Nin, The Blocking Artist

Alright, I decided to go with Tuesdays and Thursdays as updating days. Mostly because that seems to be the days people update less often.  Also, I also decided to randomly to smaller posts about random Magic topics that are on my mind, not necessarily Deck Techs.

Anyway, book keeping done, lets move on to my Nin, The Pain Artist Deck. Before I get into the Deck, I want to tell the story of its creation: I have been playing magic off and on since Mirage came out and around '03 I got into the competitive meta for a few years. Eventually that got boring and I more or less stopped playing. I still had decks, still played randomly with friends but if i played 12 times between January of 06' and May of '09 I would be amazed.  Anyway in January of '09 I got a job at the IT center for my college and slowly began making friends with a few people there. One of them got me Playing magic multi-player with his play group semiweekly.  It was fun, interesting and got me back into the game.  They liked playing multi-player variations on the game like Star, Emperor, and a format called bang.  In Bang you have a Sheriff, two Deputies, two Outlaws and a Renegade.  The Sheriff wants to stay alive, the deputies want to keep the Sheriff alive, the Outlaws want to kill the Sheriff, and the renegade wants to kill everyone but wants the sheriff dead last.  Everyone knows who the sheriff is at the beginning of the game, but who everyone else is is hidden.  As you can imagine the Renegade has kind of an uphill battle, even after we changed the rule to be that he just has to kill everyone, no worrying about the order. So I started dreaming up a Black/Red deck that ran a lot of things like Flame Rift and Syphon Soul.  I never ended up making it, though it was an interesting thought experiment for a while.  Fast forward to a little over a year later, I have long since gotten hooked on EDH, that original play group has disintegrated due to graduations and I began playing EDH every Monday at a store my friend owns. This deck is still sort of sitting in the back of my mind, the idea for it has warped from specific Slagstorm like effects to a deck that just hits everyone in a game every turn.  I'm sitting in this store talking to Mr. F (yep, a few of my decks (including one I am in the process of making) start this way) and we are talking about how mill decks rarely work in EDH. Mostly due to 3 factors. 1)100 card decks are much harder to mill than 60 card decks. 2) No one has come up with a good way to mill multiple players before dying. 3) putting things in peoples graveyards just tends to let them recur or reanimate stupid stuff quicker.  Also, those Damned Eldrazi. This conversation sits in my head and slowly merges with the previous Deck Idea.  Eventually I think "You know, Blue has a bunch of Windfall and Vision Skeins effects.  Hey! Red has a lot of Wheel of Fortune effects...HEY! A EDH Mill everyone at once deck! Awesome! Oh wait, the Blue/Red General selection is awful.  The only general that really fits is Niv-Mizzet, then I just have some boring Niv deck. Never mind."

Quick aside (I promised these would be frequent!) Niv is one of those generals I just don't like.  Not hate, like the stupid Eldrazi, I just don't like them. The deck is far too linear to have personality.  Especially this one, it just wants to play Niv, protect him, and play a curiosity effect (Of which there is a few). And I just try to avoid him, so much so that this deck almost never got made.

Anyway, this deck hung around in my mind for a while, I talked about it randomly, but it never went anywhere because I couldn't find a general I wanted. But then Wizards made the commander Decks and BAM, Nin, the Pain Artist! She’s flavorful, randomly would be able to help the deck, was cheap, and helps give the deck some personality. So I built it, tried it out and it is hands down the most fun deck I own.

Now I know what you’re thinking.  I know, because it’s pretty obvious.  If you could respond to me in real time you would yell, "But wait!" You would stand up and lecture me about how my first two posts were all about attacking every turn and not playing "Turbo-Nothing" control/combo decks.  And you would be right, but go back and look at those posts. I said " I like Decks that Attack, or at least advance the Game State. 99% of the time this means attacking. " 99% of the time.  This is that one percent.  Assuming my deck does what it's supposed to I advance the game state every turn by refreshing everyone's hand, or at least giving them a bunch of new cards.  This advances the game toward an end in 2 very awesome ways.  (As much as I like lists almost as much as I like asides. Consider this your warning) 1) advance toward my goal of milling people and thus ending the game.  2) Refresh everyone's hand, or at the very least have them draw a bunch of extra cards.  This means that every turn I am (hey look another list) 1)Giving everyone answers to me or other problems, 2)giving everyone their own problems to play (and thus handing them a way to make their deck work and their own way to advance the game) 3)Making games wonky and increasing the fun had by all.  Point 3 is actually the really big thing for me. The advancing the Game State play style is simply to keep the game active, and fun for everyone. As long as people enjoy the game, I don't care what you play at all. (I check almost every time I play this deck, so far everyone loves it. Mr. F can't help but laugh a whole bunch every time I play it.) As such I don't consider this deck a violation of the rules, just a MASSIVE bending of them.

OK, now that I got through that a few quick points on the deck before I show it to you. 1)I made a design choice to stick to my decking to only be through cards that make everyone draw. Nothing even like Chill of Foreboding, it has to be draw. 2) I play really, really, really bad cards in this deck. No really, Obstinate Familiar is in here. No, he won't end up in the "Cards that must go" section.  One of the best parts of this deck is that I have a legitimate reason to play utter junk. Anyway, on to the Deck!

General: Nin, The Pain Artist Deck.

