I made a significant investment in Ali's high performing Standard deck.

Like a lot of people - like many of you reading this, I imagine - I wasn't initially sure what to play in Standard. Foolishly, I started off apprehensive about porting my Blue-White deck to post-bans. But similarly, I was kind of wary about blowing wildcards on rares and mythic rares that were about to rotate.

Despite costing more than thirty-five wildcards, Ali's deck had excellent pedigree.

More than that, Gabriel Nassif, multiple Pro Tour Champion and one of the strongest deck-builders of all time, threw his weight after a similar deck.

Like many Pro players, Yellow Hat disliked Get Lost because of the resources it gives back to the opponent, and replaced it with Banishing Light (which, to be fair, has inherent synergy with Yuna) and Torch the Tower.

Gab's deck also played these cards for more speed...

... and more synergy and power:

So how does Naya Yuna work?

One of the reasons I was comfortable blowing dozens of wildcards making the deck is that most of the rares are obviously just good cards. In the early game it does a lot of "deck touching" with Dredger's Insight, Esper Origins, and Summon: Fenrir to get its powerhouses online.

The most important one is of course Yuna, Hope of Spira herself. If you're lucky you already put some kind of enchantments into the graveyard with Esper Origins or Dredger's Insight on the curve draw.

If you missed Summon: Fenrir (which allows a straight jump from three mana to Yuna's five), the other 3-drops actually do a great job of putting enchantments into the graveyard.

Terra and Dredger's Insight are good friends that can help keep you alive against aggressive opponents; and Terra herself is a great attacker especially against Dimir Midrange. If they have a Kaito in play, Terra can threaten him; and Dimir is one of the few matchups where her 2 toughness isn't as much of a liability. She starts out past Cut Down range, at least.

On that note, if there is one thing that Naya Yuna does in overwhelming fashion in games it wins, it's keeping its own life total high. Ali's version has Lightning Helix starting, and anybody - but ESPECIALLY Overlord of the Boilerbilges - can bury the opponent in lifelink given even one attack cycle with Yuna in play. And on that note, even though this is an article about what can go wrong with Naya Yuna, you can usually get at least one good attack in, because of Yuna's conditional Ward ability.

If there is one thing that is a little sticky about the strategy, it is that it does indeed demand a little deck touching. You want or on turn two; by turn four; and need to hard cast eights and nines. Summon: Fenrir punches above weight in many ways here, but fixing your mana and even just getting you to the point you can cast your cards is a box it really checks well.

So... What went wrong? What goes wrong?

1. Naya Yuna is Not the Biggest Bully on the Battlefield

Given what I described above, you'd kind of imagine a Menace with a capital M, am I right? Discounted Overlord of the Boilerbilges... With Lifelink? Summon: Bahamut, like ever?

In the games where you have all this online and the cards all matter, Naya Yuna is kind of by definition the biggest kid on the playground. The problem is that over and over I found myself in matchups where I simply wasn't as big as my opponent.

Black-Red Reanimator decks with Ardyn, the Usurper were the biggest offenders. They got going faster with Fear of Missing Out; and then they could set up an Ardyn + Fear of Missing Out two-man game that generated more material, faster, than Yuna could. Often a turn before Yuna was even on the battlefield!

Dinosaur Reanimator decks were almost worse. Vaultborn Tyrant is kind of too big to care about my silly Overlord. And with a Finality counter? Oh please. Or in the parlance of that deck, "RAWR."

These decks often had Atraxa, Grand Unifier or even worse Valgavoth, Terror Eater. Both of those cards are huge, have evasion, and natural Lifelink that lets them race Yuna even if all the Naya's cylinders are firing. Valgavoth is really hard to get off the battlefield; and even when you can, you might be subject to the next Valgavoth.

Finally, the fact that Naya plays a lot of powerful cards of its own - which it puts into the graveyard on purpose - makes it particularly vulnerable to bigger bullies like Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness or the aforementioned Ardyn. I like it way better when the opponent is flipping over a Temporary Lockdown that has effectively no text rather than my Summon: Knights of Round if you are picking up what I'm putting down.

2. Nor is Naya Yuna the Fastest at What It Does

Yuna is a five mana reanimator card. If you get Summon: Fenrir you can get her down on turn four; at which point she will do a reanimator thing at the end of turn (which is generally too late to exploit life Lifelink that turn).

The competing Reanimator decks sometimes have treasure-making setup cards that can help accelerate like our Summon: Fenrir; but really just benefit from the classic:

While they might have more than one way to get the job done, the fact that the central sorcery of these decks costs four instead of five is the big thing. If they can get Valgavoth down a turn before we get Yuna, it's hard for us to even set up Yuna advantage. Dredger's Insight? Those cards are just going to get stolen by Valgavoth before we can start bringing them back one-at-a-time.

