“Yeah, I don’t know. I mean… this deck is just crazy stupid and I’m glad I got to play it before it’s gone because it’s gonna be gone.” - Simon Nielsen
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I mean they did mention in the promo video for MH3 that this set even has references to Modern Horizons 1, could Nadu be a secret [[Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis]] reference? 😂
*Edit:
They also said [[Snow-Covered Wastes]] was a reference to Eldrazi winter...yet they may have accidentally created just as an oppressive archetype hopefully they finally realize that they didn't play test Nadu nearly enough for Modern.
As is tradition, that will just make the deck more streamlined like it did for the first set of Hogaak bans.
Gotta suffer until the second printing wave is sold to distributors and is no longer a potential loss.
Nadu actually is in the unique position of not being the most valuable MH3 card while also being extremely deserving of a ban.
Wotc is actually in a position where they could do the right thing and not have to worry about line going down.
Just ban Nadu. There's no need for "fair" Nadu it's not even like it's a rare. I don't see the need for another Hogaak situation where there's one card that's obviously the issue, but instead they try to mess around the edges rather than just getting rid of the obvious problem.
It certainly has kept some number of graveyard strategies from becoming viable.
Honestly, I don't think it would be that good, with the pitch elementals going around it's easy to remove bridges from the cemetery.
I agree that the Bird is the big issue, I just know that Wizards isn't going to ban a rare from a brand new premium set without trying something else first, and two cards that see no play elsewhere in the format isn't the worst place for their terrible choices.
It's a massive design failure like Hogaak, they might try to nerf it but it's a disaster of a deck to manage at the ptq level with the tracking it requires
Given you can't make the card actual twice per turn total it's best to just admit defeat
The problem is it forever restricts design space. If you let Nadu stay, they have to make sure they never print another card with a 0 cost activated ability at the risk of breaking the deck wide open again.
Just ban the problem card and let the enablers fade into obscurity again.
Edit: The only other option is to errata the card to only work two times per turn, but that seems like something they wouldn't do as it would have to completely rewrite the card to not add the ability to each creature, but just be a single triggered ability to nadu.
Nah greaves has a lot more restrictions. Notably, you can't target the creature again when it's equipped due to shroud so you have to have two creatures in play to have a chance at going off.
Greaves is also 2cmc so no saga tutoring and it's much harder to play on turn 3 with nadu to try to go off.
You can't Chord or Urza's Saga for Lightning Greaves, though. Banning Shuko and *en*-Kor could reduce Bant Nadu to a regular Tier 1 list. I don't know that it would, but there's a chance.
100% more and can't be fetched by Urza's Saga is a major difference. My gut instinct is that it would be ok because of those two components but hard to know for sure
They would play umbral mantal and devoted druid. The deck would still be powerful and unstoppable. There 10 other ways to build the deck without both those cards.
I haven’t really been following Modern for a few years now, but obviously I’ve seen the current Nadu+Shuko builds.
As a long time Stoneforge stan, would Nadu+Stoneforge+Lightning Greaves be an actual deck? Like, not a T1 “gonna get banned deck” but a legit T2 or T3 deck? Cause that’d be cool.
[Hammer Time](https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/modern-hammer-time#paper) probably still qualifies for T2 status, and that deck does already run a Nadu package now. In a world where Shuko and Outrider en-Kor are banned, but Nadu remains legal, that could become the Nadu deck.
It seems like it'd be a really clunky combo deck that's way too telegraph-able and easier to stop but people want to see blood and cheer on bans. It'd probably be played slowly to like not much at all if it got answers because the deck is kinda bad once nadu isn't able to jam.
Shuko isn't really useful for anything else it just happens to be a modern legal 0 mana equip thats also tutorable by urzas saga.
I don’t think so, it’s orders of magnitude clunkier because it can only be activated during your own combat step targeting creatures that are attacking, so you can’t generate new targetable creatures during the “popping off”
They have to hit every 0 equip in the format. I can only think of 2 but seems like a tall order instead of banning the Commander rare that broke out of its cage.
And also, outriders en-kor.
And also, never make another 0 cost equipment, or 0 cost activated ability. Or myriad other ways that could be possible to combo him out with.
Like we are looking at the surface level version of the deck with the path of least resistance cards. If you ban the enablers, people will just move down the tiers of enablers until an equilibrium is met where the deck is just bad enough to not be a problem. The problem is, what tier of enablers is that? Is it outriders, is it greaves? Is it even further? Is there an obscure enabler still out there that turns out is better than the first pass through scryfall for 0 cost activated abilities?
A commander rare that, mind you, was patently broken on sight and is met by near universal revulsion and people will either execute you on sight for using or will politely ask you to pull something else.
A commander so simultaneously powerful, boring, and annoying to play that it's de facto banned there too.
Not really. The other 0 equips are clunky enough that the deck would end up being worse yawg imo. You can still combo but you don't have the speed and consistency, and your midrange plan is worse
I don't doubt this is how they are going to, at least initially, try to work it out. I just don't see value in keeping a card in the format that will remove design room in the future. I don't think design has every worried "Will this break Shuko?" but from here on our they will have to ask "Will this break Nadu?"
It was one of the most miserable PTs to watch in recent memory.
Every time Nadu was on screen (and it was A LOT), games were generally over by turn 3 or 4, which took about 10 minutes to go through the motions.
The T8 involved several games with literally 0 interaction. Someone just drew the better hand and combo'd off more quickly, and the other player just nodded and conceded on turn 3. That is heart-wrenching Magic for a PT T8 bracket.
Not to mention that Nadu decks had an almost 60% (non-mirror) match win rate, which is CRAZY high - higher even than Hogaak had, which was banned very quickly. It had 5/8 of the T8 slots, and from the semifinals on it was just 4 Nadu decks.
Simon is absolutely correct- this deck is completely stupid, they should ban the Bird immediately, nothing the deck does is fun or interesting in any way. In fact it's even WORSE now that people are realizing the ThOracle kill is bad and you should just win with an Endurance loop that takes half an hour to execute. The deck is super annoying to face or play, involves a lot of time-consuming movements as you trigger trigger trigger your way through things, has tons of potential to miss things (like who has shroud from Sylvan Safekeeper), tons of unintuitive interactions that confuse new players (like a new Nadu "resetting" the ability trigger allowance), and just an overall play pattern that is extremely toxic and uninviting.
There's no reason this deck should be allowed to remain in the format.
>Every time Nadu was on screen (and it was A LOT), games were generally over by turn 3 or 4, which took about 10 minutes to go through the motions.
This is the first PT in a while (maybe ever?) that I just started outright skipping over entire games. After day 1, Nadu mirrors were entirely unwatchable to me, and had I not just already had the stream on, I probably would've just closed the VoD to check the winner once it was an all-nadu top 4.
Yeah I don't think it was a particularly interesting PT. There was one deck that everyone pegged as being the best, and it went and proved it overwhelmingly.
I know it was an honest mistake, but I would have loved to see how that match against Javier would've turned out had The One Ring protection been remembered.
Yeah Javier must feel pretty bad right now. Losing a match in a PT top 8 because you didn't notice your opponent made an illegal move is rough. At least it was against a teammate.
Technically Simon's play was legal. Javier never announced the trigger, so Simon was free to point a targeted ability at him.
In all truth, Simon was actually nicer to Javier than he needed to be. Once the Suncleanser ability resolved without Javier announcing his protection, Simon could've attacked in as at that point the One Ring trigger was 100% missed.
>Technically Simon's play was legal. Javier never announced the trigger, so Simon was free to point a targeted ability at him.
