Introducing Nykthos Blue In Pioneer

Many readers may remember my first advice for the Pioneer Players Tour when the format was announced, which was to find a card you think should be banned, and prove that Wizards of the Coast (WotC) made a mistake by allowing you to play with it. I’ve also argued from the beginning that Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx is one such card. Lands that tap for multiple mana are among the most dangerous categories of Magic cards to print, and Nykthos comes with extremely little opportunity cost and offers incredible mana generation if you’re willing to build your deck around it.

WotC has been much less inclined to go after unfair mana sources in their bannings than I would be, and I played with Mox Opal in Modern for years as a result. Now, I’m working to demonstrate that they’re making the same mistake in Pioneer. Perhaps surprisingly, I think blue is the best color to take advantage of Nykthos, and I have a deck that I think is essentially without close historical analog that does so.

Let’s get straight to my current list:

This is a “combo deck” in that you’re looking to draw a precise combination of cards, but it plays as much like a ramp deck as anything else. The reason I believe this is the best Nykthos deck is that, now that Oath of Nissa and Once Upon a Time are banned, blue has the best tools to quickly find Nykthos.

Between Witching Well, Omen of the Sea, and Thassa’s Oracle, this deck has an incredible ability to control its draw steps, and the mana that it spends doing so is mana invested into permanents that add devotion for Nykthos.

While we’re essentially down a card for Witching Well and arguably down a card for Leyline of Anticipaton, none of that matters at all if we can find our deck’s central combo:

The basic play pattern with this deck is to spend the first turns building up our devotion with spells that offer card selection to make sure we have all the essential pieces; cast interactive spells that contribute to our devotion, like Reflector Mage and Ashiok’s Erasure; and then draw two to six cards with Gadwick, at which point the game is essentially over. We’ll typically spend the next turn or two playing out all the cards we’ve drawn, at which point we’ll have around ten devotion, and then we’ll use the Nykthos on the battlefield and an extra in our hand to get two Nykthos taps in a turn, which will let us Gadwick for fifteen-plus while leaving two mana up. Then we can win by casting Thassa’s Oracle. Other games, we can simply turn on either Thassa and win by attacking.

So that’s what we’re building to. Now let’s go over how we get there. First, the cards I’m not playing:

My first take on this deck included spells to help me play a more controlling, reactive game, but the more I play, the more I learn just how much better my deck functions when all my plays contribute to my devotion, and the deck plays out much better without these. I have enough tools to find Gadwick, the Wizened that I just don’t need the weaker card draw. These happened to be the cards I was playing before, but the bigger point is that I want every card in my maindeck to be a permanent.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the cards I am playing:

The Core

Four copies of each of these cards are completely locked in, and the deck would have to fundamentally change to another deck before I’d consider trimming a single copy of any of these from the maindeck.

I’ve liked 24 lands in this strategy, so that means I get sixteen remaining cards, all of which should be blue permanents to round out the deck. At this point, this is getting reminiscent of building Urza decks, where I started with a core of four copies each of Mox Opal; Mishra’s Bauble; Gilded Goose; Arcum’s Astrolabe; Oko, Thief of Crowns; and Urza, Lord High Artificer ⁠— that’s six cards, but it was a roughly twenty-land deck, so Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx would be the analog of Mox Opal here, leaving both decks with sixteen flexible slots).

The Flex Slots

Sideboard

Sideboarding

Don’t touch the core cards. I almost added “when in doubt” to the beginning of that sentence, since I used to sideboard out Witching Well sometimes, but I think that was just wrong and you shouldn’t do it.

For the most part, you’ll be cutting Ashiok’s Erasure and Agent of Treachery for Reflector Mage, Detention Sphere, and Aetherspouts against aggro decks. The fact that this is a clean swap is part of why I’m uncertain about Aether Gust in the sideboard, since finding room for this involves cutting into the core, trimming Thassa, or upgrading Fblthp or Brazen Borrower, which is somewhat low-impact.

Against ramp and control, you’ll generally start by cutting Reflector Mage for counterspells, which is some argument for a third flexible counterspell like a Summary Dismissal or Disdainful Stroke over an Aether Gust in the sideboard.

Against combo, you’ll typically cut Reflector Mage, Agent of Treachery, and maybe Brazen Borrower and bring in whichever cards make sense against their combo, like Rest in Peace and the counterspells.

Things should be pretty straightforward once you know to leave the core intact. If you’re sideboarding out all the white cards, consider also cutting one or two copies of Temple of Enlightenment, especially if you’re on the draw.

Nykthos Blue is an absolute blast to play, since you get enough mana to do crazy things very quickly, and the card selection offers a high level of agency and planning. I’m still in the process of learning whether this deck has what it takes to win the Players Tour, but in the meantime, I’ve loved exploring and playing with it, and I can honestly say I wouldn’t have written this article if secrecy before a Players Tour were still a priority of mine.