Together these first two "sins" put Naya Yuna in a difficult context. When you play a deck with nine casting cost cards (or even one eight and one nine) you kind of expect to be the terminal point of the food chain. All your chips are committed to that end. But the existence of Rakdos and Dinosaur Reanimator decks relegate Naya to basically a midrange deck. Which is fine. Except combo decks go over the top of midrange decks like it's nothing; especially in Game 1.

The mere existence of these decks on Ladder and in Events was biting into my win rate in a way I couldn't easily cure.

(Ditto anything "Squirming Emergence")

3. Speaking of Midrange... Have You Read "Strategic Betrayal"?

A Diabolic Edict for the price of... Well, a Diabolic Edict.

Here's the thing: This card is totally inoffensive. For 2025 it's a little thin on rate, even. You can play Sheoldred's version and get Planeswalkers at instant speed if you want!

Only technically, on rate, Strategic Betrayal is exactly fine. In exchange for the ghetto of sorcery speed you... let's see here... Get to turn my Yuna into a 3/5 sometimes-lifelink. The Ward still matters, I guess; but we're already talking about a deck that has Edict effects, so it matters far less than Ward matters in the abstract.

Don't get me wrong: In the dark if you asked me which side I'd rather be on, the Mono-Black Midrange deck or the deck that can reliably make two Summon: Bahamuts in a game, I'm voting for Naya colors.

But the fact that the Mono-Black people also know that and started, strategically, to play Strategic Betrayal just also ate into win rate. Let's say I win a whopping seven out of ten with Naya even with Strategic Betrayal (that's probably high but we're just throwing around examples here)... Well that's a ton lower than the nine in ten I wanted against an archetype that literally can't interact with the permanent type "enchantment", isn't it?

Again, biting into win rate in a way that we really can't cure. They just started to play a card that can kill our big dumb idiots no matter how big AND cuts off our Reanimator plan at the same time.

4. On the Subject of Black Decks...

This card has been messing with powerful Magic: The Gathering decks for almost 30 years.

Which is not to say that Our Hero isn't grateful it exists, has always existed. In the late 1990s I probably never would have qualified for a Nationals, bubbled out at ninth, or stole however many PTQ wins without it.

But man in 2025 does Duress suck for Naya Yuna.

It's not that it actually does anything. Nothing permanent, at least.

Like half the time they just cast it on turn 1-2 and take your Esper Origins.

From a card advantage perspective they did kind of zero. You really want the flashback to the Esper Origins, and you're still going to get it. You mostly lost out on two life and... And...

You might have missed out on some early graveyard setup for a future Yuna. You might have needed a little deck smoothing to hit an untapped land on turn three. Just a little thing that shaves a few percentage points off of what should have been an automatic matchup. It's simply not so automatic any more.

Obviously Duress can be much worse. They can take your Dredger's Insight on the same turn, which is much more significant; especially if you were planning to combo with Terra (or you needed its dig for turn three). When you sit down with a three-color deck that has double digit lands that enter the battlefield tapped and eight and nine CMC cards there are certain concessions you have to make to the deck-building gods, and Duress can punish many or most of them.

5. The Not-Fail Fail State

Let's talk about the perfect curve for a moment.

You play turn one tapped land.

You have on turn two for Esper Origins or better yet, Dredger's Insight.

Boom! Summon: Fenrir on turn three...

Leading to an accelerated Yuna on turn FOUR!

So now what?

You have a slightly bigger Yuna. You're going to get in a Lifelink hit. But you might not even have Reanimation for turn four. Your acceleration didn't necessarily set you up because you didn't spend as much time (or any resources at all) setting up your graveyard.

This isn't the end of the world. Summon: Fenrir is going to put itself into the graveyard before your next Yuna cycle. But you basically poured your heart out onto the table; and now the opponent can take a turn. This would be a really bad turn for, say, Strategic Betrayal to be cast.

Don't get me wrong: In the abstract this is exactly the turn sequence you want. Which is why it is sometimes disappointing!

6. Believe It Or Not, You Just Deck Out

This is spectacularly exciting:

... Until your Control opponent figures out how to angle you.

To be fair, Annie Joins Up + Yuna feels pretty unbeatable sometimes. I mean those are the games where you were probably already "biggest". Because Yuna + double Overlord doesn't even beat single Valgavoth most of the time.

Anyway, decking out because I had done too much self-Mill, too much deck touching, was half the reason I was able to actually win my Qualifier Play-In last week. I realized that many opponents who were playing the hot new strategy were actually dealing a ton of "deck damage" to themselves, and I could get away with two copies of Jace, Memory Adept that played like six copies.