MTG Salvation

Nahiri 100%. She's hard removal (whereas I'd call Ajani's +1 soft removal). She draws us cards to help find our cascaders/RBs. And she's an actual win con. Ajani probably won't be winning the game on his own.

My two cents on your list/thoughts:

- I'm with you on mainboard Leylines (though I run 3). I think the card just hoses a lot of decks and helps in some problem matchups. That being said, I'm still in the middle of my 50 matches mainboard/50 side test, so hopefully soon I'll have some data to back up my mainboard leylines.

- I think Dissolve is an interesting choice. While I personally prefer Supreme Will for the card draw mode, I see the appeal of Dissolve's scry over Disallow.

- Honestly, I think trying to be aggressive isn't the right path for this deck. Yes, Modern is a fast format that rewards being proactive, but when we can't do anything for the first two turns except cast borderposts (SSG shenanigans aside), trying to be aggressive is an uphill battle. RB is a deck that wants to be played slowly, wiping away your opponent's resources and slowly building a lock until you can slam a finisher. Also, I'm with epoa that Nahiri is plenty fast/effective.

Quote from DementedKirby »

Naya control is a pretty interesting concept for this commander. The way I was thinking of playing it is with mana rock, mana dorks, and utility lands. I was thinking of not only abusing its 3 activated abilities but its casting ability as well. For example, it's very easy to bounce with Temur Sabertooth. Then, recast it to untap all your lands. If you have lands like Gaea's Cradle, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun, and/or Sanctum of the Sun, you can produce a ton of mana to lock down the board with its abilities. You could easily keep creatures, artifacts, and enchantments clear of the board and attack with a massive commander. The idea is definitely viable.

I definitely considered going the combo route. I think at first, I'm going to try a "pure control" build, without the combo. But it's something that I may very well end up adding if the deck needs it.

Quote from imdehaven »

I love these guys. With a Swiss army commander that also is an evasive finisher, you can jam the rest of the deck utility and removal spells. Your list needs a Seedborn Muse to abuse the crap outta those activated abilities!

Seedborn Muse is a great idea. I feel a little silly not thinking of that myself. Thanks!

Zacama, Primal Calamity. Ever since this granddaddy/mommy dinosaur was spoiled, I've seen a lot of talk of using the card as the new Dino commander. But I had something different in mind. Given all of those utility abilities (and the fact that I always lean towards control-style play), I couldn't help but think about Zacama as a Naya Control commander. Now, GWR are not the best colors for control. In fact, Naya is missing the two colors I think are critical for control: blue and black. But there's definitely some potential there, and I love to brew, so here is what I've come up with so far:



Currently, this is just a first draft assembled from cards I already had in my collection. One consideration I'll mention when it comes to the direction of this build: I purposefully avoided MLD. I know that's probably the "most competitive" way to build RW Control, but my meta frowns heavily on MLD, so I won't play that way.

So, what do people think? Could Zacama work as a commander/finisher for Naya Control? Has anyone else tried to play a more controlling list in these colors? What are your thoughts?

Edit: Got the list down to 100 cards. Now just looking for general suggestions.

epoa, this isn't really related to anything we're talking about at the moment, but I went to my first FNM with Bow of Nylea in the 75 and man, that card feels pretty good when it gets going...

Your mana base looks ok. Personally, I think 15 borderposts is too many, but if it works, it works. I think by running that many BPs, you open yourself up to being hurt really bad by artifact destruction.

Lingering Souls is definitely a good card. It's fallen out of favor, as many lists are cutting black, but if you run black, I would think LS is almost an auto-include.

Kiora has also been discussed here in the past. I ran her in my first version of the deck. Personally, I like Gideon of the Trials better, but I don't think she's terrible.

Eh, pass. I don't really see how this card gives us anything that we need.

We don't run a lot of creatures, so we won't have many to activate its first ability. And a token-generating, two mana land doesn't really revolutionize our deck. Since we want to have 0 creatures to get the most out of RB, I only like to run game-ending creatures like Emrakul, Gargadon, and Colossus. Plus, depending on a land holds back our RBs, too. The more I think about this card, the less I like it.

So I admit I threw this together very quickly and haven't tested it at all, but if I were to try to make a budget build, it would probably look something like this:



According to tappedout, this deck would cost $97. However, for some reason it did not give a price for Wear/Tear, so that may push the price slightly above $100.

I think you make a lot of good points. In fact, a lot of what you've said is stuff I've been thinking about recently as far as deck changes go so, great minds think alike!

