[Re:Commanders] Najeela, the World Beyond

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Yatsufusa
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Post by Yatsufusa » 2 years ago

"Two roads diverged in a wood, I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.
I know the road is unforgiving, he told me so, but I gave my word.
Ah, how far away the ideal world."

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Introduction


Welcome to Najeela, the World Beyond. This is a deck focused around lands, primarily the 10 dual-manlands which originated from the Zendikar sets. It focuses mostly around ramping so one could safely animate the manlands whilst still having enough mana around for some generic attrition actions when required.

Najeela is known for her viability in cEDH, and I've seen many casual Warrior tribal decks with her at the helm spun out of control. This ironically made me consider her to lead this deck as after many years with Horde of Notions at the helm, the deck was just clunky and couldn't really get-up-to-speed. If I mixed it together with a Commander known for easily spinning out combat too-fast, hopefully they should even out. Also, as this deck does not run any of the traditional dual-typed fetchlands (and as a result, none of the dual lands with subtypes), it is relatively lower on the power-scale, especially for a 5-colored deck.

If you have the luxury of listening to music whilst reading this thread, enjoy the appointed official song for Najeela, the World Beyond: New World Order.

Disclaimers

Same across all threads, skip ahead if you've read it elsewhere before)
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Najeela, the World Beyond is part of Re:Commanders, a suite of eight decks I've established since 2015 with the intent to "retire" from the game/format, with its stability permitting me to bling my own decks out as my own vanity project. I've written out these guides roughly with the primer style guide, but they are not meant to be primers. In fact, my updates will be sporadic as in recent years I've had less and less time to play the game due to commitments.

Generally, Re:Commander decks / guides follow these rules:

High-Powered Cards – When I started Re:Commanders in 2015 I was already sitting on 11 years' of collection, including 4 years within the format that already assembled a structural skeleton for most of my decks. My decklists often contain a lot of high-powered, cEDH-worthy cards that can be easily deemed unaffordable to the random viewer seeing the guide at any given time, but I do not feel the need to feature budget options as those change with the times, as my focus on presenting the guide is to establish an understanding of what role does a card play in the deck, and the discerning player with the understanding should be able to find their own substitutes for that role within their own budget/collection/time. I merely used my own high-powered examples because I have it, nothing more. The game is just way too big (and getting bigger faster every year now) for me to cite random alternatives nowadays, especially with prices also randomizing on their own scales.

Personal Quirks - I have some small aesthetic quirks, the most common easy example being I don't play off-color fetchlands and I don't play ABUR duals because they can't be foiled. A lot of these small factors go a ways to lower the power level of my decks in small doses. I also try to diversify card options across decks, so while there are staples I play across all decks (mostly colorless artifacts and lands), I try to keep a variety of colored cards (and for those I don't I even try to get different art/frames to compensate) across my decks. If some colored staple feels missing, that's likely because it's housed in another deck in the suite I felt was just better for it (or I just lack it in my collection, I don't have everything, after all).

Personal Definition of "75%" – My personal definition on a "75%" deck is essentially a singular deck is flexible enough to perform on both casual and competitive tables. They aren't completely "just built to win" like cEDH decks, they're first built thematically, and then built with two distinct functions – first, a way to win within context of the theme, then secondly all decks usually have an infinite outlet (or at least a substantially huge wincon) or combo or some sort because I believe that a deck should always have a way to close the game when the primary plan/theme fails. Even a bland infinite combo used as a last resort is a better game-closer than you durdling an entire game playing Kingmaker/trying to lose last.

I don't shy away from tutors. This combined with the combo aspect does really ramp it up to feel close to cEDH levels (and almost certainly pubstomping in the wrong cases), but ultimately I built the deck for me, myself as the pilot. The Commander RC has a policy of "build casually, play competitively", but due to my wide-range meta (that can contain anywhere from new players to cEDH players depending on time), I adopted a custom formula – "Build enough to face competitive opponents but without abandoning the theme, then play accordingly to the table in question".

I'm aware some people feel like it's an insult to not "play at maximum" at a table, but I just don't see that way, I have a thematic way to (attempt to) win that's not too far above the casual table and my combos are now my last resort game-closers, something I actively want to avoid having seen purely-casual tables lack it and end up playing a game of too-much-politics-and-kingmaking-trying-to-lose-last compared to actual Magic played when thematic plans fall apart.

Deck History


For a full-blown history of the establishment of Re:Commanders as a whole, as well as anything the deck might have within its context, please refer to the central hub of the Re:Commanders here.
Deck History
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The 5C deck was the last deck of Re:Commanders to be made. Initially Re:Commanders only consisted of 7 decks after I managed to distribute individual color and pairings evenly. About a month after establishing the underlying work of the 7 decks, I thought 8 would make for a better number. There would be no need to start from scratch to distribute color as long as the 8th deck was either colorless or 5-colored, so the real issue was identifying the archetype.

