Table of Contents
Naya is a very popular color combination. It is the color combination of some of the most played creature types for Tribal decks, including Dinosaurs, Dogs, and Cats. It can do other things too, but it shines most in decks built around a specific kind of deck, be it a creature type or archetype. Budget Naya decks are also common. With how popular a color combination it is, there are plenty of great options for Naya that don’t require you to have deep pockets. As with all budget decks, budget Naya is always going to be weaker than its unrestricted counterpart. You aren’t going to be winning bracket 4 and up games, but you can do perfectly fine in the lower brackets.
Budget Naya Staples
Naya decks have a lot going for them. While they shine in creature-heavy decks, they aren’t exclusively creature decks. Many budget Naya decks include Tribal, Auras, and Modified creatures, to name a few.
Creature Support
In Naya decks, creatures are usually going to be your most played card type. Tribal decks are popular in Naya, but budget Naya decks aren’t going to play Roaming Throne or The Great Henge. These cards are great creature support cards, but way too expensive for a budget deck.
While you can’t play expensive staples, there are still plenty of solid budget Naya creature support cards. Garruk's Uprising is a classic for creatures with higher power. It provides constant card draw as well as trample for all of your creatures. Beastmaster Ascension can provide a ton of value for attacking, eventually giving a giant stat boost. Rhythm of the Wild helps to fend off against counterspells primarily. You also gain riot for your creatures, which is just a nice added bonus to improve their stats.
Token Support
One of Naya’s biggest archetypes is Token decks. Budget Naya is no exception to this rule. However, some token support is very expensive. Cards like Anointed Procession, Parallel Lives, and Doubling Season are all fantastic cards, but require a lot of money to actually get them for your decks.
Second Harvest is a staple of budget Naya token decks. It essentially doubles up on all tokens you control to flood the battlefield with a ton of extras. If you’re playing a Token swarm deck, Impact Tremors can deal a ton of burn damage over time. Intangible Virtue is a basic card, but one many Naya token lists run for the boost of stats and beneficial keyword addition.
Tutor Staples
Tutors are among the best cards in Commander. With 99 card decks, Tutors add a layer of consistency so you don’t have to draw your best card. Instead, you simply search it out and put it directly into your hand (or on top of your library). Some popular examples include Sylvan Tutor, Worldly Tutor, and Enlightened Tutor. However, all of these cards aren’t cheap and are much too expensive for a budget deck.
You have a variety of budget tutor options. Time of Need and Search for Glory both tutor for legendary creatures, with the latter providing more options. A few more generic creature-based options include Signal the Clans and Congregation at Dawn. These aren’t amazing tutors, but for budget Naya options, you are fairly limited.
Budget Naya Commanders
There aren’t too many budget staples in Naya decks. Budget Naya is more about the decks themselves, as opposed to the cards inside of them. Unless the commander itself is expensive, you can build just about every Naya commander as a budget option. Sometimes, it’s because it’s a part of a precon; other times, it’s because the contents of the deck are simply cheap. Regardless of why, you have a ton of options for Budget Naya commanders. The rest of this article will look at some budget examples and make for a great base for a Naya deck you can upgrade later. Or, you can keep it budget to save money for other decks.
Duskana, the Rage Mother
Duskana, the Rage Mother is the easiest budget Naya deck to build. All you really need are creatures with a 2/2 base statline. Notably, it only cares about base power and toughness. So, if they have counters or are getting stat boosts, it doesn’t matter. A “Bear” in Magic refers to a creature with a 2/2 statline, named after Forest Bear. It’s become a staple of the Bear creature type, and this deck is partially a Bear Tribal deck, using cards like Wilson, Refined Grizzly along with a large suite of Bears.
The deck isn’t just playing Bears. It is also play ways to consistently put 2/2 creatures onto the battlefield. Zendikar's Roil and Felidar Retreat both turn lands entering into 2/2 creatures (or, in the latter’s case, can spread +1/+1 counters). Kudo, King Among Bears can turn all creatures into 2/2 Bears, not just your own. They keep abilities, but can severely limit the power of your opponents’ creatures while you get the stat boost from your commander on attacks. Wild Pair creates a 2 for 1 trade, letting you bring out another creature with the same statline when creatures enter from your hand.
Your creatures will generally have power different from their printed power. This makes Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar and Sovereign Okinec Ahau very strong. They provide card draw, as well as the ability to get a ton of extra counters onto your creatures to make them bigger threats in the later stages of the game.
A sample decklist can be viewed below. You can keep the budget even lower if you fully lean into only playing Bears. However, this list focuses on both Bears and stat-boosting cards for maximum value without needing to spend too much money on the cards.
Commander
Planeswalkers (1)
Creatures (36)
Instants (6)
Sorceries (10)
Artifacts (5)
Enchantments (8)
Lands (34)
100 Cards
$169.88
Baylen, the Haymaker
This is a budget Token deck, with Baylen, the Haymaker at the helm. The deck is built around a variety of tokens, both creature and nontoken to ensure you always have ammo to trigger your commander. This isn’t a list that uses it, but Baylen is a very popular commander for Hare Apparent decks. Since you need multiple copies, this can run up the price tag for the deck. Instead, this build will look at a broader Token theme.
Cards that can create an extra token when a token enters are the best for the deck. Peregrin Took provides an extra Food token, and Quina, Qu Gourmet brings in a 1/1 Frog when a token enters. The best of this archetype of card is Academy Manufactor, as it turns one token creation into three.
