Commander 2013 Nature of the Beast

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Happy Tuesday MTG peeps, 

We have for you today part two of five separate articles we are doing on the new Commander 2013 decks just recently released by WotC to a very welcoming Magic: the Gathering fan base.  Each of these new Commander pre-constructed decks provides a ready to play stack of 100 cards including a choice of three legendary creatures to act as your general which may be also represented by an oversized foil card.  The card list is a solid foundation which you can easily adjust to taste - we'll likely throw a few of our nostalgic favourites we've picked up from MTG Mint Card into the original mix. 

The is the overview / review for Commander 2013's 'Evasive Maneuvers' deck and we've prepared a video with our good friend Jon from 'Command Tower' on Tumblr.  

See the rest of the videos in this series:
• Evasive Maneuvers
• Eternal Bargain
• Mind Seize
• Power Hungry
• Nature of the Beast
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Here is the new Commander 2013 Nature of the Beast (Naya - Red / Green / White) with the available Generals of Marath, Will of the Wild, Gahiji, Honored One, and Mayael the Anima).  Let's have a looky-loo . . .
Marath, Will of the Wild
Costing only a 'Naya' (red / green / white), you get a legendary beast whose power / toughness are equal to its casting cost - and with the commander tax of an additional two each time you re-cast this, it can get big.  The second ability allows you to pay 'X' to remove that many +1/+1 counters from Marath to have one of three effects.  Either transfer those counters onto a target critter, ping for that much damage to target creature / player, or generate an equally sized creature token - very lovely.

Gahiji, Honored One
Here's you next new Commander - a 4/4 Beast costing five (two colorless and one 'naya').  This is a nice enticement for your opponents to attack each other as well as a boost to your creatures when they attack. This looks fine in an aggro list and would likely benefit with similar strategy cards like Gisela.

Mayael the Anima
This reprint from Shards of Alara is a shoe-in for this sort of deck.  Costing one 'Naya', your 2/3 Elf Shaman has the ability to dig the top five cards in your library for a fatty with power five or greater and drop that right onto the battlefield.  The cost to cheat a potentially expensive creature right into play costs just six mana (three and a  'naya').  Since we cannot realistically have an entire tall stack choked full 'o' fatties, we suggest you float them to the top to take full advantage of Mayael with the likes of Congregation at Dawn.

This deck is good, but in our opinion not great.  Both Marath and Gahiji are decent but we found ourselves simply wanting to deck them in to choose Mayael for the command zone.  If you are thinking of getting into Commander and love the Naya colours, then pick this one up but for us, we would rather scrap a good portion of the list and have a much more dedicated list to work with Mayael.
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