I knew I always wanted a deck themed around lands and the closest contender was making my Mono-G deck a Titania, Protector of Argoth lands deck, but the color limitation always made me hesitate. After I decided to settle for a much more unique route for that deck (refer to its respective thread for more details on that), lands were left "homeless" once again, but when the decision came to make an 8th deck, the idea of making the 5-Colored deck my lands deck would be pretty much the elegant fit.

I didn't want my manabase to be typical "all-fetches, all-shocks (I have no ABUR duals)", as optimal as it would be, especially for 5C, I liked the way I already divided color pairings across the other 7 decks so I would only use 1 fetch-shock across all my decks (for aesthetic reasons I only run fetches with both colors within color identity). So I looked for a full-cycle of duals. It so happened around that time Battle for Zendikar essentially completed the dual-manland cycle OG Zendikar (Worldwake, actually) started. So I decided that this cycle that essentially can fix mana and represents a focus of land decks (animation) should be the main focus of my deck.

For the longest time the deck had a side-theme if exiling opponents' libraries with cards like Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver or mind's dilation so that I could grasp lands with Oblivion Sower so land-animation was a less risky strategy, but over those years it was visibly clunky and I eventually dropped it in favor of just more general ramp and attrition plays. Oblivion Sower remains on the banner as a reminder of those times even though it no longer is in the deck.

Also around those times, the Commander wasn't Najeela, the Blade-Blossom, but Horde of Notions mostly because I didn't have Najeela, so I didn't consider it. Horde was in charge because a lot of powerful lands-matter creatures are (costly) Elementals. Even after removing the library-exile sub-theme, they still felt clunky mostly because I didn't just make the deck straight-up reanimator so it wouldn't crash with Karador that much thematically.

During Commander Legends I opened an Etched-Foil Najeela and decided it was time to streamline the deck down another tier. Najeela also enabled me to add in a combo-finish to a deck that would often stumble if general attrition and manland beatdown wasn't enough. Horde of Notions remains in the deck as do some Elementals, but they're considered more of a bonus of synergy if I get to them successfully in a game.
Yes, to put it bluntly, the deck suffered from a glut of problems due to too much themes, the sub-theme got abolished and a side-theme got downsized to the sub-theme all so the deck could trim away the many fats that made it clunky. All for the better, considering the main theme of the deck revolves around not playing the typical optimal manabase for a 5-colored deck.

Commander Analysis


As admitted, the deck's true focus is around the 10 dual-manlands and not its Commander. That being said, picking a Commander with synergy with core plan is advisable. Admittedly, after my long history with the deck and acknowledging its clunkiness I decided that having a combo-finisher in the Command Zone would be the best route to take and henceforth put Najeela and many of her combo pieces into the deck.

That being said, Najeela (and her combo pieces) do have some synergy with the deck's core strategy. If one grants attacking creatures vigilance with the correct attacking combination of manlands one could just combo with Najeela with just the manlands themselves. Many of Najeela's combo pieces revolve around untapping lands and/or storing mana and that by itself gives those cards more standalone value in a deck focused around having mana to spare for attrition after supporting the mana-heavy manland strategy.


[The Sun]
Worship the mercy that outshine sick truths.

Whenever a warrior attacks, you may have its controller create a 1/1 white Warrior creature token that's tapped and attacking.

We're not a warrior deck, and we don't stand to exploit this ability as much as the Warrior Tribal decks do, but it does still apply to herself and it's a "may" ability for all Warriors, not just your own, which could potentially make it a political tool.


WUBRG: Untap all attacking creatures. They gain trample, lifelink and haste until end of turn. After this phase, there is an additional combat phase. Activate only during combat.

The core reason we're playing Najeela – she's an Aggravated Assault in the Command Zone, albeit with her own conditions and technically better as she provides ability gains. It's easy to combo-out with her in cEDH with pieces like Nature's Will, regardless of cEDH or Warrior Tribal and it's no different here as I don't shy away from using combos to close games.

What's different is my game plan is amassing a huge amount of ramp and utilizing the manlands themselves as combatants, then mixing that into the typical Najeela gameplan. When both aspects of the plan (Nature's Will untapping lands or Najeela untapping attacking creatures) involve a subgroup of cards that are potentially both, it creates a lot of flexibility space.


Alternate Commanders
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Alternate Commanders
Horde of Notions – The Commander I played before I streamlined down to Najeela, Horde is powerful because many powerful land-matter creatures are costly elementals. However combined with the manland plan the deck was rather clunky. That being said, I could see a streamlined version of deck that eschews the manland plan in favor of an optimal manabase and the addition of the typical reanimator packages to greatly boost the deck. But personally I just didn't want to give up on the manland core plan and clash with my Karador deck for reanimation, so I went down a path less traveled, and that has made all the difference.

