Mirror Golem
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Highlander Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Mirror Golem

Artifact Creature — Golem

Imprint - When Mirror Golem enters the battlefield, you may remove target card in a graveyard from the game. (The removed card is imprinted on this artifact.)

Mirror Golem has protection from each of the imprinted card's card types. (The card types are artifact, creature, enchantment, instant, land, planeswalker, sorcery, and tribal.)

Jaecen on Animar, Sec

4 years ago

Card Categorization

I've categorized the cards in your deck here: https://deckstats.net/decks/50753/1215572-animar

The following analysis is based on that categorization. Several cards are in more than one category, so I've categorized them based on their primary or common case. E.g. Ancient Animus is both "Removal" and "+1/+1 Counter Interaction", but you're going to cast it to kill something -- the +1/+1 counter is a nice bonus.

Strategy

There's no explicit or stated goals of the deck, so I can't evaluate the cards against that. If you have a goal, let me know.

The core effect of Animar is to play creatures, which grows Animar. As Animar grows, he helps you play more (and more expensive) creatures. Some notable limitations:

  • Animar only decreases colorless costs
  • Animar only cares about creatures
  • Animar only cares about casting creatures

Animar is cheap to cast and protects himself from most removal (due to his protection from Black and White). Because of this, we can assume that we will get him out early and keep him out long enough for him to provide benefit. We'll build the deck assuming Animar is on the battlefield at all times.

Since Animar reduces the colorless component of creature costs, we'll get the biggest benefit from colorless creatures. As with any unlimited cost reduction effect, we should look for ways to break the free case. The obvious one here is to bounce and recast colorless creatures for free.

Since we're playing all of these (hopefully free) creatures, Animar will grow quickly. Giving Animar good evasion will give us to win on commander damage quickly.

To best abuse Animar, we want:

  • Many creatures across a range of mid to high colorless costs
  • As many of those creatures in our hand as possible
  • An many +1/+1 counters on Animar as soon as possible
  • A means to make Animar unblockable

The easiest way to break Animar is to create an engine that casts colorless creatures and bounces them to your hand as many times as possible during a turn. We'll want ETB/LTB effects on those creatures and cards that care about creatures entering and leaving the battlefield. Additionally, we'll want cards that care about +1/+1 counters on a creature.

Favor creatures over non-creatures, as you get a discount on creatures. Try to keep colored costs to a minimum - avoid double or more colors in a cost.

Abusable Colorless Creatures:

Repeatable Bounce:

Synergies:

Unblockable Enablers:

We'll want to get as many creatures down as quickly as we can. Card draw and other card advantage effects are valuable.

Draw/Card Advantage:

Changes to the Existing Cards

I would consider cutting way down on the amount of ramp. Mana dorks get the deck running early, but they don't have any synergy with the core effects. I suspect that's what was leaving you feeling like you had a dead hand.

Cards that seem particularly problematic:

  • Wild Cantor . Requires a sac for effect. Doesn't get cost reduction. A dork that taps for mana would be better.
  • Tinder Wall . Same as Wild Cantor sans the cost reduction bit.
  • Vivid Creek and Vivid Crag . These both ETB tapped, don't have basic land types, and only provide off-color mana twice. If would strongly consider running Amonkhet cycling duals over these.
  • Ancient Ziggurat . Be careful, as this mana can only be used for casting creature spells. I don't like this land in most decks.
  • Bond Beetle . I have no idea why this is in here. It works once and has very little synergy with the deck. Verdurous Gearhulk would be better, but still not great.
  • Green Sun's Zenith . I think a cheaper card that tutored to hand and then let you cast the card would be better, as you'd get the cost reduction effect and other synergies. No cards come to mind, but there are lots that look at the top X cards and tutor to hand ( Gift of the Gargantuan , etc.).