This is the perfect type of deck for Birthing Pod. It allows your green mana and mana ramping to power the Pod in addition to giving you a great selection of creatures from which to choose when building your deck. For the most part, I have been working on various versions of Naya Pod. White gives me the crushing power of Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite at the top end of my curve. It also gives me Restoration Angel. Restoration Angel is just a really good creature—a 3/4 flash flyer for 4 mana! Yet on top of that, it’s also great for reusing my various 187 utility creatures. Red gives me Huntmaster of the Fells and various cool sideboard cards such as Zealous Conscripts.

As I’ve been tuning and testing my toolbox version of Naya Pod, I’ve had the nagging suspicion that perhaps there is another color combination and another direction I could go with Pod that would be even more exciting. Those thoughts have finally coalesced into a deck. Something a little darker . . . 

More on that later . . . 

I finally had a good opportunity to run my latest version of Naya Toolbox at a 5K in Rhode Island. I ran four Angels to help against Delver and because they’re just awesome, as previously stated. The other reason to run four is that while I love casting them, I rarely Pod for them. I prefer to Pod for things that I use Angels to reuse. I also added Gavony Townships—in part just because they’re good and in part to give me more to do with my mana on my opponent’s turn. I also tried incorporating Magic 2013 by adding Elvish Visionary and Thragtusk:

"Naya Toolbox"

• Creatures (28)
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Avacyn's Pilgrim
• 1 Blade Splicer
• 1 Elvish Visionary
• 1 Huntmaster of the Fells
• 1 Primeval Titan
• 1 Thragtusk
• 1 Wolfir Silverheart
• 3 Borderland Ranger
• 3 Llanowar Elves
• 4 Birds of Paradise
• 4 Restoration Angel
• 4 Strangleroot Geist
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite

• Spells (8)
• 4 Green Sun's Zenith
• 4 Birthing Pod

• Lands (24)
• 1 Mountain
• 2 Plains
• 8 Forest
• 1 Kessig Wolf Run
• 1 Rootbound Crag
• 1 Sunpetal Grove
• 2 Gavony Township
• 4 Copperline Gorge
• 4 Razorverge Thicket

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Stonehorn Dignitary
• 1 Fiend Hunter
• 1 Stingerfling Spider
• 2 Zealous Conscripts
• 1 Inferno Titan
• 1 Thrun, the Last Troll
• 2 Thragtusk
• 2 Daybreak Ranger
• 1 Huntmaster of the Fells
• 1 Viridian Corrupter
• 1 Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1 Champion of Lambholt

Buy This Deck

I started by playing it in a Standard Friday Night Magic the night before the 5K to get some cards I needed and to give the deck a test run and myself some more experience with it. That part went great. I played against W/U control, White Kastle (W/B tokens) and Red Kastle (red deck wins). I defeated all three pretty easily and then went home to rest up for the next day. I was a little bummed I didn’t get to face either of my two previous nemesis’—Delver or Zombies—but I still felt good about getting some experience and some wins with the deck. The 5K didn’t go quite as well.

The Good News

I won four out of five Game 1s I played. In one of my losses, it looked to me as though I was going to win Game 2 as well . . . before something awful happened and I ended up losing a tight three-game match. The one draw I had looked pretty favorable in Game 3 before we ran out of time and turns.

The Bad News

Based on the 5Ks in Providence and Buffalo, Naya Pod probably wasn’t the most successful Pod deck of the weekend—Bant Pod was. According to Cedric Phillips, who won a Pro Tour Qualifier with it, Bant Pod is the most powerful deck he’s ever played. While I may yet give Bant Pod a try, I was reminded of the value of rogue decks this weekend, so I want to try something a little different. The beauty of most base-green Pod decks is that they are able to find powerful answers to the questions being asked by other decks. Given how wide open the format seems to be now, I thought perhaps a Pod engine could be used more for asking tough questions rather than trying to have an answer for every possible deck in the metagame. So, I decided to explore the possibilities of Jund Pod.

"Dark Pod"

• Creatures (32)
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Bloodthrone Vampire
• 1 Disciple of Bolas
• 1 Entomber Exarch
• 1 Phyrexian Rager
• 1 Rage Thrower
• 1 Thragtusk
• 1 Thundermaw Hellkite
• 2 Falkenrath Aristocrat
• 2 Huntmaster of the Fells
• 2 Zealous Conscripts
• 3 Borderland Ranger
• 3 Strangleroot Geist
• 4 Birds of Paradise
• 4 Blood Artist
• 4 Llanowar Elves

• Spells (4)
• 4 Birthing Pod

• Lands (24)
• 1 Mountain
• 11 Forest
• 3 Swamp
• 1 Kessig Wolf Run
• 4 Copperline Gorge
• 4 Woodland Cemetery

Buy This Deck

With two main-decked Conscripts, I’m often happy to see my opponent drop nasty creatures . . . because I’ll take them. Thanks to my many sacrifice outlets, I probably won’t give them back either. Rage Thrower, Conscripts, and Hellkite all represent powerful and sudden game-enders. Having eight creatures with haste also means that I can recover quickly from mass removal and that the deck is great at keeping pressure on and increasing the pressure. Like most decks of three or more colors, the mana won’t always be completely smooth, but having four Birds of Paradise and three Borderland Rangers should definitely help. It should also help that you don’t need any red mana in the early game. The main reason I’m not using any B/R dual lands is that I want to keep those sources separate for Falkenrath Aristocrat.

The current Standard environment is pretty wide open and full of rogue decks. What I’m looking for is a powerful, unforgiving deck that doesn’t really care what my opponent is trying to do. With the massive quantities of life-gain and card advantage combined with intense aggression and brutal direct damage, I hope to have a decent matchup no matter what I run into with Dark Pod. Perhaps you too should join the Dark Side . . .