Child of Alara – Never really tried Child as Commander, mostly because I didn't really see the need of a repeatable board-wipe in my meta. But for those who need it, the advantage Child provides for a manland-centric deck is obvious – it doesn't destroy lands, so you'll likely be ahead of the group whenever it triggers. In the right meta it provides great attrition advantage but my meta demands more precision in answers, as Child of Alara does not cover tricks in hands and it's easier to bait those out with general attrition (and a cheaper Commander that people know can combo).

Theme Analysis

Is Najeela, the World Beyond a deck for you?
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With the knowledge of what Najeela is capable of, now we explore what my build for the deck features in its themes to support the Commander (and vice versa). If the following themes (combined preferably) appeal to you, then this deck might be for you!

Manlands – This deck focuses right around the 10 Zendikar manlands. If you loved them then this is the deck (or at least me attempting to) that's essentially built around and for them. Activate them and go!

Land Ramp – Lots of that here. A deck revolving around activating manlands, effectively pushing them to the creature-side of things means the deck must literally be capable of spilling out lands like nobody's business so you could proceed with the plan without falling behind the regular mana production curve.

Elementals – A lot of cards that interact with lands are Elementals. The Zendikar manlands themselves also change into Elementals. In fact, that was the reason the initial Commander of the deck was Horde of Notions in a bid to see if I could merge the two themes together, but ultimately their synergies felt too plain-utilitarian and was adding to the weight of deck. As of the streamlining-down to Najeela happened and Horde of Notions got demoted the 99 (along with a reduction of the Elemental count), I feel safer putting Elemental synergy as a small subtheme as a positive, rather than warning people that this isn't a full-on Tribal deck for Elementals under negatives.


However, no deck can cover everything the game can offer and Najeela does lack in multiple departments. Also, no deck comes completely without weaknesses. If missing any of these themes or having to deal with any of these weaknesses if a big red flag for you, this deck might not be for you.

Landfall/Animate Lands – You would think that a deck focused around manlands and land-ramp would be chockfull of landfall cards and (nonland) cards that can animate (other) lands, right? Actually, that's not the case. Turns out after years of playing around the idea, you really need to be hyperfocused on the theme for it work. The deck already has an above-average landcount and rampcount, once you sprinkle in the necessary amount of draw, interaction and protection/recursion cards, there's actually very, very little space to place even "fun" cards. There's some landfall interaction for utility purposes, but nothing overwhelming like Rampaging Baloths. Activation of the manland and their protection leaves no space to be animating everything else for fun and exposed to more danger instead.

Creature Removal – Yes, mass land removal hurts us more on the surface level, but we're also equipped to recover faster from that, plus that's usually socially frowned upon to begin with. The real danger that comes from manland activation is the vulnerability to creature removal, and because they're lands, there's even more incentive for our manlands to be the target of removal as it'll set us back more than it does for most other creatures on-board. Opponents are likely to see it as a chance to punish the greedy ramp player without affecting the others and that's a tempting preposition.

Decklist


Now you've had a solid idea of whether you would enjoy the Commander/deck, I present you the decklist of Najeela, the World Beyond.

Najeela, the World Beyond

Planeswalker (1)

Approximate Total Cost:

Card Choices


My deckbuilding process goes in this sequence: Ramp → Draw → Removal → PRO (Protection, Recursion, Others) → Manafixing Lands. There are some specific processes that are done within/in-between, but I'll get into detail when as I move through this guide.

Ramp
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Magic games are fun because you can cast things, and the ability to be able to cast more things as the game progresses is vital. It's tremendously less fun to watch someone cast a huge spell a couple of turns earlier or cast 2 more spells than you did in your turn in the same cycle, or you to exhaust all your mana getting something out while everyone else could afford to leave mana open so they could interact with the game and turn it in their favor. Ramp is the backbone that solves all that, the cornerstone of decks everywhere.

In general, I recommend at least 15 ramp sources, around 10 of which are fast, early-game options and the remainder could be slower or conditional ramp sources that hopefully synergize with the themes of the deck.

The Big Three
I don't even think I need to introduce/explain these three cards. As much as I love my diversity, I had to admit these three cards are also dubbed the "ubiquitous three" for me and exist in every one of my decks (and yes, you will see this exact section in every thread). They obviously account for 3 of the early ramp options of every deck hence.
I usually don't mention prices, but Mana Crypt is a standout I have to state due to my personal declaration of ubiquity here. As long as your meta isn't as high-powered as mine, you don't need Mana Crypt, you can replace it with a (basic) land. In fact, the overall land count in my decks could be said to be 1 below-average solely because Mana Crypt is powerful enough to justify it and you should put a land in-lieu of Crypt to get healthier numbers for a deck without one.

Fast Ramp
Fast ramp is defined by the ability to drop on turn 2 or earlier and have an immediate effect on casting spells.


Mid Ramp
Mid-ramp refers to a specific group that essentially come online by turn 3 or later in a vacuum.