Lets Ramp Our Mana!
Sol Ring
Mind Stone
Felwar Stone
Grim Monolith
Darksteel Ingot
Pristine Talisman
Coalition Relic
Thran Dynamo
Armillary Sphere
Journeyer’s Kite
Pilgrims Eye
Solemn Simulacrum
Mana Flare

Lets All Draw!
Kami of the Crescent Moon
Lore Broker
Noggle Ransacker
Indentured Djinn
Jace's Archivist
Shah of Naar Isle
Magus of the Jar
Howling Mine
Anvil of Bogardan
Temple Bell
Horn of Greed
Font of Mythos
Forced Fruition
Jace Beleren
Wheel of Fate
Prosperity
Minds Aglow
Skyscribing
Vision Skeins
Words of Wisdom
Wheel of Fortune
Windfall
Wheel and Deal
Incendiary Command
Temporal Cascade

Lets Recur Things!
Anarchist
Izzet Chronarch
Mnemonic Wall
Nucklavee
Recoup
Mystic Retrieval

Lets Not Deck Ourselves!
Elixir of Immortality
Feldons Cane
Thran Foundry
Obstinate Familiar
Junktroller
Stream of Consciousness
Words of wind

Lets Make Sure Others Do Deck!
Tormods Crypt
Phyrexian Furnace
Scrabbling Claws

Lets Block!
Fog Bank
Psychic Membrane
Cryptic Annelid

Lets Counter Some Stuff!
Scattering Stroke
Draining Whelk

Lets Get Rid Of Problems!
Into the Roil
Spin into Myth
Chaos Warp
Shattering Spree
Rack and Ruin
Blasphemous Act
Chain Reaction

Lets Play Good Stuff!
Ivory Tower
Library of Leng

Lets Play Land!
Ghost Quarter
Strip Mine
Academy Ruins
Terrain Generator
Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
Reliquary Tower
Evolving Wilds
Terramorphic Expanse
Command Tower
Reflecting Pool
Shivan Reef
Steam Vents
Sulfur Falls
Izzet Boilerworks
Temple of the False God
Ancient Tomb
Halimar Depths
Island 7
Mountain 8

Weird looking deck right? It wins about 33% - 40% of the time, which is better than the 1% I assumed when I first made it. And more importantly it’s a lot of fun.

GENERAL!
    I already talked about Nin, so I will make this short.  Nin is the least important part of this deck.  I have used her ability maybe once. Mostly she is played as a blocker (Hence Nin, the Blocking Artist), who is cheap enough that I can replay her multiple times in a game and has an ability that could be relevant.

MANA RAMP!
    This deck wants mana ramp more than any deck I have ever played. After about turn 4 or so I tap out almost every turn and wish I could play more spells. Constantly refreshing your hand does that and is why this deck plays the awfulness that is Mana Flare and Pilgrim’s eye. Even Mind Stone and Felwar Stone aren’t great. Looking at it now there are a lot of other cards I could be playing in their place, though that’s for another section.

THE DRAW!
    This is how the deck wins.  25 Draw spells that make everyone draw a whole lot of cards.  Not much to say.
    OK, so there’s an aside.  My favorite win with this deck happened when I was at less than ten life, was clearly a threat and was assured I wasn’t getting a next turn.  As such I figured, lets try to end the game.  Then this happened: “Wheel of Fate goes off, Draw for my turn. Can I get a count of cards left in decks? OK. Prosperity for 3, Windfall, Flashback Mystic Retrieval targeting Windfall, Windfall, Flashback Recoup targeting Windfall, Windfall, in response activate Feldon’s Cane, Win.” Yea, I milled 40 cards in a turn.  Now no one trusts me once they are down to about half their deck.

GRAVEYARD HATE!
Graveyard hate isn’t played in EDH by anyone (myself included) near enough.  I have many decks that have 0, and this. well this is an issue. With all the Recursion, Reanimation, and creatures that shuffle in, it is just needed and that goes triple for this deck.

LETS SAY GOOD BYE!
    One of the benefits of writing this blog is to be able to look at the deck and see whats not working. A lot of times in a game I will just think “Man X is really bad, and I never want it” and then promptly forget by the time I am home. This deck has a few more cards that I want to replace than normal, but lets just get to it. As I said Mana Flare and Pilgrim's Eye are just terrible.  I mean, at least the eye blocks, but Mana Flare just makes everyones game better. These can be replaced with Izzet Signet, Worn Powerstone, Guardian Idol, or Coldsteel Heart.  I think it definitely needs to be the powerstone since it gives two mana instead of one.  I’m undecided if signet or Idol is better though.

Scattering Stroke - Normally, when I run counterspell’s they need to have some card advantage.  The trick here was, why not try one that gives me some mana? It was a noble try but ultimately this should just be Dismiss or Suffocating Blast.

Finally, Stream of Consciousness, Words of wind, and Junktroller were, again, noble tries that I just never want.  I am pretty sure they should be Burning Inquiry (why was I not playing this before?), Drift of Phantasms, and Guard Gomazoa. I should also probably find a spot for Relic of Progenitus.


Alright, that’s all for now.  See you next Tuesday when we discuss my Deck Singularity problem and (hopefully) Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund! (Yes, I know I said all my generals get a nickname.  But so far I have been unable to come up with anything clever for Karrthus.)