This is a guide for building an Animar, Soul of Elements 1v1 competitive deck. Additional notes at the end will cover changes for Regular 1v1 vs. French Rules, also an additional section to cover multiplayer and casual play.
The goal should be to always have an opening had that can drop Animar on T2, and start rolling out the 1,2,3 drops on T3, possibly with an infinite Animar, looping Ulamog or Ballista on T3.
Your land base should be 35 lands, including dryad arbor. Wasteland is your 'flex land' spot. For a meta with a lot of multi-color decks, Breya, new gods, basically against 3+ colors heavy decks wasteland is the goto land. If you play against a lot of mono green, red decks, etc, with blockers, Kessig Wolf run is better, or optionally just Island number two.
Some decks omit Dryad Arbor, due to not providing a mana source being a creature and having to wait a turn to tap. However the way you should look at this card is either a T1 play using GSZ for ramp, or as a Clamp target to draw 2 cards. Otherwise it's disposable later on in the game. Since it serves as a ramp component and card draw it is worth the card slot in the land portion of the deck.
Everything else is tuned to give you the best chance of hitting the lands, in the color percentages needed for the deck in your opening hand. 40% green, 28% red, 26% blue, 6% any, plus your combo/ramp spells.
The fast lands are good, you almost never care about lands coming in tapped after T3 only the first couple of turns are critical. The filter lands can be your worst lands. CoS turns colorless except for your chosen creature type, 99% of the time your choosing Elemental and it does have a couple targets outside of Animar.
Budget options for the dual lands can just be +1 of the 3 basic land types, otherwise the land base price is reasonable.
Ramp Spells and Creatures:
T1 Ramp Spells and Creatures
Generally if your hand does not contain a way to ramp out a T2 Animar, depending on the opponent, it's usually worth a mulligan.
Hardened Scales is the slight exception, if you can drop an Animar T2/T3 with scales on board, you have a good chance of being able to cast Ulamog T3/T4 or just go off with your whole deck. Scales has proven itself to be a rockstar card and not only ramps Animar like crazy it also doubles the counters placed by Bond Beetle, Rishkar, Arctic Merfolk, and Walking Ballista! also to a lesser extent the flip utility of a morphed Den Protector.
Wild Cantor also makes a good target for your Chrome Mox, giving you: T, add G or R mana source.
A T2 Sylvan Library is often acceptable with a slower T3 Animar just due to the card advantage, Earthcraft if you have the combo parts in hand or can get them and turn on Animar T3 with a combo on T4 can be worth a slower start.
With Library for at least the first two draw steps you pay 8 life, keep all the cards. There is no benefit to keep a higher life total at the loss of seeing less cards in the initial couple of turns of the game.
These cards are in the T1/T2 category as you will normally play them T2, however if you happen to get lucky and hit a T1 manaless ramp then sometimes it is possible to hit your T2 ramp on T1.
Overall you have 22 ramp spells, 14 of which are T1. You should see at least one in your opening hand or first mulligan.
If your opening hand does not have at least one or more ramp spells above consider a mulligan.
WotC/MTGO, French Rules
todo
30life
20life
ban list swaps
Multiplayer
todo
+1 Island
+1 Mountain
no wasteland/kessig
multi player target combos, 1v1 combos out
larger utility creatures
Errata:
Any ramp spells that ramp after T1, or ramp for colorless mana ie: Sol Ring are not suitable in this deck and only serve to slow down the ability to get Animar out on T2. You have enough ramp to do this very consistently. After that you are better served with utility creatures than more ramp cards in the deck.
Table of Contents
Introduction:
This is a guide for building an Animar, Soul of Elements 1v1 competitive deck. Additional notes at the end will cover changes for Regular 1v1 vs. French Rules, also an additional section to cover multiplayer and casual play.
The goal should be to always have an opening had that can drop Animar on T2, and start rolling out the 1,2,3 drops on T3, possibly with an infinite Animar, looping Ulamog or Ballista on T3.
