Xira Arien and what to do with her

[Aetherium Slinky]

When Tiny Leaders was a big thing I wanted to play Xira Arien. However, for one reason or another I never built a deck around her. I've recently been wondering what kind of themes I could put together for her. I'm now asking you for ideas; here are some that I thought of:

• Untap Tribal. I'm a fan of these and I think there's enough support for this. Tutoring will be tough due to lack of good tutors for artifacts (Illusionist's Bracers) and lack of targets for green tutors (all really good untappers are blue).
• Mass Land Destruction. This is something I toyed around with earlier. I don't know how I would go about it, though. Would I use Xira Arien to fuel my hand with extra lands? Then again she's so expensive to use that I'm not sure I have enough mana for that after blowing up all lands.
• Artistocrats could be interesting, too, considering red has access to Impact Tremors et al., green has access to token generation and black has sack outlets. Why would I play Xira Arien in this deck over something else that I don't know.
• Stax. I've heard of monored stax so tricolour stax should be easily doable. Xira Arien would obviously fuel my hand with more stax pieces.
• Group Discard. Well... I draw cards and others discard them. Neat, huh?

I really, really like the effect because it's pretty unique in those colours so I'm very excited to build something with her; I just can't think of / choose what to do. Any cool ideas?

[ApothecaryGeist]

You could go wide with Insect Tribal - with things like Ant Queen, Hornet Queen, Dragonlair Spider.  And then pump your bugs with Coat of Arms, Eldrazi Monument, and/or Akroma's Memorial.


bonus - Army Ants - all your lands are Strip Mine.

[robort]

How about since it says target player draws, try the go ahead you can draw but you also have to discard and take damage effects? or vice versa you take damage for the amount of cards you have

[Aetherium Slinky]

How about since it says target player draws, try the go ahead you can draw but you also have to discard and take damage effects? or vice versa you take damage for the amount of cards you have

This would be a very, very unorthodox approach. A sort of reverse group hug. Like Nekusar but in Jund.

[robort]

How about since it says target player draws, try the go ahead you can draw but you also have to discard and take damage effects? or vice versa you take damage for the amount of cards you have

This would be a very, very unorthodox approach. A sort of reverse group hug. Like Nekusar but in Jund.

LOL welcome to my playstyle. I don't do normal or this is what you are supposed to do. I play the way I want which is usually unorthodox hence why my playgroups know not to do politics with me because I do things just out of the ordinary just because I can

[G. Moto]

I agree with that notion. I think with Xira Arien going insect tribal with cards such as Izoni thousand-eyed, crawling sensation, dragonlair spider, nest of scarabs, and literally make a swarm at your disposal. Give them all deathtouch (such as with archetype of finality) and then run Thantis the warweaver to force your opponents to run their troops into an army of deadly creepy crawlers.
      Also one thing you could try is doing a big mana deck using her activated ability to your advantage on other people's turns. Run her with a seedborn muse and your drawing cards on everyone's turns (especially with a cryptolith rite on the field). Also there is the enchantment Curse of Fool's wisdom if you want to target your opponents, or you can simply play "Jund Dredge" like with Golgari Thug (because dredge triggers WHENEVER you would draw a card. How does that sound?

[Aetherium Slinky]

I agree with that notion. I think with Xira Arien going insect tribal with cards such as Izoni thousand-eyed, crawling sensation, dragonlair spider, nest of scarabs, and literally make a swarm at your disposal. Give them all deathtouch (such as with archetype of finality) and then run Thantis the warweaver to force your opponents to run their troops into an army of deadly creepy crawlers.
      Also one thing you could try is doing a big mana deck using her activated ability to your advantage on other people's turns. Run her with a seedborn muse and your drawing cards on everyone's turns (especially with a cryptolith rite on the field). Also there is the enchantment Curse of Fool's wisdom if you want to target your opponents, or you can simply play "Jund Dredge" like with Golgari Thug (because dredge triggers WHENEVER you would draw a card. How does that sound?

I didn't like the insect tribal option that much so I decided to go the stax way. It staxes pretty well (playtested it a couple of times online) but being in the weirdest colours it does not win games that well. It tries to draw cards every turn with Seedborn Muse, I'm just not playing every single tutor in the deck.

[Morganator 2.0]

Swarmyard is the only insect-tribal card I can find. Probably a good idea to not do that.

If you're going to do stax you also need to think about how you get around your own stax pieces. Stax is about resource denial. For example, if you're going to play Winter Orb to limit your opponent's mana, you're going to need some mana dorks and rocks in the deck. You also need to look at how Xira Arien can be used to mitigate the stax.

[G. Moto]

My only concern with playing a Jund stax deck is that typically I see jund as "blow up their stuff so they have no board" versus resource denial like a typical azorious or esper build. Not saying you can't do jund stax but how would you go about maximizing on the value of such a deck? The only thing i can think of is stacking enchantments and creatures that either burn for damage or periodically blow stuff up.