Well, Erayo, Soratami Ascendant is now banned in commander (a very sad day indeed), and Dig Through Time now exists, so this is the easiest deck list update ever. Dig Through Time provides a fantastic, instant speed, mid/later game cheap draw spell for this deck, considering that Nin doesn't utilize the graveyard, meaning that Dig will almost always cost UU and provide card advantage. I think that Treasure Cruise also deserves consideration, but am at a loss, at the moment, for what to cut to make room for it, as the deck list is pretty tight as is.
Yup, that was me :). It was a pretty incredible game, actually...and those types of wins are just the best. After playing probably a few hundred games, I can say that this deck is the real deal, and very intellectually stimulating to play. I still feel like I do not pilot it optimally most of the time, but even still it's win percentage 1v1 is very high, likely around 90%.
Anyway, I have made some updates to the opening post with some very minor changes to the deck. My local playgroup hasn't been meeting very often due to life getting in the way (;)) and so I've been playing mostly on MTGO, and, over this time, have acquired all of the cards I need to run the given list. Also, I've pretty much been playing 1v1 exclusively, since it's quick to get a game in, and fun. At this point, the list is very similar to the list Brian Weissman put together, so he deserves the credit for the list. I would guess that my list is only about 7-10 cards different from his, and you can all watch several of his matches on youtube which are very enjoyable. Someone asked me the other day what the differences were, and, off the top of my head, they were as follows:
I really like the card Impulse for digging at instant speed. I've also come to appreciate Steam Augury as a second, worse Fact or Fiction. Fact or Fiction as an instant is just sooooo good at what it does, having a second pseudo-copy is worth it. The question then becomes what to cut. I was thinking that one of the board-wipers could probably go, and that as good as Kiki-Jiki/Pestermite is to insta-kill the table, it's still a two-card combo when you need it, and can be cumbersome to assemble. So, at the moment, my plan is to make the following changes:
I'm thinking that, like Tezzeret the Seeker, Karn Liberated can be a one-card win condition, as long as you play smart enough to deploy him at the right time and protect him. We'll see how these changes stand up.
After some more testing with 1v1 and 2-headed giant games, I really feel like it's time to cut Elixir of Immortality. I know that in commander recursion is important, but as I become a bit better at piloting Nin, I feel like this card is a total crutch. For every one time it's useful, there are probably 30 times where it's a completely dead card. I'd so rather have Into the Roil, which is versatile, almost never dead, and can cantrip if needed. I've updated the OP with the changes.
Yes, it is totally a U control deck, which means that a lot of EDHers will be annoyed at you when you start countering all their spells and locking them with cards like Winter Orb. I much prefer Nin to Niv-Mizzet myself because she is so much cheaper to cast, and even when she eats removal, she's easy to recast. But honestly though, I very often hold off on re-casting her if she's drawing hate and just let the control deck do the rest, playing conservatively and reactively. I realize there are efficient combo cards with Niv-Mizzet, like Curiosity and such, but Nin is so cheap to cast, if it's mid to late in the game, you can cast her and still hold up the mana for counters or whatever, which is exactly what the U control player wants to do, of course.
My experience with MTGO and online opponents so far is generally positive. I am only running the "multiplayer budget decklist" given in the OP on MTGO, since that's all I can afford at the moment. After maybe ten or so test games learning the beta interface and some of the nuances, I started keeping track of my online games, because I'm an empirical kind if guy. After the test games, I have played 21 games so far, with a record of 18 wins, 3 losses. Also, when I request a match, I have included a request for competitive decks, out of respect for my opponent's time and enjoyment. That's just my spirit of EDH. Most of the games go long (partly because I'm not an amazing pilot, and make tons of mistakes), and end in concessions. Also, I've been playing these games 1v1, mostly to see if the multiplayer list I have can do fine 1v1, and because the games are quicker. One beef I have with MTGO is that when I assemble the Rings of Brighthearth/Basalt Monolith infinite mana combo, there is soooooo much clicking back and forth to get enough mana to deck someone with Nin that it's super annoying for both my opponent and myself, when it's 10 minutes of clicking to actually kill them. I have only played one multiplayer game online so far against Riku and Sygg, which was pretty fun. I lucked out and had both Rings and Basalt Monolith in my hand with Nin in play by turn 6 with both of my opponents (who were really friendly guys) tapped out. Barring a Force of Will, I had the game there, but was having fun so just played the Monolith and said go. A bunch of crazy things happened over the next 15 turns or so, including a couple of board wipes by me, and it was pretty fun. Then the game crashed off of my suspend trigger from Ancestral Vision and we called it a night. Anyway, even the budget list was performing very well.
