Najeela's Hulk Pod Project (cEDH Primer)
Commander / EDH*
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Further tuning with Najeela —July 9, 2018
Since I've switched to Najeela as the commander I've had a good time playing the deck, also more and easier wins because the commander actually helped a lot in keeping up pressure on staxed out tables. Switching between fastcombo and combat based value, for example with Edric, is really smooth and fits my rather agressive playstyle. However, I've tried to question some Slots that I have thought of as impossible to remove...the deck has changed with the commander being relevant and so might have the importance of certain cards.
One card I have removed for testing at the moment is Body Double. With Academy Rector filling the alternative cmc 4 slot for pod (instead of thief) there is another possible hulk line with rector and Animate Dead/Necromancy that could end directly in the Schrödinger's Cat Loop. With that in mind I have added Renegade Rallier instead of Body double, because it can be cast easier outside of hulk lines and post hulk it fulfills almost the same role. The only thing it can't do is the replacement in the pod line, but from the past experiences with the deck I'd say I don't need to force the pod line up to cmc 5 when it's clear that Karmic Guide is not in the library for some reason. I'd much rather stop at 3 and go for Najeela/Derevi if the pod is what I have to use for assembling a win.
The other changes I'm trying are Dack Fayden instead of Bazaar of Baghdad and Silence instead of the additional backup combo with Druids' Repository. In the past I had Dack AND Bazaar in the deck and more looting in general. There is still the need to discard certain creatures but often I can do that with Survival of the Fittest, Cephalid Coliseum, even Lion's Eye Diamond sometimes. For Bazaar to be used multiple times there has to be another strong draw engine already in play or the hand is emptied very fast. The upside of Bazaar being free and uncounterable is also great but with a rather creature heavy deck I think Dack might provide more flexibility (because he can be protected easier and he isn't negative carddraw). Replacing Repository with another protection/interaction piece is just a test to see how moving from more redundancy to more protection would work. Najeela has already proven to be lethal without going infinite and Derevi should be enough as a backup combo (and it's already needed for the pod line, so it's a double function in one slot).
In your primer you say that if you have mana dorks that can produce all five colors, you can go infinite combat steps with no other cards, but Najeela only untaps attacking creatures. Thus, your mana dorks won't uptap to provide another combat. Just seeing if you were aware of this. Obviously with Derevi or Druid's Repository, this is moot. However, just wanted to see if I were missing something, misinterpreting your comments, or something else. Either way, like the deck. I'm going to change my Sidisi, Brood Tyrant over to this five color list.
June 21, 2018 4:58 p.m.
Winterblast says... #3
tayrog77 you need to attack with the dorks, then use Najeela to untap the attacking dorks and then the dorks will untap themselves because they are still attacking creatures as ling as it's the combat phase...you can repeat this as often as you want tgen, even before blockers are declared, so you collect infinite combat phases. It's a bit clunky because you need to have the mana to use Najeela once without the use of these dorks, but as a backup it's good to know that it works.
June 22, 2018 10:35 a.m.
Winterblast says... #5
tayrog77 I think I've made a mistake there, because you can indeed stack infinite combat phases with that method but the creatures untap multiple times during combat 1 and then they stay tappe
If you want to see a non-infinite Najeela kill on a staxed out table, check out the latest video on www.twitch.tv/fishtrigger_tv
Sometimesnaive says... #1
I am building the same deck. Having the same flash hulk line and pod line, I have some recommendation here based on my playtests. MLDs are extremely powerful in this deck.Rushing commander and casting a timely Armageddon afterwards is basically game, as the scaling of Najeela is so absurd. After a couple tests, I've kicked out the buried alive/reanimation line, which takes up to 10 cards. Instead of that, I added more counterspells and 1-2 cc point removals. There are also some juicy cards to consider: Breath of fury; Edric, Spymaster of Trest; Purphoros god of the forge.
June 13, 2018 12:47 p.m.