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Making Naya Interesting?
Howdy folks,
I want to make a Naya commander but I just don't know where to go with it. I kinda want to make a giant and evasive creature, but I don't want to make another Uril the Miststalker. Where should I go with this idea?
I want to make a Naya commander but I just don't know where to go with it. I kinda want to make a giant and evasive creature, but I don't want to make another Uril the Miststalker. Where should I go with this idea?
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Comments
- A Human tribal payoff
- Something that cares about destroying lands
- Something that cares about your opponents controlling fewer lands than you
- Something that directly benefits creature tokens
- Something involving giving instants and sorceries Lifelink and/or "Trample" (ala Flame Spill)
- Just hecking make a legendary version of Tamanoa
Related to a big, evasive creature:
- A direct Giant tribal payoff
- Making creatures you control with power less than it unable to be blocked
- Making creatures with power less than it unable to block
- "Whenever you gain life, target creature can't block this turn"
- Something involving proliferate and +1/+1 counters
If you look at Naya, there are a few themes that you could focus/build around:
1. Tokens
2. Mono-Buff (Buffs to make just one creature massive)
3. Boardwide-Buff (Buffs to make your whole board massive)
4. Creature-Cheat (Cheating creatures out)
5. Ramp (Kinda basic, but still a big part for any Naya deck)
Uril has two things that I think would be good to keep in mind:
1. It has hexproof
2. It works really well with enchantments that make it harder to block
If you want evasion, as in, making things more difficult to block, triggered abilities like those recommended by @Arceus8523 work really well. You can easily weave any of the above 5 themes into a triggered ability like "Whenever two or more token creatures enter the battlefield under your control during the same turn, __________ can't be blocked by more than one creature this turn", etc. can make it evasive.
Giving it protection, like Uril's hexproof is another story, but it's not too difficult. You could just give it hexproof, but I think that's getting to close to what you're afraid of. So, another thing you could do is a triggered protection. This is something like Palladia-Mors (https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=447356) who has hexproof until she does damage. So, just like you can create a triggered ability based on the above 5 themes for evasion, you can do it for protection; "Whenever two or more token creatures enter the battlefield under your control during the same turn, __________ gains hexproof until end of turn."
Personally, I think that one thing you could do to fuse these is use one of the 5 themes that Naya really likes (or others if I missed some), to give the creature protection from a color of your choice. Something like "Whenever two or more token creatures enter the battlefield under your control during the same turn, _________ gains protection from the color of your choice until the end of your turn." That way, it gets a type of protection, a type of evasion, and focuses on some form of Naya tribal.
Hopefully this is helpful!
Of course, @RohanDragoon and @Arceus8523 almost certainly have more experience in this field.
NOT EVEN TRADE.
She's not a big creature, but she got built in protection, and cheats out creatures based on life-gain. Probably the biggest problem I've seen people raise about Naya is that it has been so focused on creatures, so this is a way to still make it good with creatures, but also give it another focus.
I will say that I think that what makes Naya feel less interesting than other color combinations is that it is almost solely focused on creatures. Almost all of the top Naya commanders (Gishath, Atla Palani, Ghired, Mayael, Marisi, Marath, Samut, Gahiji, Rienne, Rith, and even Palladia-Mors and Uril) are primarily creature focused, whether it's on the one big creature, buffing creatures, or cheating out creatures. There are few that interact with different mechanics that Naya has access to: Zacama is damage, life gain, and land/artifact destruction; Hazenon is land matters; and even Marisi gets a pass here for the spell restriction. But barring the partner commanders, Naya commanders are almost exclusively focused on creatures.
I think that to make Naya "more interesting", the most important thing is to highlight other mechanics that Naya can and should work with. Even though Naya is a lot about creatures, there more to Naya than just creatures.
I was thinking of maybe throwing in some card advantage similar to Feather where you draw a card whenever you cast an instant that targets the commander. Maybe something similar to the Heroic mechanic found on some other cards.