Nadu Kid on the Block

What’s good, Spirit Squad!

Modern Horizons 3 is finally here! Players, deck brewers, and of course content creators everywhere are messing around with deck ideas. Merfolk got some pretty huge updates and Eldrazi have been given new life, but the “Hogaak” of the set is actually an unassuming little Bird Wizard:

I’ve seen cards that cost 1GU …and why do I hear boss music?

Honestly, at this point a casting cost of 1GU really should be a big red flag that comes with flashing lights and sirens. Nothing good has ever come from a card having that mana value printed in the upper-right corner.

All three of these cards were seen as unassuming value pieces when spoiled.

• Rogue Refiner was seen as an acceptable piece of midrange value that could have some upside depending on what Energy cards surrounded it. Turns out that, while easily the tamest of the Simic bunch here, it was still good enough to get banned in its Standard format!
• Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath was seen as “Explore with extra steps”, but in practice ended up not only single-handedly changing the course of Legacy control decks in Magic: the Gathering, but it’s also been banned in Standard, Pioneer, Modern, and most of the Arena-exclusive formats.
• Oko, Thief of Crowns… where do we even START? This man has been banned in more formats than he has ab muscles. Since we didn’t know what Food tokens did when he was spoiled, Oko was seen to be unassuming. Turns out he was so good that Boros Burn decks in Modern splashed both Green AND Blue just to play Oko, with zero other Green or Blue cards. These days, he can be played in Vintage (where he JUST won a large Vintage championship last year by turning a Black Lotus into a 3/3 Elk and attacking with it), Commander, and Arena’s Timeless format. That’s it.

OK, so Nadu, Winged Wisdom is a card that has a lot of potential. Fine. How?

Just reading the card, you’d think that Nadu would be played with cards like Ephemerate or as a deterrent to opposing removal spells. Play a flier with decent stats, protect it with a spell or two, and net some additional cards along the way in your fair Simic shell.

Oh, you sweet summer child. Legacy players saw this card and immediately knew what to do:

Shuko is a longtime staple of one of the most consistent combo decks in Legacy: Cephalid Breakfast. The idea behind this deck is that you have a Shuko, which has an equip cost of 0, and you can repeatedly equip Shuko to the same creature. Since Equip abilities in Magic target the creature you’re equipping to, Breakfast players use it with cards like Cephalid Illusionist to mill their own decks and enable graveyard-based cards like Cabal Therapy and Dread Return!

Nadu has a lot of the same potential, since its ability has a few relevant parts that make it a ridiculously powerful enabler:

• Nadu’s ability doesn’t draw cards. It instead functions just like Coiling Oracle (Coiling More-acle? I like that. Can we keep that?), and this means that Orcish Bowmasters “has no power here”. If you know, you know.
• Nadu’s ability doesn’t trigger twice per turn. It triggers twice per turn for each creature you control. This means that if you have three creatures in play, you’re looking at six extra cards, not two.
• If you reveal a land using the More-acle ability, it comes into play untapped and your mana is available right then and there. This makes it incredibly easy to continue a combo chain once you’ve started.
• Another card that came out of Modern Horizons 3 is Springheart Nantuko, which happens to combo perfectly with Nadu. When Nadu triggers and puts a land on the table, the Nantuko makes a 1/1 that you can see two extra cards with. If either are lands, you make another 1/1 and continue the process. Easy-peasy AND you don’t even need to splash an additional color for this!

Now that we know what the basic shell of the combo looks like, there’s a few different ways to make this a real deck:

• Bant Stoneblade lists have been using Stoneforge Mystic to look for the Shuko, and simply play an otherwise-normal Azorius game with cards like Preordain, Teferi, Time Raveler, and Counterspell. These decks have a very easy time finding Shuko between Stoneforge Mystic and Urza’s Saga, but have to find Nadu naturally.
• Combo versions of the deck have been playing cards like Chord of Calling to get Nadu out of the deck, but forego the Stoneforge Mystic. These lists are on Delighted Halfling, and an uncounterable Turn-2 Nadu is pretty terrifying for a lot of archetypes.
• Amulet Titan players, as if they needed yet another cool thing, have been putting Nadu in their decks and can reliably look for both Nadu with cards like Summoner’s Pact and Shuko with Urza’s Saga. This list gets to play more than one Cavern of Souls, since you’ll sometimes want one to name Giant for Primeval Titan and one on Wizard, which covers both Nadu (Bird Wizard) and the Thassa’s Oracle (Merfolk Wizard) you’re looking to win the game with.

This is just one of the ultra-powerful things to be on the lookout for now that Modern Horizons 3 has dropped. There are plenty of other cards to keep an eye on: Ugin’s Labyrinth, Harbinger of the Seas, and plenty of others. Nadu is especially powerful, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like a Shuko ban in Modern in the next few months.

For now we can continue brewing and doing whatever we want, and I’ve been pretty excited to scour the Internet and see just what everyone’s coming up with! That’s all for today, and I’ll see y’all on the next one.