There were two other games I can recall worth mentioning here: the first loss I had was against the new Mindrazer zombie guy where I mulliganed into a hand with two U lands, no acceleration, Shackles, a Gilded Drake, and some other stuff. Anyway, he made all of his land drops, and I didn't draw a land for four turns and ended up with an uncastable Nin and expensive mana rocks off of my draws. He was running counters too, and I got too far behind and lost. One thing I've been learning is to mulligan aggressively. Another game of note had me mulligan down to 3 cards: Island, Island, Izzet Signet. I proceeded to draw Memory Lapse, Coalition Relic, Chain Reaction, land, and Gilded Lotus over the next five turns. I let him play out three weenie utility (i.e. annoying) creatures over the first few turns, then wiped the board, Memory Lapsed his next play, and played the Lotus and drew Trinket Mage into Sol Ring and got so far ahead of him, leading to victory. It was awesome to comeback like that, after having to mulligan to three. I still need to work out recording a few games, because the beta version of MTGO has disabled replays, for the time being.
I have never had a conversation with Brian Weissman, and I have never seen his personal Nin deck list. But, I've watched enough of his games to know pretty much what's in his list, and the 1v1 list in the OP I've entered is very close to what he is running, and I am not taking any credit for it. The point of my take on Nin is to try and put together a list tailored for multiplayer games, with more board-wipes, an auto-win Kiki-Jiki/Pestermite combo, and an infinite mana combo to deck multiple opponents using Nin's ability. Even though Nin has to tap, her ability can be copied with Rings of Brighthearth allowing you to deck two opponents per turn. It's working pretty well so far. But no, I have not seen his deck list.
Yesterday, I signed up for MTGO and made a budget Nin list to test out, and I have added this list to the OP if anyone wants to build this deck for 100 tix online. It's kind of sad that even a budget list costs $100, but that's life I guess.
Had another minor change today, taking out Arcane Denial and replacing it with Sower of Temptation (who is also a wizard, going nicely with my other recent addition, Riptide Laboratory). Sower is such a good card once the game gets going (and permanent theft is awesome with Nin), and I've never really liked giving someone cards off of Arcane Denial. I tried out this change last night, and Sower actually played a part in a couple of wins...stealing Derevi and using her and the Sower to untap my mana rocks was pure sweetness.
Mana Drain > all of those. At the moment, I'm thinking that if we have two slots, they should go to Counterspell and Patron Wizard. Thoughts?
Hi there. I don't play Derevi at all, but I like competitive decks, and your list looks pretty good to me. Anyway, in my opinion, if you only have two slots for counters (not including Mana Drain, which is obviously awesome if you can afford it), I would run Counterspell and Negate, since Negate seems the least conditional of your conditional counters on your list. Since you're the beat down, Negate should stop most of what you care about, and will also help you win the counter war. Would Deprive be any good with Derevi? At least it's a hard-counter. Remand is pretty good too.
It just seems like you are way short on wincons. Intuition and Gamble are as good as any other tutor. Staff of Domination would only get played if you also played Power Artifact.
As to the number of wincons being too few, I respectfully disagree. 3 diverse ways (not counting random creature beats, of course, or something silly like general damage) is just fine, in my opinion, especially when you are playing U to bounce and/or counter problem spells and permanents. This deck draws lots of cards, and is meant to be a control deck primarily as opposed to a dedicated combo deck (like Oona). Power Artifact is a dead card by itself, and as I mentioned previously, Basalt Monolith and Rings of Brighthearth are not.