Due to the deck's focus, what could be considered a tad slow in some metas of today (Cultivate and Kodama's Reach are still great picks. For those who don't have them, the 4-mana options (e.g. Migratory Path are acceptable slower replacements.

Ramp Auxiliaries
These cards are classified as such because ramping/providing mana and/or reducing costs isn't their primary/only objective, but they are more likely than not to act in favor of mana production as a byproduct in the process of performing their functions, or at least can function as an alternate mana source at the cost of their other/intended function. As ramp is considered paramount, their flexibility elevates them to this high position as opposed to just being classified as "Utility".

Cards here accelerate land drops dramatically, but are also handicapped by how many lands you can draw, as they don't search out lands themselves.

[The Star]
Rend dark paths to distant wars.
Card Draw
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Ramp may be the cornerstone of a deck, but there's no point in having mana if there's nothing to cast. Card draw is the axle-grease that keeps the deck capable of building upon itself in a game.

Like with ramp, I recommend at least 15 sources of card draw. It may sound excessive, but I personally classify a huge range of card effects under its umbrella, including cantrips, discard-draw effects and wheel effects. To me, the filtering provided by such effects to get to the correct cards you want to be casting at any given time qualifies them under the primary objective of drawing.

That being said, card advantage is an important factor, especially in a multiplayer game and as such between all sources of draws I recommend at the very least about 8 (preferably 10) of your draws are capable of generating card advantage, be it directly (one-shot draw multiples, or strong straightforward draw engines) or indirectly (can be cast multiple times by itself, or generates synergy with the deck's theme to do so like an on-theme conditional engine).
As most cards primarily placed for their drawing abilities are pretty straightforward, I will not be explaining each of the common sections and the choices that fall under them.

Single-Use
[The Moon]
Turn it on its head. Reality's a lie.
Repeatable Draw
[The Devil]
Fear the vortex swallowing all.
Tutors
Not quite card advantage, but I like to categorize tutors under the branch of card draw as it surrenders advantage for precision. I've opted not to go for the generic ones despite being a 5C deck, but only the ones that can search out for lands for a more thematic experience,
Removal
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EDH games are not played in vacuum – as much as you're ramping, drawing cards and presenting threats, so are your opponents. Someone has to be faster than someone else in most games and it's unlikely you're always the fastest on board. The ability to dispose of threats that would otherwise end the game (or you from the game) should never be underestimated.

At the same time, there's only so much space you can afford for removal, especially having spent space for ramp and card draw and needing some for other utilities. I cannot you teach you the specifics as it differs game-to-game, but threat assessment is key skill in any EDH game, as it can easily seem that there are more threats than you have answers for, as there are three opponents. You need to identify which threats are the most dangerous to you, preferably as early as possible, but only dispose of them in a timely fashion, not necessarily as early as possible. If a threat has a chance to pose a bigger threat to another opponent, then it may be beneficial to either let it weaken said opponent first or let them notice the threat (even if it's blatant verbal politics) and spend their removal to get rid of a problem for you.

Removal is divided into two main catergories, Spot Removal, which are cards that remove usually one, but can be up to a few targets (and usually do use a targeting mechanic). The other is board-wipes, which refer to cards capable of removing an entire subset of cards (or almost) from every player (or opponent, but those usually cost more) in the game.

Counterspells for most part are almost always considered single-target removals, as the bulk of them are usually used to negate a singular threat before it manifests. There's some debate because there's an array of cards that exile entire graveyards, but I personally classify all grave hate to be single-target removal on the concept that most decks that don't rely on the graveyard as theme still do have some limited recursion options, and the reason one utilizes an entire graveyard exile is simply because the cards that perform them tend to be more cost-effective, and the real objective is usually a specific card. Sure, sometimes you hit a graveyard-reliant opponent and it feels like a boardwipe, but I don't feel that means I have to classify all cards that entire exile graveyards as wipes because they're opponent-dependent.

I recommend at least a minimum of 8 spot removals, with a reinforcement of 10-minimum if you're unsure about your threat assessment skills. Unless you have really good synergy with your removal options, generically around a cap of 12 spot removals should be ceiling, otherwise it'll pressure too little space for your utilities. Cover all your bases, make sure you have at least a way to get rid of graveyards and lands, as removals for those two are often overlooked while threats they present are no less dangerous than your usual culprits.

With board wipes my minimum recommendation is at least 3 and preferably 2 of those are capable of removing creatures, the most common permanent threat-type by nature of damage, but there should also be at least one option capable of handling artifacts and enchantments. Generally speaking mass land removal is socially frowned upon (especially if you're just going for walk-in games), so pay extra attention back to your spot removal to handle the notorious few problem-lands in the game.

Like with draw, the removal effects themselves are straightforward, with my emphasis already done on ensuring you have the diversity to deal with threats of varying natures being the actual important factor. Hence, I'm not explaining my specific choices in each deck and substitutes for this section are arguably the easiest to look for with any collection.