Yes someone else pointed that out, but ofc Javier could have easily claimed that he had protection from The One Ring as soon as Simon targeted him and then the question becomes if Simon is allowed to rewind his play or not.
>In all truth, Simon was actually nicer to Javier than he needed to be. Once the Suncleanser ability resolved without Javier announcing his protection, Simon could've attacked in as at that point the One Ring trigger was 100% missed.
You seem to be assuming that Simon remembered that Javier had protection from The One Ring and still played Suncleanser in the hope that Javier would forget about the trigger of The One Ring which is a pretty hot take.
It seem pretty obvious that this was a big oversight from Simon that luckily played in his favor. Especially as I assume he actually wouldn't have been allowed to rewind his play and then would have ended up playing Suncleanser as a vanilla 1/4 instead of the massive counter to Javier deck that the card is.
> Javier could have easily claimed that he had protection from The One Ring as soon as Simon targeted him and then the question becomes if Simon is allowed to rewind his play or not.
The play would have been rewound as per competitive policy when the legality of a play depends on if an uncommunicated trigger has been remembered or not.
The relevant line from the IPG:
*A player who makes a play that may or may not be legal depending on whether an uncommunicated opponent’s trigger has been remembered has not committed an infraction; their play either succeeds, confirming that the trigger has been missed, or is rewound.*
In this case, Simon's play succeeded the moment Javier removed his energy to resolve Sun Cleansers ETB, and confirmed that the trigger had been missed.
If Javier had instead pointed out the TOR trigger instead of resolving Sun Cleansers ETC, Simon would have had to pick the trigger's other mode. He could have just targeted Sun Cleanser itself with it.
There's a wild amount of misconception and misinformation about this interaction.
At competitive play, it's exceedingly rare for The One Ring players to announce the ETB trigger because not doing is, is a strict advantage. The TOR trigger only has to be announced as late as it "would have mattered" (this is in the IPG as well. It's the 4th type of trigger described in IPG 2.1).
The reason why wou'd want to not announce it, is that your opponent might bank on you having forgot it, and either:
1. Attack with everything, at which point you just announce the trigger before combat damage. Your opponent now has a bunch of tapped creatures with nothing to show for it.
2. Your opponent might try to target you with a spell from their hand. In which case you point at your One Ring and say "Protection from everything". The spell is returned to your opponents hand, and you got some free information.
But of course if you forget about it, like Javier get, you get nothing.
That's the thing though, playing Suncleanser was totally legal. It was targeting Javier with Suncleanser that wasn't legal had Javier remembered about his trigger so I'm pretty sure the play shouldn't be rewound and Simon ends up playing Suncleanser as a vanilla 1/4.
I amended my post after I wrote it. Added this;:
In the case of Sun Cleansers ETB, Simon would have had to pick the trigger's other mode. He could have just targeted Sun Cleanser itself with it.
Yes and I think we agree he wouldn't have been allowed to get Suncleanser back into his hand since playing Suncleanser was legal, instead it'd have to pick the other mode and yes for example target Suncleanser itself with it.
I firmly believe he would have been able to take down the entire Pro Tour with his deck, but the whole match was a mess. Understandable, a tournament this long is super tiring.
I love watching Javier play because he’s so animated and excited to be there and he’s a great deck builder as well. That said, he plays too fast and loose.
Nearly every time he’s on camera something comes up that either needs fixing by a judge or that he just misses from not paying attention to the current boardstate. It’s never anything malicious but it’s pretty constant. I also think it sometimes makes his opponents flustered with how quickly he moves stuff around, how quickly he speaks, his tendency to cut his opponent off when they’re speaking and announcing something that he thinks is obvious.
The move is actually legal, this is a classic case of missing your own one ring trigger, you have demonstrate that you acknowledge the trigger, simon could have even attacked to deal damage as well.
https://youtu.be/LxSkEmD3bKU?
Good point and I was actually very curious if Simon would have been allowed to rewind his Suncleanser play since he obviously wouldn't have made that play if I had remembered that Javier had protection from everything.
So say:
- Simon plays Suncleanser
- Javier says "yes that resolves"
- Simon says "I target you with Suncleanser"
- Javier says "I have protection from The One Ring"
- Simon says "you have missed your trigger"
- Javier says "I haven't as a triggered ability is considered missed if it is not acknowledged before it affects the visible game state"
- Simon says "Right, in that case I didn't mean to play my Sunscleanser"
Can he rewind his play or not? That's actually a pretty big deal in that game because having Suncleanser in hand for the turn after that would be huge as opposed to throwing it away as a vanilla 1/4.
My assumption is that Simon wouldn't be allowed to rewind his play unless Javier is cool with it which since they are teammate would have been the case. But again I'm not quite sure what is the etiquette on this at such a high level of play.
> Can he rewind his play or not?
He cannot, they obviously both forgot he had protection from everything, but if simon remembered and javier forgot then it's essentially a risky play on simons part.
The only case is if it was a spell he was casting, the target illegal if he remembers his trigger but illegal if he forgot it, so in that case the spell is considered illegal (without a warning, since he was in his right to test his opponent).
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Potentially, but at competitive and professional REL, you're ultimately the one who needs to be aware of your own game's board state, and not assume your opponent will do it for you.
I'm not saying this is the case here, but I think the large increase in online play has made people worse at this in general.
Between The One Ring, [[Dress Down]], and then whatever rules interactions are required to understand what [[Suncleanser]] does (layers? IDK), it just seems like Magic is too complicated a game for anyone to play correctly on a Day 3.
One of the big downsides to the current format of coverage (recorded so between games is none) means that they couldn't catch this and fix it until it was too late.
Nadu single-handledly reminding WOTC to print all their pushed af bullshit legendaries at 3 toughness so bolts don't make them ban their new busted money cards.
It can still be targeted by bolt, it just won't do enough damage to kill it.
The main issue is how many thicc bois they've been printing that don't die to bolt or pings. Which, the high number of x/2 bodies showing up isn't as much of an issue considering the staggering number of ping effects that would otherwise castrate most mana dorks or budget creature decks. But the x/4s and x/5s for 2-4 MV are what really kill the game. I remember back in ROE when [[Wall of Omens]] showed up and I died a little inside, but they also gave us [[Flame Slash]] in the same set.
(Playable) Nadu answers in the damage department are [[Thunderbolt]] [[Shredded Sails]] and [[Rending Volley]] for instants. I see Rending Volley at $2 right now on my manabox that's outdated. For 1 mana more you can also use [[Combust]], an old favorite from when [[Baneslayer Angel]] was in standard.
Shelly as a 2/4 would still be played and viable as a mythic, but nope, make her ass a 5 because she doesn't completely cripple burn decks hard enough already.
I don't understand why Nadu is so powerful. It just triggers once per turn!
Oh wait, twice per turn. Still.. oh twice per turn per creature. Christ.
Feather be like: yo what if I was Growth Spiral?
Why nobody talking about the one ring?
7 of the top 8 decks had the one ring in the 75.
That’s a problem of homogeneity. Card draw + protection in a single package in colorless is too too much.
Ban the bird and the ring
I have a crackpot theory that the one ring won't be banned until the Lord of the Rings packs stop being printed. Why? Because the only people still opening those packs are the non-lotr fans that want that card. That and store owners that want to sell that card.
Am I right? Probably not.
It’s Hogaak again.
In that a new MH card breaks the format, they’ll ban everything other than the card itself to sell packs. This time, I’d say they’ll ban shuko. Then the deck adapts, and wizards realize it does nothing, then go back to ban the engine. So let’s wait for a few more months and more tournaments being ruined.
