Historic Naya Warriors: Fun & Jank Episode 8

You awake at 2 am in a cold sweat. The room is black, with only your heavy breathing providing any sensation at all. As you clumsily feel around in the dark, making your way to the bathroom, a single question pollutes your mind.

You shakily open the bathroom door, the sink illuminated by the moonlight peeking in through the window. You slowly turn to face yourself in the dimly lit mirror. Staring at yourself dead in the eyes, the question comes to the forefront of your mind. 

You try to speak but nothing comes out.

Your throat is straining as you try with every ounce of strength you have, to speak. Your eyes widen as a sense of dread washes over you. Not even a whisper escapes. Knuckles turning white, you grasp the countertop and lean in closer to your reflection. And finally, in a voice that doesn’t quite sound like your own, you struggle to speak aloud the question that awoke you from your slumber in such a terrified state….

“Can cowards actually block warriors?”

Welcome back to Episode 8 of Fun & Jank! Plum is here to tell you that no, cowards can’t block warriors you silly goose. That’s just an old wives tale told to make little Warriors behave. 

I’m here to show you that the tribe is alive and well. This week I want to highlight a list that I’ve taken to Historic Mythic 6 times thus far. If you’ve come across my discussions in discord, you’ve probably heard me refer to this list as “Ol’ Reliable.” The deck has put up a strong performance every time I’ve taken it to the ranked ladder. As we do so, I’m also going to show you some earlier iterations of the list and how I tested and refined this brew to achieve such a high quality and consistent final deck list.

The Idea

This started as a “bottom up” brew when we got the alchemized version of Base Camp. With the addition of this untapped land, we had (at the time) access to 16 rainbow lands for any of the party creature types (warrior, cleric, wizard, rogue). Being able to have consistent mana allowed us to pick and choose the best tribal support without having to worry to much about having the right mana to cast them. I had a blast playing early versions of 5c Humans in Modern so I was super excited to start cooking up something similar in Historic.

Now at the time Clerics, Rogues, and an early version of UR Wizards were already established decks. Although they now had easy access to creatures of every color, these lists were supported by a suite of spells that our rainbow lands didn’t actually help cast. Sure, we still could have tried out some kooky lists, but they likely would’ve been much worse versions of the established decks.

That’s when I decided to take a gander at the last tribe. Warriors. These guys had also received a boost with some alchemized upgrades.

Kargan Intimidator: Now pumped and granted trample in one ability.
Kargan Warleader: Now had Ward 1 and gave it to your other warriors.

These are two very small changes, but when combined, they gave Warriors both decent protection from interaction, as well as more ways to get damage through. So with Base Camp, Kargan Intimidator, and Kargan Warleader in mind, we started brewing. Like I mentioned earlier, usually tribal brews are restricted to a few colors because of set-based support (think how Otters are mainly UR or Bats are BW). Warriors was a bit different though because of how common the typing was. There are warriors in every color, and with our 12 rainbow lands we had a lot more freedom to play a variety of best-in-slot cards.

The Deck

Like we’ve talked about in previous articles, I started by identifying the strong characteristics of our tribe as I looked at the card pool we were working with.

1.) Warriors generally have a high Power-to-Cost ratio.
2.) Warriors have strong synergy, but most of the creatures are good enough to be threatening by themselves.
3.) Although spells like Atarka's Command are traditionally played in these kinds of lists, there’s enough powerful warriors that we probably don’t need supporting spells.
4.) If we’re going to be a low to the ground aggro list, Collected Company is a perfect inclusion.

After we came to these conclusions, I actually just started throwing cards at the wall to see what stuck. Early concepts included some sweet cards that ended up not making the cut.

A 5-color game plan featuring Hero of Precinct One was actually one of the strongest initial ideas I tested, but we switched gears because it didn’t improve any weaknesses. A single board wipe from control was hard to beat after we invested so much in building an army of tokens. I found that cards such as Gruul Spellbreaker and Voltaic Brawler were the all stars of those original decks because they we’re so powerful on their own and I wanted to play into that idea a bit more.

Eventually I started seeing good results with this version of the deck:

Pelt Collector was by far the best one-drop we could ask for. With our cheap, but high powered creatures like Voltaic Brawler and Honored Crop-Captain it was easy to get him up to a 3/3 or 4/4 on curve. I wanted another one-drop along side him but Usher of the Fallen fell victim to the same problem as Hero, it didn’t impact the board enough against removal heavy decks.

