Huh. Strictly Better MtG on Youtube previewed a card called Mistcaller that could be a decent Animar meta choice to help fight Breakfast Hulk type decks. It's a 1/1 for just that you can sac for a Containment Priest type effect that lasts until the end of the turn.

One new BBD card that I don't see on the list that I think should be there is Spire Garden. In this deck wouldn't it basically be strictly better than Grove of the Burnwillows? I think that it theoretically entering the battlefield is way less detrimental than giving the Ad Nauseam players even one extra life, at least in my meta in which most decks are AN decks.

Wincons in the deck discription: I recently rewrote most of this stuff just so it would all be accessible to people who want to explore different versions of the deck. I personally dont play or recommend cloudstone or earthcraft, but i wouldn't say theyre wrong in every circumstance. its more useful to have my reasoning out there for people to see, especially since some of these options are considered "classic" additions to the deck. i dont think there are any new cards missing from my discussion above.

1CMC containment priest: hell yeah this is a good meta pick! i dont like cards that are this narrowly reactive and not proactive in any way, but im also willing to a let a LOT slide for a 1CMC card with a passive effect. spicy card for sure!

Spire Garden: if it enters tapped in even 1 game its worse than Grove. just point the extra life at someone who isnt trying to cast naus. id rather be able to cast my stuff on time than jump through hoops to safe 2-3 life. Heck, run a painland if your meta is really naus-heavy. Now, if there's no chance you'll end up in a 1-v-1 match, you can consider Spire Garden. I sometimes get a few 1v1s in before the other members of my group arrive, so an opening hand with Spire Gardens would probably be a Mulligan, and it'd be a dead draw thereafter. I like Grove bc i wanted to avoid pains after swapping Tarnished Citadel in, but that's a bit of a meta pick. still, i'd recommend doing everything you can to avoid the risk of ETB tapped lands.

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/8sgpx2/m19_runic_armasaur/

This guy seems very promising as a cheap, on-board value engine. cast him tunr 3 and it'll be very easy to get 3-4 cards just from fetch lands and stuff. Feels a lot like Vizier as a mildly-expensive card with a lot of potential to push us through board-stalls. I'll definitely be testing this guy out!

So I guess that M19 has given us a few options for Animar. We've mentioned Mistcaller, Dark-Dweller Oracle, and Runic Armasaur already, but I think that the last one that could possibly be considered is Dismissive Pyromancer.

Comparing the Oracle and the Pyromancer: The Oracle is potentially able to get you a card the turn it enters the battlefield as long as you have the mana to activate its ability, a creature to sacrifice (which could be itself), and as long as you have the mana to cast whatever card is exiled that turn. The upside is that the card may let you dig for multiple cards off the top of your library in one turn, but at the cost of creatures without actually putting a card in your hand.

The Pyromancer is much slower. You need to wait a turn to activate it, its ability is more mana restrictive, it can only filter you one card a turn, and can't put you up in card advantage. However, it's not costing you creatures on board and it can act as a potential removal for all the Stax creatures that tend to give Animar trouble. Still, you have to ask if the removal option makes it better than other looting creatures like Merfolk Looter that can loot without costing you a mana to do so.

The Armasaur has potential to be a good card draw engine in a format where everyone is running a ton of fetch lands. It doesn't do anything for Animar immediately though, which means that it doesn't help continue plays when Animar is trying to storm off. And I think that around half the time in cEDH, when a creature activates an ability it is usually part of a combo so Animar may not be seeing its next turn anyway. But hey, those few extra draws you get may snag you one of the few counterspells that you could use to disrupt the final part of your opponent's combo. So when Breakfast Hulk goes off with multiple activations from Nomads en-Kor, Animar may actually have a decent chance of hitting that Force of Will it needs to stop them.

I think that Armasaur would find a better home in a more reactive deck, but it's still a decent card draw engine in green and Animar would really benefit from having one more to go with the Library and Vizier.

Greetings guys, as a fellow Animar player I greatly enjoy these discussions of various card options. Any thoughts about adding Birthing Pod? With the Kiki combo included, there are Pod lines of play that can use either Deceiver Exarch or Pestermite to get to Ancestral Statue using 5 generic mana, 6 life and a 2-drop creature. Or if we already have the Statue, we can get Purphoros, God of the Forge for the win. We can also just Pod into the Kiki combo or anything else if necessary.

I realize that a drawback to this is using additional mana that can't be reduced by Animar, but I feel that it could be worth it. Also, I know it's usually not considered for Animar but any thoughts on adding Mana Crypt to enable some extra free mana when needed?

Hi kinematik, welcome to the discussion!

I used to run Birthing Pod in my list until very recently. You're right, there are a lot of fun interaction that it can enable. One of my favorites was to use it to sacrifice Glen Elendra Archmage to fetch up Zealous Conscripts to untap the pod, since the Archmage comes back due to Persist, I would then sac it again to fetch Kiki to combo off with the Conscripts.

Unfortunately, the cEDH meta is a little too quick for that line of play to be viable in most games. It's not that the Pod is bad, but the mana you have to dump into it makes it a bit too slow and clunky in Animar. There are enough cheaper tutor spells that Animar has access to that you don't need a card like Pod clogging up your early game hand.

Outside of cEDH though, where the games tend to be a bit slower and you can get away with running more mid-range cards, I think it is fine to include in the deck if you want to.

As for Mana Crypt, there are a few issues that it suffers from in Animar. Normally it is an auto-include in deck, but it doesn't help get Animar onto the board and since most of the creatures in the deck are low CMC the colorless mana that the Crypt provides quickly becomes unusable. Taking into consideration the amount of times that the card is actually useful, you would just get more value out of running a different card.

Again though, outside of cEDH the card would probably have a bit more relevance if you are running more non-creature spells and having to deal with more wrath effects. The cEDH meta is a bit of its own monster where making card choices with speed and consistency in mind is more important. Having to pass on some of the more powerful and explosive mid-range cards that are still viable at the higher end of the more powerful casual metas can be a bit of a downer, especially since Animar can help make some of that stuff hit the board super quick, but in cEDH you are competing with decks that can potentially kill everyone on the first turn. In the end, you have to trim some of the fun cards out of the deck to give yourself the best chance that you can.

Well there has definitely been some discussion about Pod, and the lines it enables are definitely plausible, but I have the same issue with it that i do with so many other wincons/enablers: it interacts very poorly with our tutors/manabase/protection. Animar as a deck just doesnt support 3+ CMC noncreatures very well at all. and fwiw, something like Sylvan tutor can do prob 80% of the same thing for 1 mana, once you factor in the amount of time/mana you need to enable Pod. So in my opinion, Pod is definitely powerful, just too clunky to be more effective that the other options we already have access to.

Crypt is not worth it. You might be able to use the mana early in turn 2, and maybe a bit later on if you topdeck into Fabricate or something, but its just way to niche for the deck to work.

As always, good insight from Saber. Both cards are playable outside a totally-optimized animar list, and plausibly in a slower, grindier meta. I could definitely see running pod if you dont want to shell out $50 or whatever insane price Sylvan is these days. Still, id probably pass on Crypt tho.

I think that once you get into the upper tier casual tables - the sorts of places you might be likely to see a Mana Crypt outside of cEDH - you are more likely to see more wrath effects like Wrath of God, Damnation, and Toxic Deluge than you typically do in cEDH. Removal cards like Beast Within too.

I think that in that sort of environment you might want to run the Crypt because Animar is likely to die a lot more often and the Crypt would help pay the commander tax to get Animar back. There's an argument there for just running Sol Ring instead though, especially if budget is a consideration. When the board is getting blown up more often, the colorless mana has more opportunities to be useful then it normally would.

That's just my experiences though. Every shop meta tends to be different.

Thanks for the replies. I have limited experience using the Crypt in my cEDH-lite meta (90% decks with Yisan, Prossh, Tazri, Green Sevala) but it has worked pretty well for me overall. In JMCraig's above list, I count 10 cards that would benefit from Crypt mana which also includes activated abilities. If we are still running Earthcraft or Cloudstone Curio then that would be a couple more. It also helps to enable casting a higher cmc creature in the early/mid game when you need that little extra kick for the win. It's worth testing some more IMO.

Optimal uses I see in my list:

• faster turn 2-3 creatures before animar is built up (the main thing)
• recast a dead animar (relevant, but meta-dependent)
• Fabricate (generally not used until you have an established board)
• GSZ (def a good use of crypt)
• Clamp (another really good one)
• Paying Pact triggers (kinda narrow)
• Early Eldrazi (narrow, but strong)
• single colorless pips on noncreature spells (very narrow)

So it does some powerful things, but they're all pretty niche. More to the point, animar has never been a deck that needs extra mana; if anything, we've usually got too much mana and are limited by card advantage more often than not. So a niche mana producer is an answer to a question we aren't asking.

All that said, if it's working in your meta there's no reason not to play it!

Nice breakdown of costs there, additionally we have the creature abilities such as Caustic Caterpillar, Ainok Survivalist and Den Protector but that is also very narrow and near the bottom of your list. I've really only had it involved in a couple games, it greatly helped in one and somewhat helped in another so my experience is limited and I need to test it some more. Thanks again for the response!