You're definitely right that colored mana rocks are slim. I think Thought Vessel should probably be Chromatic Lantern. I may find room for another too.

There's no good reason for Brainstorm to not be in here. It's a little silly that it's not, tbh. As much as I love Kokusho, it's my weakest reanimation target and not a huge impact in this style of deck, so if I cut a fatty, it'll probably be that.

And as far as boardwipes go, Deadly Tempest is definitely the weakest.

I'll test out some of these changes soon. Thanks for all your input!

I updated the main post a bit to better reflect the dual-strategies of this deck. We are a control deck at heart and, once the we have turned the corner, we have two paths to victory. The more straightforward path is that of a reanimator deck: get a game-changing creature in our graveyard, such as Jin-Gitaxias, Void Winnower, or Tidespout Tyrant, and bring it back.

The other path is the semi-combo of Paradox Engine. This takes a little bit more setup, since you need mana rocks, but once you have a few mana rocks, Dralnu, and Paradox Engine, you start getting insane value with spells that are either free or generating mana, plus the ability to cast all of our spells twice: once from the hand and then again from the grave with Dralnu. The more and more I lean on this as my late game plan, the more I'm considering testing out more mana rocks. Currently, I'm running seven but I think eight or nine might be the better number.

Makes sense. I like the 3/1 Nahiri/Gideon split, but if you're having more success with Gid, I think 2/2 is fine, too.

Side note: I'm still working on the Leyline main board vs side board test. I just finished 50 matches with main board Leyline, now I'm switching to sideboard Leylines. Timota running mainboard Ghostly Prisons got me thinking, and I think for my sideboard test, I'm going to put 2 Prisons and a third Moon into the main, instead of 2 Scorching Suns like I originally said.

That's fair. Card accessibility can be a real issue. I'd highly recommend testing it if you do find copies. Two is probably enough, especially since you can transmute for it. As far as finding room for it, do you need 5 walkers? You could probably cut one Gideon. I don't know about the other cut, though.

I like the list. It's actually quite different than mine. A lot of the same cards, just in different numbers/main-side distribution. I'm surprised to see zero Blood Moons in the 75. I agree 100% with vetkin that the card is just too good to pass up. Is Moon weak in your meta? Did you test the moon and not like it?

I like Ghostly Prison in the main board. I think that's definitely something I could see myself testing down the road (I don't think I'd ever go without 2 Prisons somewhere in the 75).

I see you are still running Thassa. Have you found her to be too slow sometimes? That's why I ended up cutting her.

When do you board in Odds//Ends. I would imagine against decks playing counters, but in that case wouldn't you just rather have a third Ricochet Trap?

Quote from Timota »

First off I know I'm a bit late to the conversation but I do like having shocks as possibilities in my mana base. Though ever since going to three I have been having some minor issues with them and borderposts, so I might be going back to two. Also I seem to be having some issues with the two offs in my control lists but I havnt had to control issues. Since you guys keep posting with the deck formatting I was wondering how to sort my deck list like you have above. It may help convay my thoughts on the deck for you guys to help.

I'm with you Timota. I like having shocks and fetches just for a little bit more color consistency. My basic count has been slowly increasing since my first build though, so it's possible I'll end up with 0 shocks at some point.

As for formatting your deck, you just use (deck)(/deck) tags (except use square brackets instead of parenthesis).

Quote from epoa »

Also, one of these days when I have time, I wanna talk about the usefulness of Blood Moon in our builds.

I'd like to get into this convo at some point, too. Personally, I'm a very big fan of Blood Moon. It really helps the prison side of our plan (because, at the core, I think RB could be considered a prison deck). We run so many basics so it barely affects us, Blood Moon is just an "easy win" card against enough decks in the current meta, and wiping all of our opponent's lands while there is a Moon in play is very good. It means the opponent can't use fetch lands to find the lands they need to rebuild.

To add to Timota's response, I think As Foretold is really great. It's probably the best addition we've got to the deck in a long time. It provides insane value, gets RB out of your hand, and makes it easier to sac all your lands to Greater Gargadon since you don't need mana to cast things anymore. That being said, I wouldn't want to depend on As Foretold (and the Expertises) as the only ways to cast RB. Also - and I feel like I say this a lot, but that's because it's true haha - I can't imagine anything that would make giving up instant-speed Balances worth it. Violent Outburst can do that, As Foretold can't.

Also, cheaper mana rocks may look "more efficient," but the real beauty to borderposts is bouncing lands in order to reduce your land count for more impactful balances.