Blue’s Brews: Naya Landfall Zoo!

Hello internet, my name is Blue, and today we’re back with another episode of Blue’s Brews! In today’s episode, we head to modern to check out a sweet aggro deck for the format that got a lot of new power thanks to some new cards from Zendikar Rising! Before we get into the video and the deck, a quick reminder that if you enjoy the video and article to give us a sub so we can keep making videos! Now let’s get to the deck!

Naya Landfall Zoo

Companion (1) 1 Lurrus of the Dream-Den Creatures (28) 4 Akoum Hellhound 4 Steppe Lynx 4 Brushfire Elemental 4 Plated Geopede 4 Goblin Guide 4 Wayward Guide-Beast 4 Wild Nacatl Spells (8) 4 Lightning Bolt 4 Atarka’s Command Artifacts/Enchantments (4) 4 Skyclave Pick-axe

Lands (20) 4 Arid Mesa 4 Windswept Heath 4 Wooded Foothills 1 Verdant Catacombs 1 Bloodstained Mire 2 Stomping Ground 1 Temple Garden 1 Sacred Foundry 1 Mountain 1 Forest Sideboard (14) 1 Roiling Vortex 1 Wrenn and Six 2 Alpine Moon 2 Path to Exile 2 Soul-Guide Lantern 2 Abrade 2 Cindervines 2 Weather the Storm

The Landfall Cards

So this deck is fairly straightforward so let’s break it down by starting with the Landfall part of the name. Thanks to Zendikar Rising, we got three new Landfall cards to help power up this archetype with Akoum Hellhound, Skyclave Pick-axe, and Brushfire Elemental. Joining these new cards, we also have Steppe Lynx and Plated Geopede from original Zendikar for a total of four aggressive creatures that care about lands entering the battlefield and the equipment to help power up those same creatures or the other cards in the deck I’ll talk about in a minute.

With all of the cards above, we can stack on the damage really quickly by just playing lands, which we want to do anyway. In a typical turn sequence, we can play a one-drop on turn 1, play and crack a fetch on turn two for 4 damage, followed by a two-drop, then play and crack a fetch on turn three for at least 9 damage, not counting any other creatures we play on that same turn like a Brushfire Elemental that has Haste, a Skyclave Pick-axe, or another Haste creature I’ll get to in a second. Assuming you’ve watched the video matches already, you already saw a game where we had our opponent down to a single life by the end of turn three due to a similar line so it’s not like it’s Magical Christmas Land that this can happen. We saw in our games that it can happen rather consistently, and an aggro deck with consistency is SCARY!

Other Creatures

To fill out the rest of our deck, we have three other one-drops to help be as aggressive as possible and pile on the damage quickly. Joining our Landfall creatures, we have the typical Zoo cards that you’d normally see in Wild Nacatl and Goblin Guide. Nacatl is a one-mana 3/3 that can help us be aggressive and Goblin Guide is probably the most aggressive one-drop in Magic as a one-mana 2/2 with Haste. Sometimes it’ll give our opponent a land, but for the most part that text is irrelevant. On top of that, we have one more new Zendikar Rising card that I actually think is really good in this deck. Wayward Guide-Beast is a card that a lot of people make fun of for the harsh drawback of bouncing a land when it hits our opponent. In this deck, however, we can mitigate that drawback by actively wanting lands in hand to trigger Landfall and it sometimes works like a bad Twiddle if we don’t have another land in hand by letting us bounce a land and replay it post-combat to play another creature! Guide-Beast takes a lot of flack but it’s actually super strong, especially in this deck. Of course, bouncing a land is a real cost because it usually means we can’t get aggressive with it on turn one, but we have four other cards that we want to play on turn one anyway with our Landfall creatures, Goblin Guide, and Wild Nacatl so not playing it on turn one will rarely be an issue.

Burn

Lastly before we get to the lands, we have a handful of burn spells to give us a little bit of reach to close out the game. As always when playing an aggressive red deck, we have Lightning Bolt. One mana, three damage. Super simple. Next, we have a weird one but it’s actually really solid in this deck with Atarka’s Command. This card saw some play in traditional Burn over Skullcrack for a while before the deck decided the green splash wasn’t worth it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good, especially here. Normally, the chosen modes are Lifegain Prevention and Bolt, but in this deck, all four modes are relevant. Of course, we can always default to it just being a Skullcrack, but if we have a board full of Landfall creatures with a land in hand, we can choose the “Put a land into play” mode. If we have four or more creatures and our opponent doesn’t have blockers, we can do the pump mode to deal more damage than the Bolt mode would have! Even better, we can do it in any combination so it’s incredibly flexible as a burn card, as a ramp spell, as a pump spell, as a Skullcrack, whatever we need it to be to kill our opponent!

