I am playing stax version of Najeela, and run 4 basics. There is no need to run more in this list. It is fast and brutal.

As a stax deck you need to run 4. I think this list can get away with only 2.

4 as in 2 islands, swamp and a forest.

Jimothy_III

While more basics would obviously be nice in the face of a Blood Moon, they tend to hurt the deck's consistency when there isn't a Moon in play. Additionally, they are awkward to have when trying to go off with Derevi or Nature's Will.

The compromise is playing a basic forest since this enables most of our turn 1 plays, enables removal for Moon effects, and helps support the ability to go off with Druid's Repository under nonbasic land hate. It's the basic that checks the most boxes.

Great deck and I've been thinking about making a Najeela deck, I only play cEDH and this deck seems really good. Tell me how it does vs a cEDH meta and whats the speed vs the top decks ?

Turn 2 win !!

Shane.Allen

The deck is very good and can compete with the best of them. As you can see, the deck is a cEDH primer and--surprise--I play in a competitive meta. I haven't done any extensive goldfishing tests (I think its usefulness as a metric for deck competitiveness is overstated) but, from experience, the deck has an exceptionally consistent turn 4 kill. It's not the fastest average win speed but the variance around that is extremely low. Additionally, most of the win attempts offer one or more counterspells for protection that can also be used for disruption if you'd rather wait for somebody else to test the table first.

Why did you take Bloom Tender out?

Zenaku17

Just haven't felt the need for any of the bigger mana dorks with how streamlined the deck has become. Bloom Tender can help enable some turn 3 wins and is nice to have against some taxing strategies but, in general, we can't really take advantage of the extra mana super easily.

So I feel like I've been fucking around with other decks waiting for this deck to come to my attention. I've absolutely loved Najeela since I saw her.

Is this deck really good enough to compete with the Jelevas and Tazri's of the world though? Seems kind of surprising that a deck with so much interaction can beat designated combo.

Ilnez

It 100% competes with these decks. The amount of interaction is a major boon, not a downside.

Yeah, I also have like 90+% of the deck foil, it's majorly tempting. Full expedition landbase would look sexy af for a cEDH haha

Ilnez

She does look good in foil. ;)

https://imgur.com/a/b8cq2Rx

man, this deck is so great! i dont own OG duals, so i went full shocklands + some painlands/battlebond lands. while duals are ofc a lot better, the additional win% really is marginal compared to their price-tag :)

what i love the most about this deck is how well you can play it in lower-power-metas. for example my usually playgroup plays decks ranking between 6-8 on a 1-10 scale. with najeela you can just play classic tempo without ever comboing off so the other decks have still a viable win%. in those metas, i never tutor for the combo. instead i go for protection, interaction or edric/tymna and keep smashing faces until i or my enemies are dead. its very nice and refreshing to have 1 deck that is capable of adjusting to the meta by its own. a lot of the more linear combo decks in cEDH cant adapt their gameplan without changing cards to different powerlevels. additionaly to that, after playing 5+ matches of EDH the whole day (and maybe having some beers) its such a relief to just go into the redzone with creatures, not worrying about gitrog loops with dredge, doing math with a calc while keeping track of stormcount or managing 20+ dice worth of 100s of +1/+1 counters on dozens of tokens

and if you play in a cEDH meta or with prizes on the line, you just run it as its intened and win on T4 ^^ what a beauty! kind regards and kudos to you, sir

Hey, great primer! What do you think about haste enablers like Concordant Crossroads to not have Najeela spending one turn on the field before you can use it?

Kresnik

I've seen people run Lightning Greaves but haven't really found haste necessary. I would try to avoid the symmetrical haste effects.

How do you deal with people simply blocking Najeela? Seems it would be hard to keep her on the battlefield between removal and blocks. Although I guess they can't really have that many blockers by turn four. I'm used to slower metas.

Pongo_Pygmaeu5

what a good target for Eladamri's Call other than Derevi, Empyrial Tactician?

Really solid list. One question - do you run into issues with people double blocking Najeela (or blocking with something like a Tymna) which shuts down your combo line very much? I have always liked Najeela, however her 2 toughness and no first strike makes her feel a bit squishy without any other kind of buffing. I only as becasue I come from a more creature heavy playgroup, between tymna/tana, sisay and even brago decks.

enpc, Patryn

This is a competitive list, usually cast najeela on turn 1 or 2. and you will always get an empty board among your opponents which najeela will pass thru. Once she pass, the next 1 or 2 turn, your board will swarmed with 1/1 warriros, is enough to close the game, even najeela dont have to attack, just standing on board.

For more casual play, i think you need more removals/protection to protect the queen. imo.

allanrichardo: that's assuming you have good opening hand, a stright run to attack through and are not dealing with removal. Turn 1 Najeela, while not impossible seems much more uncommon than a turn 2 Najeela. And at turn 3, you start to see stuff like Kess, Dissident Mage coming down who rolls Najeela stats wise (what's up with Kess's P/T). Or at least Tymna (a very common commander) coming down turn 2. It's not even about casual, in competitive there are a lot of creature heavy builds.

enpc

Based on my experience playing najeela more or less with this deck list, she will 80% 2 drop. Yes, my playgroup has tymna n kess also, but i rarely see kess on turn 3, esp with no instant/sorcery to play it back. So dont attack opponent controling kess/tymna. There will always a player that have no creature on 1st turn.

The real problem is while all opponent have 2 dorks early game double blocking it. But once again, it rarely happen, most people only play one dork, the other is mana rock. even they doubleblock najeela, they will lose 2 mana rampers which slow them down in trade of our commander that we can cast it back later + we still got 1 1/1 warrior :)

allanrichardo

Often Gilded Drake but any of the creature draw engines are good too.

allanrichardo: that's fair. I guess my concern was around trying to get Najeela through if she's been removed prior so there is some board state from opponents. But I did notice the Fire Covenant and the maybeboard Zealous Persecution which are both good options. Plus as you mentioned at the end of the day for the first few attacks you just throw tokens at your opponents and let Najeela sit back (in your combo turn that is).

Why the basic forest? Is it to fetch when Najeela gets pathed? Or to fetch in response to a