Pioneer and Explorer have been at the forefront of many players mind’s in the last few weeks. With Pioneer being the new Pro Tour format, and Explorer releasing on Magic Arena last week, the formats have had a lot more eyes on them. With Explorer, Streets of New Capenna also released to Arena and paper and a card from the set is revamping the top deck in both formats, Naya Winota.
Spin the Wheel
The deck in question here is Naya Winota. Winota, Joiner of Forces has proven itself to be an incredibly powerful card in many a format. It’s the top deck in the Pioneer format, and it’s proving itself in Explorer too. Let’s look at a deck list for each of the formats.
Here’s our Pioneer list. It’s goal is to put out a few cheap non-human creatures that have some ramp potential to help stick a Winota on turn 3 or 4 to end the game in 1 attack. The first Explorer lists are near carbon copies of this list.
We obviously don’t have some of the same cards in Explorer lie Elvish Mystic and Voice of Resurgence, but we have solid replacements for those cards. But there’s a new card in New Capenna that actually fits quite well in this deck and there’s a few version of this deck with that card included.
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The Attendant
The card we’re looking at is Mage’s Attendant. It’s a 3 mana 3/2 Cat Rogue and it creates a 1/1 blue Wizard creature token that we can pay 1, sacrifice it, and Force Spike an opponent’s non-creature spell. This gives us 2 easy non-human creatures to trigger Wintoa, and a little protection against pesky removal spells.
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Reinventing the Wheel
With this in creature in mind, we can take a couple different approaches to building Naya Winota with it. The first is a more direct translation of the above decks, with this added in.
Here, we dropped a Blade Historian, Kenrith, the Returned King and Avabruck Caretaker for 3 Mage’s Attendants, giving us more reliable ways to trigger Wintoa at the expense of diversity of humans we can hit.
The other version that we have is a bit of spicier version, being a 4 color version. It trades out the beefy top end for some incredibly powerful effects. We also get a nice way to cheat Winota into play. This deck comes to us from Nick Peternell and Fireshoes.
This version is a Neoform style deck.
We have a few 3 drops in our deck that create tokens. Obviously Mage’s Attendant, but we also have Hanged Executioner. These 2 creatures are our primary sacrifices for Neoform to get out Winota from our library. We can execute this plan as early as turn 3. Then as for our Human hits, we have Tovolar’s Huntmaster, but also an old favorite, Agent of Treachery.
Agent of Treachery was a menace in Standard and Historic Wintoa decks, such that it had to be banned! But it’s fair game in Pioneer and Explorer, and it shows. Being able to steal an opponent’s blockers or better yet, their lands, really set us up in a power position. Often times, your opponents will concede at the sight of this card.
Mage’s Attendant is critical for this strategy as we can stop counter magic for our Neoform. It also allows us to stop a forced sweeper, since we apply so much pressure to our opponent.
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If you want to win quick and win big, then Winota is definitely the way to go, and Mage’s Attendant is a very nice addition to the deck.
