Mayael the Anima

Legendary Creature — Elf Shaman

{3}{R}{G}{W}, {T}: Look at the top five cards of your library. You may put a creature card with power 5 or greater from among them into play. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (47)

Andramalech on Mayael the anima: Big stomp

1 week ago

As someone whose first EDH deck was also Mayael the Anima, I tip my hat to you. Glad I checked out your repertoire. +1, rightfully deserved.

EchoSpice on Avengers Assemble!

6 months ago

Cool deck! Unfortunately MTG commander has something called color identity, meaning you can only run cards of the same colors as your commander, so red cant fit in this deck and remain legal. There are a lot of great Naya commanders though! (Naya is the name for the Red-Green-White color pairing)

You’re running quite a few creatures, so a commander like Mayael the Anima or Atla Palani, Nest Tender Would work great! I know it doesn’t quite stick to the avengers theme, but they’re great commanders.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you’ve got any questions :)

Flarhoon13 on Nath of the Gilt-Leaf's Dark Elves

7 months ago

May 3, 2024 I started a new quest. Having built 52 decks, I endeavoured to play them all, in roughly the same order as I created them. May 17: Nath of the Gilt-Leaf's Dark Elves Won. I think Dave's Mayael the Anima could've won with Emrakul, the Promised End but he conceded. 6-3

Michigone on Isshin for a Fight

1 year ago

Thanks for the feedback Crow_Umbra, I appreciate it. I think consistency is where I want to be with this deck. I realize that I may have been leaning into Etali because of the "cool/splashy" factor, but I had a Mayael the Anima deck as my first deck, and before I really tuned it up, I would whiff with some regularity, and that always hurt, from tempo to mana and everything else. So I think that's a good read on not putting Etali in.

And I'm glad you agreed about Audacious Thief. It just feels like it needs to do more to be included in the deck. I have Goldspan in the Maybeboard currently, but you think the treasure support from Face-Breaker, Lannery, Mondrak, and Goldspan would really be a good synergy eh? Well, I'll give it a shot.

The other change I'm making is taking out Ardoz, Cobbler of War and putting back in Ogre Battledriver. I just think the haste is better for the deck in general, especially since one of my last cuts was to add in Rising of the Day.

Abaques on Anyone else play without Commander …

2 years ago

I think that Commander damage is a key component of the game. It forces lifegain decks to have an actual win condition. It's also really necessary for the whole voltron archetype to exist.

And you can also get some great moments from Commander damage. A couple weeks ago I just won via commander damage with Mayael the Anima. I consider that an achievement unlocked.

Kaweiwu on Eldrazi Bitches

2 years ago

Quicksilver Amulet, Elvish Piper, Monster Manual, Sol Ring, Lurking Predators, Sneak Attack etc come to mind. Also, i'd add 8-9 lands. 37-38 seems appropriate for this deck. If they don't lack flavour the usual supects like Birds of Paradise, maybe Exploration or the other one. Mayael the Anima

Michigone on Crow_Umbra

2 years ago

Hey Crow-Umbra, I finally got the chance to play Isshin in a pod a few nights ago! All of my playtesting has just been me playing Isshin and a friend's Mayael the Anima against each other online. It has helped me learn to assess threats to my deck's strategy in a 1v1 setting, and in 1v1, my Isshin deck is feels solid. But since I'm the only one doing the playtesting, I don't play more than 1v1. But maybe I should. That's a good thought to explore.

But. 1) What's your win rate with Isshin in your pod? 2) How do you win with Isshin in multiplayer? Not you specifically, but more generally, how does one win with Isshin in multiplayer, thousand-foot strategy and all that, although obviously I also want to know how you specifically win with your Isshin deck.

Thoughts on the two mutliplayer Isshin games:

The deck had a very Purph feel to it, and it was fun to play at the table and watch people get burned down. But I was first out in game one and second out in game two. There was way more interaction and removal at the table than usual, mostly from my side, especially a few great board wipes in both games. But I lacked the card draw and mana to get back up and running faster than other players after the wipes.

