So I'm continuing with my review of all the precons from Commander 2013. I have to admit I was pretty disappointed by how the Power Hungry deck turned out. I thought it was going to have a lot more going for it than it actually showed. I knew the Naya deck would have more of beat down feel and that's what I was looking for. And boy, was I right! Here's some of the new stuff that comes with it:
This deck actually did exactly what I wanted it to do: Beat down with big fat beasts. The landfall theme worked extremely well with the deck. The support cards all worked well. It was just a solid deck. Here it is just to review:
Naya fun!
Deck Tech
So I really enjoyed this deck. A lot. The 2 big themes in the deck are beasts and landfall, and they worked pretty well together. Going the beatdown route was pretty easy. Getting your mana fixed wasn't that difficult, and there was plenty of destruction to deal with problems. The card draw and recursion is a little lacking though. That's easily corrected though.
I'll be honest, if I updated this deck I would make Gahiji the Commander and make it pretty much beast tribal. Marath is useful at killing things off and making little blockers, but he's not really well utilized in this deck. You could take out the "5 power matters" guys, add some better beasts and have a lot of fun with it. Gahiji actually worked really well in pushing people into attacking others.
Like I said, the landfall theme worked well. While there aren't that many decent landfall creatures that aren't in the deck (I can only think of Lotus Cobra, Admonition Angel and Emeria Angel off the top of my head) it shouldn't be that difficult to add them. Pushing this theme would have you adding more fetch lands, Life from the Loam and Crucible of Worlds.
Unfortunately this is more of a Gahiji deck than a Marath deck. If you wanted, you could push Marath by adding mana doublers and a token creation theme. Doubling Season would obviously work with him, and if you wanted to get really nuts you could add proliferators. Marath is also a pinger, so deathtouch equipment like Basilisk Collar work well with him.
Game 1
Here I'm teamed up with Prime Speaker in a 2 Headed Giant game. There's not a whole lot of early action, but Grand Arbiter plays Telepathy to see our hands. Eventually Prime Speaker ramps into Terastodon and blows up the Telepathy along with some mana rocks. But since he's playing a couple Counterspells and is tapped out, he gets hit with Amnesia from the Sharuum player.
Luckily Prime Speaker just plays his Commander and gets a new hand of cards. Meanwhile I've just been durdling along, dropping lands and playing my Commander. Eventually, I play my Avenger of Zendikar and plan on using From the Ashes to pump all my plants. My teammate tries to draw out a Counterspell to make sure that everything is all clear with a Capsize with buyback but it gets through. This leaves me open to use Ashes, which hurts the opponents and lets me bash for somewhere around 40. Our opponents quickly concede.
Game 2
Here we see how Gahiji can affect the game. Rakdos has an early Bitterblossom but is stuck on 3 lands for a long time. Meanwhile Azusa accumulates a token army while playing Garruk Wildspeaker and Garruk, Caller of Beasts. Adun Oakenshield just keeps ramping by resurrecting his Burnished Hart over and over.
I have Gahiji and Rampaging Baloths. When Azusa starts looking extremely scary and is about to draw a Kozilek I tap all his dudes so that Rakdos and I can swing in unimpeded, taking Azusa out. Since Adun has just been ramping he scares me, so I take him out with the assistance of War Cadence, and underappreciated card.
Way better than I thought.
Despite having numerous blockers and Gratuitous Violence out Rakdos never fully recovered from his mana screw and didn't have enough to block my guys due to War Cadence and I win.
Game 3
So in this game Sydri goes nuts. Phelddagrif starts out with an early Tempting Wurm but nobody really does much with it. I manage to get out Rampaging Baloths with Fires of Yavimaya while continuing to draw lands and hurt people. However Sydri stops my fun after copying his Gilded Lotus twice by using Wrath of God. A couple turns later Sydri goes completely nuts, using her Commander to make a Gilded Lotus a creature, then targeting it with a kicked Rite of Replication. She then uses Treasure Mage to look up Darksteel Forge. As she goes to cast it, Hanna responds with an Austere Command she's able to cast by having Leyline of Anticipation out. This slows down Sydri considerably.
I manage to use Deadwood Treefolk to get my Baloths back and make a few beasts, but can only knock Sydri down to 1. Syrdi follows that up with Memnarch, and Hanna, who's almost dead, tries to Volition Reins the artifact creature, but realizes things are fruitless and concedes. I attack Sydri, killing her off, and Phelddagrif concedes.
Game 4
I don't usually do a 4th game but this was pretty short. This is just a warning game for everyone out there. The Oloro deck won using Ad Nauseam (with Counterspell back up) into Demonic Consultation into Laboratory Maniac into Night's Whisper on turn 5. There's not really much you can do when these things happen, especially when someone tries to break things up with Mana Drain and the combo player has Swan Song for it. You just gotta pack up and move on to the next game.
So in closing, I really enjoyed this deck. It could use a little more pinpoint control elements, and couple of better beasts and improve on some of the X spells but in reality it performed very well. If you like playing beat down and are looking for a precon to purchase, this is likely the one. If you're more of a control player, Eternal Bargain is probably better for you. I think they're on equal footing honestly.
Hope you guys enjoyed this. Next time I'll be looking at Mind Seize!
Leviathan, aka Tarasco on MTGO
mrmorale32 at yahoo dot com
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