Double Masters 2022 Previews
In the Spirit of Double Masters 2022 (2X2), we’ve been given a double preview. That’s right—we have received two free preview cards from Wizards of the Coast this time around! 2X2 is an exciting set full of high-octane reprints and the PlayEDH team is very excited to showcase our preview cards! Let’s get right into it.
Animar, Soul of Elements
Animar, Soul of Elements will appear in Double Masters 2022 in normal and foil etched variants, featuring entirely new artwork by Filip Burburan! This legendary creature first debuted in Commander 2011 and is one of the defining early designs for the format. Animar has enjoyed long-lasting popularity. In fact, it's the #1 ranked Temur commander on EDHREC at the time of this writing!
While I think that the original Animar artwork by Peter Mohrbacher is very iconic and beloved by Commander players everywhere, I immediately fell in love with Filip Burburan's artwork for the 2X2 version of the card. It definitely presents a different take on one of Magic’s most well-known elementals.
The new artwork reminds me of Hayao Miyazaki’s films with Studio Ghibli, which have a common theme of portraying creatures that appear to be quite fearsome to humans existing peacefully alongside animals in nature. This evocative piece does a good job capturing the duality of a being such as Animar—gently nurturing the herd of elk on its back while also being strong and imposing enough enough to protect them from those who would do them harm.
Drafting with Animar, Soul of Elements
While 2X2 is loaded with great reprints for Commander, the set is also intended to be enjoyed as a draft experience with 10 different draft archetypes. Animar fits into the Temur Midrange Ramp archetype, where its ability to keep growing larger and reducing the cost of your other creatures make it into a credible threat. It also dodges two colors with efficient targeted creature removal, so it can be difficult to answer.
If you open Animar in your pack 1 and decide to draft around it, you'll probably wind up with a creature-based deck that's looking to ramp, draw cards, and eventually win through combat. You'll be able to find valuable support at all rarities in the form of cards such as Pirate's Pillage, Mulldrifter, and Bloom Tender. Cards like these will allow you to keep your hand full and get ahead on mana. This will help you find and deploy your biggest and best threats to keep your opponents on the back foot while they scramble for an answer!
You’ll likely be able to find some efficient removal such as Lightning Bolt during the draft, but you can also leverage bodies such as Venser, Shaper Savant or Aethersnipe to hinder your opponents’ tempo and clear a path for your creatures to get through. If you’ve already deployed Animar, it will feel good to cast these creatures and add more +1/+1 counters to get reductions for your top-end creatures.
If your draft goes according to plan, you should have no issue finding the necessary ramp and draw in the right colors. The only thing left is to find some big, scary friends to cast in order to have a reliable way to win the game! 2X2 has two rares and/or mythic rares per Draft Booster, so your odds of seeing relevant creature threats shouldn’t be too bad. Consecrated Sphinx is a big, evasive threat that can receive a heavy discount from Animar, while Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre are likely to end the game all on their own if you manage to resolve them!
Animar, Soul of Elements in Commander
I believe that the key to Animar’s popularity as a commander lies in the fact that casting creatures and generating value is just a lot of fun. Having protection from white and black allows Animar to avoid a lot of the pitfalls of other decks that rely on the commander as an engine, because it’s much less likely to eat targeted removal as it starts to get bigger. Let’s talk about some of the most fun ways to build around Animar, as it has proven to be a surprisingly powerful and versatile commander.
Every time that you cast a creature spell, your next creature spell gets cheaper. That means that Animar can easily just jam huge value creatures such as Apex Devastator and Maelstrom Wanderer and cast them at a big discount, cascading into even more huge value creatures! You can even cast colorless creatures like Wandering Archaic for free once you put enough +1/+1 counters on your commander! If your commander happy place involves casting big, dumb creatures and turning them sideways, Animar will be a perfect fit for your next commander deck.
Animar providing the generic mana discount allows you to easily ramp out big, powerful Eldrazi for little or no mana while supporting them with ramp, disruption, and card draw in your colors. World Breaker becomes a recursive threat that can be recycled and cast again for just 1 green mana and you’re sure to get some groans when you cast Void Winnower or It That Betrays for 0 mana! Along with the Eldrazi Titans that we mentioned earlier, there’s definitely enough scary Eldrazi threats to allow this deck to put in some serious work in a Temur ramp shell.
Author’s note: You can even combine an Eldrazi sub-theme with a big value theme featuring creatures like those mentioned previously! These two concepts work pretty nicely together.
The last archetype that I wanted to discuss for Animar is combo. Animar is known for easily comboing with Ancestral Statue by repeatedly bouncing it back to hand while Animar continues to grow larger and larger. You can also run several two-card combos in a shell like this one. Dockside Extortionist, a fellow reprint from 2X2, is one of many cards that can be used to combo off in these colors, with Cloudstone Curio being a great way to loop it and other ETB creatures in order to pull out a win. There are way too many combos that work well with Animar for me to list them all here!
Hold on—we’re not done yet! Surely, you didn’t forget that we have another preview card for Double Masters 2022!
Terminate
Terminate will appear in Double Masters 2022 in normal and borderless treatments. The borderless version features new art by Paolo Parente. This removal spell isn’t as flashy and exciting as some other spells out there, but it’s still a very reasonable pick in draft or constructed play if you’re in the right colors. It also remains a popular card in Commander, where being able to take out almost any creature at instant speed fits well into the multiplayer environment of that format.
Author's note: Please note that our second 2X2 preview card can not be used to destroy our first 2X2 preview card! That said, I’m in fear for my life from this one since the Archelle from the borderless version’s flavor text is a Chief Exterminator!
A Bit of Trivia on Terminate
Terminate made its first appearance in Planeshift way back in 2001. This spell was kind of a big deal back then—most black removal had restrictions that didn’t allow it to target black or artifact creatures. The original artwork by Di’Terlizzi for this card shows Darigaaz, the Igniter moments before he sacrificed his life by diving into a volcano in order to weaken the power of the other Primeval Dragons.
The art by Lucas Graciano that is featured in 2X2 was first used in Modern Masters 2017. This art famously portrays a Sun Titan being destroyed by the spell. It’s okay—you can use the Animate Dead from Premium Deck Series: Graveborn to bring him back if you want to stay on theme! I’m a big fan of iconic cards being referenced in other cards, so this art has always been one that I’ve enjoyed.
Prior to the borderless version of Terminate in 2X2, the best ways to bling out your deck with a special version of this card were the Friday Night Magic 2006 promo version with the FNM watermark and DCI set symbol (read: this is some seriously cool bling) and the textless Magic Player Rewards 2009 promo version featuring exclusive art by Thomas M. Baxa. It’s always exciting to see new and exciting versions of classic cards!
I hope that you’ve enjoyed our exciting preview cards for Double Masters 2022. This set has given us many exciting reprints to enjoy. I’ve seen a lot of hype online around the new foil variants and fantastic new artwork, and I’m looking forward to blinging out my own Commander decks with some of these incredible reprints!
What did you think of our preview cards? Which reprints have been your favorites so far? Please let us know on Twitter! We’d love to hear from you. Articles like these are made possible by our Patreon supporters. If you’re looking to play curated webcam EDH online, come take a look at our Discord.
This article is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.
