You Will Like This Deck If:
  • You like using your commander, but dont want to rely on them to win
  • You like strong synergies but have reservations about infinite combos
  • You like winning by turning creatures sideways
  • You prefer multiple paths to victory

You Will Not Like This Deck If:

  • You dislike creature-based decks
  • You want to play good old-fashioned aggro. Gahiji can accomplish quick victories, but this deck is built to last
  • You place high value in interaction (or whatever blue players call counterspells)

Why Gahiji?

My criteria for a great Naya commander is its ability to affect the game the turn it's played. This leaves us three possible commanders: Samut, Marath, and Gahiji. Let's be honest, Marath, Will of the Wild is probably the strongest Naya commander overall. Marath is removal, pumps out creatures, and pumps up creatures all in one. However, Gahiji has a lot of strong assets, which we will discuss in a moment.

First, properly analyzing a strategy requires taking a look at all of the options, and I will highlight reasons why I do not like some Naya alternatives.

Samut, Voice of Dissent is an interesting Naya commander I have been eyeing since her release. She promises a lot of interesting synergies with cards like Selvala, Heart of the Wilds and anything that has a cool tap ability. And, oh yeah, Paradox Engine. (Has that been banned yet?) I am interested in seeing lists for this commander. She does, however, need to be built around, which is why she is not included in my 99.

In my opinion, Uril, the Miststalker is not a good commander for a strategy that aims to be competitive and/or truly take advantage of Naya colors. The commander traps you into a weird enchantment voltron strategy that doesn't take advantage of the many awesome creatures available to you in this color pie. In addition, it's extremely susceptible to wraths.

Mayael the Anima is my least favorite Naya commander. First, it takes nine mana and a whole turn rotation to activate her, and then she's not even as good as Garruk, Caller of Beasts. And that's if you don't completely whiff, which you will. The rest of your hand is a ton of high CMC creatures that you can't even cast early game because Mayael doesn't support having dorks, ramp, or rocks in the deck to speed it up. I have never seen a playable Mayael deck.

Hazezon and Rith both support tokens, however, Marath and Gahiji support token strategies with greater efficiency and more complexity.

We're left to consider Gahiji, Honored One. I am only slightly biased toward this card. It supports a variety of strategies and encourages the player to play around with themwhether you want to go aggro, midrange, group hug, tokens, Naya good stuff, political, it does it all. It affects the board immediately when it hits play and turns formerly pathetic creatures into threats other players must answer, so your dorks and utility cards are doubly good. It also changes the political climate of the game to your favor, especially if players don't yet see you as a threat.

Gahiji is a great deck for both beginners and veterans of EDH/Magic: the Gathering. It is easy for new players to pilot and have a good time with and complex and flavorful enough for veterans to appreciate.

I hope this primer shows you why I think Gahiji is powerful, versatile, and fun!

This list of Gahiji, Honored One has been in the works for over three years. It is the result of adding green to a mana-greedy Aurelia, the Warleader deck when a member of my playgroup already had a tuned Marath, Will of the Wild. What began as a token deck evolved into Naya goodstuff, which was slowly pruned into the list you see today: a deck that takes advantage of the commanders abilities while being resilient to many control strategies. It still retains elements of my earlier builds.

As a primarily Naya player in a meta of control-heavy, fairly-competitive competitive decks, my challenge is pruning and perfecting the art of taking mid-range into the late game, and vice-versa. This is why we see Vexing Shusher and a full set of artifact hate in the list. Our plan is to fill the board with dorks and low-cost utility creatures that are threatening on their own with only our commander in play, while we have a host of fatties in our hand to unleash after every wrath. It makes a control player feel very bad to waste a wrath on a militia of dorks, but it feels worse when they're immediately replaced by "bigger" threats. This is our goal.

Early game, we sit back like a control player and Cultivate our land. We cast dorks, Wood Elves, and a crypt if we've got it. Politically, this is good for us; we are able to build a threatening board without looking like a threat. If all is going swimmingly, we should have at least nine mana available to us by turn four. This is enough to cast our commander and Triumph of the Hordes for a heartwarming win.

Our opening hand does not need to be specific. There is really no single card that makes it keepable for us. Three lands, two or three ramp sources, and a threat or card draw is all we need. Here are a couple examples that are great:

Hand 1: Forest, Temple Garden, Elvish Mystic, Selvala, Explorer Returned, Genesis Wave, Boros Signet, Cultivate.

Nice! We have access to all three colors, a shit ton of mana, and an outlet that produces advantage and threats. A turn two Selvala is usually a better choice than Cultivate, especially since it can churn out mana and card draw. It is good to remember that this deck is all about timing, so play the Genesis Wave wisely.

Hand 2: Mountain, Forest, Wheel of Fortune, Ruric Thar, the Unbowed, Sol Ring, Sylvan Library, Krosan Grip.

Not as good as our first hand, but still acceptable, depending on the decks were playing against. Krosan Grip can answer a distasteful artifact or enchantment and then we can wheel after pruning the cards on top with Sylvan Library.

Another bonus to running many mana dorks and cards like both Selvalas is that we take advantage of two of three primary types of mana generation (which my friends and I have named land ramp, artifact ramp, and creature ramp) instead of putting our eggs into one basket. An Armageddon is not game over for us, neither is a Wrath of God. We are also able to Bane of Progress, Null Rod, and Vandalblast control decks (who tend to rely on artifacts for ramp) over and over without feeling any remorse.