There are a lot of ways to make multiple tokens each turn. Rabble Rousing turns all your attacking creatures into that many extra 1/1 tokens. You rapidly gain more 1/1 tokens every turn with Assemble the Legion as it gets more counters. Once you have six lands, Scute Swarm gets progressively more out of hand as you create more copies of it every time landfall triggers.
A sample decklist can be viewed below.
Commander
Creatures (30)
Instants (16)
Sorceries (9)
Artifacts (6)
Enchantments (5)
Lands (34)
100 Cards
$167.14
Pantlaza, Sun-Favored
Pantlaza, Sun-Favored is the face commander for the Veloci-Ramp-Tor precon, making for an easily accessible commander. Although the precon itself has driven up in price, the commander itself is quite cheap. There is a large amount of cheap Dinosaurs you can play, making for an easy budget Naya deck to build. Dinosaurs even have their own unique mana dorks like Drover of the Mighty and Ixalli's Lorekeeper.
Dinosaurs cost a lot of mana, but luckily, there are multiple ways to get around their casting costs. Cryptic Gateway lets you tap two Dinosaurs to put one onto the battlefield. This can be done at instant speed, so you can use these Dinosaurs as blockers before tapping them to cheat a Dinosaur in. Monster Manual can put any creature onto the battlefield for just two mana once it’s on the battlefield. If the top card of your library is a Dinosaur, Descendants' Path can cheat it onto the battlefield, and can even put dead draws onto the bottom of your deck.
Of course, the main attraction is the Dinosaurs. Gishath, Sun's Avatar can put a ton of Dinosaurs onto the battlefield whenever it manages to connect for damage. You can make a one-sided board wipe with Wakening Sun's Avatar (unless you happen to be in a pod with another Dinosaur player). Apex Altisaur wants to fight a ton of other creatures, and with a 10/10 statline, it’s generally always going to win.
A sample decklist can be viewed below. This deck only cares about Dinosaurs, so Dinosaur creatures make up the majority of the deck along with ramp spells.
Commander
Creatures (44)
Instants (5)
Sorceries (6)
Artifacts (9)
Lands (33)
100 Cards
$152.42
Shalai and Hallar
Another very popular theme for Naya decks is +1/+1 Counters. For a budget option, Shalai and Hallar is your best choice. It turns all your counters into burn damage, making cards like Rhythm of the Wild and Good-Fortune Unicorn much more impactful to constantly trigger your commander just by playing creatures.
The more +1/+1 counters going onto your creatures, the better. This constantly triggers your commander, letting you burn out life totals without ever having to engage in actual combat. Branching Evolution and Loading Zone both double the number of counters going on creatures. They only add one extra counter, but Hardened Scales and High Score are useful cards to include too.
There are a handful of creatures that give abilities to creatures with counters on them. Both Abzan Battle Priest and Envoy of the Ancestors provide lifelink, Meanwhile, Abzan Falconer gives them flying. If Champion of Lambholt has counters on it, if it has high power, it can prevent your opponents from being able to block your creatures at all.
A sample decklist can be viewed below. The deck can run away with the game with counters, all without needing to break the bank. If you invest more expensive cards into it in the future, you can make a very strong Counter Burn deck.
Commander
Creatures (31)
Instants (11)
Sorceries (9)
Artifacts (7)
Enchantments (8)
Lands (34)
100 Cards
$169.1
Sigurd, Jarl of Ravensthorpe
Sagas are a rather unique deck, and for budget options, Sigurd, Jarl of Ravensthorpe is a great choice. By keeping to three colors, it helps to cut out some of the more expensive Sagas, but still runs plenty of great ones like Showdown of the Skalds and Oath of Eorl. Green and White are the most import colors for Sagas, so the deck doesn’t lose out on any of its best support cards.
Cards that can get counters out of Sagas are great, as it lets you re-trigger the best chapters on them. Garnet, Princess of Alexandria can remove a lore counter from all of your Sagas, all while massively growing its stats for doing so. You can remove one counter at a time with both Power Conduit and Nesting Grounds. These aren’t as good as the mass removal Garnet has, but still perfect servicable.
A natural downside of Sagas is that once the last chapter resolves, it goes to the graveyard. Luckily, there are multiple ways to recur it. One of the easiest ways is with The Aesir Escape Valhalla. You actively want to give it extra counters to return your permanents back to your hand quicker. Since your commander puts +1/+1 counters on creatures as they get lore counters, the best choice if you need to recur a card is Evolution Witness. They’re a little worse since it makes them enter with a finality counter, but Yuna, Hope of Spira and Rydia, Summoner of Mist can bring Sagas directly back from the graveyard. However, you can use other cards to get these finality counters off them and onto cards you don’t care if they have them.
A sample decklist can be viewed below. The deck is a mixture of traditional Sagas and Saga creatures, along with generic enchantment support cards.
Commander
Creatures (32)
Instants (5)
Sorceries (7)
Artifacts (7)
Enchantments (15)
Lands (34)
100 Cards
$155.19
In Conclusion
Budget Naya decks can do a whole lot. The Naya color combination covers a wide range of archetypes, from Tribal to Counters to Tokens. All of them are great, budget or not. Naya decks benefit from having the colors that are among the most popular, so there are a lot of budget options for the most expensive staples.
In Naya’s case, you don’t need staples in your decks. They are much more focused on their commander, generally. As such, you can easily build around a commander instead of needing to make sure you have certain kinds of staples in your decks.