The 1v1 version that Brian Weissman put together is really fun to watch in action, and I have a link in the OP if you'd like to check out a few games to see what makes the deck tick. A particularly awesome multiplayer game that he played can be found here. I have never seen his list, but I have watched enough of his games to know that the 1v1 list I have in the OP is probably less than 10 or so cards different from his.
In multiplayer, it is true that counter spells become weaker and we need more ways to win, card advantage is king, and we need some kind of recursion. At this point, I feel like Staff of Dominion would only be good if we already have infinite mana, in which case we have already won with Nin, making the staff win-more. The tutors you're suggesting are okay, but I don't really abuse the graveyard, making Intuition not as good. Gamble is okay, but honestly, tutors like Merchant Scroll, Mystical Tutor, and even Muddle the Mixture are much better options in this type of deck.
Staff of Domination is indeed a good, versatile card. But, I really don't think we need another win-condition, which is why I cut Blue Sun's Zenith a couple of days ago. I just haven't found it necessary in my testing so far, with three ways to kill the rest of the table already, once control has been established. The three ways I'm referring to are: infinite mana and decking with Nin, Tezzeret's ultimate ability with the slew of artifacts, and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker/Pestermite for oops, I win.
Thank you for your feedback though, and I do appreciate the constructive suggestions.
Anyway, I have made some updates to the opening post with some very minor changes to the deck. My local playgroup hasn't been meeting very often due to life getting in the way (;)) and so I've been playing mostly on MTGO, and, over this time, have acquired all of the cards I need to run the given list. Also, I've pretty much been playing 1v1 exclusively, since it's quick to get a game in, and fun. At this point, the list is very similar to the list Brian Weissman put together, so he deserves the credit for the list. I would guess that my list is only about 7-10 cards different from his, and you can all watch several of his matches on youtube which are very enjoyable. Someone asked me the other day what the differences were, and, off the top of my head, they were as follows:
The cards I run that Brian does not are: Sower of Temptation, Telepathy, Venser, Shaper Savant, Ral Zarek, Blasphemous Act, Pongify, and Thirst for Knowledge. If I recall correctly (and I have never seen his detailed list because I do not believe that he publishes it), the cards that Brian runs that I do not are: Amnesia, Preordain, Keranos, God of Storms (although I think he recently cut this for Dack Fayden), and obviously a few other cards, maybe some more conditional counters like Daze and a couple pseudo-mana rocks like Wayfarer's Bauble.
OUT:
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
Pestermite
Chain Reaction
IN:
Impulse
Steam Augury
Karn Liberated
I'm thinking that, like Tezzeret the Seeker, Karn Liberated can be a one-card win condition, as long as you play smart enough to deploy him at the right time and protect him. We'll see how these changes stand up.
My experience with MTGO and online opponents so far is generally positive. I am only running the "multiplayer budget decklist" given in the OP on MTGO, since that's all I can afford at the moment. After maybe ten or so test games learning the beta interface and some of the nuances, I started keeping track of my online games, because I'm an empirical kind if guy. After the test games, I have played 21 games so far, with a record of 18 wins, 3 losses. Also, when I request a match, I have included a request for competitive decks, out of respect for my opponent's time and enjoyment. That's just my spirit of EDH. Most of the games go long (partly because I'm not an amazing pilot, and make tons of mistakes), and end in concessions. Also, I've been playing these games 1v1, mostly to see if the multiplayer list I have can do fine 1v1, and because the games are quicker. One beef I have with MTGO is that when I assemble the Rings of Brighthearth/Basalt Monolith infinite mana combo, there is soooooo much clicking back and forth to get enough mana to deck someone with Nin that it's super annoying for both my opponent and myself, when it's 10 minutes of clicking to actually kill them. I have only played one multiplayer game online so far against Riku and Sygg, which was pretty fun. I lucked out and had both Rings and Basalt Monolith in my hand with Nin in play by turn 6 with both of my opponents (who were really friendly guys) tapped out. Barring a Force of Will, I had the game there, but was having fun so just played the Monolith and said go. A bunch of crazy things happened over the next 15 turns or so, including a couple of board wipes by me, and it was pretty fun. Then the game crashed off of my suspend trigger from Ancestral Vision and we called it a night. Anyway, even the budget list was performing very well.