Gahiji enables us to bounce back from wraths surprisingly well. There is no recursion (other than Sun Titan) in the deck because we do not need it. After our dorks have been wrathed away, we begin to play the game. Unleash threat after threat against our competitors and they will be struck with the fear of God. Any of the combinations listed below will get you there.

Notable Synergies/Win Conditions

Gahiji + mana dorks. This one puts the fun in funny. They should have used Wrath of God when they had the chance!

Craterhoof Behemoth + Avenger of Zendikar. This is a given. Get lucky or search it up with Tooth and Nail. Win.

Avenger of Zendikar + Purphoros, God of the Forge. Again, a given. Triumph of the Hordes makes this path a little more spicy.

Aurelia, the Warleader + Xenagos, God of Revels. Fun fact, both Xenagod's ability and our commander's ability stack with multiple combats. This means that those three alone will net you at least 44 damage, even if Xenagos isn't a creature. Alpha strike at your leisure.

Gisela, Blade of Goldnight + Dragonlord Atarka. Gisela gets along with pretty much everyone, but ten damage to assign at our leisure is devastating for Superfriends.

I want to use this section to talk about some of my favorite effects or synergies a little more, and to justify a few of the card choices or why I did not include certain cards.

First, Chandra, Flamecaller is an absolute powerhouse. She does everything for us: draws cards, throws powerful creatures at our opponents (with our commander, it's 1/4th of their starting life total. That's power!), and wraths if we need it. She is one of the most versatile cards in the deck, and definitely worth six mana.

Terminus as the only "real" wrath in the deck might also be seen as an unconventional choice. I chose it over, say, Wrath of God because putting our creatures back in our library in an emergency is better than condemning them to the graveyard, it takes care of online gods or an enemy Avacyn, Angel of Hope and graveyard decks are hurt by it a little more. Overall, I think it's the strongest mass removal to run in a deck that doesn't want or need a lot of wraths.

Arachnogenesis is a truly wonderful card that is only made more powerful by our beloved general. Ever swung out to kill one player just to have another alpha strike you out of nowhere? Ever wished you had a Fog in your hand, but cant really justify including it in your list? Enter this card, which gives you an army of 3/2 spiders to make your opponent wish they had never attacked you, only for a delicious three mana. Revenge never tasted so sweet.

The inclusion of Stony Silence is a symptom of my meta. It is a wonderful addition if your opponents like to be naughty (i.e. Turn one land, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Signet, pass). I prefer it over Null Rod simply because enchantments are more difficult to get rid of. My Sol Ring is not as important as my opponents Mana Crypt, Gilded Lotus, Grim Monolith, or, yes, even Sword of Feast and Famine. Competitive decks hate it. Control decks hate it. Voltron decks hate it. As an added bonus, its recurable with Sun Titan. So, we run it.

You may have noticed that Avacyn, Angel of Hope is not included on this list. In my 3+ years of piloting this deck, I have played around with Avacyn, and often found that she was more of a liability than anything else. At eight mana, we have better things to play. This is because a) people largely overestimate Avacyns threat level, and EDH is all about threat assessment, not politics. This does not work to our advantage, because b) there are a lot of answers to an indestructible board, and c) we dont even care about wraths anyway.

Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger was also once included in this list. However, as with Avacyn, I often found it more trouble than its worth. At eight mana, Vorinclex is at the high end of our curve, which means we usually cast him and wait a full turn rotation to reap the benefits of his most relevant ability. There are also cheap ways to remove him during this time which makes his other ability not worth the hate. A turn casting Vorinclex in this deck is simply a wasted one.

With so much power on our side, what do we fear?

While many creature-based decks are susceptible to wraths, this deck (when played correctly) isn't. Taking advantage of Gahiji's ability is key, and the earlier the better. As mentioned above, our dorks and utility creatures do double-time while we keep bigger threats in our hand. Playing this deck correctly is all about timingthe worst thing we can do is play our entire hand just because we can.

There is one wrath this deck absolutely hates: an overloaded Cyclonic Rift. Luckily, it is usually easy to figure out if an opponent has one in hand. Please do not attack a player who is playing blue and has left exactly seven mana open.

Wraths do not matter if we can keep a grip of cards, but the biggest weakness of this deck is card draw. For this we have tutorable and recurable card draw/advantage like Sylvan Library, as well as Harmonize, wheels, and tutors to search up both toolbox creatures and threats when we need them most.

That being said, being outraced in a game is terrible. Inability to answer a well-built Animar, Soul of Elements can have lasting effects on the psyche. There is only one wrath in the deck: Terminusand the miracle mechanic can sometimes really live up to its name. This is fixed by simply adding more wraths, especially if your meta is less control-heavy. If this is the case, I suggest taking out Vexing Shusher, Vandalblast, Ruric Thar, and Stony Silence for additional wrath effects.

Suggestions

Updates Add

Out: Ruric Thar, the Unbowed, Temple of Triumph

In: Wrath of God, Karplusan Forest

I acquired some awesome foils (Eladamri's Call, Tooth and Nail, etc) and am on track to turn all the lands that enter tapped into better lands. Traded Ruric Thar for a Wrath because of the influx of elf decks in the meta.

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Date added 7 years
Last updated 6 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

30 - 0 Mythic Rares

34 - 0 Rares

11 - 0 Uncommons

12 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.51
Tokens Beast 3/3 G, Elemental 3/1 R, Emblem Garruk, Caller of Beasts, Insect 1/1 G w/ Flying, Deathtouch, Plant 0/1 G, Spider 1/2 G, Spirit 1/1 C
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