I’m a fan of cats, so when I saw an interesting synergy between Magic: The Gathering Commander (2014 Edition)’s Jazal Goldmane and an older Cat card, I just had to pounce on it.

Clearly, Jazal rewards us for having a lot of attacking creatures. That means he plays nicely with cards like Storm Herd, Nomads' Assembly, and Increasing Devotion. He’d be quite strong in a tokens-themed Commander decks with those cards, perhaps with Rhys the Redeemed commanding the way.

However, the card that jumped out at me was Nacatl War-Pride. The War-Pride has been attacking with armies of its own creation since Future Sight, and with Jazal, they become that much more lethal.

But there are a few pieces of the lethal-damage puzzle missing between these two.

What’s the Glaring Weakness?

Fortunately, there are ways to make that happen. Hunted Troll, for example, could help do the job. My only reservation here was that my 4-drop slot was a bit crowded—oh, and I ended up running zero non-God, non-Cat creatures, so the Troll would break that soft guideline as well.

Forbidden Orchard is the go-to choice for such a situation, as it can solve our problem while simultaneously fixing our mana. We give our opponent the most innocuous of creatures while setting up a great attack with a Jazal War-Pride.

Sylvan Offering walks the edge of our Cat boundary here, as it creates Elf and Treefolk tokens, but it scales exactly with the amount of mana we have available, and it also give our opponent a bunch of 1/1s. The Treefolk could be an issue, but we should have enough Cats to sneak around.

The Stampede

Well, fortunately for us, Nacatl War-Pride doesn’t care whether the defending player’s creatures are tapped. This seems obvious as we read the card and consider what it does, but when it plays out in game, it can come as a surprise. If our opponent attacked with two creatures and left two back, when our War-Pride attacks, it’ll make four tokens even though our opponent only left up two blockers.

Nonetheless, we should still have a contingency plan for when there are sufficient blockers on the other side of the table. Sure, with Jazal, those creatures are all probably dying anyway, and we can resume attacking next turn—albeit with fewer tokens—but it’s more interesting if we just end the game in one massive, final turn.

Thus, we need trample. Nylea, God of the Hunt isn’t a Cat, but Nylea's Emissary is, and while we’re not running that card, cats like hunting, so I think Nylea counts. Nylea’s trample boon will be greatly appreciated, and in return, Nacatl War-Pride offers three green mana symbols in devotion. If we don’t have Jazal to spend on, Nylea does plenty of good work with .

Finally, the last option in solving this problem has nothing to do with trample. Since the creatures we’re giving to our opponent are primarily 1/1s (darn you, offered Treefolk), any spell that hits all creatures for 1 should do the trick of removing them. That said, we don’t want to kill our own Elves—we’d like to have pumped them with Jazal first, and since he can only pump while we’re attacking, we need an instant.

So the plan is to attack, gain Nacatl War-Pride tokens, pump with Jazal Goldmane, cast our 1-damage-dealing instant, and then move on to blocker declarations, at which point our opponent should have far fewer creatures than we do and subsequently die. So what is the best option for a 1-damage-dealing instant?

I propose Electrickery. It’s versatile early, and we can use it to kill off an early opposing Llanowar Elves or the like. We can even just kill off a Spirit token we gave away with Forbidden Orchard if we need to break through with a Cat or two. Also, this particular card won’t even hit our own Sylvan Offering Elves, as it only hits creatures we don’t control, so we don’t even necessarily need Jazal for the synergy—Nacatl War-Pride, Sylvan Offering, and Electrickery could very well do the job.

Catsistency

Mirri, Cat Warrior and Brimaz, King of Oreskos are a couple important cat figureheads as friends of the famous Gerrard Capashen and Ajani Goldmane, respectively.

Finally, perhaps Healer of the Pride will give us a bunch of life with all these tokens we’re creating. A 4-drop that gains us life in an aggressive deck with a combo finish may not be exactly where we want to be, but at least she’s a Cat. If you wanted change your spots for Hunted Trolls, here you go.

Speaking of finding room for things, you might want to give Hunting Cheetah a try. As a Portal Three Kingdoms card, copies of this one are pretty pricey, but when they connect, they can fetch shock lands to help out Wild Nacatl and to help us consistently reach the we need to actually cast Nacatl War-Pride. And if you try this list out on Magic Online, the Masters Edition 3 Hunting Cheetahs should be quite a bit more affordable.

Jazal?s Cat Stampede ? Cat Casual | Andrew Wilson

• Creatures (29)
• 2 Healer of the Pride
• 4 Fleecemane Lion
• 4 Loam Lion
• 4 Nacatl War-Pride
• 4 Qasali Pridemage
• 4 Wild Nacatl
• 1 Brimaz, King of Oreskos
• 1 Mirri, Cat Warrior
• 2 Nylea, God of the Hunt
• 3 Jazal Goldmane

• Spells (7)
• 1 Stampede
• 4 Electrickery
• 2 Sylvan Offering

• Lands (24)
• 3 Plains
• 4 Forest
• 1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
• 1 Temple Garden
• 4 Forbidden Orchard
• 4 Sacred Foundry
• 4 Stomping Ground
• 1 Eiganjo Castle
• 1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers

Buy This Deck

If you love cats, if you bought three copies of the white Commander (2014 deck), if you have stacks and stacks of green Future Sight uncommons, or if you just want to see what Ajani’s home was like on Naya, give this deck a try.

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com