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From the moment Nissa, Voice of Zendikar was spoiled I have been adamant about the fact that it's probably one of the best, if not the best card in the set. Unsurprisingly, with the full spoiler up this still appears to be true. Nissa plays entirely too well with the best card from Battle for Zendikar.
There are a lot of interesting tools to flesh out a deck with these two powerful planeswalkers, and I imagine it will take some time to polish the best list. My gut tells me that I want to curd Dragon Fodder into Nissa into Gideon to maximize the potential power of these anthem effects. In another unsurprising turn of events, I'm quite confident that Oath of both Nissa and Gideon will fit well into this deck.
Making sure that we're able to block for Gideon and Nissa seems very important, and I like borrowing Elvish Visionary and Hangarback Walker from Sam Black's token deck. Wingmate Roc will help us glean more value from all of our little creatures, and I'm curious to try the new Chandra to get a feel for it.
This is the initial list that I would start testing:
Naya Tokens
Virulent Plague poses some serious problems for this deck. In the maindeck you have the ability to inevitably get enough Gideon emblems to get around it, but there should probably something in the sideboard that deals with Plague a bit more efficiently. Outside of that weakness, this deck seems quite robust and powerful, and I imagine something similar will shortly become a pillar of Standard, though it's unclear exactly what will be presented to supplement Gideon, Nissa and their Oaths.
Interesting. Do you think this deck needs Nissa, Vastwood Seer though?
It’s certainly replaceable, though it’s very good. Den Protector is the only better “three drop” that I can think of, though this isn’t a great shell for Den Protector given the general lack of instants and sorceries. What’s your objection to her?
This deck looks very cool but if you could find a spot for Needle Spires that would be really great! The card seems pretty poor to first sight but with Gideon emblems and Nissa pumps the four mana might start looking like a pretty sweet deal.
Cutting a Painland or two would be pretty easy. I wanted to maximize coming into play untapped for the manabase, but if a lot of games go long/ are otherwise close Spires sounds great.
Since I saw Nissa I’ve been thinking the same brew, but with a different angle, more focused in cards that can regenerate your deck from nowhere. To me it was obvious that the deck needs Secure the wastes and 2x retreat to emeria.
We all expect -2/-2 effects (or 2 dmg with kozilek’s return). But the deck is so resilient with this cards that you can play around them. Once you manage to play Gideon glorious anthem effect, you are only 1 pump spell away to save your creatures from this effects (Nissa, another Gideon, or cracking a fetch to trigger retreat of emeria landfall). Also we all know eot secure the wastes followed by a gideon was a great play and it will still be. Now we have Nissa to do exactly the same thing.
A pity we do not have the GW manland to recreate the days where treetop and Elspeth knight errant made a great GW tokens T2 deck.
How can I even spend the time writing anything if I read the decklist and I do not see the secure the wastes on it. Just ignore me…
Creatures:
2x Monastery Mentor
3X Hangarback Walker
3x Thopter Engineer
2x Pia and Kiran Nalaar
1x Wingmate Roc
Planerswalkers:
3x Nissa, Voice of Zendikar
3x Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
1x Chandra, Flamercaller
Enchantments:
3x Oath of Nissa
2x Oath of Gideon
Spells:
4x Atarka’s Command
2x Dromokas Command
4x Secure the Wastes
2x Fiery Impulse
1x Roast