Please read through this primer, this deck is freaking epic! You will NOT be disappointed!
The following is all direct from _shift's primer:
Introduction
This is a midrange deck that seeks to establish an early game with Akiri, Line-Slinger on the board providing incredible board presence while stockpiling artifact tokens, then winning via commander damage, draining your opponents out by creating/using those tokens, or one of several other winning lines that ignore traditional rules of Magic.
Play this deck if you:
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Enjoy playing Mardu colors (Red, White, Black), the most refined color pairing in Commander
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Love embracing jank that actually performs extremely well in a specific deck
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Love generating a pile of treasure, freeing you to cast anything at will
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Enjoy a very consistent early game
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Enjoy a variety of paths to victory
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Thrill in pummeling opponents with commander damage
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Ignoring decks with infinite lifegain
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Making opponents regret casting board wipes
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Enjoy putting a timer on the game via consistent non-combat damage, preventing long games
Do not play this deck if you:
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Are looking to aggressively combo off early (but we do have mid-game combos!)
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Cannot stand playing a highly-tuned, highly-efficient and synergistic deck made to break the backs of your enemies
- This is an artifact token aristocrats deck at its heart. There is a certain Yin and Yang between
Akiri, Line-Slinger and
Nadier, Agent of the Duskenel. Stockpiling treasures powers Akiri up but does nothing for Nadier. Using treasures powers Akiri down but charges Nadier up. My buddy describes it as "the transfer of power being complete."
- True to being a midrange deck, it looks to establish an early, aggressive board presence with Akiri, Line-Slinger while seeking to amass a pile of artifact tokens. At some point you will want to start using your treasures. You should get Nadier out before this point to maintain the value from them. Nadier provides a growing inevitability that a simple Path to Exile can't solve for your opponents. Nadier, Agent of the Duskenel along with various cards synergistic with the sacrifice of artifacts allow you to milk maximum value out of your treasures to drain your opponents out while using them to fuel your spells.
Starting Hand and Early Game
A perfect starting hand has these elements, in priority order:
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A way to generate W and R on T2
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An artifact or a way to generate an artifact token to turn Akiri, Line-Slinger on by combat on T3
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A way to start generating treasures
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A card advantage source to refill by T4 or T5
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Early game looks remarkably similar each game, and it's here you can choose to power up the deck with duals, 0CMC artifacts and/or off color fetches.
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T1: Fetching Savai Triome, dropping a tapped dual artifact land, or playing an on-curve 1CMC drop (Esper Sentinel, Sol Ring, Curse of Opulence, and Shadowspear are your best bets). The land you play T1 needs to be able to make W or R.
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T2: Playing your other source of W or R as a land drop, and then dropping Akiri. I have purposely removed all 2CMC mana rocks from this revision of the deck. You nearly always want to play Akiri on T2. Dropping a 2CMC rock on T3 is fine (perhaps you have 2 in hand and would thus be able to play both) but I want to trial higher impact 3CMC mana rocks that don't mind being played on curve.
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T3: Things start to open up here. Remember those 3CMC rocks I talked about? A charged Coalition Relic on T3 will ensure a T4 Nadier, Agent of the Duskenel with a land drop. Note that Curse of Opulence or Guild Artisan are perfectly fine T3 drops, as they give value on the attack trigger. A 0 power Akiri will immediately generate 1 Gold token or 2 Treasure tokens on attack, effectively "jump-starting" her before blockers are declared. The 3CMC slot is absolutely loaded in this deck and it's hard to go wrong. Cursed Mirror or Skyclave Relic are fine to drop here if you've got nothing else, but both of these are excellent late game.
Mid Game
- At this point, your priority is to establish a treasure generating engine if you have not already, and to get Nadier, Agent of the Duskenel out to snowball the value out of sacrificing your treasures.
Directions to go from here
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Swinging in with a sufficiently large Akiri, Line-Slinger is certainly a valid option. Tacking on a sword or two (Sword of Fire and Ice, Sword of Feast and Famine, Sword of Hearth and Home), doubling up with Cranial Plating, or hitting enough artifacts that Embercleave becomes a killer are all Voltron avenues of play.
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Get Nadier out and snowball treasures. You've got a truckload of options now.
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Dockside Extortionist will always do it.
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If you have a handful of evasive attackers, Curse of Opulence, Guild Artisan (which will trigger separately for both Akiri and Nadier!), Professional Facebreaker, Goldspan Dragon, and Grim Hireling will start making huge piles of treasure.
