pie chart

Mayael's Force of Nature

Commander / EDH Aggro Midrange Multiplayer Primer Ramp RGW (Naya)

NinjaKitty778

Upvote 0
0

Creature (30)

Enchantment (6)

Land (37)

Artifact (5)

Commander (1)

Commander: Mayael the Anima

Instant (12)

Sorcery (9)

Introduction

As we all know, aggro decks don't tend to get a lot of love and affection; especially in a format like EDH thats heavily biased against aggro. However, aggro decks can deliver a certain depth of strategy if planned correctly. Mayael the Anima is a great commander for aggro players for a number of reasons. Firstly, she's a card advantage engine in colors that typically have a hard time generating it. Secondly, she makes a perfect complement to a strong suite of board control effects by letting you rebuild faster than your opponents while digging through your library to find the best creature with power greater than or equal to 5 you can. Finally, she can dig through your library and drop uncounterable threats at instant speed. These are all things you want to be doing in an aggro deck.

Before we get into the primer, let's address the Terastodon in the room: Mayael the Anima, like so many commanders of her time, have fallen to the wayside in today's modern Magic The Gathering. Cards are now faster, cost less, and do more; some to a devastating degree. She's simply too slow to keep up with a lot of other commander's in today's meta. For this reason, it should be known that Mayael with never be a competitive EDH commander. But I'm not building Mayael because I want to be competitive; I'm building her because she's my favorite commander in my favorite color combination. She allows us to play to Naya's strengths without dedicating our strategy to a particular niche or tribe of creatures. In spite of the fact that Mayael will probably never be a cEDH commander, that doesn't mean we can't make her a high power threat.

Lets take a closer look at the deck:

Land Base

Lets quickly talk about the land selection; the most important part of any deck. I made careful choices when selecting my lands to synergize with the deck's ramp package and (in some cases) the choice of creatures.

Dual Lands - I specifically chose dual lands that counted as two different types of lands. For example: Stomping grounds counts as both a mountain and a forest. This is crucial to the deck's ramp package because we have spells that search for "forest" cards; not "basic forest" cards. Constructing our land base and ramp package this way ensures that we can ramp into the appropriate colors we need and not getting stuck without the right colors.

Fetch Lands - While I don't have the money for the good fetch lands (Arid Mesa, Misty Rainforest, etc.), and those lands would most assuredly make this deck WAY better, I did make sure to include some fetch lands that would benefit us and search for lands with more than one color. Fetch lands are important for Mayael because it thins out the deck and makes it more likely to hit a creature with her ability.

Other Lands - Not running much in the way of utility lands. Ancient Tomb is fantastic because it puts us one turn ahead of our opponents. Homeward Path is an EDH staple in my opinion as it completely counters mind control effects which are rampant in the format.

Mana Management

By nature of her design, Mayael is a very mana-intensive commander. We don't want to run out of, or get stuck without, the right colors; especially since she forces us to run a greater-than-normal amount of expensive creature spells. Like it or not, there is the risk that those creature spells could get stuck in our hand. The topdeck manipulators will help alleviate some of that issue but we should also make sure to run a top notch RAMP package as well. Hitting our land drops every turn and trying to ramp ahead of the curve are essential. For these reasons, I try to have 50 mana sources in the deck; split between 37 lands and 13 pieces of ramp.

First things first, lets talk about our traditional green ramp cards: Farseek, Nature's Lore, Skyshroud Claim, and Three Visits are our spells of choice for a very specific reason; they search for "forests", not basic forests. Meaning that our dual type lands (like Stomping Groundfoil or Temple Gardenfoil) will count as a valid target. As stated above in the Land Base section, this is one of the crucial ways the deck ensures it has the right colors on the field.

Bloom Tender and Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea serve as our mana dorks and can accelerate our mana by a significant amount.

Cavalier of Thorns can dig through the top of our library for a land and offers recursion when he dies. Ojer Kaslem, Deepest Growth   also digs through the top of our library for a land AND any creature card; amazing. Both are creatures that can come down relatively early should they end up in our hand but can also be targeted by Mayael.

Other sources of ramp come from artifacts: Arcane Signet, Chromatic Lantern, and good ol' Sol Ring.

The final pieces of our ramp package include:

Jeska's Will - Can generate lots of mana early and/or dig through our library to generate some card advantage.

Smothering Tithe - A stax card that can potentially slow down our opponents while ramping us. A great card in any deck with white in it.

Card Advantage and Tutoring

Card advantage is important in every single deck. While Mayael can be an important part of our strategy, it is important that the deck be able to function without her should she be removed. I usually try to include around 10 pieces of card advantage in my EDH decks. A big way to ensure we keep up with the table is to have plenty of draw power:

Cavalier of Flame can draw us cards when he enters at the expense of cards we might not want in our hand. He's also an aggro enabler because he gives our creatures haste for two mana AND he burns our opponents and their planeswalkers when he leaves the field equal to the number of lands in our graveyard; which should be a good amount with our fetch land package.

