Naya Ramp began as an elves tribal deck and evolved into a flexible, midrangier strategy attempting to curve toward more valuable mid- and late-game threats than elves can offer (at least until July(?)).
NR plays elves turn 1 and 2 to produce and fix mana. By turn 3, players ought to be summoning valuable angels, gods, and/or dinos, or less ideally, more ramp. Grand Warlord Radha and Servant of the Conduit help you round the curve faster than stompier decks, enabling faster Carnage Tyrants and Ghaltas (when opponents are still producing 4 and 5 mana per turn).
Fixing for Naya colors opens the possibility of casting angels, two of which stand out as exceptionally valuable for their CMCs. In my past couple of weeks at Standard Showdowns, Shalai has demonstrated the incredible usefulness of hexproof in the format right now. With a Blossoming Defense protecting my Shalai, I can save my creatures (and my face) a lot of strife from Magma Sprays, Abrades, etc. The other angel that NR runs is (IMO) not as useful on her own as Shalai, but when Lyra and Shalai work in tandem, they are very effective.
I believe the dinosaurs speak for themselves.
An ideal sequence of turns might look like:
- Forest -> Llanowar Elves
- Aether Hub -> Tap for 3 mana -> Aethersphere Harvester (3 energy @ endstep)
- Land -> Tap for 4 mana -> Shalai, Voice of Plenty -> Tap Shalai to crew Harvester
- Tap for 4 mana -> G.W.Radha -> Swing with Radha and Shalai (Make GG) -> Song of Freyalise
- Ghalta/Tyrant/Lyra/Rhonas
-or-
An unideal sequence of turns might look like this:
(On the draw :/ )
- Forest -> Adventurous Impulse
- Sunpetal Grove -> Llanowar Elves (protecting with Blossoming Defense (the h8 is real))
- Land -> Rishkar, Peema Renegade
- Land - Thrashing Brontodon & Song of Freyalise
- Land (8 possible mana now) -> Ghalta/Tyrant/Rhonas
Positives:
There are quite a few combinations of draws and plays that will stay loyal to the central idea of ramping toward payoff creatures. Also, with this deck, I've found it easy to find something to do each turn, leading me to believe its CMCs are well-distributed. Another nice thing is that sideboarding 4 Heroic Intervention and a couple of Abrades makes fighting Mono-Red significantly less headachey. Heroic Intervention feels very powerful right now with Chainwhirler rising in the meta.
Negatives:
Once my opponent concludes the deck's conceit is ramp-and-summon, I'm hard-pressed to protect my mana dorks, which in turn draws my attention (and my mana) away from summoning higher-value cards. Also, the land is not perfect, and fixing for Naya isn't always a walk on planet cake.
Lastly, my sideboard attempts to answer my local LGS's Gift- and Aggro-heavy meta by offering graveyard destruction and permanent control for God Pharaoh's Gift, and by offering some defense against board wipes and removal spells I'm seeing in Aggro and mono-red decks.
All in all, it is almost as fun as playing an elf deck, but more likely to win in the mid- and late-games. It feels faster than Naya Dino decks, and more threatening than elf decks, of which this decklist is a hybrid.
Here's hoping for more elves this year.
Good luck,
Q
::)
Sources Cited:
Elves of Dominaria
Dinos of the Perfect Curve
Angel Elf Naya
