Nykson's Back: The Power of Nykthos in Casual Multiplayer Magic

A lot of people probably know me as a mono-Black mage. I fell in love with the color many years ago back when Torment was first released and I got my hands on a playset of Cabal Coffers. It only took a single activation to hook me for life and here I am 11 years later still sleeving them up as a proud mono-Black mage. Playing with "broken mana" often feels like a drug. The high that it gives you is typically so potent that if you use it once you'll never want to stop. It feels so disgustingly unfair that you'll sometimes catch yourself looking around and thinking "are these people stupid? Why isn't everyone playing with these kinds of cards?" For the longest time I couldn't justify playing a lot of color combinations and archetypes simply because they just plain didn't have access to the amount of broken mana that I'm accustomed to using. Fair decks with fair mana bases and fair cards just don't interest someone like me any more.

The topic that I'd like to discuss today is Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and why everyone should probably purchase 4 copies of it sooner rather than later. This is a card that basically everyone (myself included) grossly undervalued when it was initially spoiled but we've long since discovered that the card is completely insane. The reality of the matter is that when this card is good it's the best draw in your deck by a country mile and that it's incredibly easy to construct your lists with it in mind. When it does its thing, which happens more often than not, it feels like a 0 mana, uncounterable, Indestructible, colorless win condition. While that may be a somewhat~ hyperbolic statement I legitimately believe that it's a fairly accurate representation of what the card routinely does to games. Every time that I play with it I'm flooded with memories of Cabal Coffers and how it enabled me to crush my meta despite the fact that I was frequently teamed-up on. I was able to win because while everyone else was playing fair Magic I was the lone wolf playing unfair Magic. Nykthos operates in the same way. When you play this card and it works it often makes the actions of others seem trivial by comparison.

Let's start by talking about everything that is right about Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and why it's almost always right to play with it. The first thing that the card has going for it is that it's a land that comes into play untapped and that taps for mana. Since it isn't obvious the key word in that phrase is "land." Worn Powerstone has long since been a casual staple of mine and I've gone on record calling it one of the best casual cards in the game. I've often recommended aggressively mulliganing for it given that you're allotted a freebie in a multiplayer setting. Starting every game with Sol Ring Jr. is still pretty damned good all things considered. The problem that the Powerstone and every other mana rock has (other than Sol Ring) is that they're A) vulnerable B) they cost mana (that could otherwise be spent on defense) and C) typically come at the cost of spell slots (often cheap defense) in your decks. What this means is that you're often playing decks with ~30ish sources of mana (many of which Time Walk over your turn by eating up your available mana) that eventually become very bad topdecks. They're also vulnerable to any number of board sweepers and since you can't play ramp to sandbag it (it makes absolutely no sense to do so) it usually means that you'll get set massively behind when you do encounter heavy resistance. Playing ramp early on also means that you're not playing defensive bodies and so you run the risk of falling too far behind on life and dying to random beats before your deck can hit its stride.

Nykthos, on the other hand, doesn't have those kinds of issues. You can just blindly play 2-4 in 26 land decks and call it a day. You don't have to remove defense for it, you don't waste early turns casting it, it can't get ripped from hand with discard, it can't be countered, it won't be easily destroyed, etc. You run a small risk of drawing them in large quantities but more often than not you'll just draw 1 or 2 and play Magic with a ~26 land deck that has 34 "live draws" in it instead of durdly (and potentially risky) ramp. Still, hey, that's only part of the reason why we're running Nykthos and not the traditional fare. In addition to freeing up deck slots Nykthos is awesome because it's almost impossible to remove in casual, kitchen-table games. Land destruction is typically frowned upon/banned/avoided and so you can usually expect to have it stick around. Moreover, Nykthos doesn't have a slow setup time like most ramp does. You can typically just cast and immediately activate it like a giant ritual if need be. This mitigates the risk of drawing multiples and having them be "dead" cards because you can always just treat them like 0 mana Seething Songs or whatever. That may not be an ideal use for a card but it's certainly not horrendous.

Moreover, one of the most compelling reasons to run Nykthos in your decks is that it allows for your cheap, defensive drops to double as ramp spells enabling you to get the best of both worlds. Bluntly put I don't like the fact that my decks have to field early threats such as Nantuko Shade and Geralf's Messenger or Strangleroot Geist and Predator Ooze just to avoid dying to random critter beats early on. In an ideal world I'd rather skimp out on defense as much as possible so that I can focus on playing big, dumb, powerful spells. Nyktos is unique in that it turns all of your early drops into ramp spells. Vampire Nighthawk is always going to be a "fine" play but when it starts acting like a mini-Sol Ring then it suddenly becomes an amazing one. What this means is that I can run Ash Zealot instead of Fire Diamond, not die, but still have plenty of mana to cast my Magmatic Force over the next few turns. I cannot stress how powerful that is. Nykthos is just such a stupid card because you're paying 0 mana and 1 card to get that Gilded Lotus effect while simultaneously playing defensive bodies who'll ensure that you'll be able to survive long enough to abuse it.