Graveyard Removal
[Death]
Let love burn to its silent end.
Spot Removal
[The Tower]
Tear it down with the wicked ones.
Board Wipes
[Justice]
Let the scales deal harsh equality.
Traditional wipes may pose a threat to our manlands, so I'd opted for wipes that specifically state nonland, so manlands can survive.
PRO (Protection, Recusion & Others)
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With three pillars of any EDH deck settled, we move on to slightly less important parts (no part can be considered unimportant because an EDH deck is supposed to be a machine with all its part working in sync ideally). Protection & Recursion can be said to be two sides of a same coin, under a function of keeping other parts of deck intact so those could perform their duties. Basically the opposite of removal, the attempt to keep your threats intact (or returning/reusing them after they got disposed).

Protection & Recusion

Protection is pro-active and prevents a card of yours from either be removed, or at least it helps by hindering your opponents from doing so (so effects that grant shroud or hexproof qualify). This prevents the card from leaving the battlefield or get countered, so it's less vulnerable to grave hate options, but in exchange, protection requires timing and mana left open and can be tricky to maneuver, even more so than threat assessment. Some counterspells can function as protection, but for simplicity's sake I just classified them under removal due to my processing order, but take note if you already run counterspells they might be pulling double-duty as Protection.

Recursion, as I said, is the opposite of the same coin. It doesn't prevent the destruction, but bringing something back from the graveyard to the hand, deck or battlefield means there's no real timing restriction outside your own personal urgency. Likewise, it's vulnerable to gravehate, which is arguably the #1 factor that would provide a sense of timing urgency.

While they're distinct enough that I have to provide paragraphs establishing their roles, Protection and Recursion could be said to be one tier below the three pillars of deckbuilding (ramp, card draw & removal), as it's theoretically possible for a deck to just ignore it altogether and operate on "If it's gone, it's gone" principle) and still reasonably perform well if it's other components are settled well. This cannot be said for the three pillars (which would visibly affect performance significantly more if they were missing).

That being said, it definitely never hurts to have some countermeasures of your own against removals, especially if your deck's themes and/or combos are heavily reliant on one card with poor redundancies/substitutes. There's no real "guide number", but I'd recommend around 5 in total, divided any way you want between the two sub-types. Most preferably your choices have synergy with your Commander of deck theme, even if it means going all-in with one and ignoring another.

Protection
[Temperance]
Reign over havoc, weal and woe.
Recursion
[The Hangedman]
Endure his foolish crucibles.
Others
Actually more accurately referred to as Utility (but PRO sounded much better than PRU), this is the "last" section you fill in. But wait, isn't mana-fixing lands after this? Yes, which is why you need to do one thing before you starting filling this "last" section, which is to clarify your numbers.
Walls of Text, but Critical to Deckbuilding
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At this point you need to tabulate the total number of cards already in your deck. Then you need to determine the number of lands you need in your deck. It may feel like a contradiction to think how many lands you need before you got all your non-lands in to determine your mana curve/intensity, but blindly going in more-often results in people loving to stuff it to the gills only to find out they only have space left for 20 lands (which is a big NO-NO), which is why this guide even focuses on establishing numbers for all your three pillars and PR before moving to this Utility section, which is probably the most "fun" part of deckbuilding.

If you completely have no idea of what your mana curve/intensity would look like, the general recommendation for total land count is to be at 38 lands. If it's not your first time building a deck and you could sort of mentally preview your curve to be much lower than the average, there's an argument for cutting down up to 2 lands, and if you're running Mana Crypt like me, you could safely reduce the count by 1. That makes the absolute minimum land count 35 and even then you really must anticipate/know your mana curve accurately.

On the opposite path, if you know you're putting too much weight, you might want to up to count by a couple at most, and even then 40 lands does put you at a risk of land-bloating that I would whether recommend you keep a tight rein on both the 38 land count and the "calorie intake" of your card choices instead. The only exception is if your deck is a lands-matter deck, and assuming it's a main theme of the deck, the numbers are skewed to around 40-minimum-to-45-maximum with no real average. There are some other decks out there that really delve deep into the theme with 50+ lands that do work, but I don't specialize in that and will not elaborate further (and 99-land decks are their own thing).

Let's say you took the 38-land assumption (no Crypt) and booted up on the minimum/average recommended suggestions I made (15 ramp, 15 draw, 13 removal and 5 PRs). That brings the total to 86 cards. Not counting the Commander (and I'm assuming no Partners), that leaves a whooping total of 13 spaces left for your utility, "fun" stuff. Sounds incredibly small, sad and not enough space for all the awesome ideas you had for your deck but now can't fit in.

It'll be tempting to start trimming cards from the prior sections, but please do not, for that is the most common temptation newer/casual players fall for, only to find out their deck doesn't churn along because the pillars that keep the deck (including the "fun" parts) running just aren't up to the task.

But, now is the time to restore a bit of hope. It's time to check back on the cards already in the deck and see how many lands are already residing there. Did you use Ancient Tomb as ramp? Did you let War Room smooth out your draws? Did you file Buried Ruin under recursion because you didn't want to waste a spell slot to get back one important but not numerous artifact in the deck? Everyone land you already used counts under the land total, which means you free one more space for your utility fun.

But what happens if you found out you didn't have that many lands that helped you free up space? Then I'd recommend you start looking up for those lands to take over some of your nonland choices in these categories to create that space. The secret to a well-oiled EDH deck that has space for its luxury plays is the one that finds the most land openings to fill in the pillars of its own oiling, not just cutting the pillars off for luxuries that no pillars are around left to support.

When it's done you should have around 15 to 20 open spaces for your utilities/fun (I actually have less because I usually go a couple above the recommended minimum for my pillars). It can still feel "little", especially for newer players, but at this point I just have to say that's the sacrifice it takes to be able to get what you consider fun up-and-running in a 99-card deck format with so much variance, it certainly isn't just 60+ cards of fun and lands. That's why like how you find lands in your pillar card-choices to make space, it's in your best interests to find nonland cards in those sections as well that synergize better with your themes, so that your pillars are also fun to play with as well.
Another small beacon of light to look forward to, there are lands that are utility and/or fun, and like with all lands before them, they fall under the land total quota, so they don't eat up your remaining spaces. That Treetop Village that isn't really protection but just small utility? Doesn't eat up your remaining establish space.

One very important thing to note when distinguishing if a land actually falls under the land total. I do not consider lands that are incapable of producing mana by themselves in a vacuum to one, if they're in for a non mana-fixing reason (which is why I count those last) and can't produce mana on their own, they're functionally like 0-mana "non-land" cards in a way. Maze of Ith strikes as the most common example (and no, even if you run Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth in the deck it doesn't just reverse this classification in the deckbuilding process, which usually favor in-a-vacuum status.
With the importance of juggling numbers in this section finally out of the way, let's briefly go through my miscellaneous card choices.
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Core/Combo/Finishers
[Judgment]
Sound the trumpets to the empire's end.

As I said, Re:Commanders decks are almost always built with combo-ways to close the games in case the primary win condition style is rendered unachievable, hence the pieces for these combos are usually my first priority in filling out my utility spaces. As I have a section dedicated to explaining the combos, I'll leave this part as short as possible.

Other Utility

Amulet of Vigor is a great support card in a deck built around 10 lands that enter the battlefield tapped.
Wrenn and Realmbreaker can animate lands and act as recursion.
Rootpath Purifier expands on the number of targets the basic fetchers can find.
Maskwood Nexus enables cross-synergy between creature types (Warrior and Elementals) and can produce emergency blockers.
Noyan Dar, Roil Shaper is the primary source of animate lands that can't animate themselves to provide a board if necessary.
Seedborn Muse really helps in keeping manlands online during other players' turns.
Color-Fixing Lands
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At this point you should be done with all your nonland cards, and with some lands slots already taken up, you should roughly have about 30 land slots left in a multicolored deck, or substantially less (around 25) for a monocolored deck. Mono-colored decks pretty much don't need color fixing, so it's basically all basic lands filling the remainder. For multicolored decks though, now is the time to get your color-fixing options in, so you can reasonably produce the colored mana for your needs at any stage of the game.

I seldom talk about budget alternatives (be it high or low), but lands are among one of the more-commonly spoken of topics when discussing about budgets, so I'm supplying some alternatives here.

The Ten Manlands

The core of the deck, they provide partial mana-fixing in the early to the mid-stages of the game and are your beatdown/defense/combo options later in the game.

I'm not going to be analyzing each and every of their unique animated forms, they're all pretty straightforward that one has to decide on the spot of each game depending on which ones they have / can activate according to the situation.

"Fetchlands" Package
Even without traditional dual-fetches, the deck does permit land recursion easily because manlands are rather vulnerable, so some non-traditional fetches make it in. I prefer the quick and simple ones that search for basics just to fix mana when needed.

Myriad Landscape, Rocky Tar Pit, Krosan Verge: They're either too slow (coming into play tapped twice) for a deck already slow or too narrow in their search scope compared those already in the deck.

Unconditional Lands
Lands that provide any colored mana unconditionally, but come with their own drawbacks (except for Command Tower).

Conditional Lands
These lands have conditions that affect the colors of mana they can produce, or have restrictions as to how the mana they produce can be used, making them a tier lower than the unconditional due to their reduced reliability to generate colored mana.

