I’m finally branching into other colors for this series, and I’m even doing a card from Future Sight: Nacatl War-Pride!

Given how new this card is, the selection of decks online isn’t plentiful, but I still plan to show you a few decks from the net as examples. I’ll then follow that up with my own deck. But given the number of directions I could take this card, which one will I focus on in the end? Keep reading to find out!

Nacatl War-Pride is a combo player’s dream card. There are so many possibilities. Give all of your Cats haste and then combine with Aggravated Assault to do some terribly delicious beatdown. Or, combine with cards that give power/toughness boosts when a creature comes into play and then sacrifice them all to Altar of Dementia for a mill-tastic finish. You could even just combine it with Pandemonium and deal lots of damage to an opponent in one turn. Wait, why not try Doubling Season while you’re at it?

Of course, a lot of the above combos are reliant on your opponent having creatures. Lots of them. But that’s all good for a combo player as if you one of them, you’ll already have a few in mind.

If you don’t, here are a few ideas: Hunted creatures work to give your opponent’s creatures with Hunted Phantasm being the best, as it will put five creatures on an opponent’s side of the table. Forbidden Orchard can do it once a turn (without any untapping effects) and then there’s Varchild's War-Riders. The War-Riders give survivor creature tokens to an opponent on an incremental basis every turn thanks to cumulative upkeep.

But while Nacatl is a combo player’s dream card, it is any average player’s rules nightmare. If you think Lure is going to work with the Pride, you are wrong. Why don’t we take a look at some of the “Official Ruling” entries for this card:

• 5/1/2007 If it's impossible for Nacatl War-Pride to be blocked by exactly one creature, then the defending player may block it with multiple creatures or may leave it unblocked.
• 5/1/2007 If Nacatl War-Pride has left play by the time the triggered ability resolves, the tokens will still come into play as copies of Nacatl War-Pride.
• 5/1/2007 If Nacatl War-Pride becomes a copy of something else after the ability triggers but before it resolves, the tokens will come into play as copies of whatever the ex-Nacatl War-Pride is now. If Nacatl War-Pride became a copy of something else and then left play, the tokens will come into play as copies of whatever it was copying when it last existed in play.
• 5/1/2007 The tokens come into play attacking, even if the attack couldn't legally be declared.
• 5/1/2007 Putting an attacking creature into play doesn't trigger "When this creature attacks" abilities. It also won't check attacking restrictions, costs, or requirements.
• 5/1/2007 In a multiplayer game in which you're allowed to attack only one player each combat, the new creatures will be attacking the same player as Nacatl War-Pride. In a multiplayer game in which you may attack multiple players, you choose the player each new creature is attacking. It must be a player you're allowed to attack.

Some interesting stuff can come out of all of that. For one, you can Cytoshape your Nacatl War-Pride while the "copy-me" triggered ability is on the stack, and turn the Cat into another creature, say a Krosan Cloudscraper. Doing this will make all of the creature tokens Cloudscrapers! However, turning the original Nacatl into another creature before or after the ability triggers will not have the same effect. Likewise, effects applied to the original Nacatl like Auras and +1/+1 counters will not transfer onto copies.

Also, as mentioned earlier, Lure will not work as you think on a Nacatl. When blocking, you must satisfy as many blocking requirements as possible. Blocking the Lure-Nacatl with only one creature and having your other creatures block the other Nacatls will always fulfill more requirements than blocking it with multiple creatures would. 

Even I was confused with how the above paragraph works, but let's move on.  With all of that fun reading out of the way, let’s get to some decks!

Pande-Pride

I had mentioned earlier that Pandemonium was a great combo with the Nacatl. It basically equates into X*3 damage to an opponent where X is the number of creatures your opponent controls.

This deck uses Doubling Season to double the tokens the Nacatl makes, Privileged Position to protect the original Nacatl and Pandemonium to deal lots of damage. The card used to make sure your opponent has some creatures is Hunted Troll. There is also a couple of Gruul War Plows to ensure your tokens have trample.

Overall, this deck is well built with Summoner’s Pact for some creature searching, Gruul Signet and Llanowar Mentor for mana acceleration and Terramorphic Expanse to even out your mana base. It looks like a solid deck.

However, I will be honest in saying this is a typical strategy for Nacatl. Of all of the seven or eight decks I found online, the most used card in conjunction with Nacatl was Pandemonium – so this deck is nothing overly ingenious. I’m not saying it’s unoriginal – just that it’s too common.  If today's card is going to rule them all, we need to find some Nacatl Tech.

Finding Nacatl Tech!

I can in no way, shape or form say the following tech is my own creation. Instead it goes to DestroX from the Wizards.com forums – at least his post was the first I saw with the card combination of Scryb Ranger + Timbermare + Nacatl War-Pride.