Elder Gargaroth can draw us cards when he attacks or blocks; very useful. Can also make tokens and gain 3 life as the situation calls for it.

Garruk's Uprising, and Return of the Wildspeaker offer fantastic draw power while also promoting our aggressive playstyle. Trouble in Pairs is an amazing draw engine, especially with more than one opponent, while simultaneously shutting down blue's power to take extra turns. Eladamri's Call tutors a card from our creature tool box to help deal with specific situations; most times, however, I use it on Seedborn Muse.

Some of the card advantage package also includes top-deck manipulators. These cards are especially important. Mayael is incredibly dependent on the top few cards of the deck. She wants to find a big creature within the top 5, but we don't want to draw those cards. So, we want our beat-sticks NEAR the top but not actually on the top. When you have a fatty in your hand, it generally means you’re going to end up paying retail for it, and doing it at sorcery speed. This is the opposite of what you want to be doing. The ideal play is to activate Mayael during your last opponent’s end step or in response to something; such as an attack. You should know what you’re going to flip off her activation; but your opponents won’t, making it much harder to attack you profitably.

Scroll Rack is downright awesome. Lets face it, no matter how much you scry or manipulate the top of your deck sometimes its just inevitable to draw your big creatures. And having them in your hand means you'll have to hard cast them for their large CMC and they run the risk of being countered as well. This card will put the big creatures from our hand on top of our deck (where they need to be) and digs through our library. Not to mention this card mitigates the need for mulligans as well. So this thing has a lot of use in this deck.

Sensei's Divining Top is pretty much an EDH staple. It drops early and generates lots of card advantage for Mayael by manipulating the top of the library. Its also incredibly resilient, should it get targeted for destruction just tap it to put it on top of your deck.

Sylvan Library is an excellent 2 CMC top-deck manipulator (probably one of the best in the game) and serves as a powerful draw engine. A good candidate for Mayael :)

Sylvan Tutor and Worldly Tutor round out the card advantage package by searching for any creature in our creature tool box and putting it on top of the library; which can then be summoned by Mayael's effect whenever we want.

Protection

It is vital that we stop our opponents from interacting with our board and protect our investments with the proper kit; ensuring our permanents, especially our creatures, can't be removed so easily. Naya colors have a lot of cards that offer fantastic protection, in fact I would say that it's one of the colors specialties. While it's impossible to have complete protection from everything, we can cover a lot of our bases with the right cards. Let's start with our creatures:

Avacyn, Angel of Hope is a no brainer. She makes all our permanents indestructible which deters a lot of spot removal and board wipes. Alongside her we have Gisela, Blade of Goldnight and Sigarda, Host of Herons, both angels under Avacyn's command. These cards reduce the amount of damage we take and prevent our opponents from making us sacrifice things respectively.

Serra's Emissary is a beautiful new addition to Mayael. When she enters, she gives us and our creatures complete protection from a specific card type; which is huge. The most common choice would be "creature" since it prevents you from being damaged by creatures while making your creatures unblockable; but "instant" and "sorcery" are equally effective choices.

Finally, Frenzied Saddlebrute and Marisi, Breaker of the Coilfoil discourage our fellow aggro decks from attacking us; this is especially useful against token decks. The saddlebrute also doubles as a haste enabler for us!

The non-creature spells are the "bread 'n' butter" of our protection package. Each one has been chosen for is effectiveness and/or utility:

Akroma's Will offers incredible protections and can also be used to end a game with its offensive option. Asceticism is very important in a creature heavy deck such as ours; and can help rebuild our board after a board wipe with regenerate. Deflecting Swat redirects a targeted spell to something else, potentially removing an opponents threat instead of ours. Boros Charmfoil and Heroic Intervention are cheap instants to give our permanents indestructible (and hexproof in the case of heroic). Teferi's Protection is the ultimate protection spell IMHO, as it simply removes us and our permanents from the game until our next turn. This is extremely useful in many scenarios, but my favorite time to use it is when my opponent casts return-to-hand spells like an overloaded Cyclonic Rift. You may have noticed a slight dislike for blue players in this deck description LOL all in good fun though.

Removal Package

This section can be broken down into 2 categories: spot removal and board wipes. I usually try to include anywhere from 8-10 spot removal and 2-3 board wipes. Spot removal gets rid of problematic permanents our opponents control that would hinder our strategy, and board wipes are extremely useful when the field gets out of hand; which happens often. Its also important for our removal cards to have some versatility to them in order to get around some of the protections our opponents have. Some of our removal spells take the form of creatures; ensuring that we have some kind of interaction when Mayael hits a target with her ability.

We'll start with our spot removal cards. Beast Within and Generous Gift are basically the same card, they get rid of a permanent and give our opponents a 3/3 critter; which will cower before our behemoths. Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares are white's most efficient form of removal; both costing 1 mana and exiling a creature to get around indestructibility. Drakuseth, Maw of Flames, Kogla, the Titan Ape, Terror of the Peaks, and Zacama, Primal Calamity all have useful spot removal effects attached to big creatures we can attack with.

