Animist's Awakening

Sorcery

Reveal the top X cards of your library. Put all land cards from among them onto the battlefield tapped and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.

Spell mastery — If there are two or more instant and/or sorcery cards in your graveyard, untap those lands.

Discussion (49)

Mana_Mythic_Legendary on Pursuing Perfection, Part 9: Gruul …

1 month ago

In the last article, I referenced the opinion that Heath Ledger’s Joker is a Rakdos player. Here, I further submit that Godzilla is a Gruul player, or would be if you could find cards big enough. Big, stompy, and gloriously unsubtle, if you like mind games then maybe this isn’t for you. The rest of us will have a grand old time stampeding over you in the true Rhythm of the Wild.

Parsing out themes within Gruul commanders was a little more challenging than the past color pairings. While there are obvious trends like ramp and damage, I’d prefer to discuss things that are more in line with both colors rather than one or the other. To that end, we’re discussing X, Power, and Unsubtlety. As always, please bear in mind that the point isn’t a discussion of the competitive but rather a celebration of the thematic.

X

Bear with me. There are only six legal Red-Green spells with X in the cost, and not all of them are playable. However, there are currently eighty red X spells in print, sixty-eight in green. The other colors all have less. Of those 148 cards, 71 do some sort of damage. My point is this: In the Green corner, we have the undisputed champion of ramp, while in the Red corner we see, by inference, the most willing color to serve as a mana dump. Klauth's Will is probably the only Gruul X spell I’d play, but there are lots, and I mean LOTS, of mono-colored choices for channeling your inner flamethrower.

A 4/4 for four? Not bad. That taps for four? Woot! Heck, I run every Gilded Lotus I own, and that’s only good for three mana! If you like X spells, Rosheen is a nice, reliable bet that probably won’t draw much hate.

This guy? Unlike Rosheen, he might draw hate, and in spades. Doesn’t look relevant to X at first glance, does he? All that draw is magnificent, and an excuse to finally go tribal werewolves is well and good. Come nightfall, though, and he suddenly turns into a Kessig Wolf Run. Crack enough mana and you can kill everyone with one wolf token each. Good times.

This card was made for Goblin Bombardment and all it’s disgusting relatives. Sweet mercy, what a load of combo this is. Crack infinite, Make a pile of tokens, play it, empty it, play it again.

Power

Green’s fatties tend to be just that: well-rounded. Most of them have equal power and toughness, or near to it. In Red, however, you see things like Spark Elemental frequently: potent attackers made to die quickly, loudly, and messily. Both colors, though, have a passion for dominating in the combat phase. From Runes of the Deus to Fires of Yavimaya, there’s a fine sweep of support for storming enemy lines, and there are a number of Gruul commanders who do the same.

Whoa nelly, let them fight is right! Suddenly all those glass cannons Red gave you are made mighty, mighty thick by offense being, after all this time, the best defense. Flowstone Slide is suddenly tempting to play, frighteningly so. I don’t know what other chicaneries you might get into, but this is something I’d love to see played.

Omnath, Locus of Mana had a flying, hasty baby. I’m just going to leave this here and remark that any other commentary I would have made is being drowned out by maniacal laughter.

You like command damage, right? Of course you do. Well, that’s not the point here. However, playing big toys is strongly endorsed, especially when paired with Unnatural Growth and all those delightful parallels to the Pathbreaker Ibex. Get tall, go wide.

Unsubtlety

One could argue for the elegance of simplicity, but there’s nothing elegant about clubbing your opponents with chonks or hosing them down with napalm. Black, now, black’s plenty elegant. Blue is stupid elegant. Green and Red, though, lean towards an extremely direct approach. Here, we’re talking commanders that reward simplicity, encouraging unorthodox deck construction in order to reap some sort of reward.

Lands and critters, critters and land. And SUCH land! I always loved Heartbeat of Spring, but most similar effects double everyone’s stuff, or a particular kind of stuff. Not Nikya. Nikya gives only to you, provided you want to spend it on creatures. Props if you start pulling crazy tricks with Ashaya, Soul of the Wild.