So what do I do? Lean more into group slug, i.e. put in Impact Tremors? Lean away from wipes and focus on ramp and draw? More protection for my creatures? Anyway, these are just some thoughts I'm kicking around. The finer points of piloting that I'm still struggling with and would love some input on can be articulated as thus.

3) In thinking of actions I could have taken differently in my games to better my chances of winning, I reasoned that I could have assessed who was the biggest threat at the table (I actually knew this both games, but more on that in question two) and just directed all my damage output to them first, thus knocking them out. Then I would turn on the other two players and gut them. I COULD play this way, but my feelings on playing that way can best be described as distasteful. I don't want to be a bully. Maybe more specifically, I dont want another player to have to sit out for a long time because I gunned them down first and then have them watch me slowly debone the other two players. Seems like it might be unfun for them. But is that a route to victory? I mean, if I'm going to become the archenemy right away because of the fast aggression of the deck and the quick changes to my board state, do I have to embrace that mindset? Which leads me nicely to question...

4) As the only deck in the meta with a robust removal suite, I played both games with a strategy towards parity for all players so that everyone could be at the table for as long as possible. Is this a bad strategy? To better define "parity for all" I'll give you an example. I knew the biggest threat at the table in game 1 was the Ghired, Conclave Exile deck, and I rightly removed its Anointed Procession when it was played, because I knew how out of hand that could get, but I held myself back from using more removal on its Garruk's Uprising in the vain hope that the other players at the table would understand the threat it represented and use their own removal on it. I also held back because I didn't want the Ghired player to feel unfairly targeted by my removal, even though I knew how big of a threat their deck was (The other two decks were a SLOW and poorly tuned Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle and the Isperia, Supreme Judge pre-con unchanged). When playing aggro (or maybe even magic in general), is playing for parity possible if a player is trying to win?

Now the last question is probably more of a style of play choice, but comes from the same place as the others.

5) I noticed that board wipes kept me in the game, and kept the game going, but at what cost? As I may have mentioned before, our meta is very little permission and removal, and we often get 3-4 games in over a 3 hour period. We seem to like this pace of play, as it allows us to switch up decks, try new things out, and everyone gets to do their thing. With a board wipe, it kept everyone at the table longer because the games lasted longer, but we only got 2 games in over the course of 5 hours. They were much closer games, with lots of back and forth, which kept it engaging, but maybe it would have been better to scoop and get more games in? My problem with board wipes is more a two part question I guess. Part I) How do I recover more quickly after a board wipe than my opponents? Do I need more card draw? Do I need more protection to keep my creatures around? And Part II) I guess this is similar to question four, but when is the right time in an aggro deck to play a board wipe? How do I threat assess the table correctly to say board wiping now will help me close out the game in a turn or two? And maybe more broadly, if my philosophy has been in almost all of my decks so far to win in a big flashy play all in one moment (infinite combo or alpha strike), do I need to shift off that playstyle in order to play a low to the ground fast aggro deck with a hefty removal suite? Is there a way in Isshin to have a big flashy win besides building board state over turns? Is that leaning more towards group slug?

Anyway, this is a massive post, and I know that it is an investment of time and energy to read all of this let alone answer all or even any of these questions, so if you have any thoughts that you want to share I am very appreciative that you took the time to read all this and come up with a/some response(s).

Thanks,

Michigone

Michigone on Trigger Warning

2 years ago

I'm making two switches to the deck. I'm cutting Disallow and going back to Arcane Denial, because there have been a number of games where the extra {U} in Disallow's cost has been enough for me to not be able to cast it, and in my current meta, there aren't too many egregious abilities that need countering. The primary play testing done with this deck was in a 1v1 setting, against a Mayael the Anima deck, so naturally, that ability was always foremost on my mind. Additionally, Arcane Denial leans into the card draw mechanic, and thus fits more with the theme of the deck. The second switch I'm making is removing a Forest and putting in a Mosswort Bridge. The whole point of the deck is to have large creatures get in for lethal combat damage, and so having a land that will allow me to cheat out something for "free" while still tapping for a forest is great value.