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PRIMER - Najeela Midrange

Commander / EDH* Combo Competitive Control Midrange Multiplayer

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Instant (30)

Sorcery (8)

Land (30)

Artifact (5)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Najeela, the Blade-Blossom

Creature (18)

Enchantment (8)

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Sorcery (1)

Enchantment (1)

Najeela Midrange - Primer

Welcome!

This is a Najeela, the Blade-Blossom's Midrange build primer. The strategy consists on assembling Najeela on the battlefield as early as turn 2 in order to start building up our board presence with warrior tokens while we play value cards and interaction before we try to assemble our combos.

This deck is tuned for grindy metas, making it resilient and interactive during early, mid and late game. We prioritize having a good amount of card advantage engines and specific hate pieces for the most relevant strategies in cEDH. We also run many interaction spells which are relevant either to protect our strategy or disrupting our opponent’s.

On the other hand, this list avoids running cards that are too risky or all-in oriented. Usually those cards might make you fall behind in the card advantage run and we aren’t willing to sacrifice our mid/late game in case that plan fails.

Najeela is a 5-color identity commander that costs , which is relatively low for a commander, being able to hit the board at turn 2 most of the time. She has two relevant abilities that make her unique in cEDH. The first ability is a triggered ability that goes off every time a warrior attacks, creating a warrior token tapped and attacking together with the original attacking warrior. As it checks for every warrior, this ability grows exponentially. Just to run some numbers, in an ideal world where no one has blockers, here are the numbers that Najeela can get by just attacking:

  • 1st attack: Najeela attacks (3) and creates 1 warrior token tapped and attacking. Total Damage this turn = 4 (3+1).

  • 2nd attack: Najeela and 1 warrior token attack (4) and create 2 warrior tokens tapped and attacking. Total Damage this turn = 6 (4+2). Damage accumulated = 10 (6+4)

  • 3rd attack: Najeela and 3 warrior tokens attack (6) and create 4 warrior tokens tapped and attacking. Total Damage = 10 (6+4). Damage accumulated = 20 (10+10)

  • 4th attack: Najeela and 7 warrior tokens attack (10) and create 8 warrior tokens tapped and attacking. Total Damage = 18 (10+8). Damage accumulated = 38 (20+18)

  • 5th attack: Najeela and 15 warrior tokens attack (18) and create 16 warrior tokens tapped and attacking. Total Damage = 34 (18+16). Damage accumulated = 72 (38+34)

  • 6th attack: Najeela and 31 warrior tokens attack (34) and create 32 warrior tokens tapped and attacking. Total Damage = 66 (34+32). Damage accumulated = 138 (72+66)

So basically, a fair approximation would be 6 turns to kill all your opponents by just attacking, if left unchecked. However, this can be accelerated by her second ability. By paying , you untap all of your attacking creatures and they gain haste, lifelink and trample until the end of the turn, and you also get an additional combat phase after the current combat phase. For greater advantage, you might activate this ability after blockers for maximizing the life gain and giving haste to the tokens that have just entered the battlefield, or sometimes, for some combo lines, after damaged is dealt.

It is important to point out that this is neither easy nor efficient to assemble. Winning through beating is possible, but it is a fragile and slow strategy for cEDH, and it shouldn’t be our main goal. The real strength here is the combination of her second ability with the first ability making her an incredible combo enabler for infinite combat steps and damage through combat with your warrior army, which I’m describing better in the next topic.

One of the greatest strengths of Najeela is that she has many cards that are a one-card combo with her, being the most relevant ones listed below. This characteristic makes the deck one of the slimmest and with the few dead slots decks in cEDH, as these combo pieces are relevant in comparison to other combo pieces in other cEDH decks.

All of our combo pieces are mana-related, once we need to achieve multiple times to resolve our combo.

  • Derevi, Empyrial Tactician = To combo with Derevi, you have to be able to generate , even if it is using only one permanent as Command Tower for instance, as you can stack derevi untap triggers on the same permanent. A good way to start a Derevi combo is having Najeela and one warrior token out. Once Najeela and the token attack, they will create 2 more tokens, allowing you to get 4 Derevi triggers if they connect damage to your opponent, making you only need one additional mana to start looping combat phases.

Derevi has other advantages as tapping blockers on ETB and being easily tutored to the battlefield with Green Sun's Zenith or Eldritch Evolution. It also synergizes well with land enchantments as Utopia Sprawl and Wild Growth.

It is possible to achieve a Turn 3 win with Derevi with the assist of the land enchantments, but it is mostly a Turn 4 and 5 combo.

Our initial hand should ideally have a way to cast Najeela at least on turn 2, at least one card draw engine or tutor, and some interaction. As mentioned before, lands are important to some of our combos so we should really pay attention to what lands do we have in hand or can fetch in order to generate .

Keepable Hands for an average gameplan:

Hand 1

We have a Turn 2 Najeela followed by a T3 Sylvan Library with 2 Interactions. We also have a land that generates mana of any color and a fetch land fix our mana base and to shuffle cards from Sylvan Library back if do not want them.

Hand 2

This hand is not spectacular, but it is keepable specially if we are playing against green decks. If we can play Oakhame Adversary on T2, followed by a T3 Najeela and drawing a card from Oakhame, things are going well. We are low on interaction, but we have a powerful stax piece in hand that can be relevant in most cEDH games. We also have a way to dig deeper into our deck for a third land drop or tutor.

Hand 3

This hand enables a turn 3 win with protection. On T1 you fetch a Mana Crypt or Sol Ring with Enlightened Tutor. Follow this with a T2 Najeela and a T3 Nature’s Will with Dispel for Protection.

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Casual

90% Competitive

Top Ranked
  • Achieved #2 position overall 5 years ago
  • Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH 4 years ago
Date added 5 years
Last updated 4 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

22 - 0 Mythic Rares

48 - 1 Rares

13 - 2 Uncommons

16 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 1.67
Tokens Bird 2/2 U, Treasure, Warrior 1/1 W
Folders Serious?, cEDH, cEDH, EDH IDeen, cEDH, Fun fun, Deck Ideas, Decks i want to make, testing Najeeja, cEdh
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