Hydrophobia Part 2: Nath of the Gilf-Leaf Primer

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Coinman1863

3 January 2017

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Hello all, welcome to the second article in a series written by your resident coin expert, Coinman1863. This article series is about the dark side of EDH; where infinite combos, Stax, and Armageddons abound, where reanimation can mean turn 3 wins, and where high CMCs are practically taboo. This is competitive EDH (abbreviated here to cEDH).

cEDH is generally considered a place where all colors are overshadowed by the grand overlord of permission: Blue. But I think we can change that. There are ways to combat this menace and beat it down to the same level as the other colors, and in this multi-article series I’m here to tell you how. If you also have a severe phobia of the water-themed color then look no further for tips, tricks, and strategies for cEDH decks that specifically avoid and beat Blue which currently takes up a good portion of the meta

Yes, it has been a long time since I last wrote one of these, but I decided to get on the bandwagon of writing articles again, because I said I would write another on in my last article, so, I kind of had to write another one. However, this time around we will be talking about a different beast than what I said back when I wrote the last article. This time, We will be talking about, Nath of the Gilt-Leaf.

Nath has been done in many different ways, the most popular I have found is elf tribal. You make them discard to spew elves and win with Lords like Elvish Archdruid and Ezuri, Renegade Leader to Overrun people to Death. However, in cEDH, this tactic does not fare well because by the time you build up your army to attack, you will die by many other decks which are significantly faster than you like Storm, Food Chain Decks, or even Yisan, the Wanderer Bard. So, we end up having to take a different route of attack. We play a style of play called Stax.

Let’s start off with where the name comes from. It comes from a deck in Vintage called “The Four Thousand Dollar Solution” or T$4KS, which then later became $T4KS, then finally rested upon “Stax”. The idea of the deck, and playstyle, is to play cards that prevent or hinder the other players from playing the game while you are able to either:

• Overcome the effect

• Avoid it all together

Famous cards like this are Leonin Arbiter, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, and Rule of Law, These are all examples of Stax cards. Leonin hoses tutors and fetches, Thalia hits non-creature spells, and Rule of Law hits Storm decks by preventing them from going off altogether.

With Nath being B/G, we do not have access to any of those cards so we have to use other cards which do similar things instead. So, we use Sphere of Resistance, Thorn of Amethyst, and Winter Orb to control what the other players do. Let me show you my personal list so we can go into more detail about the Stax pieces and why we chose them. My list takes a more aggressively Stax approach to EndStepTop’s famous list My Deckbox Smells of Rich Mahogany to combat the hyper-competitive meta I play in.

Combo? Where We're Going, We Don't Need Combo

Commander / EDH Coinman1863

SCORE: 279 | 96 COMMENTS | 77624 VIEWS | IN 136 FOLDERS

Let’s start with the cards I mentioned prior. We are able to fight through all of those cards for the same exact reason. Lots and Lots of fast mana which does not require lands to tap, like mana rocks and mana dorks. So, we are able to ignore Sphere and Thorn because we are ahead on mana, and ignore Winter Orb because of our plethora of mana dorks. Our other main all around Stax pieces are:

• Trinisphere: Because it makes everyone’s spells cost 3. In a format where the average converted mana cost of the deck is usually below 2.5, this slows down the game to where you can get ahead.

• Tangle Wire: You get to order the trigger such that you have to tap down one less thing and you can tap Wire itself. So you get 2 more permanents untapped than anyone else, hindering them enough to put you ahead.

• Mana Web: In the competitive setting, mana fixing is king, so many times, you have many lands out which all produce the same color. So when you tap one land, you end up tapping most of your other lands. They can tap their lands in response to the trigger however, it makes them use all of their mana then so you have to choose between counterspells and advancing the board.

• Null Rod: Hoses Artifact decks and all artifact ramp. Hits the decks that win via artifacts real hard and can sometimes shut down decks entirely. Yes, we run a lot of artifact ramp, but our dorks make up for it.