Make at least 5 in combat with Aggravated Assault out (or use Sword of Feast and Famine) and go infinite on combat.
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A gross interaction exists between Akiri and Ruthless Technomancer. Akiri's power can get huge on the battlefield (her own ability, equipment like Cranial Plating, etc.). You can drop the Technomancer, sacrificing Akiri to it for a massive blast of treasures. Then any time before your next turn, simply pay 2B and sacrifice a single treasure (X can't be 0 after all) to bring your 0/3 Akiri back out of the yard.
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Establish Sunforger. Sunforger brings all the protection in your deck to the palm of your hand. It should probably be the first thing you grab with Stoneforge Mystic, unless you think you have a direct line to victory someplace else
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Persist and drain. The "Token Synergies" package is your route to closing out the long game the midrange way. Use your treasures to fuel your spells and grow your Nadier, Agent of the Duskenel and drain out your opponents. At some point your gigantic Nadier will die and leave behind a pile of 1/1 elves. Don't let off the pressure. Agent of the Iron Throne can (again, double) trigger on their deaths along with Nadier's Nightblade. Neither of these cards care if elves or treasure are hitting the bin. With a pile of elves you can continue a go wide strategy to generate treasure with Grim Hireling and the gang to repeat the process. Use Skullclamp on your elves to refill your hand. Drop 10 tokens into Bolas's Citadel (even better with Mayhem Devil) to start closing things down quick.
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Again, swinging in with a sufficiently large Akiri, Line-Slinge (or Nadier, late game) is a valid option. Between the three swords in the deck, you have protection from all colors available to you. Shizo, Death's Storehouse as well as Embercleave and Shadowspear ensure you push through. Hopefully you have the Sunforger package online to cover your ass as you Voltron out. Opponent playing a Grave Pact deck, which is the bane of any Voltron strategy? Cover your Akiri with a Nadier sac and fill the field with token fodder to sac to the triggers, and benefit from it all with your Nadier's Nightblade, Agent of the Iron Throne, or Mayhem Devil.
How big of a treasure pile have you generated?
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Skyclave Relic: At worst it is a Darksteel Ingot. Better, it provides 3 Darksteel Ingots for 6 mana. At best, you're dropping it with an Ingenious Artillerist or Reckless Fireweaver and/or Anointed Procession out and creating an absolutely mad value play for 6 mana.
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Cursed Mirror: Doesn't target and gives haste. Amazing. Cut through Hexproof or Ward and grab that Tivit, Seller of Secrets and swing it to get two triggers. Maybe your Nadier, Agent of the Duskenel died and left behind a bunch of bodies. Go ahead and copy your opponent's Craterhoof and finish them off. Every red deck (including yours) runs Dockside Extortionist, so odds are good that you can simply hit that. All of these are actual examples that have occurred in game with Cursed Mirror.
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Sword of Hearth and Home has some serious value attached. Not only does it ramp you, you can shake extra value out of your ETB creatures, and you've got plenty (Disciple of Bolas, Dockside Extortionist, Ruthless Technomancer, Stoneforge Mystic, Imperial Recruiter).
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Spectacular Showdown functions as a goad on an opponent's creatures, or a permanent double strike on on of yours, or a fantastic closer.
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Descent into Avernus is a fantastic card that speeds up the game. You might not like it, feel free to replace.
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Wheel of Fortune: Was avoiding the infinite combo with Underworld Breach+Smothering Tithe (infinite treasure and table-wide card draw).
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Fast Mana: If you want to play fast mana, I suggest an Akiri/Tymna variant. Being able to ramp through playing Akiri on 2 / Tymna on 3 (or earlier!) while getting Akiri online is ruthless and fantastic.
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Black Tutors: Deck is tuned to my meta.
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Ancient Copper Dragon: Very expensive card ($$$). At the end of the day it's a big beater without haste that needs to cause combat damage to trigger. Hellkite Tyrant suffers from the same problem, and I'm running Hellkite Tyrant before I run this. The only 6 mana creature I want to eat removal is Nadier. Marionette Master is great because if it's not countered, you get to sac all your treasures in response to any removal.
Upvote and support this fun, crazy-strong deck!
Deck and description (lightly edited) unashamedly stolen from "_shift" @ https://deckstats.net/decks/208321/2589280-mardu-treasures-akiri-nadier-v/en
Yeah, it's a good deck. This guy knows how to build. I wanted to play it the instant I saw it. There's so much synergy, mana's never a problem, and it's just so much fun. I just couldn't NOT share it here on TappedOut.net!