There were two other games I can recall worth mentioning here: the first loss I had was against the new Mindrazer zombie guy where I mulliganed into a hand with two U lands, no acceleration, Shackles, a Gilded Drake, and some other stuff. Anyway, he made all of his land drops, and I didn't draw a land for four turns and ended up with an uncastable Nin and expensive mana rocks off of my draws. He was running counters too, and I got too far behind and lost. One thing I've been learning is to mulligan aggressively. Another game of note had me mulligan down to 3 cards: Island, Island, Izzet Signet. I proceeded to draw Memory Lapse, Coalition Relic, Chain Reaction, land, and Gilded Lotus over the next five turns. I let him play out three weenie utility (i.e. annoying) creatures over the first few turns, then wiped the board, Memory Lapsed his next play, and played the Lotus and drew Trinket Mage into Sol Ring and got so far ahead of him, leading to victory. It was awesome to comeback like that, after having to mulligan to three. I still need to work out recording a few games, because the beta version of MTGO has disabled replays, for the time being.
Hi there. I don't play Derevi at all, but I like competitive decks, and your list looks pretty good to me. Anyway, in my opinion, if you only have two slots for counters (not including Mana Drain, which is obviously awesome if you can afford it), I would run Counterspell and Negate, since Negate seems the least conditional of your conditional counters on your list. Since you're the beat down, Negate should stop most of what you care about, and will also help you win the counter war. Would Deprive be any good with Derevi? At least it's a hard-counter. Remand is pretty good too.
As to the number of wincons being too few, I respectfully disagree. 3 diverse ways (not counting random creature beats, of course, or something silly like general damage) is just fine, in my opinion, especially when you are playing U to bounce and/or counter problem spells and permanents. This deck draws lots of cards, and is meant to be a control deck primarily as opposed to a dedicated combo deck (like Oona). Power Artifact is a dead card by itself, and as I mentioned previously, Basalt Monolith and Rings of Brighthearth are not.
The 1v1 version that Brian Weissman put together is really fun to watch in action, and I have a link in the OP if you'd like to check out a few games to see what makes the deck tick. A particularly awesome multiplayer game that he played can be found here. I have never seen his list, but I have watched enough of his games to know that the 1v1 list I have in the OP is probably less than 10 or so cards different from his.
In multiplayer, it is true that counter spells become weaker and we need more ways to win, card advantage is king, and we need some kind of recursion. At this point, I feel like Staff of Dominion would only be good if we already have infinite mana, in which case we have already won with Nin, making the staff win-more. The tutors you're suggesting are okay, but I don't really abuse the graveyard, making Intuition not as good. Gamble is okay, but honestly, tutors like Merchant Scroll, Mystical Tutor, and even Muddle the Mixture are much better options in this type of deck.
I'm familiar with Power Artifact, since it is a major combo piece with Basalt Monolith and Grim Monolith that I use in my Oona, Queen of the Fae competitive commander deck. I don't really like it with my version of Nin though, because (unlike with Oona) I'm not playing Nin as a dedicated combo deck, with a zillion tutors like you have when playing B. In this list, Power Artifact, by itself, is a dead card without Basalt Monolith. However, both Basalt Monolith and Rings of Brighthearth are useful on their own, and together they go infinite, which is why they fit better in Nin. Basalt Monolith is another mana rock (that I'm running anyway), and Rings can do fun things with Tezzeret the Seeker, Vedalken Shackles, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Sensei's Divining Top, or even Nin, the Pain Artist herself, so Rings is rarely ever dead (although you still have to be careful when you play it).
Staff of Domination is indeed a good, versatile card. But, I really don't think we need another win-condition, which is why I cut Blue Sun's Zenith a couple of days ago. I just haven't found it necessary in my testing so far, with three ways to kill the rest of the table already, once control has been established. The three ways I'm referring to are: infinite mana and decking with Nin, Tezzeret's ultimate ability with the slew of artifacts, and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker/Pestermite for oops, I win.
Thank you for your feedback though, and I do appreciate the constructive suggestions.