Here’s how it works. With the Ranger and Nacatl in play, play Timbermare in your first main phase. He will tap all other creatures. Normally, you would just attack with the Timbermare, but not in this instance. Use the Ranger’s ability to return a Forest to your hand and untap the Nacatl. Now you can attack with your Nacatl and the Timbermare. Nacatl will generate a 3/3 token for each (tapped) creature your opponent controls and you’ll get through with a lot of damage!

Here’s a rough decklist found in the wizards.com forum by MonoPyro:

What I like about this deck is that it is red free. More plainly, it’s Pandemonium free.

Trickbind is an interesting inclusion in this deck as you can counter the “sacrifice all tokens” ability at the end of the turn so you get to keep all of your tokens for next turn. Or you could Trickbind either Pact’s next upkeep cost. If you needed to, you could even Trickbind Timbermare’s “tap everything” comes into play ability.

Another great inclusion in this deck is Primal Forcemage. When your tokens come into play, they will each get +3/+3 until end of turn. Combined with a little trample, which this deck doesn’t have, can be lethal. Of course, who needs trample when you can set things up with the earlier combo to attack without resistance?

Of course, there's other tech I should to enlighten you with. Who needs Hunted creatures or silly Varchild’s War Riders when you can give your opponent lots of creatures with one spell for just a turn. I’m talking about land animators. Even if your opponent isn’t playing creatures, they are definitely playing lands, right? Well, use good ‘ol Jolrael, green Kamahl or even Natural Affinity to turn all of your opponent’s lands in to creatures. Then attack!

The following deck uses this strategy:

The above deck uses both Jolrael and Natural Affinity to animate the opponent’s lands. Followed up with a Nacatl War-Band attack, your opponent will lose all of their lands. That’s assuming they don’t have a Darksteel Garrison or Earth Surge out…

“War” Cards Think Alike.

There were a few decks I couldn’t find online including MILL decks using the Altar of Demetia I mentioned earlier. I couldn’t find any decks using Cytoshape either.

Nor could I find any decks already made using Grave Pact. While Grave Pact really defeats the purpose of Nacatl’s ability, it sure is a nasty combo. You see, the Nacatl War-Band puts a token into play for each creature your opponent controls. At end of turn, all of these tokens will be removed from the game. However, if you use a sacrifice outlet to sacrifice the tokens before the end of the turn, they will each hit the graveyard.  Grave Pact will trigger and make your opponent sacrifice all of their creatures. In the end, this doesn’t help you make more tokens the following turn but it does pave the way to victory.

In fact, this is the direction I am taking my deck into. However, I couldn’t just go into one direction. I had to throw in a little burn in the form of Goblin Bombardment (a nifty way to make use of those tokens before they go to the graveyard). I also had to throw in a little Mill-action in the form of Altar of Dememtia.   Both of these cards are effective ways to both win and to set up a Grave Pact - token combo as mentioned earlier.

Instead of using Hunted creatures to ensure my opponent has creatures to help Nacatl copy itself, I’m using Varchild’s War-Riders. What’s nice is that even though the Grave Pact will eliminate your opponent’s army every turn, each turn you will get another token to add to their temporary army thanks to the War-Rider’s cumulative upkeep.

And to top it off with some craziness, I’ve included Essence Warden in all her green Timeshifted beauty, to gain me LOTS of life with all of the creatures coming in and out of play each turn. The final decks looks like this:

The rest of the deck is mana acceleration and card advantage. While I was hoping to use Harmonize to draw into some of my key cards, you could easily replace them with Diabolic Tutors or any other tutor for that matter. Likewise, you can switch out Elves of Deep Shadow with Birds of Paradise if you have them – this move will smooth out the mana base in your deck even more so than I’ve tried in the above build.

There’s one copy of Natural Affinity for fun and a pair of Caltrops to keep those little Survivor tokens at bay.

Well, that’s all I have for you today. I’m sure there are even more directions I could have taken with the Nacatl War-Pride, but I don’t want to turn this ‘supposed-to-be-fun’ article into an essay.

I hope you enjoyed the read and some of the decks and even some of the ideas I’ve presented with the Nacatl. Now, go take your Johnny sense into a deckbuilding mode and build something for your self using the Nacatl. Test it out, own it and then have some fun Ruling the World with it.

Join me next time when I just may pick up a card from Urza’s Block.

Streetz

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Articles Spotlights from 2007:
Lorwyn Theme Week Intro & Schedule of Events
Blink And Bounce: Timing is Key
Going Blind: XCB Metagaming - A Prolonged Conclusion.
The Science of Magic: Genetic Engineering, Part Two.
Shifting Lineaments: Casual Metagaming (Pt. 2).
The Dungeon Of Malefict: Pure Evil!
Land Week Introduction & Schedule.
Combofusion: Legends Timeshifted.
One Card to Rule Them All: Coastal Piracy
Irrational Love: Chimeras. The Lego's of Magic.