Atla Palani, Nest Tender - Break an Egg

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darrenhabib
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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago


I decided to do some theory-crafting what a potential dedicated list might look like if you devoted yourself to a plan using Atla Palani, Nest Tender as a combo creature in an cEDH environment.

The main reason is that I like to try and champion "off colors" in competitive metas. So Boros being generally the weakest in two colors, and in my opinion Naya or maybe Jund in three colors. Anything that doesn't have blue really.
There are of course exceptions "Blood Pod", Gitrog, Mono-Green, "Godo, Bandit Warlord Helm" but you don't really see much outside of blue, and certainly not Naya.
So I'm just trying to hypothetically see if something is possible to compete with the "big boys" in the ominously bad Naya colors.

Combo commander win
The game plan is to win via Atla Palani, Nest Tender getting out Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Village Bell-Ringer for a combo win as they are the only two creatures in the deck.
If Village Bell-Ringer is the first card revealed then you can untap Atla Palani, Nest Tender and use her again to make another Egg. In theory winning in the same turn if you can kill the Eggs and have enough mana to do so.
If it's Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker that get's revealed then unfortunately you'd need to wait a turn, or have some other plan to create another Egg.
Now there are some cards that let you do this. Populate allows you to copy the Egg with, Wake the Reflections, Sundering Growth. Twinflame also allows you to copy the Egg.

Then the other part is that you actually need the Eggs to die.
The deck has a lot of mass creature removal with Tremor, Pyroclasm, Whipflare, Firespout, Sweltering Suns, Rolling Earthquake, Earthquake.
There is also targeted removal you can use to kill them as well with Forked Bolt, Chain Lightning, Chain of Plasma allowing you to kill both of them if required.

Wrenn and Six can ping an Egg, as well as get lands back to help with land drops.

Disruptive Archetype
Now the actual tempo of the deck is to be as disruptive in Naya colors as possible, and play a much slower game plan. The idea is not to try and combo as quickly as possible, but to stop your opponents from winning as best as possible with disruptive cards, and then be patient and wait for opportunities to use your commander to win.
You really want other people to be attempting their combos first and have the table react to stopping those, yourself included as there are lot of interactive cards in the deck. You are trying to find that window of opportunity when people have used a lot of their interaction already.

There is a healthy amount of hate cards in the deck centered around popular themes in cEDH.

There is a Stax element to slow down opponents and especially those that are looking to use storm strategies.
Sphere of Resistance, Thorn of Amethyst, Trinisphere to make spells cost more.
Root Maze, Null Rod, Stony Silence, Karn, the Great Creator will shut down artifact mana strategies.
Rest in Peace for graveyard strategies.
Rule of Law will stop a lot of shenanigans, especially storm decks.
Blood Moon will nullify lands for a lot of players, and because there is artifact lock down AND lots of mana creature removal, this card will be very effective. Even though you have a lot of non-basic lands, you can prepare yourself for this more by getting the basics with your fetches first, and also the deck can operate on Mountains very effectively as well.
Stranglehold will make 90% of some decks stop functioning.

On top of this there is a lot of cheap removal. This can be used to stop your opponents game wining combos, slow down their mana bases, but also once you are further into the game to remove any hate cards that might look to prevent your combo.

There is an anti-blue suite as well to reflect the meta.

Cards like Silence, Orim's Chant, Abeyance can help you push through your combo, while also perhaps stopping an opponent that looks to be trying to win in a single turn.

The mass creature damage card can be really effective against a lot of the decks that play mana creatures as part of their mana source plans.
They can also hit some hate-bear type creatures that might be stopping elements of your combo.
At the very least it's going to slow down Tymna/Thrasios commanders looking to get some cheeky draw.

Wheel of Sun and Moon can be used to enchant yourself to give insurance against removal or discard. Wheel effects can be a pain if you have Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker or Village Bell-Ringer in hand and end up getting put it into your graveyard. Wheel of Sun and Moon will make sure that you always have access to them, unless exiled.
But you can also use it on a Flash-Hulk player to stop the "dies" trigger on Protean Hulk.
Note that token creatures can still "die" with Wheel of Sun and Moon so the Eggs will still trigger the reveal effect.