These are my choices for color-fixing lands, and we'll round the rest of the deck with Basic Lands. Every deck should always run some Basic Lands to "passively" combat nonbasic land-hate, especially the stax ones. As a general rule of thumb I calculate the mana symbols in all casting costs and non-mana abilities to have a rough gauge to determine how to divide the colors among my Basic Lands, with a cap that I should at least run 2 of each land type for coverage even if one color is played so little the formula results in recommending only 1 Basic. This deck runs 18 basics despite being a 5C deck, due to the amount of ramp there is (and without the subtype duals, even the flexible ramp cards can only find basics).

Piloting the Deck

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I'm not going in-depth into this section (partially because I haven't had many actual games myself), but if you've established an understanding of how each card in the deck works, I don't think I need to overtly dictate specifically how any of my decks should play out in a game. Bluntly speaking, you need to ramp and set up draws as early as possible, and your starting hand should revolve around that set-up. General threat assessment usually means don't waste your removal on early "threats" that aren't lethal or overtly crippling (unless someone's super-aggro), you'll need to juggle around the mid-game and if you've resourcefully saved them could afford to be a little trigger happy nearer to the end-game.

Mulligan & Early Game (T1-T4)

Ramp is king in the deck, but draw is the kingmaker. Outside of the typical opening-hand ratio, the number of priority should be able to get one of the draw engines online as soon as possible. It's easy for a beginner to see Burgeoning with 4 lands, 2 removal/support and think that's optimal, but if they don't get their draw engines online, they'd be durdling turn 2 and beyond with 4 mana and with nothing to remove/protect and no draw (and being the target of attention with all that mana)

You don't need the dream opening of having 4-5mana turn 2 (although having that with draw would propel the deck much faster to compensate for its otherwise slow nature). The critical move is making sure you can play something by turn 2, preferably one of the early ramps so you could build up your draw engines by turn 3 with 4/5 mana. It's the worst case scenario, the floor this deck seeks to minimize, for its slow nature means if you fall behind, you fall behind even harder, and falling behind in draw is the hardest fall here.

To sum it up, what is most critical is draw, and preferably your basic early ramp to get that draw online as quick as possible. Burst ramp is the meat of the deck, what you can afford to do mid-game because of the deck's theme/design. Occasionally you get the highroll where you burst-ramp-into-draw early game, but that's the rare ceiling you sometimes touch, it's the floor you need to manage and burst-ramp alone is the most common trap to fall through that floor.

Also note with a notable number of lands that enter the battlefield tapped to carefully plan your sequence of land drop/ramps. Can't really teach since it varies a lot by what other cards you have, but the priority is to make sure you can cast things, so don't go dropping that basic turn 1 with nothing to cast, then a manland on turn 2 when you could ramped that turn with 2 mana.

Mid-Game (T5-7/8)

By now your draw engine should be online and ideally this is the time to burst-ramp, be it a "highroll" kind with Burgeoning and Tatyova or just playing multiple normal ramp cards. This deck is supposed to ramp more than the usual deck while other decks are playing either their earlier threats or set-ups.

The real management game here is balancing out your ramp-speed with your threat assessment, in this phase your board might be lighter than other players building their board, which makes you a tempting target. Open mana (with the answers) signals you are ready to deal with the smaller threats/set-ups that would otherwise come after you if they see you spent all your six mana on ramp and is tapped out. If with a regular playgroup, you might even successfully fake-out with just open mana and cards in hand.

Don't be afraid to activate your manlands to protect yourself if necessary, especially if you've got the recursion options in hand. Likewise, if someone else is open for a manland beating that would trigger your draw engines, going for that in-lieu of ramping might be the right choice (especially if you didn't have any of the land-draw engines).

Late-Game (T8+)

By now, the war of attrition should have dragged out and options from all players should have lessened, if not exhausted. Choose an optimal time to either bring out Omanth for a battlecruise-y play with your remaining ramp/recursion options, and/or load out the Commander for multiple combat phases, if not infinite to close the game.

The advantage of having a low mana-cost Commander you don't really need to cast until the late-game in a deck revolving around ramp is that the incentive for removing the Commander is significantly lowered because of exhausted resources, but the combo potential would reverse that to completely empty those resources, opening the path for a more battlecruiser finish. Or you could just cast the Commander again to combo (maybe even in the same turn) if the battlecruiser plan already got countered due to a timely draw (it happens).

Remember, ultimately in a typical 4-player game where there can only be 1 winner, the odds are stacked against each player individually and the war of attrition is just a matter of who's the lucky one who managed to get his beatdown/combo down at the right moment when the other three exhausted all their immediate resources.

