on Animar.

There are also ways to use more situational enchantments like Carpet of Flowers, Food Chain, and Earthcraft

Monke needs no introduction. Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer.

This deck loves to get good grades so we're packing quite a few creature tutors of various use.

Tutor Creatures to the battlefield:

  1. Green Sun's Zenith
  2. Chord of Calling
  3. Eldritch Evolution assuming we have a creature to sacrifice
  4. Neoform assuming we have a creature to sacrifice
  5. Prime Speaker Vannifar assuming we have a creature to sacrifice

Tutor Creatures to hand/top of library:

  1. Imperial Recruiter
  2. Weird Harvest
  3. Worldly Tutor
  4. Sylvan Tutor
  5. Fauna Shaman everyone's favorite budget Survival of the Fittest if I can ever get a copy of that card it will be replaced/duplicated.

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Casual

99% Competitive