Helping the combo.
To the help the combo a bit more, there are some tricks.
As I mentioned if Village Bell-Ringer is the first creature revealed then you can target Atla Palani, Nest Tender to use her ability again. You can use Sylvan Tutor or Worldly Tutor to actually make sure this happens.

Also there are a number of land cards that give your creatures haste with, Hall of the Bandit Lord and Flamekin Village.
Flamekin Village requires investing mana, and if you imagine casting Atla Palani, Nest Tender 1wrg then tapping a r and the land itself, plus you are wanting to spend 2 to make an egg, that is 8 lands you will be tapping. So don't look for this as an early game plan by any means. But Hall of the Bandit Lord can give you the ability to use 6 mana to get in a turn early with an Egg.
Winding Canyons can be used cast Atla Palani, Nest Tender before your turn and then you can look for a copy effect to try and combo off.

Crop Rotation can be used to get one of these lands, as well as Sejiri Steppe in the face of targeted removal.You can also get High Market which you can use to kill the Eggs.

If you draw Village Bell-Ringer before you combo then this can be used to your advantage. You can either use it to untap Atla Palani, Nest Tender when you go to combo, and so she can make another Egg. That would require 4w to do plus whatever you are going to use to kill the Eggs. Or you could cast before your turn if mana constraints were tight and you wanted do something else.

If you draw Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, then it's more mana intensive, but let's say you have made an Egg already, you can cast Kiki-Jiki and actually copy the Egg token, and look to go off that way. However you can't look to use the 3 damage creature removal spells, as they will kill Kiki-Jiki.

But I will stress this deck is not about speed. It's about attrition, with a final plan of using your commander to win once the coast is clear.



I'm keen to hear if there are some cards that I should be playing to help the strategy, or even if you think that this concept is totally misguided? lol.



Decklist

Targeted creature removal

Targeted damage

Opponents can't cast spells

Graveyard Recovery

Artifact mana

Enchantment

Planeswalker

Approximate Total Cost:

Last edited by darrenhabib 4 years ago, edited 1 time in total.

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benjameenbear
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Post by benjameenbear » 4 years ago

I think Birthing Pod needs to be considered here as well since you can use the same creatures to win while adding in some resiliency.

Honestly, this seems like a not as good version of Tana & Tymna Blood Pod deck.

But, with that being said, I like the idea a whole lot, so let's try and make it work!

Lightning Greaves seems like a bad omission. Giving Atla shroud is crucial so that you can keep her alive and actually get her Egg trigger.

What if instead you were to try and build her along the strategy line of Kaalia? I think Atla could actually be a legitimate way to cheat in some of the powerful White Stax creatures like Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Chancellor of the Annex, Alms Collector, and Linvala, Keeper of Silence. You could even, dare I say it, cheat in our beloved Zacama, Primal Calamity by killing some Eggs. That way, when Atla's Egg trigger goes off, you'll always get some sort of creature that will immediately disrupt or aggravate an opponent's strategy.

An awesome suite of creatures could be something like this:
Basically like a weird Mayael of the Anima deck?

Also, Reckless Rage could be extra awesome here to kill an Egg AND an opponent's creature!

NotMyOwlbear
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Post by NotMyOwlbear » 4 years ago

Pod is definitely a good line for this, but without black tutors it is better as a secondary line.

Unlike with artifacts such as pod, Naya can easily tutor for creatures, therefore...

For the primary line we are probably better off with Mirror Entity, along the lines of:
1. Buff Atla (due to layering this will work with buffs like Invigorate, there are also lands good for this, etc)
2. Activate Mirror Entity for zero a large number of times.
3. Mirror Entity will die, triggering Atla's egg death trigger, but her buff spares her.
4. The next creature you flip will also become a 0/0 egg from the stacked activation and so on.
5. This continues indefinitely, allowing you to flip every creature, enabling all sorts of things. You can loop it using either an Eldrazi titan or new Gerrard.

The most likely wincon would be some of the usual Pod suspects.

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darrenhabib
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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

benjameenbear wrote:
4 years ago
I think Birthing Pod needs to be considered here as well since you can use the same creatures to win while adding in some resiliency.

Honestly, this seems like a not as good version of Tana & Tymna Blood Pod deck.

But, with that being said, I like the idea a whole lot, so let's try and make it work!