Always swing? Ok. Reach and Vigilance? With two heads, I’m not surprised. 6 damage to anyone not playing a proper spell? Gloriously unsubtle, and less prohibitive than Nikya. Faced with the prospect of self-immolation in seven spells, Blue is going to be very, very cross with you, to say nothing of artifact decks.

The big guy puts me in mind of a line from X-Men Origins: Wolverine. “I'm coming for blood; no law, no code of conduct. You put me in the right direction, you get the hell out of my way.” This looks hard to pull off, but lordy the work it’ll do when you manage! I know from experience that green has all the kit necessary to fill a hand with land: give ol’ Borbor a deck excessively stocked with lands, a few choice options to shuffle your graveyard back in, stick him with Basilisk Collar and get to work.

And, for my personal favorite...

We HAD to discuss him at some point. Nobody is going to look at this guy piloting your deck and wonder what’s going to happen. You are going to spam land drops like nobody’s business until you can afford to plunk his expensive ass on the field, and then you are going to start making an EFFORT. You are going to throw thiccness at absolutely everyone. And, above all, there will be a delightedly murderous glint in your eye whenever someone suggests boardwiping. I know because this is an old, old deck of mine; there’s a bare-bones toolkit, then 40-odd lands and a massive pile of land-rush and “whenever you play a creature.” Think Warstorm Surge, Animist's Awakening, and an excessive collection of the actual token.

That's it for this round. Thoughts and questions are welcome. I hope you enjoyed it, and will come back next week for a real favorite of mine, Selesnya!

Prior Articles:

Rakdos

Dimir

Azorius

Green, with links to the other mono-colors

b0bjohnson on Mono Green burn

2 months ago

Aceh

I just cut Hurricane from the list, to make room for Gaea's Touch. I think the number of wincons depends on your playstyle/playgroup. Two might be too few.. In total I have 6 cards that usually leads to victory after flipping sasaya:

• Animist's Awakening
• Planar Portal
• Ring of Three Wishes
• The Great Aurora
• Borrowing the East Wind
• Squall Line

I used to play City of Solitude. It was amazing in this deck.. I think I might have cut it for Veil of Summer.. Both of your card-suggestions are excellent.

My issue with this deck is cutting cards. I do honestly not know what cards to cut anymore! If you have any suggestions for cuttable cards I would love to hear them!

Barbarian_Sun_Pope on My run in the Maze.

2 months ago

Love a good Maze's End deck (+1). Have you considered Animist's Awakening? It's legal in pioneer and considering the number of lands in this deck there's a pretty good chance you'll hit quite a few each time. Hope this helps.

edster on Synergies with Unbound Flourishing in Modern

3 months ago

Been testing unbound with newer cards and other deck lists: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModernMagic/comments/mdkh1w/ug_unbound_flourishing_tron/ https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/against-the-odds-unbound-wealth-modern-magic-online

Feels like Hydroid Krasis belongs in Game Winning. The value of a 2x/2x Flying Trample, draw x gain x is too much for most decks to come back from. Same for Walking Ballista, it's a great card all game. It can block then sac against aggro, disrupt creature combos and kill your opponent in the late game.

Magus of the Candelabra from testing feels like Great or even Game Winning. The copy goes on the stack, so you can target the same land twice. E.g. x=1, target Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, copy also targets Nykthos. Use Nykthos once after copy resolves, and again after original ability resolves. If you have lands that produce more than one mana, such as Castle Garenbrig, Nissa, Who Shakes the World, Utopia Sprawl, Magus becomes insane.

Prismatic Ending would be god tier but the number of colors (converge cost) isn't copied. The copy can only exile a 0 cost nonland. This card is amazing even without unbounded. Probably belongs in Poor tho.

Repeal could be upgraded from Poor to Neutral / Good. Any card that double cantrips with Unbounded is decent. From my own testing and decks in the link above, it does well.

Shatterskull Smashing  ^Flip, Agadeem's Awakening  ^Flip and other modal lands are Good in the right decks.

