Ob Nixilis's Cruelty

Instant

Target creature gets -5/-5 until end of turn. If that creature would be put into the graveyard from the battlefield this turn, exile it instead.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (24)

TCK_Green on Official missing/incorrect card/token thread

4 months ago

Had a quick browse of the other J22 cards and it looks like the Coldsteel Heart and Ob Nixilis's Cruelty images are also broken. Thanks for your help! :)

martiwluwka on Bad Business

6 months ago

Auger Spree > Ob Nixilis's Cruelty

TheOfficialCreator on

1 year ago

Black Market Connections is a very strong ramp/draw/fodder shell for your deck.

Ob Nixilis's Cruelty, Ambition's Cost, Deadly Dispute, Village Rites, and Cabal Ritual are some good additions you could look into as well.

Alkadron on Falthis & Halana, Venomous Bites

3 years ago

Deathtouch + Halana is extremely cute.

Consider Viridian Longbow to go with all that deathtouch? I'm not sure you need more creature destruction, but maybe.

Also, I'd swap Murder for Ob Nixilis's Cruelty. Murder is great at killing all the things that your other cards can already kill, but if someone comes up with an indestructible or regenerating thing, I think you'll struggle against it. Similarly, Smoldering Butcher and Wildslayer Elves could do work for you.

Kayne117 on Syr Gwyn - Beatdown

4 years ago

Without analyzing the deck like crazy, one thing I would recommend is upping your basic land count. Fixing in 3 colors isn't as hard as you may think, and playing too many tapped lands will have a very real effect on the speed of your aggro deck, a deck type that is not favored in EDH. It would also mean your Myriad Landscape will function more reliably, but that's a smaller upside. Another small thing is perhaps removing Cleansing Nova for Austere Command. For one more mana you can cause significantly more damage to your opponents while leaving your own goodies untouched, or at least less effected. Other than that it's mostly smaller optimizations, like removing Ob Nixilis's Cruelty for something like Bedevil, Hero's Downfall, Terminate, or Anguished Unmaking. Honestly there's a lot you can go with, but it won't make a massive difference if your playgroup isn't on the competitive side. All in all, looks like a solid deck. Oh, and I just remembered you're more on a budget. Perhaps Mortify in place of cruelty :p

JakeHarlow on Budget Pirate Aggro

4 years ago

@ Spongee07:

Thanks so much for commenting!!

After Standard rotated (with the Ixalan block no longer being legal), I stopped playing Standard and haven’t been back since — I haven’t played the format with Core 2020 or Throne of Eldraine. Mostly this was because I could no longer play my Pirates!!

Then, Pioneer popped up, and just like you, it got me thinking. I haven’t thrown a list together yet, but I had considered upgrading these Pirates and seeing how they’d do in the new environment.

I would LOVE to have a discussion with you on how to upgrade this decklist for the new format. Send me a PM here on Tappedout, and maybe we can do a Google Hangouts or whatever and have an actual chat about it!

I don’t really have much of an idea about the Pioneer metagame. Is it even settled yet into smallish group of dominant strategies, or is it still wide open? I honestly have not been paying much attention.

Since Pioneer is basically Return to Ravnica forward, minus fetch lands, here are my initial thoughts right off the bat:

• Mainboard Duress moves aside for the full playset of Thoughtseize . When they reprinted this in Theros, I immediately thought it would be absurd in an aggressive shell, and Pirates is perfect for that. Given the incredible performance of Drill Bit as auxiliary hand disruption out of the sideboard (we only run in when we are on the play or against hard Control), I’d say we would be happy to mainboard 4 copies of Thoughtseize .

• Mana Confluence : Maybe run four of these over Dragonskull Summit ? If we can reduce the probability of playing taplands (and therefore having slow starts that could cost us games) to 0%, I feel like we would be well-served. When I did lose games with this deck, over half the time I’d say it was to drawing awkward mana and having too many Summits coming in tapped. If the meta is aggressive or burn-heavy, we might want to think twice before running so much pain in our mana base, but it’s worth considering.

• Rending Volley : Possible sideboard option? Don’t know the meta but this is a fairly good color hoser. The other card in this Dragons of Tarkir cycle that we have access to, Self-Inflicted Wound , comes to mind as well, but it doesn’t strike me as a competitive enough to be playable in Pioneer.

• Ob Nixilis's Cruelty : I think this is still a really good removal spell for the sideboard. Deals with indestructible, stops graveyard strategies and reanimation, and gets things with 5 toughness off of the board ( Siege Rhino comes to mind here). What do you think?

• Sorcerous Spyglass vs. Phyrexian Revoker : As a creature, Revoker is squishier and easier to kill, but it does advance our clock faster against control and combo decks because it can attack. Losing the ability to peek at the opponent’s hand is also a drawback, but with hand disruption and Game 1 information, we should already have a pretty good idea of what the opponent has and is relying on. Revoker can also turn off mana dorks, since his ability does cover mana abilities, so that’s an upside too. This gives us some play against ramp decks, and since Elvish Mystic and Llanowar Elves are in the format, I’d say we might want to have an extra card against ramp!

• March of the Drowned : I still think this is one of best cards against grindy matchups and Control decks, and depending on how Pioneer’s meta is, we might even want to play more than two copies. It’s a really cheap and efficient reanimation card for Pirates.

• Kolaghan's Command : This card seems too good to ignore for the sideboard. Extra removal, hand disruption, reanimation and artifact hate on one card? I’d say it’s better than Angrath's Rampage even though it costs more (and it is an instant, too).

• New Pirates?: I know Core 2020 added Glint-Horn Buccaneer , which at 3 mana and 4 toughness is very interesting and within our curve. It’s far sturdier than all our other creatures, does have haste, and causes incremental damage when we discard a card to its ability. This could be very useful against Control or grindy midrange in particular, since it can help us get through land pockets if we run into one. Against aggro matchups, it blocks fairly well if we are on the ropes. Definitely not a bad Pirate or a bad three-drop. But what to cut for it? Is it just a sideboard piece too? Or do we skip it? Also, are there other new Pirates in these colors that I am overlooking?

Anyway, those are my initial thoughts. Shoot me a private message and I’ll give you my gmail and maybe we can link up and have a real discussion! I agree with you that there is real potential here! Thanks for your interest and have a great day!!

emarg0ed on

4 years ago

@sanguinaut thanks for the suggestions, I hadn't thought of Dark Prophecy before! And yes I need to go with 4 castles, I only have one on hand at the moment though :P

Fatal Push has been better for me so far than I originally expected; thinking of going with 2 more of those. Grasp of Darkness and Ob Nixilis's Cruelty have been on my shortlist as well. I'm finding Murderous Rider to be maybe slightly clunky, but not too horrible yet.

tkjanacek on

4 years ago

I used to run a very similar deck, but in my experience Maralen is just too fragile. Expunge , Murder , Reckless Spite , Price of Fame , Murderous Cut , Ashes to Ashes , Ob Nixilis's Cruelty , Force of Despair , Never/Return , Sever the Bloodline , Silence the Believers , Cannibalize seem to me to be vastly preferable to Dash Hopes , Eyeblight's Ending , Rend Flesh , Kiku's Shadow , Withering Boon . Does Mindcrank even do anything here without Bloodchief Ascension ?