Video: Naya Constellation In Standard!
Sam Black is combining the best of both worlds! Can’t decide between an aggressive token deck and the grindy enchantment builds? Why not try both?
Today I want to try a new brew I’m working on that takes the elements I like most from my R/W Tokens deck and combines them with some of the more powerful green cards in the format. My goal is to increase the overall power level of the deck while improving its positioning against Hornet Queen and Doomwake Giant.
I’ve loved Heliod’s Pilgrim for Chained to the Rocks, and I realized that playing a single Nylea’s Presence to find with Heliod’s Pilgrim can allow me to have even more access to “Mountain” than my R/W deck had, and my Pilgrim never has to find a card I can’t cast. Splashing Chained to the Rocks and having access to lots of copies of it because of having four tutors allows me to exploit the synergy between Eidolon of Blossoms and Chained to the Rocks –the efficiency of Chained to the Rocks forgives the inefficiency of a four mana 2/2, while giving me a lot of cheap enchantments to “go off” with.
Fetchlands maximize my access to Mountain while minimizing my lands that enter the battlefield tapped, minimizing the amount of mana that I waste each game on tapped lands, allowing me to play more inefficient cards that generate card advantage. This also gives me access to a huge number of untapped green sources on turn 1 to maximize the strength of Elvish Mystic.
The other elements of the R/W deck that I’ve preserved are Wingmate Roc in a deck full of cheaper creatures and most of the sideboard, particularly Chandra, Pyromaster, Glare of Heresy, and Erase.
Because I’m not playing Stoke the Flames, I’ve included Murderous Cut and Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker as outs to Stormbreath Dragon.
My decklist for today:
Round 1
I feel like I must have done something wrong to let that first game slip away. I wonder if I should have just purely tried to race, only plus-ing Sarkhan and not blocking with Ashcloud Phoenix.
In the second game my curve was outstanding, and I just got out way ahead.
The third game was awesome. We both had good draws and our decks got to do their things, I was just able to grind out Jeskai Ascendancy with a Chandra, Pyromaster that stayed in play for several turns. This deck is a little clunky, but its cards are independently very powerful and combine well to just give the deck an incredible lategame.
Show Summary
Round 2
My gamble on a one-land hand paid off, and my deck functioned pretty well, but I just couldn’t find and stick a flier to answer Elspeth in time. The second game, my hand was slow but had a lot of answers, and Wingmate Roc did its thing against Elspeth.
The third game was epic. My opponent was stuck on three lands for a while, but my deck is reactive enough that I couldn’t really punish them, I could just pull ahead, but I wasn’t prepared to kill Ajani, Mentor of Heroes when it came down, which meant my opponent and I both had steady streams of powerful cards. By the time I finally assembled a board that could handle everything, I ran out of time on my clock.
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Round 3
I was surprised to win game 1–I thought my color issues would kill me, but my opponent not having another spell on turn 4 meant the Swiftspear based aggression fell apart, and then the misclick with Stoke the Flames locked up a game I was likely winning anyway. I think my opponent might have been able to win by bluff attacking with all the Monastery Swiftspears on turn 4.
The second game was pretty simple. Sylvan Caryatid into Chandra, Pyromaster is a very difficult start for that deck to beat.
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Round 4
My start in the first game was too slow, in general, and while I found a lot of removal once I got going, I needed it much earlier to stop the explosive draw my opponent had.
Elvish Mystic played a crucial support role in letting me go off with Eidolon of Blossoms to get far enough ahead that even Back to Nature wasn’t enough to get my opponent back in the game.
My five-card hand in the third game was basically perfect, but not good enough to handle Xenagos into Hornet Queen. This game and the first game of my second match highlighted that my deck is really leaning heavily on its few fliers to answer planeswalkers. That might be enough most of the time, as it is nine cards that are very good against planeswalkers, but if the planeswalkers come out early, or if I stumble or my opponent has removal, it can definitely be a problem. That might just be the nature of planeswalkers, and as we’ve seen in some other games, I can just power through some portion of the time.
Show Summary
Overall, I’m pretty happy with the deck as a start. I think it might be a little too clunky–I might want more cheap removal, like Lightning Strike, and while the numbers on cards that give me access to each source of mana that I need work out well, the fact that almost all of my lands only actually tap for one color of mana means that I often have to choose not to be able to cast some portion of my spells. Sylvan Caryatid fixes everything, but I’m likely leaning too heavily on it. I can still have access to plenty of Mountains while playing fewer fetches like Windswept Heath and a few more duals. This makes Elvish Mystic a little more awkward, but there’s some room to do that here because I have so many untapped lands at the moment.