Combo Strategies


Najeela's Combos
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Najeela's combos basically revolve around generating enough mana during the combat phase/process of attacking to activate her ability to create infinite combat phases. There are multiple ways to achieve this:


Simple explanation: Attack with 5 creatures, put 5 charge counters, remove them to add WUBRG to activate Najeela, attack with the same 5 creatures again and repeat.
- Doesn't require the attacking creatures to actually deal combat damage, but always requires at least 5 attackers, so if you're losing attackers every attack phase it'll eventually cease to work if you only have 4 charge counters to remove, although if you attack with way more creatures initially charge counters can be stored for later uses so attacking different players to manage damage can be a math-game by itself.
- Doesn't untap lands, so manland synergy isn't really there, although you still can use mana sources normally to compensate for an initial lack of attacker(s) as long as Najeela can generate enough attackers to make up 5 attackers every attack phase by the time you run out of lands for mana


Simple Explanation: Deal combat damage to an opponent with 5 creatures, untap triggers go on the stack, tap 5 WUBRG lands to activate Najeela, then resolve to untap them.
-Because it is considered 5 separate triggers, it's actually possible to just use a single land (that can produce any color) by tapping for each color before letting each untap trigger resolve.
-Derevi can untap any permanent, so mana rocks work as well as lands.
-Derevi can untap lands, which means his combo is self-sufficient with any number of attacking manlands as long as its ability is triggered at least 5 times (and the lands can produce WUBRG), as the manlands are always considered attacking regardless of how many times they were tapped/untapped until the combat phase is complete (unless an ability specifically removes them from combat, like Labyrinth of Skophos) and Najeela's ability has to activate and resolve within that timeframe.
-Double Strike counts as two instances of combat damage (notable for Needle Spires).

or

Simple Explanation: Deal combat damage to an opponent with any creature, untap trigger goes on the stack, tap 5 WUBRG lands to activate Najeela, then resolve to untap them.
- Only one creature dealing combat damage is needed to trigger it, but it also is only a single trigger, therefore you cannot just use a single land to produce mana, you have to use 5.
- As Nature's Will untaps lands, it is self-sufficient with even one manland, but it would still require 5 lands in total (inclusive of the manland dealing combat damage) producing WUBRG
-Bear Umbra doesn't even need combat damage to be dealt, just attacking with one creature, but it is an aura and outside of the combo enchanting a manland would cause it "fall off" after the land stops being a creature. However, enchanting Najeela herself is also an option.


Granting vigilance (Examples: Brave the Sands or Embodiment of Insight for manlands)

Not in the current incarnation of the deck, but I'm pointing the high level of synergy Vigilance has in-line with the combo style the deck goes for.

Simple Explanation: Attack with 5 WUBRG manlands with Vigilance, tap them for mana, activate Najeela, repeat.
-Basically requires 5 manlands to go infinite, because it doesn't untap any other land, it just takes advantage that an attacking manland can still produce mana.
-Jegantha, the Wellspring is the singular card that can do the same job by itself when granted vigilance, but note that it isn't a land.

Closing


This brings us to the end of this guide Najeela, the World Beyond, sure it looks easy on the surface needing only 2 pieces, one being in the Command Zone and enough lands/attackers, but my route of choosing to utilize manlands makes the assembling the 5 attackers a much more mana-intensive procress.
Although to give it more positive outlook, it's actually the reverse, the Najeela combos give the mana-intensive process of utilizing manlands a much more respectable chance of winning, after all this a deck built around the manlands first-and-foremost and not actually a deck built around comboing with Najeela first (although with enough creatures one could still pull off a regular one here).

Flavor

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Well, this is no primer, so instead of giving credits, I'm just going to the customized flavortown for the deck. (Actually the real reason is I sort of just absorbed random tidbits over the decades and can't remember all the specific sources I got, some I simply kept/forgot in my brain until years later, only randomly recalling the tidbit when I come up or have to refine my ideas/decks).

This deck is flavorfully themed after the Major Arcana, specifically "The World" representing the deck as a whole (since it is centered around the 10 Zendikar manlands).
The first half of its thematic quote/description was taken from poet Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken".

The second half, along with the inscriptions of the feature card images in this thread come from lyrics of "New World Order", an OST from the browser game Granblue Fantasy, specifically from its "Arcarum" game mode, themed around the Major Arcana (it focuses on only half of the actual Major Arcana, although there are links to the remaining half). The Commander's epithet "the World Beyond", also originates from the game mode as that's the mode's full title (Arcarum: the World Beyond).

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"New World Order" also serves as the deck's theme song, alongside the 7 other songs (Each Re:Commander deck is assigned 8 songs, one as its own theme song and one that it shares with each of the other 7 decks of the suite). Links to each song are below, and disclaimer that it's safer to assume every link is NSFW than vice-versa so make sure you're in your safest environment before pressing any links.

(Theme Song) New World Order
(Song with Freyalise) Paradox
(Song with Yorion) Kuusou Mesorogiwi
(Song with Extus) This Will Be the Day
(Song with Ryusei) Courtesy Call (Nightcore)
(Song with Karador) Clattanoia
(Song with Animar) Database
(Song with Grimgrin) Great Escape
If you enjoyed this [Re:Commanders] thread and would like to see another one, feel free to visit either the main [Re:Commanders] hub or any of the other [Re:Commanders] threads linked below

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