Lightning Greaves seems like a bad omission. Giving Atla shroud is crucial so that you can keep her alive and actually get her Egg trigger.

What if instead you were to try and build her along the strategy line of Kaalia? I think Atla could actually be a legitimate way to cheat in some of the powerful White Stax creatures like Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Chancellor of the Annex, Alms Collector, and Linvala, Keeper of Silence. You could even, dare I say it, cheat in our beloved Zacama, Primal Calamity by killing some Eggs. That way, when Atla's Egg trigger goes off, you'll always get some sort of creature that will immediately disrupt or aggravate an opponent's strategy.

An awesome suite of creatures could be something like this:
Basically like a weird Mayael of the Anima deck?

Also, Reckless Rage could be extra awesome here to kill an Egg AND an opponent's creature!
I did have Birthing Pod in my draft list, with the idea of using Zealous Conscripts instead of Village Bell-Ringer.
One problem is that Null Rod and Stony Silence is going to shut it off a number of times.
But it does give the line of sacrificing Atla to get Kiki-Jiki and then you can make a copy of an Egg. You still need to kill both the Eggs.

I feel like a big fatties package is going to be too slow?
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite - will take your eggs out of range of some of the damage spells.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - doesn't get the cast trigger.
Protean Hulk - even if there is a line, the creatures themselves will be potential reveals for Atla. and it's pretty safe to assume they will be ordinary as individual cards.
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre - needs a turn to attack and even then can only target one player.

Linvala, Keeper of Silence, Void Winnower, Magus of the Moon, Ruric Thar, the Unbowed, Archon of Valor's Reach - these ones are better because they effect the board immediately.

My biggest concern is just drawing a bunch of fatties, which of course will be dead cards in hand and that the creatures themselves are just not effective enough to actually win?

There is a combo with Thornbite Staff and Ashnod's Altar, where you can keep sacrificing the Eggs for 2 and untapping Atla, to literally get all the creatures from your deck. Atla is a Shaman as well, so the equip can be without cost potentially.
So in a build with multiple creature this line could be looked at.
But again it runs foul of Null Rod and Stony Silence, but obviously you can take these cards out.

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darrenhabib
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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

NotMyOwlbear wrote:
4 years ago
Pod is definitely a good line for this, but without black tutors it is better as a secondary line.

Unlike with artifacts such as pod, Naya can easily tutor for creatures, therefore...

For the primary line we are probably better off with Mirror Entity, along the lines of:
1. Buff Atla (due to layering this will work with buffs like Invigorate, there are also lands good for this, etc)
2. Activate Mirror Entity for zero a large number of times.
3. Mirror Entity will die, triggering Atla's egg death trigger, but her buff spares her.
4. The next creature you flip will also become a 0/0 egg from the stacked activation and so on.
5. This continues indefinitely, allowing you to flip every creature, enabling all sorts of things. You can loop it using either an Eldrazi titan or new Gerrard.

The most likely wincon would be some of the usual Pod suspects.
Interesting. I'm guessing the best bet is just to have Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre and Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and literally a single ETB/LTB creature that will win you the game. Goblin Arsonist for example.

But honestly requiring both Mirror Entity and a buff spell is quite a few hoops.
Your investing way more cards to the combo, rather than just trying to use Atla as an eventual way to win without needing to invest too many cards into the combo.
You'd be realistically trading kill creature cards for buff spells, and they are always going to be less useful as cards during games.

But definitely think about how this could be used.

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darrenhabib
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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

Alright thinking about the Mirror Entity line there are a number of lands as @NotMyOwlbear mentioned, so I think you could get away with just land buffs, which isn't so bad on the "cost" of running the combo.

These are cards that I've marked as potentials.

An advantage of running this type of line is that you can run as many creatures in the deck as you want.

Forerunner of the Legion has the advantage of search for Mirror Entity. but also giving Atla a +1/+1 counter when you cast Mirror Entity.

Cavalier of Flame i was thinking of in case you've drawn both Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre and Kozilek, Butcher of Truth.

I still think this is shaping into more of a "competitive" deck rather than a "cEDH" deck, but got to keep theory-crafting otherwise we will never know.

With Mishra's Factory you activate Mirror Entity for 1 first then tap Mishra's Factory to give Atla the +1/+1 as she will be an Assembly-Worker.

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