How Good are Nykthos and Caged Sun in Two-Color Decks?
General forum
Posted on Aug. 29, 2021, 8:30 a.m. by DemonDragonJ
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and Caged Sun are obviously best in monocolored decks and not particularly good in deck with three or more colors, but how good are they in two-colored decks? Will they work in such decks, with the proper construction? What does everyone else say about this?
TypicalTimmy says... #3
I never run Caged Sun because by the time you're using 6 mana, there's generally better uses for it, even if it does ramp.
Shrine is amazing in guild decks, especially if you lean more into one color than the other. But remember you need at least 4 devotion to see any profit. The reason is, you're tapping Shrine and two sources of mana to activate it. Since Shrine itself taps for 1 mana, you are effectively "losing" or "tying up" three mana to activate it. So you need at minimum 4 devotion to see any worthwhile return.
August 29, 2021 10:16 a.m.
Nykthos is really going to depend on your specific deck, and you have to balance a number of factors.
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Do you have enough permanents to support Nykthos? If your deck is heavy on spells, you are going to have a hard time hitting your devotion requirements.
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What are the pips on your permanents? If you have a lot of cards with multiple colored pips (especially hybrid pips) it is going to be a lot easier to hit your devotion requirement. At the same time, fewer generic mana requirements mean an early draw of Nykthos is worse--if you have lots of colored pips and cannot profit from devotion, Nykthos' tapping for would be less ideal than a basic in that situation.
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What format are you in and how fast is your meta? This is posted in General, so I am not sure if you are also considering for kitchen table, Modern, etc.--if you are in a faster meta where you need to more consistently hit your colors than you need to ramp, Nykthos becomes a bit less ideal.
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Do you have sufficiently large spells to cast and/or do you have enough card draw that you will be able to have in-hand lots of smaller spells to cast in the same turn? Nykthos is great for generating lots of mana, but there can be decks where you never quite need the amount of mana you generate from it. That is not as big of a problem without mana burn, but Nykthos can be a liability for the first few turns of the game, and there is no need to place yourself in that position unnecessarily.
August 29, 2021 12:25 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #5
Caerwyn, I have not yet built any decks in which I would use Nykthos, but I am eventually planning to build a black/white EDH deck with Liesa, Shroud of Dusk as the general, so I suppose that I am specifically asking about that format.
August 29, 2021 4:09 p.m.
DarkMagician says... #6
Just about any deck running a lot of colored permanents can be a solid home for Nykthos.
August 30, 2021 2:14 p.m.
For a long time I ran Caged Sun with my Teysa, Orzhov Scion deck as while it was a WB deck, it was obviously focused more on cranking out Human and Soldier and Spirit tokens and pumping mana into things like Decree of Justice. So that's a use case scenario, if your creature colors are slanted enough you'll catch everything that wants to be in combat with Sun.
August 30, 2021 4:57 p.m.
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shadow63 says... #2
I mean nykthos is fine in 3 color decks but yeah both are great in 2 color decks
August 29, 2021 9:33 a.m.