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Did you miss me? :Nicol Bolas, the Ravager

Commander / EDH Combo Dragons Reanimator Stax UBR (Grixis)

Lythia

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Commander: Nicol Bolas, the Ravager  Flip

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Every fairytale needs a good villain.... -- Arthur Conan Doyle

Description Actively Under Reconstruction Welcome to the first bolas superfriends deck ^^

Once again I felt the need to take a traditionally "bad" commander and make it "good". I mean, this is Nicol Bolas after all, the Destroyer of Planes and twisted visionary single handedly responsible for making Jace's character likable again (Well....until Wizards started outsourcing their writers). The idea that Magics #1 villain could be anything less than awesome is nothing but pure heresy! That said, the purpose of this deck is to give players a taste of what it’s like to release their inner dragon and become an evil mastermind like Bolas or Moriarty.

This deck is highly versatile and as such depends heavily on player ingenuity. As such, no 2 games are played same and thus, in my opinion, never boring. Watch as your opponents meticulously slave away to build up their board states only to have them wiped out the next turn. Use your creativity and dragon like cunning to secure a win, borrowing from your opponents when necessary and turning their resources against them. Enjoy playing the part of the mastermind as you manipulate your way to victory.

I’ll be honest, the deck can be kinda mean at times, and I know that’s not exactly EDH kosher, but I figured if I was going to build a Bolas deck I should honor the spirit of my commander and just embrace my inner villain.

After all, in the words of the great dragon... Though it will often serve you "poorly to be too much the dragon...it [is] no fun to be the dragon too little."

I hope you enjoy the deck and please feel free to leave any comments or suggestions below :)

Simply put, the goal is to repeatedly wipe the board and stall/lock out your opponents while you gather your army of planes walkers and stolen merch and beat your opponents with them or use your dragon-like cunning to combo off.

Actively under revision

I firmly believe there is no one right way to play a deck, but sometimes we need a little guidance, especially when playing a deck built by someone else. Therefore, I have provided an in depth explanation of my general play strategy with Bolas to help gain a better understanding of the deck.

Early Game:

Bolas is a mid to late game deck. Thus the goal in the early game is to delay your opponents as much as possible and by any means necessary to give yourself more time to set up your board for the late game. This is generally done through board wipes, grindy stax cards, targeted removal, and hard lockdown. (I caution against going to hard hate in the early game without a board wipe/more lockdown to follow it up as you may become the archenemy a tad earlier than you are prepared for. It’s really a judgement call)

If I’m playing very competitive (for me that is....I never play above semi Comp) and can early game crack mindslicer sometimes I throw out all of the above and crack mind slicer and after playing all my repeatable ramp/draw

Building up the board: I tend to spend this time spitting out ramp, mill artifacts/enchantments, card draw, and defenders (if I’m not planning to wipe the board), However, my personal preference is to save my key combo pieces like mind stone until I already have my bloodchief ascension out and charged (that way it’s not removed early on and the combo comes as a surprise so people don’t have time to plan for it.)

Mid Game: This is when I will generally will play and flip bolas (unless I have a very rampy hand they I may play him earlier) and often after a board wipe to minimize the risk of him dying immediately. I personally like to wait till I will have the mana to flip bolas next turn as I don’t like leaving him vulnerable and my board wipes become less advantageous. This is also the point in the game where I start trying to hard lock down my opponents with multiple more aggressive discard and mill as I’m less worried about my ability to handle being Public enemy no 1 and I want to steal their resources from grave.

Late Game: If all goes well I hope to have won the game or knocked out some opponents by now. I should have the advantage with draw, powerful stolen objects, or being the only player not top decking (I tend to keep a counter in hand if I can for the last scenario).

Key tutors and Cards:

Muddle the Mixture:

Because this card grabs one of my key combo pieces, Mindcrank, I tend to save it for later (ie after I activate blood chief), unless someone plays something highly problematic that I must counter immediately. Other things I have tutored for are Torment of Hailfire (my win con with infinite mana or a opponent with low life/hand) and (rarely) Waste Not.

Perplex:

While it doesn’t grab a combo piece like muddle the mixture, this card has alot of versatility giving you access to a lot of key cards you might need mid/late game so, like muddle the mixture, I like to save it and tutor for something useful. My favorite tutors are chaos warp (to remove any annoying permanents immune to a boardwipe), crawlspace (to negate infinite token combos), entreat the dead (amazing if peregrine and deadeye are still both in grave), forbid (especially if you are close to comboing off and want to guarantee your win), Rhystic study (draw), toxic deluge (to negate indestructible creatures), and memory erosion ( If you have no attackers when you mindstone/bloodchief combo).

Toxic Deluge/Hour of Devastation:

This may be nitpicking but with all the removal in this deck I tend to save either toxic or hour until later as I keep running into pesky indestructible things and they are my only ways of handling indestructible.

More coming soon...

•Using -6 Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast’s -6 on God-Pharaoh's Statue then stealing an opponents Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer with Nicol Bolas, the Arisen  

• Playing against an artifact ramp deck with an opening hand of Reanimate Deadeye Navigator and Dockside Extortionist. T1 skip and discard deadeye. T2 reanimate deadeye. T3 Dockside Extortionist and inf mana!

Please upvote the deck if you like it ^^...If not, I’m sure the God pharaoh can find room for 1 more zombie soldier :)

Embrace Your Inner Villain! Upvote Now

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Revision 59 See all

(2 years ago)

+1 Oath of Jace main
Top Ranked
  • Achieved #3 position overall 4 years ago
  • Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH 4 years ago
Date added 5 years
Last updated 2 months
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

20 - 2 Mythic Rares

41 - 2 Rares

15 - 1 Uncommons

9 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.82
Tokens Construct 1/1 C Token w/ Defender, Emblem Chandra, Awakened Inferno, Emblem Dack Fayden, Emblem Tezzeret, Artifice Master, Insect 1/1 UR, Nightmare 2/3 UB, Servo 1/1 C, Thopter 1/1 C, Treasure, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders Cool Decks, others ideas, Sweet Brews from Other Folks, Nicol
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