Some of you might be concerned that Nykthos won't work for you and your meta. Understandable. What I will say is that there are some very important things to remember about kitchen table magic. First of all, most people tend to build synergy decks of some sort and synergy decks very rarely want mass removal. As such multiplayer metas tend to have far less mass removal than they reasonably should. Yours may be an exception, I recognize that, but I'm willing to wager that the average deck in the average meta doesn't have 4 Wraths in it. Moreover, devotion is fairly easy to trigger with Enchantments and durable threats. A common sequence that I've employed many times myself is Utopia Sprawl into Predator Ooze in Green or Bloodchief Ascension into Phyrexian Arena/Geralf's Messenger in Black. By weaving cheap Enchantments with resilient threats you can substantially mitigate the dangers of mass removal. Finally, very few playgroups encourage the use of land destruction. It's typically despised, banned, cautioned against, etc. This means that you can, on average, feel relatively safe relying on lands to do the heavy-lifting for you. Odds are the only thing that could threaten them is the odd Vindicate at best.

With respect to building decks with Nykthos in mind, I don't think that there's actually much of a trade-off at all. First of all, casual mana bases tend to be budget-minded which means that most people are playing 3+ color decks very often. Most of us just plain don't have the means to create workable mana bases for them. In the context of 1-2 color decks Nykthos is perfect because it literally doesn't matter what you pair with it to fill out your early game curve. You can't afford Predator Ooze? You can probably get some Wistful Selkies instead. Wild Growth? Pretty sure that anyone can find those. Nykthos is a fantastic card because it accelerates the game in a big way and offsets the value of your early drops. Wistful Selkie may only be a 2/2 but when you consider the fact that she draws a card and Thran Dynamos you then she starts to look very appealing. Pretty soon you're chaining Sylvan Primordials with Clones with Progenitor Mimics and it doesn't matter what you cast on turns 1-3 because you started casting your 7 drops on turns 4-5. You can't afford Primeval Titan but you can afford Sylvan Primordial and he's just as good (if not better) in these kinds of decks. There are enough cards in Magic that you'll be able to fill your early curves with solid bodies who enable devotion and from there it's just a matter of putting your Insurrections to use. Some of the most overpowered 6+ CMC spells in the game are relatively cheap because it's not realistic to have them cast in most competitive spheres. The one place where they can shine is typically casual, kitchen-table Magic. I guarantee that anyone out there can build affordable decks with tons of power and plenty of early defense insofar as they incorporate Nykthos into the 60.

With that in mind, let's start talking about building with inevitability and Nykthos in mind. Some of the strongest cards in Magic are commonly referred to as "split cards" because they have 2 "virtual" modes to them. A good example would be something like Mizzium Mortars. On the one hand it can be fired off early on to kill a troublesome threat. Later on it can be Overloaded to Plague Wind the rest of the table in some instances. Both modes are desirable because the first mode helps you survive long enough to take advantage of the second. The card is good whether it's drawn early or later in that sense. Nykthos, in my mind, breaks these kinds of cards wide open. Think Divine Deflection, Cyclonic Rift, Profane Command, Aurelia's Fury, Clan Defiance, Genesis Wave, Rite of Replication, Decree of Pain and more. Think beyond spells to creatures as well. Student of Warfare, Figure of Destiny, Lighthouse Chronologist, Kargan Dragonlord, Hundred-Handed One, Ember Swallower, Arbor Colossus, Stormbreath Dragon, etc. These are all great examples of cards who are strong early on and who're still valuable in the later stages of the game. Why? Because they can convert mana directly into additional power. What this means is that it becomes incredibly easy to build fiercely competitive decks that will post strong finishes. I mean even if you completely ignore "split cards" are just play a deck with a solid curve that also has a bunch of Titans, Primordials, Forces, obnoxious Enchantments, big dumb spells, etc. then that's a perfectly viable way to go about it as well. It's literally as simple as "play a deck with early drops and overpowered bombs." All roads lead to Rome in this instance.

Nykthos is a perfect investment card. I'm not saying that you should buy a ton of them or anything but why wouldn't you buy 4 for example? They work in any mono-colored and most dual-colored decks and that fact will probably never change. You can shift the same 4 across every deck that you'll ever play if you want to. I've been doing that with my same 4 Cabal Coffers for like 11 years. When a land is this powerful you don't need an excuse to play it because more often than not your deck just becomes objectively better in its presence. It's colorless, it's timeless, it's affordable... what's not to love about the card? The best part is that you don't even need mint condition copies of it. Find any, even if they're all beat-up. Who cares? You're not going to trade them away and it's not like the effect is going to be obsoleted in the near future. I could legitimately see myself still playing with them 10 years down the road in the same way that my Cabal Cofferss are still as amazing today as they were back in the Torment era. If you can grab a playset of these for under 30 bucks, really, why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you want to start building decks with one of the most powerful lands in the game?
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Prid3

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