Also to follow up, how has Mox Amber worked for you? To me that seems like the number one card that Crypt would reasonably replace in your list.

Forgot about the morph guys since the'yre often free, but yeah, unmorphing is something you can pay half of with crypt. good point.

Amber has been a little narrow, but the downside is low and the payoff is really excellent. We usually want Animar on board anyway, so this is just free mana, and it speeds us up in a very tangible way. Heck, if we dont have animar we usually want kiki out, so its kinda the same thing! And since its making colored mana, it can do almost everything Crypt can (youre wasting 1 mana from crypt on costs with only one colorless in them most of the time). It's usually our weakest mox, but i still prefer it to crypt.

Hey JMCraig, I haven't hopped in here for a while and man are there some changes! First of all I want to thank you for constantly updating your lists with the new sets. I have a competitive EDH tournament this weekend and had a couple of thoughts. I won't have access to a thran quarry or tarnished citadel by Saturday and instead will just have Yavimaya Coast and Shivan Reef in. I am also happy to see Kiki back in the mix. I do recall having conversations on his RRR being difficult to cast though, have you tested the new build so far? What are your thoughts? I really like this line for multiplayer though because it doesn't leave us dead in the water should Animar be removed 2 or 3 times. I also don't have access to a sideboard on this tournament. Would you keep scooze in to fight off the Thrasios/Tymna and Gitrog decks that are in my meta? Thanks in advance. Also, do you have a discord set up at all for Animar players? If not we should get one put together.

Hey man!

Tarnished/Quarry were part of the reason I got back on the Kiki train. Shaving Earthcraft made room for more gold lands, and having access to a few more R sources helped smooth things out for kiki. It's been working really well! Pains would def be the next best thing for that slot.

If you don't have a sideboard handy, the maindeck slots you devote to hate will have to be pretty well planned. In my list, id say the following are "flex" hate slots:

• Ainok Survivalist (cut if you have no torpor orbs in the meta)
• Caustic Caterpillar (def use one of either Ainok or this)
• Gilded Drake (if you dont have many creature/commander-reliant decks, cut this)
• Mental Misstep (if youre not playing in a ful cEDH meta, this gets worse)

Good alternatives are:

• Scooze (dece against Kess, solid against a lot of other popular decks)
• Shusher/Serpopard/Gaea's Herald (if your meta is super counter-heavy)
• Bane of Progress (if the meta is REALLY artifact-y)
• Manglehorn/Rec Sage (more reasonable artifact hate)
• Grim Lavamancer/Ulvenwald Tracker/Inferno Titan (for bear-heavy metas)

So what's your meta like? If you're totally blind, i'd say prob cut Ainok and add Scooze so you can have some game against the most possible matchups.

Even without Tarnished/Quarry, I haven't had many issues with pulling off the RRR for Kiki. Sometimes it has meant using Pestermite/Deceiver Exarch to untap a red source to net that third red mana, but overall its fairly easy to manage if you think ahead a little while deciding which lands to fetch for.

And I agree with JMCraig about Ainok being the flex slot for Scavenging Ooze if you are expecting to be up against Breakfast Hulk type shenanigans. The Ainok is mostly in there as an extra answer to Torpor Orb, which might pop up as a meta option to help deal with decks like General Tazri; Breya, Etherium Shaper; and Sidisi, Undead Vizier. For that sort of effect though, I think that you are more likely to see a Hushwing Gryff from a BloodPod player than a Torpor Orb.

JMCraig, what's your experience on the likelihood of someone running a Torpor Orb? Your meta regularly has to deal with your Animar deck, so do people in your meta play it often or do they opt for other type of disruption instead?

The Bloodpod guy i regularly play with uses Hushwing and Torp, but he's the only one. The blue decks like Storm and Hulk usually just run more broadly applicable answers like counters, bounce effects, Rapid Hybrid/Pongify etc. and honestly, if youre facing Torp, you can still get counters on cast and win by beating down, so its not as spicy tech as it was years ago. Still good to have an answer or two, esp if your meta is geared up against Animar, but i wouldn't sweat it too much.

Hey JMCraig. Because the events are few and far between the meta shifts constantly. Things that I know will be there for sure though: 2 thrasios/tymna, 1 teferi chain veil, 1 gitrog monster, 1 tazri FC, 1 Prossh FC,1 Brago Stax, 1 Tasigur Season's past, and 1 Arcum Paradox Engine. So my meta is pretty diverse and it is super hard to make decisions on what to add and cut, which is why i love sideboards but that can't happen this time. I think I will be keeping your stock list just to see how it performs overall. It's only a 15 dollar buy in and prizing is store credit so this should be a good test as to how the deck performs in constant 4 player pods. After the event i'll be sure to comment in again with my results. Thanks for the advice! Also, I have everything but sylvan tutor and I may not be able to get it in time. Thoughts on a replacement card? There's not many one drops that have that effect, which sucks.