Growth-Chamber Guardian was our “card advantage” in the deck. Since we weren’t playing spells to draw cards, this guy allowed us to get more gas in hand as a late game mana-sink if needed. Sigrid, God-Favored and Champion of Lambholt gave us some much needed interaction against other creature decks (mainly elves) while also keeping the tribal theme.

But things change, the meta got a bit faster, new cards were introduced, and suddenly the deck wasn’t keeping up anymore. Through the use of an Arena app such as Untapped.gg, I was able to track my win rate and matchup percentages. When combined with my experience as the pilot, I decided that leaning more heavily into the “efficient creature” aspect of warriors as a tribe was the best course of action.

So we evolved into this list:

We tightened up some numbers, went up on lands, and started relying on curving out as consistently as possible. Sigrid was cut because our creatures outclassed most of the other creature decks out there, and if there happened to be something bigger on the board, Champion of Lambholt and Kargan Intimidator made it so we could still get damage through.

Duskwatch Recruiter was the only addition of any significance in this iteration. Playing a similar role as Guardian from the previous version, but giving us a bit more selection.

Refining

Can you guess what happened next? Exactly. We kept playing magic!

We tested, refined, tested, tweaked, tested, refined, and tested some more.

It’s not a fast process. Testing takes time, and it takes data. You might get mana screwed a couple games in a row and immediately want to add more lands. Only to get flooded for the next 5. When it comes to testing a new brew you really want to make sure you’re getting a large sample size in terms of gameplay. Magic has a lot of variance, and it can be hard to tell the weaknesses and inconsistencies after just a few games. Make sure to keep track of your win/loss record and do your best to play against established decks to get an accurate reading of how your deck performs.

When refining, make small changes. Just one thing at a time rather than trying to overhaul the whole deck. Go up a land or two and play 20 games to see how it feels before you mess with the numbers again. This makes sure you can recognize trends (such as flooding, running out of gas too quickly, bad matchups, etc.) so you can plan your future testing around them.

Now there was a lot of testing not only by me, but a few other members of the community in discord. Talking to the community is another great way to test. Two heads are better than one! It’s always good to hear other people’s ideas about your deck list, good or bad. So I’m going to jump ahead a bit and show you the most recent version of Naya Warriors.

What a beaut!

At it’s core, it’s the same deck we started with. Efficient, high powered creatures that we want to turn sideways. But notice how the addition of new sets and cards gave the deck so much more power.

–Pawpatch Recruit is another 1-drop along side Pelt Collector that builds our board late game and has a relevant ability against interaction heavy decks

–Chief of the Edge completes the 3/2 trifecta along with Crop-Captain and Brawler, but also buffs all our other creatures too. This is where the rainbow lands really come in handy, easily allowing us to splash a fourth color.

–Cavern of Souls now we have uncounterable warriors and smoother mana! Easy to slot it and gives more of an edge against control decks.

–Jegantha, the Wellspring is free to include, so why not?

Notice how none of these cards radically changed the deck. They all just provided a small, but noticeable boosts to many different aspects of its game plan. This is one the reasons I love brewing! You might revisit an outdated list from 5 years ago and find the cards to revive it. Suddenly giving it new life! Magic is constantly evolving and as brewers its our job to keep a look out for how to not only create new decks, but also breathe new life back into old ones.

Naya Warriors is a fast and consistent aggro deck that still holds up in the current meta. I suggest you give it a spin and show all the cowards on the ladder what a true warrior looks like. I’m sporting a 78% win rate with the list this season.

Closing Thoughts

Now we didn’t really get into the nitty-gritty of how to test and refine a brew today. There’s countless things to pay attention to when testing and I’m not sure I’d ever be able to fit it into one article. But I’m here to help you recognize brewing concepts and give you a general guideline on how to engineer something viable, creative, and fun! Test, review, make changes, repeat. That’s all there is to it really. In the future we may talk about how to use hypergeometric calculators to make mana bases, or even how to analyze matchup percentages. Just remember I’m not a spike, and if you’re reading this there’s a good chance you’re not either. No matter what or how you brew, this is still a game and it should be fun! Don’t sweat the small stuff or rely only on yourself. It’s called Magic: The Gathering for a reason. Our community is an awesome resource and I promise you can find people just as excited as you are about your crazy brews who can help you make it better! I hope you enjoyed this weeks deck!

Thanks for reading.

As always feel free to comment and leave any questions you have below! Make sure to come back next week for even more Fun & Jank!

Happy Brewing!

and remember Cowards can’t block warriors.