• Cursed Totem: Hoses creature based decks like Yisan, and they practically can’t function while this is in play. Yes, this hoses some of our ramp and one of our combo’s (which I will explain later) but in the long run, we can win without that combo when we drag the game out long enough.

• Chains of Mephistopheles: The ultimate control killer. It basically reads: “If anyone would draw a card outside the draw step, discard a card before you draw. If you have no cards in hand, mill one instead of drawing.” The best thing about this ability is that it’s a replacement effect, so nothing can mess with it unless someone destroys it.

• Nether Void: The king daddy of taxing. If you land this early with some artifact ramp and a few dorks out, you practically win the game because you end up so far ahead of everyone else since you can play your spells and they cannot since the tax is so steep.

• Contamination: I call this card the slightly better Blood Moon. This is because it hits all lands, not just non-basics. We have two ways to keep the Contamination lock going. One is Nath, by sacrificing the token he makes, and the other is Bitterblossom, by sacrificing the token the enchantment makes each turn.

• Torpor Orb: One of the most innocuous pieces of stax in the deck. It does so much for so little. It stops Reclamation Sage, Kiki-Jiki and Zealous Conscripts, Boonweaver Giant and much more. Just for 2 mana, so does so much, while barely affecting us at all.

The best opening hands have a little bit of everything, ramp, Stax, and tutors. You need all of these things because you want to start out fast, while hindering the extremely fast decks like Storm and Food Chain decks. Then once you have slowed them down, tutor for either more lock pieces to help stop them entirely, or start working towards your wincon. So an ideal hand looks like this:

• Two Lands: Need access to both colors
• Two Ramp pieces: e.g. Llanowar Elves and Mana Crypt
• Two Stax pieces: e.g. Sphere of Resistance and Tangle Wire
• One Tutor/Filter/Card Draw: e.g. Vampiric Tutor, Dark Confidant, or Sylvan Library

Assuming you have an opening had of two fetches, Elf, Mana Crypt, Sphere, Tangle Wire, and Vampiric Tutor, your opening here would be:

Turn 1: Play land, Elf, then Crypt, and then Sphere. You have to do it in that order because if you play Sphere first, then you cannot play the Elf.

Turn 2: Play land, then Tangle Wire. This should put you so far head that you should be in the driver’s seat for most of the game, especially since you have a tutor in hand.

Now we have the upper hand. So the next question is, how do we win?

We have three ways to win the game outright, and a fourth being a more grindy affair:

1. We make them discard their hands. With Sadistic Hypnotist, we are able to make everyone discard their hands with Nath out. This is because if you sac one elf, you make them discard two cards, thus making two elves, and then you rinse and repeat with each other opponent. This alone does not make you win the game, however, it makes it really hard for you to lose because they cannot hold anything in their hand past their turn otherwise it will be discarded. This heavily enables the win.

2. Squirrelcraft. This is the combo where we make infinite squirrels with the Squirrel Nest and Earthcraft combo. This works because you put Nest on a basic, tap the Nest, make a Squirrel, tap the Squirrel and use Earthcraft to untap the enchanted land again. Rinse and repeat to an arbitrarily large number. A great benefit to this combo is that each part has it’s uses on it’s own, especially Earthcraft with Elf Tokens. The only downside to the combo is that all of the Squirrel tokens, but one, end up tapped because you have to tap the to untap the land. So it is best to do this combo on the end step of the person before you go so you can swing for lethal.

3. Torment of Hailfire. By generating large amounts of mana with Gaea's Cradle or other similar methods, we can cast a large Torment which lets us neuter the opponent so much, as all three parts of the card help us greatly, that we are able to finish off any opponent left after the spell was cast. The smallest I'd recommend casting Torment for is X=6 so it is effectively an eight mana spell which fits on our Bob curve.

