Hello everyone! So I am very excited to play Nevinyrral, Urborg Tyrant. The original Disk and it's lore have always intrigued me, and I am very entertained by the new card that represents the iconic character. I wanted to start a thread to generate some ideas for how to design a deck for Larry. It seems like there are numerous ways one could take this deck, and I am open to hearing all suggestions and checking out deck lists that people may have already generated.
The concept I was thinking of for my build would be a control shell. Esper colors are perfect colors for control, boasting card advantage, removal, and late game-finishers. Nevinyrral, Urborg Tyrant gives us two of these key elements in one package, all while being accessible as a General in the command zone. Being able to wipe the board (save for Planeswalkers) is a huge play, along with being able to amass an army of zombie tokens to eat away at life totals. Despite the advantages, there are some loopholes and issues with the gameplan.
- Nevinyrral wants to be easily reanimated, blinked, or cast again and again in order to maximize his value. You want to always be ready to Nuke the board, as well as spawn a Zombie token army.
- Sacrifice outlets would be perfect in this build in order to instant speed trigger Nevinyrral's ability, however nuking the board will likely take your sacrifice outlets with it. The sacrifice outlets will have to be resilient or recursive in some way. On that note, everything in the deck should be pretty resilient or be able to be used again and again for maximum value and our strategy.
- I know that there are probably some infinite combo broken shenanigans with Phyrexian Altar, but I would like to avoid that route and go for just a more dynamic strategy.
Permanent sac outlets: Phyrexian Tower High Market
There are other lands that can sac creatures, but I think these are by far the 2 best ones as they tap for mana, and can be activated with paying additional mana. Liliana of the Veil, Liliana, Dreadhorde General Both are good cards, but can't be activated at instant speed (with the zombie trigger on the stack), and it's kinda redundant to spend loyalty making people sac creatures when you're blowing up the board anyway.
TBH it's probably best just to try to tutor for the lands. Casting Nev and paying the extra 1 to his death trigger is already at least 7 mana. Cranking the cost of nuking the world up even higher just makes it even harder to pull off. I guess the sac-rituals like sacrifice still work, and can be worth it if you have a follow-up play that uses black mana.
I think the real challenge in building this deck is ramping. As mentioned 7 mana to nuke the world before the zombie trigger is a lot, especially if you're holding back a land to be the sac outlet. Esper isn't really good at cheating extra lands into play, and you don't want to lean too heavily on mana rocks since you're planning to blow up the world repeatedly with Nev. You'll probably have to play some clunky ramp like: kor cartographer knight of the white orchid boreas charger solemn simulacrum Savor the moment is kind of a bad explore I guess?
To supplement, you may want a package like: Sevinne's Reclamation Brought Back Second Sunrise faith's reward Sun titan
to combo with yarded fetchlands, notably Myriad Landscape. With a sac outlet online, they can work with the above creature ramp too. There are also some shenanigans involving thawing glaciers with bouncelands (eg: azorius chancery after activation) or untappers (deserted temple to thaw twice in the same turn), but that may be too cute/slow for most metas. If you are interested in that, it does overlap nicely with the fact that your best sac outlets are lands, thereby giving more usefulness to your land-tutors.
I don't think it's worth relying on Darksteel forge or Avacyn, Angel of Hope to make your stuff survive. Just play planeswalkers and other permanents that survive on their own. Actually the aforementioned Savor the Moment is pretty sweet with planeswalkers in play, maybe it's worth running other extra turn spells as well.
Also, definitely worth considering cards like undying evil which not only lets Nev survive, but also doubles up the size of your resulting zombie army.
I wonder If Mycosynth Lattice and Darksteel Forge could be useful as a one sided board wipe with Nevinyrral, Urborg Tyrant? Just use Master Transmuter to cheat out one of the two artifacts mentioned along with something else that cheats artifacts onto the battlefield and you should be good to go.
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"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
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The concept I was thinking of for my build would be a control shell. Esper colors are perfect colors for control, boasting card advantage, removal, and late game-finishers. Nevinyrral, Urborg Tyrant gives us two of these key elements in one package, all while being accessible as a General in the command zone. Being able to wipe the board (save for Planeswalkers) is a huge play, along with being able to amass an army of zombie tokens to eat away at life totals. Despite the advantages, there are some loopholes and issues with the gameplan.
- Nevinyrral wants to be easily reanimated, blinked, or cast again and again in order to maximize his value. You want to always be ready to Nuke the board, as well as spawn a Zombie token army.
- Sacrifice outlets would be perfect in this build in order to instant speed trigger Nevinyrral's ability, however nuking the board will likely take your sacrifice outlets with it. The sacrifice outlets will have to be resilient or recursive in some way. On that note, everything in the deck should be pretty resilient or be able to be used again and again for maximum value and our strategy.
- I know that there are probably some infinite combo broken shenanigans with Phyrexian Altar, but I would like to avoid that route and go for just a more dynamic strategy.
Phyrexian Tower
High Market
There are other lands that can sac creatures, but I think these are by far the 2 best ones as they tap for mana, and can be activated with paying additional mana.
Liliana of the Veil, Liliana, Dreadhorde General Both are good cards, but can't be activated at instant speed (with the zombie trigger on the stack), and it's kinda redundant to spend loyalty making people sac creatures when you're blowing up the board anyway.
Relevant spells that sac a creature as an additional cost:
diabolic intent seems awesome
card draw spells: morbid curiosity, Altar's Reap, Costly Plunder, etc. The ones that draw more cards are sorceries, which don't work if you want to stack the triggers such that you get zombies after nuking everything.
Worthy cause has buyback
carrion can actually makes zombies in this case
sacrifice, culling the weak
tormented thoughts, tendrils of despair
TBH it's probably best just to try to tutor for the lands. Casting Nev and paying the extra 1 to his death trigger is already at least 7 mana. Cranking the cost of nuking the world up even higher just makes it even harder to pull off. I guess the sac-rituals like sacrifice still work, and can be worth it if you have a follow-up play that uses black mana.
Tutors to find the land outlets: Tolaria West, Expedition Map, Vampiric/Demonic/etc
I think the real challenge in building this deck is ramping. As mentioned 7 mana to nuke the world before the zombie trigger is a lot, especially if you're holding back a land to be the sac outlet. Esper isn't really good at cheating extra lands into play, and you don't want to lean too heavily on mana rocks since you're planning to blow up the world repeatedly with Nev. You'll probably have to play some clunky ramp like:
kor cartographer
knight of the white orchid
boreas charger
solemn simulacrum
Savor the moment is kind of a bad explore I guess?
To supplement, you may want a package like:
Sevinne's Reclamation
Brought Back
Second Sunrise
faith's reward
Sun titan
to combo with yarded fetchlands, notably Myriad Landscape. With a sac outlet online, they can work with the above creature ramp too. There are also some shenanigans involving thawing glaciers with bouncelands (eg: azorius chancery after activation) or untappers (deserted temple to thaw twice in the same turn), but that may be too cute/slow for most metas. If you are interested in that, it does overlap nicely with the fact that your best sac outlets are lands, thereby giving more usefulness to your land-tutors.
I don't think it's worth relying on Darksteel forge or Avacyn, Angel of Hope to make your stuff survive. Just play planeswalkers and other permanents that survive on their own. Actually the aforementioned Savor the Moment is pretty sweet with planeswalkers in play, maybe it's worth running other extra turn spells as well.
Also, definitely worth considering cards like undying evil which not only lets Nev survive, but also doubles up the size of your resulting zombie army.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta