Sacrificing creatures as a deck strategy is now typically established in Aristocrat style decks, but what are some of the other prominent decks in MtG's history that highlighted the power of sacrificing creatures?

Some that come to mind for me are:

• Recurring Nightmare decks.
• Arcbound Ravager affinity decks.
• Decks that ran Skullclamp, like some goblin variants.

Are there any others that come to mind?

And from the old-school kitchen table, I'm going to give a quick nod to Breeding Pit for its noble work in helping to repeatedly sate Lord of the Pit's snack attacks back in the day.

Yeah, I agree with Crow_Umbra. Slowing the game down with a bunch of wrath spells is going to get at least some of your opponents salty. If that's acceptable to you though, an option that pops to mind for me is Oloro, Ageless Ascetic.

• Lends itself well to a deck with a bunch of wraths because it can do something while still in the command zone.
• The deck can focus around planeswalkers and/or enchantments so you aren't as affected by your own wraths.
• Sanguine Bond and Exquisite Blood can be your main combo.
• Something like Virtue of Persistence is early removal and a potential late-game win condition by reanimating your opponents' dead creatures to use against them.
• Idyllic Tutor isn't on the Game Changers list but is still a good tutor to help you find your combo.

The downside is that it isn't exactly the cheapest deck to build if you don't already have a bunch of the cards.

The attitude towards combos in Bracket three is basically that no one should be comboing off until turn 7 at the earliest. The wording specifically says no "2-card" combos before turn 7, which in a technical sense means that 3+ card combos before that could be alright, but the attitude for bracket 3 is that games shouldn't be ending too quickly.

So if you are aiming to build a dedicated combo deck for bracket 3, you kind of have to hinder yourself a bit to make sure that you aren't threatening to combo off too soon. Some ways that you can do that are:

• Use combo pieces with high mana values that you will only be able to cast later in the game.
• Reduce your consistency in being able to achieve your combos by limiting your ability to tutor for pieces or run combos that require more than two cards.
• Run combos that also require one or two specific board state conditions that need to be achieved before the combo can really go off.

Beyond those basic guidelines, I'd need either the commander that you would like to run or the specific flavor of control you prefer to be able to suggest more specific options. Do you like running few creatures and lots of board wipes? Lots of counterspells? Creating engines that let you use repeatable removal effects? Hate bear effects that deny opponents options?

Well, with the new additions it looks like you are aiming to improve the deck's speed and consistency. With that in mind, potential cuts that I could suggest are:

• Palinchron: I used to run this but cut it after Ancestral Statue was printed. Even with a full discount from Animar, Palinchron still needs a lot of lands on the board to net you infinite mana without help. The deck should be able to win before you get that many lands out in a lot of instances. Peregrine Drake is much more mana efficient and can combo with other creatures for infinite mana. You also already have a number of different ways to rack up infinite counters on Animar so Palinchron is more of a liability since it can clog your opening hands.

• Outcaster Trailblazer: This is what I would swap out for the Dour Port-Mage. Your deck doesn't really run many creatures with a power of 4 or higher to trigger this. If you take out Palinchron then the Trailblazer is mostly there for working with Ancestral Statue. The Port-Mage works with Statue just as well, is cheaper to cast, and can be triggered with a wider variety of creatures and effects in the deck on top of being able to trigger its own draw effect with its other ability.

• Aluren: You already have a bunch of more efficient combo lines in the deck. You can't tutor for Aluren and Animar can't discount it. It also opens up potential plays for your opponents that they can use against you. You have so many more efficient combo lines that I'm pretty confident that you can cut this and not miss it, even if it might enable combo lines with the Port-Mage and cards like Shrieking Drake.

• Prime Speaker Vannifar: I know that I run Birthing Pod so this might be a bit of a hypocritical suggestion, but the big difference in my mind in that Birthing Pod doesn't have summoning sickness. I think that having to spend the mana to cast Vannifar and then wait until your next turn to use her ability is a bit too slow for what Animar aims to do.

• Kami of Whispered Hopes: This is basically just in the deck for Animar since you don't have ways of throwing around +1/+1 counters. Effects like this aren't even really necessary for Animar because you only need two counters on it to enable most of your combo line setups. 3 mana for a mana dork that makes you wait to produce mana with it is also too slow in my opinions.

• Hardened Scales: This is cheaper than Kami of Whispered Hopes but I think the same reasoning applies. Animar just doesn't need the effect that badly. I think that it would be better off as a 1 CMC mana dork that helps you either cast Animar on turn 2 or triggers Animar to get a counter later in the game. Having this card slot be a creature also means that you have one more card in the deck that can trigger cards like Beast Whisperer.