4. Creature Beatdown: Though not ideal in the slightest, this is not an unlikely way to win games in some situations. This is by far the slowest method and by far the least efficient way of winning the game.

This deck is very health greedy. You need health to draw cards in all of your good draw spells as well as Mana Vault and Mana Crypt triggers. So, to play this deck well, it requires very tight play and paying careful attention to your life total because you will be using it so much. One important thing to remember is that your Dark Confidant happens before you draw. I have killed myself accidentally Vampiric Tutoring for a Nether Void or Sadistic Hypnotist and promptly dying in the next combat because I got hit by Confidant for four or 5. So, careful consideration of your health needs to be taken at all times

Playing the discard enchantments like Necrogen Mists or Bottomless Pit can be beneficial even without having Nath in play first. We can benefit from the discard because it disrupts the other people’s plan while we have different ways of retrieving cards in the graveyard, which many other people do not. Our most re-usable one is Volrath's Stronghold since it’s on a land and helps keep our creature combos alive while letting us reuse Reclamation Sage and other cards with similar effects.

Do not be afraid to play Stax pieces. Even if it might set you back some, it is most likely going to set your opponents back more since your deck is build to fight through the Stax you play as well as disrupting their game plan.

Pros and Cons to the Deck

Pros:

• Very Consistent
• Does well in high Combo/Stax metas
• Once the lock is in place, it is extremely difficult to break out of.
• Has a wide variety of answers to different playstyles.

Cons:

• Some hands can be too slow in some games.
• Has a harder time in creature based metas
• It can be difficult to assemble the lock, and when broken, it can be hard to put back together again.
• Has limited amounts of targeted removal

Why would you want to play the deck?

Now that you know how the deck works, why would you want to play this deck in a field of blue decks with counterspells and such? Part of it is the player themselves. If they like long grindy games which require tight plays to become victorious, then this is your kind of deck. If you want to just combo out and crush the other players before they can do anything, this deck is not for you. The other half of this equation is the meta you are in. If you are in a creature based meta, this deck is not great for that. If you are in a combo/Stax meta, this deck thrives there, since that is the kind of deck which this deck is build to beat.

If my build is too expensive for you and you want to build it, below is a significantly budgetized version of the list which goes for about $500 compared to the $3200 of the other list.

Nath of the Gilt Leaf Budget List

Commander / EDH* Coinman1863

SCORE: 49 | 14 COMMENTS | 12418 VIEWS | IN 33 FOLDERS

You can do what you want with this list, but I think this is the cheapest you can go without significantly compromising the core elements of the deck. This version will play similar to the non-budget version, however, it will not be as powerful of the non-budget version but it should be able to take down competitive tables if you play well with it.

Deck Edits

3/16/19: The deck primer isn't dead. For effectiveness in the new meta, and lowering the curve overall, the following cuts were made:

• Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth --> Grafdigger's Cage
• Snuff Out --> Assassin's Trophy
• Pox --> Fevered Convulsions
• Possessed Portal --> Ravenous Slime
• Damnation --> Priest of Titania
• Sylvan Scrying --> Scavenging Ooze

2/26/17: After trying Pulse of Murasa for for a couple months now, I simply found it was not enough. Instead, with the increase of the occurrence of Selvala, Heart of the Wilds decks and other creatures which have effects when they enter the battlefield, I decided to opt for Torpor Orb as it barely affects us, while being a hinderance to many other decks.

12/10/17: Due to Grim Tutor under preforming I cut the tutor and added another wincon in the form of Torment of Hailfire which lets us have another wincon without damaging our Confidant curve. This also gives us a little more leeway in how we win, which helps the deck function better when other avenues are cut off.

If you have any questions or comments about the deck or the article, please write them below. I will be glad to answer them. Also, if you have any suggestions about what kind of EDH article you want next from me please post below as well. Next, I am looking at either doing another one of these, or looking at weird and odd archetypes which exist in the cEDH meta.

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed the article.