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Supervillains EDH

Commander / EDH Superfriends UBR (Grixis)

NickyBolas

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Land (37)

Enchantment (3)

Artifact (17)

Sorcery (11)

Instant (6)

Commander (1)

Commander: Nicol Bolas, the Ravager  Flip

Planeswalker (15)

Creature (10)

Maybeboard

Enchantment (1)

Artifact (1)

Sorcery (1)

Nicol Bolas Supervillains

Concept

Tired of playing my 5-color Superfriends list (5 Color EDH - Ultra Friends), but unable to shake my love of planeswalkers, I decided to re-invent the list around the new Nicol Bolas, the Ravager  .

Development

Losing access to Green and White walkers was a significant setback as these are the colors that generally provide tokens for defending walkers from attack. Needing a strategy to make up for these losses, while simultaneously embracing the "evil" EDH theme, Land Destruction seemed like the perfect method by which to create a vacuum in which Planeswalkers flourish, disrupt opponents to allow time for the deck to develop, and to feel like a supervillain.

How It Plays

Early game is about establishing mana rocks while slowing opponents down with various board-wipes. Once enough rocks are out, we can destroy all lands and play planeswalkers who can operate very well without requiring additional mana. From there we disrupt opponents as they try to catch back up, while using various planeswalker Ults and a handful of creatures that operate particularly well in this environment, to close out the game.

Card Selection

Draw

Draw power is as important as ever in this control-style EDH deck because many of our cards don't impact our opponents directly.

  • Ob Nixilis Reignited/Tezzeret, Artifice Master are some of our card-draw walkers
  • Rhystic Study works especially well here because against the more experienced crowds, it will slow our opponents down a turn, buying time to find a MLD spell. Then post-MLD, they will have to play into it in order to race to rebuild.
  • Ponder/Preordain do their usual excellent job at fixing our early game draws, or late-game post-MLD land drops.
  • Wheel of Fortune always provides an opportunistic hand-refill and combos particularly well with a Sunder and Cyclonic Rift

Ramp

Ramping, in the form of a mana rocks, is very important to our strategy, as we plan on destroying all lands quickly and frequently. Being able to generate 4+ mana without lands is ideal, as that will allow us to continually cast planeswalkers.

  • Gilded Lotus, Thran Dynamo, Sol Ring, and Mana Crypt do the heavy lifting post-MLD
  • Coalition Relic gets a boost here because it allows us to fix in colors and bank mana from turn-to-turn
  • Darksteel Ingot is indestructible, synergizing with Jokulhaups which destroys all other artifacts.
  • Signets are also quite important to filter mana into the correct colors after all the lands have 'sploded.
  • Treasure Nabber allows us to reap the benefits of all mana rocks, and synergizes well with the Darettis who can use the temporarily-stolen artifact as sac fuel.

Removal

Board-wiping is the main method by which we disrupt our opponents' plans. After-all, if we simply destroy all lands and leave our opponent with a Ghalta in play, we're still going to lose.

  • Chaos Warp gives us a way to deal with enchantments, which will survive almost all of our MLD/boardwipes and could be a real problem afterwards
  • Hero's Downfall gives us a way to deal with other planeswalkers, because no one outshines Nicol Bolas at his own strategy
  • Toxic Deluge, Damnation, and Blasphemous Act provide cost-effective ways to deal with boards full of creatures.
  • Several of the MLD spells also destroy creatures, which is perfect for our strategy.

Walkers

The most thematic section of this decklist, we relegate ourselves to playing only walkers that are evil or neutral. So no Jaces, Chandras, or Tamiyos, and we allow ourselves some liberty with Sorin and Dack Fayden (or else we have too few walkers for the deck to function!). We also lean heavily on Tezzerets for card advantage, so this deck has extra artifacts throughout. This is the weakest section of the deck, which is why we have to play more aggressive versions of the other sections to make up for the shortcoming.

  • Angrath, the Flame-Chained provides us an early game utility-creature killer to slow down opponents and a slow clock in post-MLD. The ult should function well when opponents are unable to stop it when all of their lands are in the graveyard.
  • Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver does a mediocre impression of a Thief of Sanity but works well post-MLD where she uses loyalty rather than mana to cast creatures.
  • Dack Fayden, who's a bit of a thematic stretch to include, allows us some filtering and a way to dominate the mana-rock game so that we come out on top post-MLD.
  • Daretti, Scrap Savant can recur any destroyed mana rocks of ours as well as Wurmcoil Engine and Baleful Strix.
  • Ral Zarek helps untap mana rocks which is great post-MLD for producing colors out of a single Darksteel Ingot.
  • Sorin Markov provides a strong win-con by setting someone to 10 life. From there, the remaining Nicol Bolas's, Tezzerets, and sorceries should be able to finish them off.
  • Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas provides you with a stream of 5/5 creatures post-MLD by turning your surviving mana rocks into beaters.
  • Tezzeret the Seeker pulls a lot of weight, able to fetch some powerful mana rocks (or artifact lands for -0), as well as drastically increase mana production from just a pair of rocks post-MLD.
  • Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker/Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh/Nicol Bolas, the Arisen need no introduction. These will win the game through sheer power if our opponents don't scoop to them post-MLD.

Creatures

Only a handful of creatures made the cut in this walker deck, as they are particularly strong if not dealt with, providing us with another vector of attack while our opponents are struggling to deal with the walkers while starved of mana from MLD.

  • Thief of Sanity adds a whole lot of reach to our deck by allowing us to effectively tap into the strengths of the other colors. It is also nice that it allows us to cast spells using mana rocks.
  • Baleful Strix/Solemn Simulacrum/Trinket Mage provide a small contingent of early-game planeswalker defenders who grant us some card advantage.
  • Consecrated Sphinx is one of those post-MLD bombs that provides an near-game-ending advantage to which opponents struggle to find answers.
  • The Scarab God/Demon of Dark Schemes allows us to, in classic Nicol Bolas fashion, use our opponents resources against them.
  • Deepglow Skate can catch opponents off-guard by maxing out some of planeswalkers early-on.

Disruption

This is where things get pretty dirty. Because planeswalkers don't require mana to activate their abilities, an environment starved of mana is the perfect situation in which they excel. Playing a series of "evil" cards, normally frowned upon in casual circles, we can create said environment by destroying lands and reducing resources in various ways.

  • Static Orb/Winter Orb serve as soft-MLD by freezing out the majority of our opponents resources while allowing our walkers to continue their work unabated.
  • Smokestack/Impending Disaster/Devastation all destroy lands and creatures without harming our mana rocks.
  • Decree of Annihilation is purely for cycling, but leaves opponents' creatures alive, so has some down-side.
  • Jokulhaups is normally a powerful card in a walker deck but, with our weaker suite of walkers, keeping our mana rocks alive is a much higher priority.
  • Sunder provides us with an instant-speed response, however that loses its appeal when we'd rather float our mana in order to cast things and replay lands on our turn.

Postmortem

I've been very reserved about playing this list with my playgroup, as the high instances of stax effects and land destruction is surely not going to make any friends. In the few instances I've played it, it performed abnormally well (with Sol Ring/Mana Crypt starts that led to early-on MLD), and it has already earned a bad reputation.

Will need more testing, as I'm not entirely sure it is as strong as people believe it to be.

Competitive

>Optimized<

Focused

Casual

Jank

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Revision 9 See all

(4 years ago)