Lands

The lands are by far the most important part of the deck but also the most simple. We have a total of 14 fetchlands mixed between Arid Mesa, Windswept Heath, Wooded Foothills, Verdant Catacombs[/c], and Bloodstained Mire, as well as a handful of shocks and a couple basics. The reason we have so many fetches is because it is crucial we have one available to play and crack the turn we go to kill our opponent. With so many Landfall creatures, it’s not impossible to play a fetch and crack it to amass nearly 20 damage all in one turn! In fact, we have so many fetches compared to lands to fetch for that in our game against Mill, our opponent managed to mill three of our fetch targets, two of which were our only white sources! We still won the game, but we were super close to not being able to close it out because our Nacatl’s were stuck as 2/2s and we couldn’t trigger Landfall! It was a close game, I will give our opponent that

Also, huge shoutout to said Mill opponent for being super chill during the game and even subbing to the YouTube during the recording! You’re awesome my guy and we appreciate your support!

Sideboard

The sideboard is probably where I’m most iffy on and I feel like I say this every week. First, we have a little bit of removal between Path to Exile, Abrade, and to a lesser extent, Cindervines. Path cleanly answers whatever we need it to, Abrade can hit small creatures or artifacts, and Cindervines can hit artifacts and enchantments. It’s always nice to have our answers spread out so we can answer whatever we need to. Plus, Cindervines has the added upside of being good against control if we can stick it because it’ll continually deal damage to our opponent as the game goes on and leave them vulnerable to even just two or three creatures sticking on the board.

Next, we have some specific hate cards with Alpine Moon for Tron and other land-based matches and Soul-Guide Lantern for graveyards that doesn’t shut off Lurrus and synergizes rather well with said Lurrus.

Weather the Storm for a little lifegain against opposing aggro decks and a couple odd options that I was testing against control. Wrenn and Six is usually a midrange card to grind value from the yard, but I wanted to test it against control. The idea is to Regrow lands from the yard to make sure we keep hitting our landfall triggers against Control, but also the Retrace ability on the ultimate is a legitimate way to end the game in a grindy match where we can turn all of our late-game lands into Lightning Bolts or Atarka’s Commands to eventually close out the game. It feels a bit too cute and probably not correct, but I wanted to try it. The other one is a new Zendikar Rising card in Roiling Vortex. This isn’t exclusively for control, but those are usually the matches I’m going to want it in outside of Eggs because they cast a lot of spells for free or Soul-Sisters to prevent the lifegain. The one damage a turn adds up against Control and similar to Cindervines we talked about earlier, it will eventually kill our opponent if they can’t answer it. I may want more copies if it ends up being good in modern, but I only played one in the video matches because I wasn’t that sure on it.

Very absolute lastly, we gotta mention our companion, Lurrus of the Dream-Den. There aren’t that many creatures above two mana we’d want to play anyway, so he’s basically just a free-roll. In a couple games, he came down to help us close out the game, but for the most part, he just sits in the command zone and might eventually do something.

Video Matches

(Spoilers Ahead. You’ve been warned)

So in the video matches, we ended 3-2, but there’s an asterisk on that because while we did lose those two matches fair and square, one of them was because we got blown out by Blood Moon. It wasn’t on my radar as something I should’ve been worried about, so I didn’t go get my basics and we didn’t have a board when it came down so we couldn’t close out the game through it like we did earlier against Ponza. If I had thought about it, I would’ve fetched for my Forest earlier and brought in Cindervines to answer it, but I sadly didn’t think about it. The good news is, I don’t think we would’ve won anyway even without the Blood Moon in play, so it wouldn’t have mattered, but we did beat a Blood Moon earlier against Ponza so we know that we can do it.

Wrap-Up

Anyway, that’s all from me today! If you enjoyed the video and/or article, make sure to subscribe so you can get notified when we have new videos go up! If you have any questions for me, feel free to leave them below or ask me on Twitter @TheRealBlueMTG! While you’re there, remember to follow the site @MTGOracle and our sponsor @Mana_Traders! That’s all from me for now! This is Blue, signing out!