1 Animar, Soul of Elements
Land Base (34)
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Ancient Ziggurat
1 Arid Mesa
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Botanical Sanctum
1 Breeding Pool
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Command Tower
1 Copperline Gorge
1 Fire-Lit Thicket
1 Flooded Grove
1 Flooded Strand
1 Karplusan Forest
1 Mana Confluence
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
1 Rootbound Crag
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Shivan Reef
3 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Spirebluff Canal
1 Steam Vents
1 Stomping Ground
1 Taiga
1 Tropical Island
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Volcanic Island
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Yavimaya Coast
Meta Flex Land (1)
1 Wasteland
1 Kessig Wolf Run
1 Island
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Elvish Mystic
1 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Tinder Wall
1 Wild Cantor
T1 Ramp Spells (6)
1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Chrome Mox
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Diamond
1 Utopia Sprawl
1 Wild Growth
T1/T2 Alt. Ramp (2)
1 Sylvan Library
1 Hardened Scales
T3 Ramp Creatures (9)
1 Bond Beetle
1 Beastcaller Savant
1 Bloom Tender
1 Cloud of Faeries
1 Lotus Cobra
1 Rattleclaw Mystic
1 Wall of Roots
1 Rishkar, Peema Renegade
1 Wood Elves
T3+ Ramp (2)
1 Peregrine Drake
1 Primeval Titan
Bounce (6)
1 Ancestral Statue
1 Arctic Merfolk
1 Dream Stalker
1 Shrieking Drake
1 Man-o'-War
1 Temur Sabertooth
Tutor (11)
1 Imperial Recruiter
1 Fierce Empath
1 Fauna Shaman
1 Trinket Mage
1 Brutalizer Exarch
1 Eldritch Evolution
1 Fabricate
1 Gamble
1 Sylvan Tutor
1 Worldly Tutor
1 Birthing Pod
1 Mulldrifter
1 Champion of Wits
1 Sea Gate Oracle
1 Raven Familiar
1 Glimpse of Nature
1 Skullclamp
Graveyard Recursion (2)
1 Den Protector
1 Eternal Witness
Interaction (5)
1 Gilded Drake
1 Magus of the Moon
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Brutalizer Exarch
1 Spellskite
Clones (2)
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Phyrexian Metamorph
Finishers/Stompy (5)
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
1 Emrakul, the Promised End
1 Walking Ballista
1 Primeval Titan
Counterspell (3)
1 Daze
1 Force of Will
1 Pact of Negation
Combo (3)
1 Aluren
1 Earthcraft
1 Cloudstone Curio
Your land base should be 35 lands, including dryad arbor. Wasteland is your 'flex land' spot. For a meta with a lot of multi-color decks, Breya, new gods, basically against 3+ colors heavy decks wasteland is the goto land. If you play against a lot of mono green, red decks, etc, with blockers, Kessig Wolf run is better, or optionally just Island number two.
Some decks omit Dryad Arbor, due to not providing a mana source being a creature and having to wait a turn to tap. However the way you should look at this card is either a T1 play using GSZ for ramp, or as a Clamp target to draw 2 cards. Otherwise it's disposable later on in the game. Since it serves as a ramp component and card draw it is worth the card slot in the land portion of the deck.
Everything else is tuned to give you the best chance of hitting the lands, in the color percentages needed for the deck in your opening hand. 40% green, 28% red, 26% blue, 6% any, plus your combo/ramp spells.
The fast lands are good, you almost never care about lands coming in tapped after T3 only the first couple of turns are critical. The filter lands can be your worst lands. CoS turns colorless except for your chosen creature type, 99% of the time your choosing Elemental and it does have a couple targets outside of Animar.
Budget options for the dual lands can just be +1 of the 3 basic land types, otherwise the land base price is reasonable.
Ramp Spells and Creatures:
T1 Ramp Spells and Creatures
Generally if your hand does not contain a way to ramp out a T2 Animar, depending on the opponent, it's usually worth a mulligan.
Hardened Scales is the slight exception, if you can drop an Animar T2/T3 with scales on board, you have a good chance of being able to cast Ulamog T3/T4 or just go off with your whole deck. Scales has proven itself to be a rockstar card and not only ramps Animar like crazy it also doubles the counters placed by Bond Beetle, Rishkar, Arctic Merfolk, and Walking Ballista! also to a lesser extent the flip utility of a morphed Den Protector.
Wild Cantor also makes a good target for your Chrome Mox, giving you: T, add G or R mana source.
A T2 Sylvan Library is often acceptable with a slower T3 Animar just due to the card advantage, Earthcraft if you have the combo parts in hand or can get them and turn on Animar T3 with a combo on T4 can be worth a slower start.
With Library for at least the first two draw steps you pay 8 life, keep all the cards. There is no benefit to keep a higher life total at the loss of seeing less cards in the initial couple of turns of the game.
These cards are in the T1/T2 category as you will normally play them T2, however if you happen to get lucky and hit a T1 manaless ramp then sometimes it is possible to hit your T2 ramp on T1.
Overall you have 22 ramp spells, 14 of which are T1. You should see at least one in your opening hand or first mulligan.
If your opening hand does not have at least one or more ramp spells above consider a mulligan.
Combos
Earthcraft
Cloudstone
Aluren
Recruiter Chains
Statue
Utility Creatures
todo
Utility Spells
todo
Finishers
todo
Ulamog
Koz
13/13
WotC/MTGO, French Rules
todo
30life
20life
ban list swaps
Multiplayer
todo
+1 Island
+1 Mountain
no wasteland/kessig
multi player target combos, 1v1 combos out
larger utility creatures
Errata:
Any ramp spells that ramp after T1, or ramp for colorless mana ie: Sol Ring are not suitable in this deck and only serve to slow down the ability to get Animar out on T2. You have enough ramp to do this very consistently. After that you are better served with utility creatures than more ramp cards in the deck.
History: