Nalia de'Arnise - Partycrasher
Nalia de'Arnise
Approximate Total Cost:
General Overview
The payoffs overall for the Party mechanic are generally not terribly impressive on most cards, however, Nalia herself utilizes Party well if you enjoy playing aggressively. Your board quickly gets to be rather threatening once you have a full party as your creatures grow every turn. Swinging with a board full of deathtouch creatures makes blocking a little trickier for opponents even when they have larger creatures.
Nalia's ability to play creatures off of the top of your deck is a huge benefit. With how useful this is, I think you really have to be mindful of keeping the creature count fairly high in the deck to help your odds of being able to keep playing from the top of your deck.
Since Nalia is a Rogue herself, including any Rogues feels to be a bit of a waste as that lessens the odds of getting other creature types for the Party mechanic. One huge exception to this that I added was Oona's Blackguard. This card is massively scary in this deck and every time I've dropped this card it has immediately put other players on edge with the threat of killing their hands.
The theme is rather open with a ton of cards to pull from across the four classes, which is rather appealing if you enjoy endless tinkering with decks (and I do). This also encourages potentially playing some weird cards that I probably wouldn't otherwise consider since I really need to stick to these four classes. I think you can take the core concept of this deck in a number of different directions such that many Nalia de'Arnise decks are going to look rather different. One important thing to keep in mind at all times is that you need a good ratio of wizards to warriors to clerics to have good odds of getting the full party benefits from the commander. I've formatted the decklist in such a way that it is easier to see the balance of the different classes.
Cards for Future Consideration
Cauldron of Souls - This seems just silly for this deck and would make the deck fairly resilient to board wipes. Assuming you have a full party, on your turn Nalia will cancel out all -1/-1 persist counters, letting you use the Cauldron once per turn cycle. This is a 5 drop that doesn't increase your aggression factor though, so I'm not 100% in on it. It is definitely something I'd consider if I was expecting lots of board wipes.
Cauldron Haze - Similar to Cauldron of Souls, as a one shot effect this is definitely not bad.
Resourceful Defense - This is in similar territory as The Ozolith, so I think it warrants trying out at some point.
Sigarda's Summons - I think this has great potential since most creatures in the deck end up with +1/+1 counters pretty quickly. It is a 6 drop though, and finding room for something like that is a bit tricky in this sort of deck.