For our board wipes we have Cleansing Nova and Farewell. Both cards offer enough versatility for us to choose how the board looks after we wipe it. Balefire Dragon, one of my personal favorite cards, comes with a field wipe effect attached to an evasive flyer; fantastic against token decks. Finally, Vandalblast can be used as a spot removal or overloaded to take out all of our opponent's artifacts. Since we're only running five artifacts this will likely hurt our opponents more often than it'll hurt us.

Utility

This is a bit of a broad section. Basically, what I mean by utility is anything that can help our strategy/aggro playstyle or rebuild our board with some recursion effects. Utility cards can be an important part of any deck's strategy to win while also offering the most versatility for choice. The cards that I choose to run for utility might not be the same cards you choose. I'll do my best to explain why I chose the cards that I did and why I like to run them; but this section allows for the greatest amount of variety to include the cards you like to run in your own Mayael deck.

I run a small recursion package to help rebuild my board after an opponent destroys/counters my cards. Greenwarden of Murasa has good synergy with Mayael, being a creature she can target, and offers fantastic recursion when it both enters and dies. Sun Titan is also a big body that can offer consistent recursion for our lower CMC permanents OR bring back some of the fetch lands we sacrificed at the beginning of the game; ensuring we keep up with the curve and hit our land drops late into the game.

I'm also running a couple of burn cards to keep the pressure on our opponents. Purphoros, God of the Forge burns our opponents every time a creature enters the battlefield on our side. His low CMC also means he can hit the field early should he end up in our hand. Quakebringer burns our opponents every turn, but his real utility is his ability to prevent life gain for our opponents; he can also enter early if you foretell him.

Token generation isn't the purpose of the deck, but it can help us keep up with those opponents who prefer to attack us with quantity instead of quality. Avenger of Zendikar is an oldie but a goodie. Offers plenty of tokens when he enters and buffs them every time a land enters the battlefield; which pairs nicely with the fetch lands we're running. He also synergizes crazy good with Purphoros, God of the Forge for a lot of damage and maybe a surprise win. Titania, Protector of Argothfoil also synergizes with our fetch land package. If left unattended our opponents could be facing an army of 5/3 elementals.

Surrak, the Hunt Caller gives our creatures haste. So does Xenagos, God of Revels but he has the added benefit of pumping our already big creatures to great heights. Speaking of "pump" effects, Nylea, God of the Hunt and Rhonas the Indomitable are both cheap creatures (Gods even) that can make our guys bigger when we have open mana and gives them Trample. All of these cards can be targeted by Mayael and offer plenty of great effects.

Kodama of the East Tree is a unique form of utility. He lets us put permanents from our hand onto the field for free (meaning they can't be countered this way) provided they didn't enter because of him; albeit at an equal or lower CMC than what just entered. This of course synergizes fantasticly with Mayael's ability, allowing us to keep up with our opponents and establishing our board.

Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger is a nasty card. Doubling our mana production while freezing our opponents lands is a crippling ability. Once upon a time I willingly opted to not include him in the deck because his ability was so game changing (see what I did there) and I didn't want to play a game that "wasn't fun" for my opponents. However, over the years I realized that my sense of honor is not shared by my opponents; even in my own friend group LOL So now I've adopted a more "cutthroat" mentality. In all seriousness he's a powerful and welcome addition to the deck.

Finally, we have my favorite part of the utility package, the untap effects:

Wilderness Reclamation untaps our lands during our end step. This allows us to play cards from our hand during our turn without worrying about trying to leave mana open for our instants OR Mayael's ability.

Seedborn Muse untaps our EVERYTHING during each of our opponent's untap steps. This ability is phenomenal for allowing us to either respond to our opponents or to use Mayael's ability during their end phase while setting us up for the next opponent's turn. This essentially multiplies the number of times we can use Mayael's ability by the number of opponents we have.

When we have both Wilderness Reclamation and Seedborn Muse on the field, we are extremely deadly. During our end step, our lands uptap which immediately enables us to use Mayael's ability; only to have our permanents untap again during our opponents turn where we repeat the process. I've had both these cards on the field simultaneously only a few times, and each time Mayael has been extremely hard to deal with. They're worth your consideration when making your own Mayael deck.

Conclusion

To me, Mayael the Anima represents everything I love about Naya. She was one of my first commanders ever and has been a staple in my deck box ever since. While I have adapted her as best I can over the years, she'll always remain out of reach of cEDH. But that's ok! Because honestly, sitting with my friends around a table or going to a casual MtG night at my local game store is my prefered way to play. Not every deck has to be meta defining; sometimes its just about playing what you like and playing it to the best of its ability. Well that about sums it up. If you like the deck then give it a +1! If you guys can think of anything else to improve the deck then please drop a comment :) I'm only one person after all so I can't think of everything lol Hope you guys liked it!

Suggestions

Updates Add

Comments

Attention! Complete Comment Tutorial! This annoying message will go away once you do!

Become a supporter of TappedOut and hide ads for only $3/month!

Important! Formatting tips — Comment Tutorial — markdown syntax

Please login to comment

95% Casual

Competitive