Common Ground.

Last week I talked about some of the great commons that you can play in pauper but I didn’t actually admit as to what I would be playing this week at FNM Relax.  There were two reasons for this – one I wanted to look at a number of cards in the format rather than just the ones I would be playing and also I had not made my mind up exactly what I wanted to play so I didn’t have a deck list.

After much though I have decided to play Naya, which is green, white and red for those who don’t know and is named after one of the shards of Alara.  Naya has seen a lot of play recently – most notably in Brian Kibler's birthing pod decks where Naya gives you a formidable toolbox of creatures so you can just go and get the one you need via the birthing pod and win.

As birthing pod is a rare there will be none of them around, so my deck contains the following;

4 Evolving Wilds

2 Teramorphic Expanse

7 Forests

6 Plains

6 Mountains

25 Land

4 Steppe Lynx

4 Plated Geopede

4 Squadron Hawk

4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim

16 Creatures

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Oblivion Ring

3 Khalni Heart Expedition

3 Travel Preparations

2 Rancor

3 Harrow

19 Other spells

This deck is all about being fast and killing your opponent with landfall creatures which become very big in the middle of combat sometimes – stick a Rancor on them and even if they are blocked the damage will find its way through. 

The ability to go turn 1 Forest, Avacyn’s Pilgrim.  Turn 2 Tap the pilgrim and the forest play Khalni Heart Expedition, play a plains put a counter on the expedition, play a Steppe Lynx.  Turn 3 play Evolving wilds, counter on Expedition landfall trigger on the lynx, crack the evolving wilds and get a mountain, counter on the expedition, landfall on the lynx, crack the expedition go get 2 lands, 2 landfall triggers on the lynx, tap the forest, plain and pilgrim play harrow, sacrifice a tap land, go get a mountain and a forest, 2 land fall triggers on the lynx, play Rancor with the forest on to the lynx and swing for 14 trample with my Steppe lynx…

Obviously this needs a perfect hand to go off like that but it is very possible to do something like this to win from nowhere.  Getting the landfall triggers on the  Lynx and the Geopede are key to this deck and give it fast and deadly creatures both on the attack and defence.

The sideboard looks like this;

2 Farseek

4 Kiln Fiend

3 Rangers Guile

2 Plummet

3 Naturalise

1 Erase

The Farseek comes in if my opponent is running enchantment hate and I can also use them to trigger the Kiln Fiend who interacts with the deck well already.  Rangers guild is great against removal and it pumps my guys.  Plummet for those heavy flying decks and Naturalise/Erase for artefacts and those pesky enchantments that aren’t mine!

The skill of this deck is knowing what hands to keep and what to send back.  If you are looking for inspiration for this Friday at Patriot Games Sheffield then have a look on the mother ship where they have just had a Modern GP over the weekend, full details can be found here.  

See you all Friday