Animar Commander Elementals [mostly Magic 2020] Part 1

I have been having some fun in solitaire with this casual deck. At some point I plan to get Animar on paper, but not this Summer.

Once you cast a few creatures (they don't have to be Elementals!!), Animar is letting you cast them only for their colored mana costs. It's addictive, and the reason why it's a $20 commander on paper.

Kiora is a big help to untap a land. Three color decks are more mana-restrictive.

Thunder Drake gets counters easy in this deck.

And Overgrowth Elemental allows you to put a counter on a creature without one to abuse later with Populate (although this current build is not abusing Proliferate).

Another situation where any large Elemental gets almost free-casted.

Low mana Elementals are great for boosting Animar in the early game.

Risen Reef is really good in this deck. It really does not have an upside.

Any card that enters by dropping tokens can be used to abuse Risen Reef.

After enough Risen Reef abuse, I am loaded up with tons of additional lands, and additional Elementals.

Another awesome card in this deck is Soul of the Harvest. It has double green mana, which can be restrictive with a casual mana base to near free-cast off Animar, and enters somewhat late in some instances, but once setup, it's quite the card drawing engine.

Regal Force is another card-drawing engine but triple green proved too much of a restriction in this deck.

Here is the beauty of solitaire.

I was not able to abuse Populate that much in this build.

Another instance where I would have liked more token on my creatures.

In part 2 I put it more counter maker spells.

The Irony of an EDH spike

A spike in the price of a card is usually abbreviated as a 'spike.' EDH, or Elder Dragon Highlander, or Commander, used to be the format were junk rares (and mythics) were put to good use. No longer; now, there is a competitive EDH, or cEDH format, in which players jam their decks with every possible broken card to win at all costs.

Wizards has done a great job to capitalize on this popular format (good for them, and even the players). But now, instead of someone saying about a card 'it will find use in EDH' and meaning that it is a cheap card, this more often means that it is a valuable card. This makes sense: as the Commander format has exploded in popularity, cards good for the format have risen in value. And so now we have EDH spikes... You can't fight progress.

I am having too much fun with Pokemon Sun and Moon and I am also not a fan of spending so much money on Magic for every conceivable format. Vintage and Legacy have always been out of reach, then Modern became out of reach. Pretty soon, Commander will also be out of reach. I guess there is always Standard.

Deflation

Prices of the old cards went up by a lot during the buyout phase of the Magic bubble. The bubble is still there, same as the other bubbles in the U.S. economy. I wanted to take a quick snapshot and see if there is any deflation already happening. I see very little deflation. I am waiting for all of these cards to go down to prices that are no more than twice what they were before the bubble. They are all unplayable, and can only be collector's pieces.

Money Horizons

I never imagined, when I began playing Magic during Summer 2012, that Wizards would slowly and successfully implement a tiered model for it's products. The current tiered model seems to be:

1. $15 packs for the top 5%, Ultimate Masters and future products. These are premium booster boxes in the $300 and above range.
2. $10 packs for the top 5% that enable players in this wealth bracket to mingle with folks in the bottom 95%, Modern Masters, Eternal Masters, others, and now, Modern Horizons. These are premium booster boxes in the $180-$220 range.
3. $4 packs for the bottom 95%, Standard sets and the occasional special product, such as Battlebond and Commander. This is Magic for the masses.

Unless you are willing to spend $500 and above per month on Magic, you will not be able to afford this hobby at tiers 1 and 2. These tiers are for Modern, Legacy, Vintage, and hardcore Commander players/collectors/investors. That means you will have to pass on an ever-increasing range of products. These products are very desirable for a Magic player. You can make some awesome pulls out of those $10, $15 packs.

If you, like me, are a peasant, you are buying battlecruiser packs and Commander precons. That's it. There is still MTGO, where many cards are cheap to rent, but then you are in a split platform world: MTG Arena (MTGA) for Standard, and MTG Online (MTGO) for all other formats.

There is everything right with Wizards trying to make as much money as possible, and we peasants should not feel bad that the company needs to do this in order for us to get our $4 packs, our birthright. Yet, as a peasant, I sense something is wrong with this tier model, and I long for the day when ALL packs will be $4, and also for the days when Wizards will once again be an independent company, no longer a conglomerate's cash cow to make up for other dog areas of said conglomerate.

How long will the tier model stick? Maybe forever. Every change comes with a possible secondary effect, something no one could have foreseen. I think there is a scenario in which players who would have purchased the content in tiers 1 and 2 substitute with other games. But this is just a scenario. Another scenario, which I think is more realistic, is that Wizards' tiered model milks the last generation of players willing to pay absurd amounts of money for artsy cardboard.

In my case, I have substituted with Pokemon, but I am a trend of one person, and that is not data. I will continue buying occasional Standard packs and Commander decks for paper, and testing out tier 1 and tier 2 products on MTGO. I am excited about Modern Horizons, but only for MTGO. I have so far refused to collect any of the tier 1 and tier 2 packs. I just can't do that.

WAR Bant Proliferate

There is enough Proliferate in this deck for all of Magic history. I love it. Here are the planeswalkers (Nissa is shown in the Grixis post):

Jian Yanggu is really important to place counters on creatures with no counters.

Vivien's -2 ability allows me to cast an extra card, even if I have to pay the cost, and I can cast it anytime.

I am untapping lands with Kiora. I am sure it can be used to untap mana rocks.

Ajani's ability to put a counter on each creature is really strong.

Nissa is much better suited for a mono-green deck, especially for it's ultimate ability. Turning lands into creatures is really powerful, and in a deck full of proliferate, those lands can become even stronger creatures later in a game.

Here is the deck.

I made a copy of Ajani with Spark Doubler and added counters twice: sweet!

So many cards in this deck proliferate, that the blue ones are outnumbered by the green ones.

Here, I get to use Vivien's Arkbow.

The better creatures for a Proliferate deck don't need any help in getting counters.

Vivien lets me pick Nissa here.

Another Proliferate example.

Nissa turning lands into creatures.

And then I can buff the land-now-a-creature.

Nissa's ultimate would be absurd in a deck full of Forests.

Many lands-now-creatures.

Thuder Drake gets a counter from the second spell I cast.

Panhelion II is just too heavy, IMHO.

Proliferate triggered by Evolution Sage.

Hydras can get really big!

...really, really big.