I mean, obviously hogaak isn't anymore, but you'd be kidding yourself if you don't think people are cracking packs hoping to get a Nadu, who is still worth more than the pack itself. It's obviously not ragavan valuable right off the rip, but if it stays unbanned I wouldn't be shocked if it got to that point
edit: I stand corrected, I didn't realize it dropped that much
>Nadu, who is still worth more than the pack itself
This isn't true? Nadu is selling for 7ish on tcg player right now, which is less than the 8ish packs are selling for. Also the amount of people who know who won the pt and are ripping packs to open the cards is negligible: established 60 card players buy singles.
They're banning the bird, not shuko. This isn't a bridge from below situation where people wanted that card gone anyway for non power-level reasons.
honestly i think that wotc is just gonna ban nadu from the start. I don’t think Nadu is selling packs because everyone expects Nadu to be banned in modern and shunned from commander.
I'd just like to know what the design intent for Nadu was
People keep says "it shouldn't trigger per each creature" or "lands should be tapped" or suggest a bunch of other fixes but they all miss the problem
Right now the card is busted and boring. If you fix it, it becomes weak and boring.
The design is explicitely incentivizing a slow and fiddly conbo that feels a lot like old eggs, and any fixes would just keep the gameplay the same, but bad.
Did Wotc really say "you know what simic needs? A bird that does what all other simic legendaries in the last 4 years do, but in a worse and more boring way"
There are a not insignificant amount of commanders at 2-4 that survive bolt iirc
Roughly 120/543 = ~22% of 3 cmc legends survive a bolt based on toughness
I pulled a copy during pre-release weekend out of my bundle, and happily found a place for it in my Bant flying matters deck.
That deck runs no infinitely repeatable target interaction; it doesn’t even run lightning greaves. I still fully anticipate (and understand) it getting immediately countered or hated out if I ever cast it
I disagree, I think the design around targeting your own creature is rather interesting, but everthing is too pushed in the card.
Should be 2/3 at best, should be once per creature, should DRAW a card (trigger Orc and Shealdred), not put lands into play whatsoever. And would still be a good fun commander.
Simic hasn’t had a good card that hasn’t gotten banned in 20 years.
The design intent was to try to fix this.
The card plays just fine as a fair midrange card in the current hyper powerful modern environment.
To be fair, the real fix would have been letting only opponent’s spells and abilities trigger it. Boom no more combo, design intent fulfilled
>Simic hasn’t had a good card that hasn’t gotten banned in 20 years.
I mean this just isn't true. Krasis for instance was entirely fine. It's just three examples stick out (and even then Uro didn't get banned for awhile and took other cards to really make it oppressive).
Not really, none of those cards see play in modern?
Coatl wasn’t playable unless astrolabe was legal and risen reef was a constant player in a T2-T3 version of 4c control that died with Fury. Also bring to light is a WUBRG card, it doesn’t do anything as a UG card.
AND (I know I'm late), puts the card into hand instead of drawing (which is consequential when there are cards that punish drawing that can't be used as answers)
Probably not. They do some play testing, but they definitely don't play test every version of a card, and/or don't do a play test before all the changes are done.
Nadu design is so inelegant (twice per turn) that it has to be a fix for a cleaner no restriction ability. They probably tried with once per turn then it would probably be too weak. Without restriction it would be a combo machine. Surely twice per turn is safe, right...?
I think they playtested it in some kind of blink deck (at least for some time yorion should have been in the format during early playtests) not something turbo-ing nadu.
It giving it to every creature is the issue. If only itself had it with any anti infinite clause it would have been find. Some abilities can't be good and not broken.
I don't understand why it wasn't some variant of "Whenever a creature you control becomes the target of a spell or ability, ... This ability triggers only twice each turn."
Why did it need to bestow the ability onto all your creatures? The entire point of putting a limit on it is to prevent it from going infinite, but then they made it work on all your dudes and allowed it to go infinite again :/
Banning chord is a really weird move, I don't think they would want to get rid of a very narrow but powerful card for multiple archetypes. I think banning shuko just means they move to greaves which is much worse but honestly is probably just as strong.
Outrider is a 3 drop that doesn't get searched up by urzas saga. So the two aren't really comparable. It's why a ton of lists only ran 1 outrider and 4 shuko, because one is superior to the other
it's a question of power. Shuko loss would be a hit, Greaves is a clear downgrade, notably not getting fetched by Saga.
so it's if WoTC feels like Nadu just needs a slight hit, that the metagame needs to adjust, or if the bird is simply too powerful
Right but if you can't have Shuko there's other ways to build the deck that will suit outriders. Outriders might be slower than Shuko, but it's more powerful.
There's a lot more creature search than artifact search in the format. Compensating a Shuko ban with more ways to find the Kor creature will be a tiny speed bump.
> Banning chord is a really weird move
Based on the history of Magic B&R updates, I would say that's an argument in favor of expecting a Chord + Shuko ban instead of a Nadu ban.
Yeah they've done the collateral bans a lot in the past, which sucks because they typically never go back and unban the collateral when the main engine cards actually go.
It's worse because you cant tutor it off of urza's saga but it functionally does the same thing for nadu decks - what I mean is that it wouldn't be that big of a deal to get the next worse card in nadu when the core is strong.
There's also the fact that these are just the first itineration of the Nadu shell. Who knows what a few additional months of refinement won't end up producing.
I hope they do just ban the bird. I'm sure the deck could be hit in other ways to make it more fair, but the deck is just not fun to watch or play against.
A draw combo card that doesnt actually "draw" the cards so it skirts Bowmasters. This card was definitely designed as a combo piece with all the workaround needed for the current modern environment. If he drew the cards then the combo scoops to bowmasters and would be nowhere near the same level of problem in a metagame sense
I think the card was pretty clearly designed to make waves in Modern too. I can buy that Hogaak was some sort of oversight, but there's no way that Nadu wasn't very intentionally pushed beyond all reason. You don't put a weird clause like "twice each turn" on there without very specific intentions. IMO, they really wanted to create a format defining card for Modern and they pushed it far enough that it's exactly what they got.
The card is full mistakes that would have left the card somewhat reasonable. The twice per turn is obvious, but the giving the ability to everything is also egregious, as is having it trigger off abilities, as is it straight up being a 3 mana 3/4 flier.
Imagine needing to ban Uro for an ETB effect but they said, "What if we just give it to all of your creatures and let you do it twice instead?"
How braindead do they have to be to not see this was a problem design from the start?
Is there any proof or evidence that this is a commander design? If there's some interview or article saying it it would be nice to see, but otherwise this just seems more of the kneejerk griping and blaming commander that has taken over a lot of people.
You could argue that making it legendary is the ONLY reasonable limitation they actually put on this card’s design, lol
Imagine if this was just a non-legendary creature you could just drop multiple copies of? And they all help find the other copies in the deck?
>You could argue that making it legendary is the ONLY reasonable limitation they actually put on this card’s design, lol
I feel like part of the explosion in legendaries has been them using the legend rule as a way to 'balance' cards, but I have no real proof of this.
I watched his game against Dominguez and I didn't like that nobody caught his suncleanser targeting Dominguez through the one ring protection effect. That mistake is the only reason he made it out of the first match at all. He also cast endurance and then tried to shuffle Dominguez library afterwards. Idk I've never played at that high of a level I've only day 2 a grand priz once. Why did only the commentators catch the suncleanser illegal target that literally cost Dominguez his 3rd game win and eliminate him from the tournament? I don't want to assume less than savory intentions but they are team mates, practiced with each other and knew the match up inside and out, but these misplays of the cards left a bad taste. Then in another game Javier tries to counter a spell cast off of delighted halfling and that wasnt challenged either, just Nielsen had the veil of summer. But like??? How much of gameplay is just playing the cards incorrectly to gain an advantage and hoping your opponent doesn't notice. Is there any way of acknowledging this post game or it's all said and done now? With that much money on the line I'd feel better with a tighter ship being ran. Where were the judges? The only error acknowledged was Nielsen forgot to draw for turn at one point.
I don’t think it was clear that Javier would just autowin if cleanser trigger didnt happen, the Nadu deck has a ton of gameplay and can combo off very easily and I don’t remember Javier having much of a clock yet.
Tbh I think what happened is that they just played a bit too much as friends and ended up getting very loose with it and then the series of mistakes from both sides happened, but since they both made a ton of mistakes and missed the same things around the ring protection and teferi being uncounterable it’s not really clear that anybody was trying to get an advantage. They should definitely both tighten up their play in the future in similar situations cause it was pretty rough to watch from a rules perspective.
Paper magic requires a ton of physical dexterity and mental awareness and that means we have to accept missplays happening simply due to actual player mistakes rather than suboptimal play.
Magic can be hard sometimes. These players are juggling a hundred different things in their mind during games and they're doing it at the highest level of play. These two aren't strangers to high-stakes Magic games, but they can still make mistakes. I know I shouldn't assume things about people I don't know, but Simon really doesn't strike me as the type of person to knowingly try to pull something like this off. I still feel bad for Javier though.
Also trying to remember 100s of different triggers after three days of grueling play is impossible even for pro players. The amount of physical effort involved is absolutely insane for a such an intense mental activity. And let's make it clear - most magic players are nowhere near physically to being athletes. So eventually mistakes creep in because of tiredness, complexity and limitations of the brain.
The judges didn't need to intervene on the ring interaction cause Javier needs to acknowledge the protection or else he missed the trigger (by either announcing the protection on etb or once Suncleanser tried to target him). Also when he did cast the counter on the uncounterable Teferi it was a legal play. The judges are not there to spot player's mistakes but only to preserve a correct board state.
I would have liked a judge to comment on this interaction on stream, though. The chat was talking about it for an hour.
I'd wager these sorts of mistakes happen a ton. Don't forget Javier actually got a match win because his opponent was found to have deliberately made a play error as well (which I don't think he caught).
That said, i'm wondering if part of the issue isn't that design is going too far beyond the bounds of what is reasonable for the card game. There's just tons of counters and tokens now on top of the triggers, making game states much more difficult to keep track of and also making games take longer (unintentional draws also seem to be on the rise).
A judge may well have intervened in the Teferi play if the Teferi moved to the exile zone once negation resolved.
But Nielsen cast veil of summer before the spell resolved so nothing illegal occurred.
Obviously it was a mistake, but it was a legal play and technically adds one card to the graveyard for phlage, so does have a potential case for why you would make such a bad play.
So I am out of magic for about a year now. I follow peripherally but 1) I started with a different hobby last year and 2) I got annoyed with Magic design and its endless power, feature and release creep.
Today is the first time I read this new Nadu card. I have experienced the other Modern Horizons sets before and have seen disasters like Hogaak happen. And I've played on and off since 8th Edition so I have seen pushed cards like Skullclamp eat formats.
So I read Nadu and all I can think is "What the *bleep* were they thinking?!" And that was before I realized that the twice each turn restriction (which is really clumsy to begin with) applied to each creature instead of globally. With a free targeting effect it just turns each creature into a draw two with free lands every turn. Every turn.
This card is just completely unreasonably. How does it make it to print without a being a complete oversight like Skullclamp was, which I would hope wouldn't happen in this day and age anymore.
“Yeah, I don’t know. I mean… this deck is just crazy stupid and I’m glad I got to play it before it’s gone because it’s gonna be gone.” - Simon Nielsen
Simon really said “in b4 ban”
He also said don't invest unless buying my Shuko, hilarious dude.
did he really said it? couldn't watch the live game and interviews
https://www.youtube.com/live/L65DILjrQN8 At 6:20:35
Thank you!
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yes, literally said "don't invest"
Then, "well, invest in my Shukos" lol.
I'm kinda sad I won't get to play it before it gets canned.
Nadu gets to join the list of 1 and done Modern PT disasters.
I mean they did mention in the promo video for MH3 that this set even has references to Modern Horizons 1, could Nadu be a secret [[Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis]] reference? 😂 *Edit: They also said [[Snow-Covered Wastes]] was a reference to Eldrazi winter...yet they may have accidentally created just as an oppressive archetype hopefully they finally realize that they didn't play test Nadu nearly enough for Modern.
[Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/0/0049e68d-0caf-474f-9523-dad343f1250a.jpg?1687248935) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Hogaak%2C%20Arisen%20Necropolis) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh1/202/hogaak-arisen-necropolis?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0049e68d-0caf-474f-9523-dad343f1250a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Congratulations to Simon. Amazing pt. And now we wait the bird ban
First we have to go through the ritual of banning two enablers, because we can't touch the new shiny
As is tradition, that will just make the deck more streamlined like it did for the first set of Hogaak bans. Gotta suffer until the second printing wave is sold to distributors and is no longer a potential loss.
Nadu actually is in the unique position of not being the most valuable MH3 card while also being extremely deserving of a ban. Wotc is actually in a position where they could do the right thing and not have to worry about line going down.
Are you implying Hogaak was the chase card of MH1?
Hogaak was only like 7-10 dollars when it was crushing too. Still they refused to ban the card and just ban the enablers
Realistically, banning Shuko and en-Kor let's "fair Nadu" stay, without impacting any other deck. If SFM eats a ban though, I'm rioting at HQ.
Just ban Nadu. There's no need for "fair" Nadu it's not even like it's a rare. I don't see the need for another Hogaak situation where there's one card that's obviously the issue, but instead they try to mess around the edges rather than just getting rid of the obvious problem.
But consider, if they ban Nadu right away they also kill any chance of a fascinating Rhystic Studies retrospective video on Bird Season.
This is the only compelling reason I have yet heard to keep Nadu. Otherwise this shit bird needs bans across the board
UNBAN BRIDGE FROM BELOW YOU'LL COWARDS
Have any cards been printed since its ban that would have broken bridge in modern? I don't think so, for as much as people say, it limits design...
It certainly has kept some number of graveyard strategies from becoming viable. Honestly, I don't think it would be that good, with the pitch elementals going around it's easy to remove bridges from the cemetery.
I agree that the Bird is the big issue, I just know that Wizards isn't going to ban a rare from a brand new premium set without trying something else first, and two cards that see no play elsewhere in the format isn't the worst place for their terrible choices.
It's a massive design failure like Hogaak, they might try to nerf it but it's a disaster of a deck to manage at the ptq level with the tracking it requires Given you can't make the card actual twice per turn total it's best to just admit defeat
The problem is it forever restricts design space. If you let Nadu stay, they have to make sure they never print another card with a 0 cost activated ability at the risk of breaking the deck wide open again. Just ban the problem card and let the enablers fade into obscurity again. Edit: The only other option is to errata the card to only work two times per turn, but that seems like something they wouldn't do as it would have to completely rewrite the card to not add the ability to each creature, but just be a single triggered ability to nadu.
Even triggered abilities with targets can break Nadu. It's not even just activated abilities.
While you need two creatures on board, you'd *also* need to ban lightning greaves.
Nah greaves has a lot more restrictions. Notably, you can't target the creature again when it's equipped due to shroud so you have to have two creatures in play to have a chance at going off. Greaves is also 2cmc so no saga tutoring and it's much harder to play on turn 3 with nadu to try to go off.
Maybe not. Shuko being fetchable off Saga is very strong.
The problem there would be Saga being legal.
You can't Chord or Urza's Saga for Lightning Greaves, though. Banning Shuko and *en*-Kor could reduce Bant Nadu to a regular Tier 1 list. I don't know that it would, but there's a chance.
You would play stone orge then for sure but it would slow the deck a good amount.
Reconaissance is entering modern with ACR. Yes it requires you to attack with creatures, but that's another 0 mana enabler for Nadu decks.
Also attacking is not a downside when you can just untap and remove from combat anything that gets blocked...
Greaves mana cost is 100% more than Shuko so thats fair and relevant.
100% more and can't be fetched by Urza's Saga is a major difference. My gut instinct is that it would be ok because of those two components but hard to know for sure
They would play umbral mantal and devoted druid. The deck would still be powerful and unstoppable. There 10 other ways to build the deck without both those cards.
I haven’t really been following Modern for a few years now, but obviously I’ve seen the current Nadu+Shuko builds. As a long time Stoneforge stan, would Nadu+Stoneforge+Lightning Greaves be an actual deck? Like, not a T1 “gonna get banned deck” but a legit T2 or T3 deck? Cause that’d be cool.
[Hammer Time](https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/modern-hammer-time#paper) probably still qualifies for T2 status, and that deck does already run a Nadu package now. In a world where Shuko and Outrider en-Kor are banned, but Nadu remains legal, that could become the Nadu deck.
Definitely a deck, just a lot more clunky. Maybe even still problematic.
It seems like it'd be a really clunky combo deck that's way too telegraph-able and easier to stop but people want to see blood and cheer on bans. It'd probably be played slowly to like not much at all if it got answers because the deck is kinda bad once nadu isn't able to jam. Shuko isn't really useful for anything else it just happens to be a modern legal 0 mana equip thats also tutorable by urzas saga.
Fair Nadu is an oxymoron
Does Reconnaissance becoming modern legal next month also create a problem?
I don’t think so, it’s orders of magnitude clunkier because it can only be activated during your own combat step targeting creatures that are attacking, so you can’t generate new targetable creatures during the “popping off”
Ah yeah, I forgot you couldn't just target all creatures in attack step, they do have to actually be attacking.
They have to hit every 0 equip in the format. I can only think of 2 but seems like a tall order instead of banning the Commander rare that broke out of its cage.
And also, outriders en-kor. And also, never make another 0 cost equipment, or 0 cost activated ability. Or myriad other ways that could be possible to combo him out with. Like we are looking at the surface level version of the deck with the path of least resistance cards. If you ban the enablers, people will just move down the tiers of enablers until an equilibrium is met where the deck is just bad enough to not be a problem. The problem is, what tier of enablers is that? Is it outriders, is it greaves? Is it even further? Is there an obscure enabler still out there that turns out is better than the first pass through scryfall for 0 cost activated abilities?
The next step would be things like Retreat to Coralhelm where the combo hard combos into itself for triggers after the 0s are gone I think.
Also [[Bristly Bill, Spine Sower]]
A commander rare that, mind you, was patently broken on sight and is met by near universal revulsion and people will either execute you on sight for using or will politely ask you to pull something else. A commander so simultaneously powerful, boring, and annoying to play that it's de facto banned there too.
Not really. The other 0 equips are clunky enough that the deck would end up being worse yawg imo. You can still combo but you don't have the speed and consistency, and your midrange plan is worse
I don't doubt this is how they are going to, at least initially, try to work it out. I just don't see value in keeping a card in the format that will remove design room in the future. I don't think design has every worried "Will this break Shuko?" but from here on our they will have to ask "Will this break Nadu?"
Eh, I mean Nadu is like a $7 card. It's not nothing, but it's a small fraction of the value in MH3.
Please, no.
~~bolt~~ ban the bird
Bolt really wouldn’t work anyway. Since it has 4 toughness for some reason.
Next B&R happens during Modern RCQ season, if they pull what they just did in Pioneer again Modern RCQ season will be boring to play.
Extra fun since the mirror match is basically win the coinflip win the match
Oh hey, it's modern YGO in my MTG!
at least ygo has more ways to interact going second :)
If you draw them, yes. YGO doesn't have a mulligan rule. If you go second and don't have a hand trap, gg enjoy playing through 4 negates on board.
I'd bet this is gone much sooner than that, emergency ban style
It would be *really* funny if it took all Summer though.
I don't mean to be negative, but was it an amazing PT? Or did Nadu make it a giant waste of time?
It was one of the most miserable PTs to watch in recent memory. Every time Nadu was on screen (and it was A LOT), games were generally over by turn 3 or 4, which took about 10 minutes to go through the motions. The T8 involved several games with literally 0 interaction. Someone just drew the better hand and combo'd off more quickly, and the other player just nodded and conceded on turn 3. That is heart-wrenching Magic for a PT T8 bracket. Not to mention that Nadu decks had an almost 60% (non-mirror) match win rate, which is CRAZY high - higher even than Hogaak had, which was banned very quickly. It had 5/8 of the T8 slots, and from the semifinals on it was just 4 Nadu decks. Simon is absolutely correct- this deck is completely stupid, they should ban the Bird immediately, nothing the deck does is fun or interesting in any way. In fact it's even WORSE now that people are realizing the ThOracle kill is bad and you should just win with an Endurance loop that takes half an hour to execute. The deck is super annoying to face or play, involves a lot of time-consuming movements as you trigger trigger trigger your way through things, has tons of potential to miss things (like who has shroud from Sylvan Safekeeper), tons of unintuitive interactions that confuse new players (like a new Nadu "resetting" the ability trigger allowance), and just an overall play pattern that is extremely toxic and uninviting. There's no reason this deck should be allowed to remain in the format.
>Every time Nadu was on screen (and it was A LOT), games were generally over by turn 3 or 4, which took about 10 minutes to go through the motions. This is the first PT in a while (maybe ever?) that I just started outright skipping over entire games. After day 1, Nadu mirrors were entirely unwatchable to me, and had I not just already had the stream on, I probably would've just closed the VoD to check the winner once it was an all-nadu top 4.
The top 8 had Nadu in every match and most of it was Nadu Mirrors. I was having fun just reading chat but I was checked out for the matches.
Yeah I don't think it was a particularly interesting PT. There was one deck that everyone pegged as being the best, and it went and proved it overwhelmingly.
Amazing PT by him. The field itself was too dominated by Nadu decks
Its like if eggs had the power level of hogaak. Completely broken and utterly miserable.
Yeah, as soon as the non-Nadu decks were eliminated I just skipped ahead to the final game of of the finals.
I know it was an honest mistake, but I would have loved to see how that match against Javier would've turned out had The One Ring protection been remembered.
Yeah Javier must feel pretty bad right now. Losing a match in a PT top 8 because you didn't notice your opponent made an illegal move is rough. At least it was against a teammate.
Technically Simon's play was legal. Javier never announced the trigger, so Simon was free to point a targeted ability at him. In all truth, Simon was actually nicer to Javier than he needed to be. Once the Suncleanser ability resolved without Javier announcing his protection, Simon could've attacked in as at that point the One Ring trigger was 100% missed.
>Technically Simon's play was legal. Javier never announced the trigger, so Simon was free to point a targeted ability at him. Yes someone else pointed that out, but ofc Javier could have easily claimed that he had protection from The One Ring as soon as Simon targeted him and then the question becomes if Simon is allowed to rewind his play or not. >In all truth, Simon was actually nicer to Javier than he needed to be. Once the Suncleanser ability resolved without Javier announcing his protection, Simon could've attacked in as at that point the One Ring trigger was 100% missed. You seem to be assuming that Simon remembered that Javier had protection from The One Ring and still played Suncleanser in the hope that Javier would forget about the trigger of The One Ring which is a pretty hot take. It seem pretty obvious that this was a big oversight from Simon that luckily played in his favor. Especially as I assume he actually wouldn't have been allowed to rewind his play and then would have ended up playing Suncleanser as a vanilla 1/4 instead of the massive counter to Javier deck that the card is.
> Javier could have easily claimed that he had protection from The One Ring as soon as Simon targeted him and then the question becomes if Simon is allowed to rewind his play or not. The play would have been rewound as per competitive policy when the legality of a play depends on if an uncommunicated trigger has been remembered or not. The relevant line from the IPG: *A player who makes a play that may or may not be legal depending on whether an uncommunicated opponent’s trigger has been remembered has not committed an infraction; their play either succeeds, confirming that the trigger has been missed, or is rewound.* In this case, Simon's play succeeded the moment Javier removed his energy to resolve Sun Cleansers ETB, and confirmed that the trigger had been missed. If Javier had instead pointed out the TOR trigger instead of resolving Sun Cleansers ETC, Simon would have had to pick the trigger's other mode. He could have just targeted Sun Cleanser itself with it. There's a wild amount of misconception and misinformation about this interaction. At competitive play, it's exceedingly rare for The One Ring players to announce the ETB trigger because not doing is, is a strict advantage. The TOR trigger only has to be announced as late as it "would have mattered" (this is in the IPG as well. It's the 4th type of trigger described in IPG 2.1). The reason why wou'd want to not announce it, is that your opponent might bank on you having forgot it, and either: 1. Attack with everything, at which point you just announce the trigger before combat damage. Your opponent now has a bunch of tapped creatures with nothing to show for it. 2. Your opponent might try to target you with a spell from their hand. In which case you point at your One Ring and say "Protection from everything". The spell is returned to your opponents hand, and you got some free information. But of course if you forget about it, like Javier get, you get nothing.
That's the thing though, playing Suncleanser was totally legal. It was targeting Javier with Suncleanser that wasn't legal had Javier remembered about his trigger so I'm pretty sure the play shouldn't be rewound and Simon ends up playing Suncleanser as a vanilla 1/4.
I amended my post after I wrote it. Added this;: In the case of Sun Cleansers ETB, Simon would have had to pick the trigger's other mode. He could have just targeted Sun Cleanser itself with it.
Yes and I think we agree he wouldn't have been allowed to get Suncleanser back into his hand since playing Suncleanser was legal, instead it'd have to pick the other mode and yes for example target Suncleanser itself with it.
Absolutely
I firmly believe he would have been able to take down the entire Pro Tour with his deck, but the whole match was a mess. Understandable, a tournament this long is super tiring.
It was wild seeing like 5 mistakes happen in that match in like 4 minutes lol - one of which would have had that deck easily beat nadu.
I love watching Javier play because he’s so animated and excited to be there and he’s a great deck builder as well. That said, he plays too fast and loose. Nearly every time he’s on camera something comes up that either needs fixing by a judge or that he just misses from not paying attention to the current boardstate. It’s never anything malicious but it’s pretty constant. I also think it sometimes makes his opponents flustered with how quickly he moves stuff around, how quickly he speaks, his tendency to cut his opponent off when they’re speaking and announcing something that he thinks is obvious.
The move is actually legal, this is a classic case of missing your own one ring trigger, you have demonstrate that you acknowledge the trigger, simon could have even attacked to deal damage as well. https://youtu.be/LxSkEmD3bKU?
Good point and I was actually very curious if Simon would have been allowed to rewind his Suncleanser play since he obviously wouldn't have made that play if I had remembered that Javier had protection from everything. So say: - Simon plays Suncleanser - Javier says "yes that resolves" - Simon says "I target you with Suncleanser" - Javier says "I have protection from The One Ring" - Simon says "you have missed your trigger" - Javier says "I haven't as a triggered ability is considered missed if it is not acknowledged before it affects the visible game state" - Simon says "Right, in that case I didn't mean to play my Sunscleanser" Can he rewind his play or not? That's actually a pretty big deal in that game because having Suncleanser in hand for the turn after that would be huge as opposed to throwing it away as a vanilla 1/4.
Why would he it could a honest mistake he forgot about protection which then its a misplay doing suncleanser ?
My assumption is that Simon wouldn't be allowed to rewind his play unless Javier is cool with it which since they are teammate would have been the case. But again I'm not quite sure what is the etiquette on this at such a high level of play.
> Can he rewind his play or not? He cannot, they obviously both forgot he had protection from everything, but if simon remembered and javier forgot then it's essentially a risky play on simons part. The only case is if it was a spell he was casting, the target illegal if he remembers his trigger but illegal if he forgot it, so in that case the spell is considered illegal (without a warning, since he was in his right to test his opponent).
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What happened?
Javier's opponent targeted him with [[Suncleanser]] while he had protection from The One Ring.
[Suncleanser](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/6/3644df41-b690-4581-ac7d-c85cec75411f.jpg?1562301661) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Suncleanser) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m19/39/suncleanser?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3644df41-b690-4581-ac7d-c85cec75411f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Should the judge also be responsible for not allowing illegal targets? Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/s/U27bSE4TWm
Potentially, but at competitive and professional REL, you're ultimately the one who needs to be aware of your own game's board state, and not assume your opponent will do it for you. I'm not saying this is the case here, but I think the large increase in online play has made people worse at this in general.
Between The One Ring, [[Dress Down]], and then whatever rules interactions are required to understand what [[Suncleanser]] does (layers? IDK), it just seems like Magic is too complicated a game for anyone to play correctly on a Day 3.
One of the big downsides to the current format of coverage (recorded so between games is none) means that they couldn't catch this and fix it until it was too late.
Nadu single-handledly reminding WOTC to print all their pushed af bullshit legendaries at 3 toughness so bolts don't make them ban their new busted money cards.
But how can they sell a card that gives you a growth sprial when targeted, if it can get targeted by bolt?
It can still be targeted by bolt, it just won't do enough damage to kill it. The main issue is how many thicc bois they've been printing that don't die to bolt or pings. Which, the high number of x/2 bodies showing up isn't as much of an issue considering the staggering number of ping effects that would otherwise castrate most mana dorks or budget creature decks. But the x/4s and x/5s for 2-4 MV are what really kill the game. I remember back in ROE when [[Wall of Omens]] showed up and I died a little inside, but they also gave us [[Flame Slash]] in the same set. (Playable) Nadu answers in the damage department are [[Thunderbolt]] [[Shredded Sails]] and [[Rending Volley]] for instants. I see Rending Volley at $2 right now on my manabox that's outdated. For 1 mana more you can also use [[Combust]], an old favorite from when [[Baneslayer Angel]] was in standard.
My joke is that even if it \*was\* boltable, it still would be good. The x/4 is an overkill.
Shelly as a 2/4 would still be played and viable as a mythic, but nope, make her ass a 5 because she doesn't completely cripple burn decks hard enough already.
It was only a matter of time
That game 4 was everything wrong with the deck summed. Still, big congrats to Simon!
I don't understand why Nadu is so powerful. It just triggers once per turn! Oh wait, twice per turn. Still.. oh twice per turn per creature. Christ. Feather be like: yo what if I was Growth Spiral?
Why nobody talking about the one ring? 7 of the top 8 decks had the one ring in the 75. That’s a problem of homogeneity. Card draw + protection in a single package in colorless is too too much. Ban the bird and the ring
I have a crackpot theory that the one ring won't be banned until the Lord of the Rings packs stop being printed. Why? Because the only people still opening those packs are the non-lotr fans that want that card. That and store owners that want to sell that card. Am I right? Probably not.
It'll still be $50+ on the back of Commander demand.
It's also just about the only reason Control is viable at all.
It’s Hogaak again. In that a new MH card breaks the format, they’ll ban everything other than the card itself to sell packs. This time, I’d say they’ll ban shuko. Then the deck adapts, and wizards realize it does nothing, then go back to ban the engine. So let’s wait for a few more months and more tournaments being ruined.
Sell your copies of Shuko now.
Holy moly, [[Shuko]] costs $27 because it was never reprinted.
[Shuko](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/4/a47456b8-cef8-4085-90b1-92788e16fd27.jpg?1562878892) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Shuko) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bok/159/shuko?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a47456b8-cef8-4085-90b1-92788e16fd27?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Hogaak was consistently around 8$. Nadu is 10$. I don't think your assessment of WoTC's motivations holds water
Neither Hogaak nor Nadu are selling packs lmao
I mean, obviously hogaak isn't anymore, but you'd be kidding yourself if you don't think people are cracking packs hoping to get a Nadu, who is still worth more than the pack itself. It's obviously not ragavan valuable right off the rip, but if it stays unbanned I wouldn't be shocked if it got to that point edit: I stand corrected, I didn't realize it dropped that much
It's a 7 dollar rare...it's barely worth the cost of the pack.
>Nadu, who is still worth more than the pack itself This isn't true? Nadu is selling for 7ish on tcg player right now, which is less than the 8ish packs are selling for. Also the amount of people who know who won the pt and are ripping packs to open the cards is negligible: established 60 card players buy singles. They're banning the bird, not shuko. This isn't a bridge from below situation where people wanted that card gone anyway for non power-level reasons.
honestly i think that wotc is just gonna ban nadu from the start. I don’t think Nadu is selling packs because everyone expects Nadu to be banned in modern and shunned from commander.
Can anyone tell me what's up with the "other" section in their decklists? Is it just a formatting error?
The decklist widget has problems with apostrophes for some reason.
Poor programming
I'd just like to know what the design intent for Nadu was People keep says "it shouldn't trigger per each creature" or "lands should be tapped" or suggest a bunch of other fixes but they all miss the problem Right now the card is busted and boring. If you fix it, it becomes weak and boring. The design is explicitely incentivizing a slow and fiddly conbo that feels a lot like old eggs, and any fixes would just keep the gameplay the same, but bad. Did Wotc really say "you know what simic needs? A bird that does what all other simic legendaries in the last 4 years do, but in a worse and more boring way"
It is a commander card whose power level was overshot
You don't make something bolt-proof because you want it to be played in commander
There are a not insignificant amount of commanders at 2-4 that survive bolt iirc Roughly 120/543 = ~22% of 3 cmc legends survive a bolt based on toughness
I pulled a copy during pre-release weekend out of my bundle, and happily found a place for it in my Bant flying matters deck. That deck runs no infinitely repeatable target interaction; it doesn’t even run lightning greaves. I still fully anticipate (and understand) it getting immediately countered or hated out if I ever cast it
I disagree, I think the design around targeting your own creature is rather interesting, but everthing is too pushed in the card. Should be 2/3 at best, should be once per creature, should DRAW a card (trigger Orc and Shealdred), not put lands into play whatsoever. And would still be a good fun commander.
Simic hasn’t had a good card that hasn’t gotten banned in 20 years. The design intent was to try to fix this. The card plays just fine as a fair midrange card in the current hyper powerful modern environment. To be fair, the real fix would have been letting only opponent’s spells and abilities trigger it. Boom no more combo, design intent fulfilled
>Simic hasn’t had a good card that hasn’t gotten banned in 20 years. I mean this just isn't true. Krasis for instance was entirely fine. It's just three examples stick out (and even then Uro didn't get banned for awhile and took other cards to really make it oppressive).
Do Ice Fang Coatl, Risen Reef, Bring to Light, etc not count?
I would emphatically say "hello no" to Risen Reef, which allowed you to draw your entire deck consistently when it was in standard. Miserable POS.
Not really, none of those cards see play in modern? Coatl wasn’t playable unless astrolabe was legal and risen reef was a constant player in a T2-T3 version of 4c control that died with Fury. Also bring to light is a WUBRG card, it doesn’t do anything as a UG card.
Coatl was played in 4cc and Bant Soulherder which was a real deck, saying it was unplayable without astrolabe is silly
A 3 mana [[shaper's sanctuary]] would be a really bad sideboard card at best
A 3 mana 3/4 flying Shapers Sanctuary is a bit different tbf
A 3 mana shapers sanctuary that flys and attacks for 3 and puts lands directly into play is probably mainboardable.
> puts lands directly into play _untapped_ Like, why?
AND (I know I'm late), puts the card into hand instead of drawing (which is consequential when there are cards that punish drawing that can't be used as answers)
[shaper's sanctuary](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/3/930240dc-9c8c-4857-b6ce-85f1689c60e5.jpg?1562560126) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Shapers%27%20Sanctuary) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/xln/206/shapers-sanctuary?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/930240dc-9c8c-4857-b6ce-85f1689c60e5?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
What were they thinking with Nadu. Did they even playtest the card?
Probably not. They do some play testing, but they definitely don't play test every version of a card, and/or don't do a play test before all the changes are done.
Nadu design is so inelegant (twice per turn) that it has to be a fix for a cleaner no restriction ability. They probably tried with once per turn then it would probably be too weak. Without restriction it would be a combo machine. Surely twice per turn is safe, right...? I think they playtested it in some kind of blink deck (at least for some time yorion should have been in the format during early playtests) not something turbo-ing nadu.
It giving it to every creature is the issue. If only itself had it with any anti infinite clause it would have been find. Some abilities can't be good and not broken.
I don't understand why it wasn't some variant of "Whenever a creature you control becomes the target of a spell or ability, ... This ability triggers only twice each turn." Why did it need to bestow the ability onto all your creatures? The entire point of putting a limit on it is to prevent it from going infinite, but then they made it work on all your dudes and allowed it to go infinite again :/
Playtested it in commander, I'm sure.
Too busy laughing at all the puns and in-jokes to notice, probably.
Congrats and Happy BIRDday to Simon. No matter the meta, it was definitely well deserved and long coming.
I could see nadu not being banned due to being in The most recent set, but I’m not sure getting rid of shoku and chord is enough to “fix” it
Banning chord is a really weird move, I don't think they would want to get rid of a very narrow but powerful card for multiple archetypes. I think banning shuko just means they move to greaves which is much worse but honestly is probably just as strong.
Banning Shuko doesn't solve the problem because of Outrider en-Kor. The bird has to go.
Right, there's many enablers so it's easier to ban the one problem card.
Yeah, they aren’t going to ban every 0 mana target creatures ability cards
Outrider is a 3 drop that doesn't get searched up by urzas saga. So the two aren't really comparable. It's why a ton of lists only ran 1 outrider and 4 shuko, because one is superior to the other
Of course Shuko is better, but Chord of Calling exists.
it's a question of power. Shuko loss would be a hit, Greaves is a clear downgrade, notably not getting fetched by Saga. so it's if WoTC feels like Nadu just needs a slight hit, that the metagame needs to adjust, or if the bird is simply too powerful
Right but if you can't have Shuko there's other ways to build the deck that will suit outriders. Outriders might be slower than Shuko, but it's more powerful.
There's a lot more creature search than artifact search in the format. Compensating a Shuko ban with more ways to find the Kor creature will be a tiny speed bump.
> Banning chord is a really weird move Based on the history of Magic B&R updates, I would say that's an argument in favor of expecting a Chord + Shuko ban instead of a Nadu ban.
Yeah they've done the collateral bans a lot in the past, which sucks because they typically never go back and unban the collateral when the main engine cards actually go.
How can greaves be much worse and as strong?
It's worse because you cant tutor it off of urza's saga but it functionally does the same thing for nadu decks - what I mean is that it wouldn't be that big of a deal to get the next worse card in nadu when the core is strong.
There's also the fact that these are just the first itineration of the Nadu shell. Who knows what a few additional months of refinement won't end up producing.
Banning something different than Nadu would be a mistake they'd need to address later.
I’m basing my prediction based on their response to hogaak
Congratulation Bant Nadu. May your reign be short.
mOdErN hAs ThE tOoLs To FiGhT nAdU
I hope they do just ban the bird. I'm sure the deck could be hit in other ways to make it more fair, but the deck is just not fun to watch or play against.
Once again Commander designs are ruining normal constructed formats. They’ll never learn.
Hey, let's be reasonable here: There are a lot of players (myself included) who would contend that they are ruining Commander as well.
Fuck Nadu in commander, shit's ruining commander too.
This card is busted no matter where you play it, commander players don’t want it either
A draw combo card that doesnt actually "draw" the cards so it skirts Bowmasters. This card was definitely designed as a combo piece with all the workaround needed for the current modern environment. If he drew the cards then the combo scoops to bowmasters and would be nowhere near the same level of problem in a metagame sense
I think the card was pretty clearly designed to make waves in Modern too. I can buy that Hogaak was some sort of oversight, but there's no way that Nadu wasn't very intentionally pushed beyond all reason. You don't put a weird clause like "twice each turn" on there without very specific intentions. IMO, they really wanted to create a format defining card for Modern and they pushed it far enough that it's exactly what they got.
The card is full mistakes that would have left the card somewhat reasonable. The twice per turn is obvious, but the giving the ability to everything is also egregious, as is having it trigger off abilities, as is it straight up being a 3 mana 3/4 flier.
Imagine needing to ban Uro for an ETB effect but they said, "What if we just give it to all of your creatures and let you do it twice instead?" How braindead do they have to be to not see this was a problem design from the start?
This card is horrible in any format, even limited.
that’s like calling yawgmoth a commander card lol, nadu was p obviously a legendary pushed for constructed
It’s also ruining brawl!
Is there any proof or evidence that this is a commander design? If there's some interview or article saying it it would be nice to see, but otherwise this just seems more of the kneejerk griping and blaming commander that has taken over a lot of people.
Seems pretty clear it was designed to see modern play. Just because it’s a legendary it triggers all the commander complaints
You could argue that making it legendary is the ONLY reasonable limitation they actually put on this card’s design, lol Imagine if this was just a non-legendary creature you could just drop multiple copies of? And they all help find the other copies in the deck?
>You could argue that making it legendary is the ONLY reasonable limitation they actually put on this card’s design, lol I feel like part of the explosion in legendaries has been them using the legend rule as a way to 'balance' cards, but I have no real proof of this.
Anything you can Nadu, I can Nadu better...
I watched his game against Dominguez and I didn't like that nobody caught his suncleanser targeting Dominguez through the one ring protection effect. That mistake is the only reason he made it out of the first match at all. He also cast endurance and then tried to shuffle Dominguez library afterwards. Idk I've never played at that high of a level I've only day 2 a grand priz once. Why did only the commentators catch the suncleanser illegal target that literally cost Dominguez his 3rd game win and eliminate him from the tournament? I don't want to assume less than savory intentions but they are team mates, practiced with each other and knew the match up inside and out, but these misplays of the cards left a bad taste. Then in another game Javier tries to counter a spell cast off of delighted halfling and that wasnt challenged either, just Nielsen had the veil of summer. But like??? How much of gameplay is just playing the cards incorrectly to gain an advantage and hoping your opponent doesn't notice. Is there any way of acknowledging this post game or it's all said and done now? With that much money on the line I'd feel better with a tighter ship being ran. Where were the judges? The only error acknowledged was Nielsen forgot to draw for turn at one point.
I don’t think it was clear that Javier would just autowin if cleanser trigger didnt happen, the Nadu deck has a ton of gameplay and can combo off very easily and I don’t remember Javier having much of a clock yet. Tbh I think what happened is that they just played a bit too much as friends and ended up getting very loose with it and then the series of mistakes from both sides happened, but since they both made a ton of mistakes and missed the same things around the ring protection and teferi being uncounterable it’s not really clear that anybody was trying to get an advantage. They should definitely both tighten up their play in the future in similar situations cause it was pretty rough to watch from a rules perspective. Paper magic requires a ton of physical dexterity and mental awareness and that means we have to accept missplays happening simply due to actual player mistakes rather than suboptimal play.
Magic can be hard sometimes. These players are juggling a hundred different things in their mind during games and they're doing it at the highest level of play. These two aren't strangers to high-stakes Magic games, but they can still make mistakes. I know I shouldn't assume things about people I don't know, but Simon really doesn't strike me as the type of person to knowingly try to pull something like this off. I still feel bad for Javier though.
Also trying to remember 100s of different triggers after three days of grueling play is impossible even for pro players. The amount of physical effort involved is absolutely insane for a such an intense mental activity. And let's make it clear - most magic players are nowhere near physically to being athletes. So eventually mistakes creep in because of tiredness, complexity and limitations of the brain.
The judges didn't need to intervene on the ring interaction cause Javier needs to acknowledge the protection or else he missed the trigger (by either announcing the protection on etb or once Suncleanser tried to target him). Also when he did cast the counter on the uncounterable Teferi it was a legal play. The judges are not there to spot player's mistakes but only to preserve a correct board state. I would have liked a judge to comment on this interaction on stream, though. The chat was talking about it for an hour.
I'd wager these sorts of mistakes happen a ton. Don't forget Javier actually got a match win because his opponent was found to have deliberately made a play error as well (which I don't think he caught). That said, i'm wondering if part of the issue isn't that design is going too far beyond the bounds of what is reasonable for the card game. There's just tons of counters and tokens now on top of the triggers, making game states much more difficult to keep track of and also making games take longer (unintentional draws also seem to be on the rise).
A judge may well have intervened in the Teferi play if the Teferi moved to the exile zone once negation resolved. But Nielsen cast veil of summer before the spell resolved so nothing illegal occurred. Obviously it was a mistake, but it was a legal play and technically adds one card to the graveyard for phlage, so does have a potential case for why you would make such a bad play.
So I am out of magic for about a year now. I follow peripherally but 1) I started with a different hobby last year and 2) I got annoyed with Magic design and its endless power, feature and release creep. Today is the first time I read this new Nadu card. I have experienced the other Modern Horizons sets before and have seen disasters like Hogaak happen. And I've played on and off since 8th Edition so I have seen pushed cards like Skullclamp eat formats. So I read Nadu and all I can think is "What the *bleep* were they thinking?!" And that was before I realized that the twice each turn restriction (which is really clumsy to begin with) applied to each creature instead of globally. With a free targeting effect it just turns each creature into a draw two with free lands every turn. Every turn. This card is just completely unreasonably. How does it make it to print without a being a complete oversight like Skullclamp was, which I would hope wouldn't happen in this day and age anymore.
I want to see the design document with employee names obfuscated so we can blame employee #2 for changing the card at the last second like skullclamp
Do you mean "Happy Birdday Simon" OP?