Animar is one of the most built decks because of its flexibility and open construction. You can play virtually any creature and it works really well with Animar's ability. Its also difficult to remove Animar due to his dual protections.
I built a pretty standard Animar deck with tons of value creatures and some of their bigger cousins. It has a number of ways to go infinite but mostly will win just by swinging with cheap fat dudes. I only included Ire Shaman from DTK but this list could use some Den Protector action and various other cards that will fit with the plan of the deck to reuse enter the battlefield over and over.
List here: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/21-03-15-swV-animar/
Lets start with the non-creatures, since they tell us the most about the deck.
Non-Creatures:
Cloudstone Curio - The most important card in the deck, Curio lets us do all kinds of shenanigans.
Glimpse of Nature
Chord of Calling
Sylvan Library
Earthcraft - The ability is not impeded by summoning sickness, so with constant bouncing we can make tons of mana.
Birthing Pod
Food Chain - This works with Misthollow Griffin to generate infinite mana and is just good at making lots of mana out of nowhere.
Aluren
Primal Surge
Equilibrium
One of the best ways to abuse recasting creatures as opposed to blinking them is Cascade. Animar reduces Maelstrom Wanderer or Bloodbraid Elf to only colored mana, easily casting things that cost more mana than you paid. The cast spell being a creature even triggers Animar.
Cascade:
Maelstrom Wanderer
Bloodbraid Elf
Shardless Agent
Etherium-horn Sorcerer
Slightly less explosive than Cascade is "just" drawing cards. We can play some pretty gnarly draw creatures though:
Genesis Hydra
Fathom Mage
Fathom Seer - We can play creature Gush! The cost reduction applies to morph so this guy can reset lands for free.
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Mulldrifter
Prime Speaker Zegana - The colored mana cost of Zegana is hard to make work, but the effect is an enormous number of cards.
Primordial Sage
Soul of the Harvest
As much as Animar reduces the overall cost of the creatures we play, we still need a lot of mana to chain our spells together. Specifically we need a lot of colored mana.
Mana Dudes:
Farhaven Elf
Sakura-Tribe Elder
Wood Elves
Coiling Oracle
Solemn Simulacrum
Sylvan Ranger
Cloud of Faeries
Palinchron
Peregrin Drake
Verdant Eidolon - This is very speculative, but I think this card will be green Dark Ritual frequently enough.
Burning Tree Emissary
Grinning Ignus
The rest of the creatures are filled out by utility, dealing with problems or generating value in less straightforward ways.
Utility:
Phyrexian Metamorph
Artisan of Kozilek
Deadwood Treefolk
Duplicant
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
Draining Whelk
Glen Elendra Archmage - This card is just generally good, but I could see it not being what we want all the time since the timing of its ability is not when we want to have mana open. It was originally Mystic Snake but GUU is going to be way too hard for us to get to on the fly.
Venser, Shaper Savant
Willbender
Fauna Shaman
Fierce Empath
Dream Stalker
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
Deadeye Navigator
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Eternal Witness
Vesuvan Shapeshifter
Gilded Drake
Imperial Recruiter
Shrieking Drake
Nantuko Vigilante
Man-O'-War
Ire Shaman
Lastly, we have the creatures who are there to win the game for us:
Purphoros, God of the Forge
Psychosis Crawler
The lands are a perfunctory affair. We need so much colored mana that we don't really have the space for frills beyond an Eye of Ugin for finding our multitude of huge colorless threats.
Land:
Breeding Pool
Command Tower
Eye of Ugin
5 Forest
Frontier Bivouac
Gruul Turf
Hinterland Harbor
5 Island
Izzet Boilerworks
Karplusan Forest
Misty Rainforest
2 Mountain
Rootbound Crag
Scalding Tarn
Shivan Reef
Simic Growth Chamber
Steam Vents
Stomping Ground
Sulfur Falls
Taiga
Temple of Abandon
Temple of Epiphany
Temple of Mystery
Tropical Island
Volcanic Island
Wooded Foothills
Yavimaya Coast
That's it! This deck is a compilation of the various strong cards but things like Animar Hydras is legitimate since the cost reduction is amazing with the X nature of Hydra costs. Polukranos doesn't seem like he would be great but with the nearly infinite mana you generate it gives you a repeatable board wipe, Essentially, this deck can play any of a dozen ways and you should feel free to swap any of these cards at will. This version is a bit on the meaner side, but its very difficult to build Animar without being a bit mean. I would list this as a 4 since it does seek to end the game, but its a pretty shameless combo approach. If you wanted to do something similar but less combo, you could swap the general to Maelstrom Wanderer and look for more artifact mana. And by more, I mean any since this deck runs none. Artifact mana is really good at generating colorless mana, which we don't care about too much. Signets are my go to for three color generals, but it actually doesn't speed up us any to signet into Animar. I thought it would be more pure to just leave it all aside.
I'll be back next week with Silumgar's Dragons!
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