The problem with cards like Genesis Wave, Vivien's Arkbow, Electrodominance, Fiend Artisan etc that put a card into the battlefield is your deck probably has cards with cost {x}. You have to pick x=0, so you have some dis-synergy. For that reason, unless you build around this, losing out on some really great {x} cost cards, they go down one synergy rating in my books. They are still great but not perfect. ;]

Animist's Awakening is a trap. I think it belongs in Neutral or Good in landfall decks. In a deck with 30 lands (which I doubt), without unbound you expect x/2 lands since half your deck is lands. With unbound, you expect x lands so pretty much it doubles your number of lands. Sure it gives you back your mana this turn and double next turn, but it doesn't quite affect the board state enough compared to other cards.

nbarry223 on Darude - Landstorm (Turn 2 Win)

3 months ago

Animist's Awakening is really good if you can make its spell mastery cost work. It sort of fights with Faith's Reward though.

Barbarian_Sun_Pope on Landfall the win

3 months ago

Nice deck (+1), do you think Animist's Awakening would work here or would it be a bit more of a "win-more" card?

Shaffe_House on This Land is my Land

3 months ago

Part 2

Other Cards that you could consider cutting

1. Ondu Giant => Seedguide Ash this card is one more mana expsive and has to die inorder to get the lands, but could be such a good upside. This dieing with your commander reads ramp 3 draw 3 cards and gain 3 life
2. Soratami Mirror-Guard I get what you are doing here, but I feel like there are better payoffs for this
3. Timbermaw Larva => Rampaging Brontodon trample is 1,000% better on this card
4. Wakeroot Elemental 5 greens for a 5/5? way overcosted
5. Wave-Wing Elemental again similar argument to Windrider Eel not that big of an impact
6. Wild Wanderer good but could have better options
7. Aetherflux Reservoir I know this is good in commander but why? No synergy at all, there has to be a better card slot here
8. Elixir of Immortality I used to put this in all of my decks too, but it is counter productive to your stragay with cards like Splendid Reclamation and The Mending of Dominaria
9. Wayfarer's Bauble There is better ramp than this in green
10. I see why you have Jiang Yanggu but I feel like there is stronger cards than that. I cut the card to tutor Journey for the Elixir for him sorry :(
11. There are a bunch of other better than Ranger's Path you could add, I'll show them in the recommendations
12. Future Sight and Ominous Seas both seem strange here. I get future sight can draw cards, BUT I feel you should use mana sinks rather than off the top of your library draw
13. Ghostly Flicker is on thin ice, like yes you have all the etb creatures but sometimes it is a dead card. meh at best?

Other Cards that you could consider adding

This is where the fun begins and your wallet cries

1. You want Nissa, Who Shakes the World great card, it is a mana doubler ramp, and also you just win with the ultimate
2. I heard you like ramp try Tireless Provisioner and pick up one for me while you are at it please
3. Here is a gaint list of green ramp Harrow , Growth Spiral , Explore , Khalni Heart Expedition , Roiling Regrowth , Grow from the Ashes , Urban Evolution , Migration Path , Natural Connection , Nissa's Renewal , Nylea's Intervention , Spring / Mind , Animist's Awakening , Omen of the Hunt
4. Keeping your life total at a high level Kazandu Nectarpot , Grazing Gladehart , Retreat to Kazandu , Jaddi Offshoot
5. Mana Sinks, you are going to have a lot of mana, might as well do something with it Kamahl's Druidic Vow ummm.... yes? Kefnet the Mindful one of my favorite Gods, that doesn't have a place. I look forward to getting attacked by him Sprout Swarm it is really easy for this card to be "free"

6. Win Cons Blackblade Reforged yes, all the yes Kamahl’s Will All the lands become creatures lol Crash of Rhino Beetles oh crap a 15/15 oh no Oran-Rief Hydra meh, but it could be good?

7. Other just good cards Frilled Mystic , Trygon Predator , Plasm Capture Gush , Tragic Lesson , Simic Charm , Rampage of the Clans

That is all I can think of at the moment. I'm sure I'll have more la

dvdn1997 on Hydra commander??

4 months ago

Villainous Wealth Mass Manipulation Profane Command Wildest Dreams Nylea's Intervention Gaze of Granite Animist's Awakening