Finally, a note from SlashDance after playing this deck ...
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
The first time playing this deck, I was very impressed.
In a pod of 3 players, I was playing Akiri, Opponent 1 was playing an Eldrazi deck and Opponent 2 was playing a mono blue deck filled with nearly all counter spells (seriously, about 40+ counters) and only a few minor win conditions.
The game started slow, as I was only permitted about 1 in 4 spells to be successfully cast (I was trying to run him out of counters, but then he got a couple ways to draw more each turn and it was tough). The Eldrazi player was having slightly less difficult time, but his deck was slow anyhow, so he did not mind the blue player focusing on me.
Eventually, due to the abundance of 2 and 3 slot spells I was able to establish some token generators and get Akiri successfully cast.
Academy Manufactor, Guild Artisan, and Curse of Opulence combined to let me attack in to the blue player and jumpstart token generation, and if the Eldrazi had more health I would attack him instead. Black Market Connections soon followed, allowing me to draw additional cards and drop token generations by paying with life, which I was all too willing to expend to get an advantage.
The Eldrazi player was gathering up a very large board state, but was trying to stay neutral to the blue player and couldn't attack into my Akiri with Vigilance and First Strike. I was able to drop a Sword of Fire and Ice for Akiri, and now Mr. Blue couldn't block it with fodder or creatures he had stolen from me. I swung twice and killed Blue with Akiri's commander damage.
My eyes now set on Mr. Eldrazi ...
With the counterspells no longer a nuisance, I could finally play Nadier, Agent of the Duskenel without it being snuffed before it even hit the board, so I did just that.
After a few turns of my Akiri being blocked by 1/1 token Eldrazi, my opponent was slowly being whittled down by my Ingenious Artillerist, and was getting really worried about a Revel in Riches I had just played.
Luckily for him, he found and played Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, which he immediately used to destroy all my colored cards with 6 CMC or less ... which was everything except my artifacts. Quickly, I responded on the stack by powering up Nadier, Agent of the Duskenel with several treasure tokens, food tokens, and clue tokens, gaining some much needed life (I was incredibly low by using Black Market Connections so much) and some card draw. Now, Nadier had a power of 11 as he died to Ugin's ability.
With only land and some artifacts remaining, all my colored cards went to graveyard, but out popped eleven 1/1 Elf Warriors from Nadier's carcass! On my turn, I equipped the Sword of Fire and Ice to an elf, dropped and equipped a Sunforger, and I was immediately back on the offensive!
He attacked into my elves, to which I sacrificed a couple of them as blockers. He had the advantage, though, as he was now generating a lot of 1/1 token Eldrazi that I would not be able to keep up with. I needed an answer, and quickly, otherwise I wouldn't be able to kill him before he killed me. Eventually, it came down to Mr. Eldrazi only needing one more turn to finish me off.
After my upkeep, I drew my card ... holy light shined down upon my deck, the angels sang while a harp appeared nearby playing a heavenly melody. Ruinous Ultimatum. I began sorting my land in front of me and counting silently to make sure I had all the correct mana, then started tapping my mana one land at a time. My opponent felt something was up, and he was counting out loud, getting louder as I tapped the fifth, sixth, and finally the seventh land. "Uh-oh ... what are you doing? This doesn't look good for me" he said. "No, I'm sorry, I don't think you'll like this", I replied.
I cast Ruinous Ultimatum. He scooped up all his non-land cards. I attacked with many elves. Mr. Eldrazi scooped up the rest of his lands and shook my hand.
"Good game, that looks like a fun deck!"
I smiled "Good game, Eldrazi! That was, indeed, fun ... that was a great game. I just got lucky though".
I proceeded to talk about his deck, how good it was, and asked about his land (he had some problems through the game and commented it was always like that), and I gave him some suggestions to improve his mana situation, and encouraged him that his deck was great and he likely should have won the game.
But, inside, I knew I loved this deck, and honestly ... even when I was on the ropes ... I trusted the deck to come out on top. It always seemed to have an answer, and the synergy was through the roof. Regardless, even if I had lost, I had a ton of fun playing it. This is exactly my sort of deck, and I'm so glad "_shift" shared his decklist with the world so that I could find it and experience it. Thanks, _shift!
Upvote and support this fun, crazy-strong deck!