If you click on the comment archive button and go back a little bit I go through the pros and cons of Signal the Clans as a budget tutor option if you don't have a Sylvan Tutor. You could give that a read and see if it is an option for you.

Spellseeker does a decent job of being an extra Worldly Tutor in most cases, so you could just use that Sylvan Tutor slot for the Scavenging Ooze that you were contemplating earlier. It would be worth running against about half of the decks you think will be coming to the tournament.

@JMCraig You were contemplating running Noxious Revival as a Spellseeker target a while back weren't you? Did you ever give that a test run? There's a lot of blue in those decks that Andros240 mentions above, so maybe that Autumn's Veil that you were also contemplating might be a viable option? If Sylvan isn't an option, then either of those two utility spells could be worth running.

I tested a few cards in that slot, but ultimately decided that running a sub-par card just bc Spellseeker makes it slightly better isn't worth it. ended up only adding the Seeker, and relying on the instants already in the deck.

Your suggestion to fill the Sylvan Tutor slot with a piece of tech is really smart though. The next best tutor would be Signal or Chord, and both have issues, so adding Scooze there would be really solid. Nox is a bit redundant, and Veil is a bit narrow, but your meta seems like it would demand some GY hate if you have the slot for it.

Good luck!

Hello there, I have been searching for a high-tuned Animar deck,and I run into your build. IMO is one of the most competitive builds out there. I also play an Animar storm-based deck and your list helped me a lot, but I have some questions; first, what are your tought on Aluren, I saw you mentioned it but actually don't run it. I'm considering on buying one but its too expensive and I want to listen to some opinions first before getting such a card. Second, my meta is too fast and insane (food chain tazri, ad nauseam tyma and thrasius, infinite turns narset, ramos storm deck (it may combo off on turn 2) stax derevi and saffi). I have won some duels when they start ruining their combos, so I take advantage and combo off from nowhere, but it's really hard. I dont run eldrazis, I used to think they would slow me down, but I want to hear your opinions about the eldrazi, besides, my animar gets killed a lot. I really like your build, congrats, it seems quite solid.

Hey! glad you're having fun!

Aluren: generally too bulky in my opinion. yes, it can enable some strong plays, but as a 4CMC noncreature, its also difficult to cast, and can hurt your timing in all but the best circumstances. I gave it a shot a while back, but ultimately found it a bit weaker than the wincons already in the deck. since we have access to two really good ones, i'd rather dedicate that deck slot to card advantage or protection.

Fast meta: its important to note that Animar won't always be the fastest deck in a meta with Thrasios/Tymna Hulk, Tazri, etc. your gameplan is usually to disrupt their first attempt to win, then make your move once the rest of the players are out of gas. your first tutor target could be something like Revoker/Glen to give them something to deal with, then build up you own wincon while they figure it out. Classic "who's the beatdown" scenario. its not always you!

Eldrazi: only two are worth playing. New Ulamog is a fantastic piece of removal that takes care of some things our deck struggles with otheriwise. he's also a nice end to the old school Recruiter line. Old Kozilek is a bit of a wierd card in the deck, but i still really like it. its free draw when you're ramping up, and the annihilator can really take someone out of a game. The central role both play though is as a mini wincon when the game stalls out. sometimes your tutors are all getting countered and your draw engines arent available, but a big free eldrazi is enough to destroy a stalled boardstate. Kozi in particular feels like a timmy pick, but every time i cut it i end up slotting it back in, bc its a solid role player. def a slot worth testing tho. cEDH decks sometimes just cant handle a monster beater.

Getting animar killed a lot: this is a classic problem with the deck. I always advise recognizing early when this will be a problem (you prob know which decks always pack REB or Pongify or whatever) and playing around it with your tutor targets. Glen is always a solid first pick when you think there will be wraths/point removal used against you. you may lose a few turns off your clock, but again, that disruption is often more valuable if youre not the faster deck anyway. other good cards to fetch are Sylvan Safekeeper, Skite, and Siren Stormtamer, if you run him. and also, since I added the Kiki package, i've noticed that it can be very powerful to bluff by feeding Animar into removal, then slamming Kiki shortly after. Having a non-Animat wincon gives you room to be a litte more flexible in your plays.

Good luck!

Thanks for your replies. I'll give the eldrazi a try. What I like most in MTG is creatures,and playing animar lets me use them in a competitive environment. Thanks for your pieces of advice.