Nicol Bolas, Commander

Before I get started, I just wanted to give a shout-out to my fellow writers on StarCityGames.com who are able to participate in the SCG Tour Season One Invitational this weekend. I wish you luck and hope you have great fun! It looks like Pete Hoefling and the gang are pulling out all stops to make this tournament a blast, and I look forward to one time being able to make the trip to Roanoke to join them. The dates for 2017 line up on the weekends I have my kids, so I’ve got my fingers crossed for 2018…

Wow, Hour of Devastation is rolling deep on the Commander goodies, isn’t it? I wrote about the amazing Neheb, the Eternal as your commander last week, and we’ve got even more legendary creatures previewed, including the three “forgotten” Gods of Amonkhet.

While the original five Gods from Amonkhet were cool, I felt like they were all just a little bit clunky for Commander. It was a fun challenge building around them, but I never got the sense that any of them were just off-the-chain powerful as a commander.

These new Gods are a different matter altogether. Each of them is chock-full of potency on its own, and if you build an entire Commander deck with one in mind, it feels to me that the resulting deck will certainly be high on the power scale. Zombie tribal already has plenty of fantastic choices for a Commander, but then Wizards comes along and prints The Scorpion God, who is just flat-out insane in a Zombie tribal deck.

Their “dies to hand” ability is subtly an insane superpower that draws parallels to Derevi, Empyrial Tactician. That card’s ability to circumvent the Commander tax proved to be very overpowered, and Wizards R&D correctly added a delayed trigger for these new Gods not returning to your hand until the next end step. Even so, (almost) never having to pay more than the printed mana cost each time you cast one means you can quite reliably have each of these available to you once you hit that initial mana threshold outside of counterspells and graveyard hate. The beauty is, even in the face of extraordinary measures to send these Gods back to the Command Zone, they still can just operate just like every other Commander.

Like many of you, I’ve already started sketching out Commander decklists for all three cards. Then it occurred to me… as awesome as these three cards are, they are merely hench-Gods to one of the biggest Big Bads of the Magic multiverse—Nicol Bolas! And while Nicol Bolas is currently a planeswalker, there is a copy of Nicol Bolas as a legendary creature we could build a Commander deck around and stuff it full of all his newest machinations and shenanigans, including all three Gods from Hour of Devastation.

All the Nicol Bolas You Can Handle

Throw in Nicol Bolas, the Deceiver while you’re at it!

In fact, not only can we have Nicol Bolas as our Commander, but we also now have three different versions of the Bolas planeswalker, which dramatically ups the chances of bending time and space by having the legendary creature on the battlefield alongside a planeswalker version! How cool is that? I mean, who could stand before the awesomeness of having double Nicol Bolas side by side?

The original Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker is still probably the most powerful of the bunch, but Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh is no slouch, especially at one mana cheaper. While the planeswalkers found in the Planeswalker Decks are intentionally powered down to keep the deck prices accessible to newer players, I think even Nicol Bolas, the Deceiver is a perfectly respectable card at the Commander table.

Nicol Bolas Accessories

Speaking of the planeswalker decks, I’m actually digging the “Bolas Matters” cards for our Bolas Commander deck too! Wasp of the Bitter End isn’t bad as a 2/1 flier for two, and if it sticks around, it becomes a Murder once we cast a Bolas planeswalker and then sits in the graveyard, ready to Eternalize later on. Visage of Bolas provides color fixing and mild acceleration while also searching up Nicol Bolas, the Deceiver.

Gem of Becoming is a classic Nicol Bolas accessory that ensures we make our next three land drops and have all three Grixis colors.

Dark Intimations, Throne of the God-Pharaoh, and Gate to the Afterlife provided some nice foreshadowing the impending arrival of Bolas in recent sets, and now we’ve got some more from Hour of Devastation with Imminent Doom, God-Pharaoh’s Gift, Torment of Hailfire, and the actual card Hour of Devastation. God-Pharaoh’s Gift had me looking at having more utility-style creatures that I’d certainly like to bring back from the graveyard with Eternalize later.

A quick aside regarding Torment of Hailfire: I can’t help but imagine Nicol Bolas arriving and in a thunderous voice announcing death and carnage by Hailfire. Then his speech is interrupted by Southern Jimmy.

Southern Jimmy: “Hailfire? I didn’t know you were a demon.”

Nicol Bolas: “I am not a demon.”

Southern Jimmy: “Then why are you throwing around Hailfire?”

Nicol Bolas: “Are you trying to say Hellfire?”

Southern Jimmy: “Isn’t that what you’re saying?”

Nicol Bolas: “It’s Hailfire.”

Southern Jimmy: “Right. Fire from Hell.”

Nicol Bolas: “Hail. Fire.”

Southern Jimmy: “And brimstone, yeah I get it. So are you a Demon or what?”

Nicol Bolas incinerates Southern Jimmy. Poor Southern Jimmy!

(I get to make this joke because I’m a born and bred Virginian.)

End aside.

Henchmen

The Hour of Devastation Gods are the henchiest of henchmen and truly awesome in this deck. They are so powerful, forcing your opponents to go to extraordinary lengths to permanently deal with them, that when you get around to casting Nicol Bolas from the Command Zone, your opponents’ removal options for it might have dried up. I was originally thinking of including a bunch of creatures with Eternalize, but since The Scarab God and God-Pharaoh’s Gift both Eternalize any creature, I decided against it.

I was also thinking of tapping creatures with Eternal in their title, but only two really jumped out at me as worthy of a spot in this deck. Neheb, the Eternal is amazing as a commander but does good work here as one of the 99. His mana boost can be most useful in casting the very expensive Nicol Bolas and potential Commander tax payments. Wildfire Eternal is the other one I think will do some good work, potentially letting you cast an expensive spell for free.

Tezzeret the Schemer’s recent appearance in the Kaladesh story showed that he’s still got contact with Nicol Bolas, though so far he hasn’t shown up in the Amonkhet storyline. He’s gotta be lurking around somewhere, though. I have a fair number of artifacts, so his artifact-centric abilities should still be useful, but honestly, I think his ramp and color-fixing ability making those Etherium Cells is what we need him for—Nicol Bolas cards are expensive!

Archfiend of Ifnir got added to the mix because I thought cycling it for later Eternalizing sounded okay, but as I fleshed out my 99, I found myself adding more and more cyclers, so that makes Archfiend even better.

Supporting Cast

Skullclamp is an almost auto-include for every Commander deck, but the card does insane things alongside The Locust God. So does Nin, the Pain Artist. There are lots of activated abilities that Training Grounds helps reduce the cost for. I added a few actual Zombies like Cryptbreaker and Grave Titan to provide a little synergy with The Scarab God’s triggered ability. Baleful Strix and Mulldrifter are fantastic cards to Eternalize. I also peppered in some cycling creatures for Eternalize targets and to help turn on Gate to the Afterlife.

I added Bloodsoaked Champion and Reassembling Skeleton as early targets for Skullclamp card draw and to give you a battlefield presence after a wipe. The creatures make pretty good targets for The Scorpion God too. I had more for them to do in earlier drafts of the deck, but I think they still do fine in the current list.

Grixis Good Stuff

I rounded out the deck with lots of Grixis good stuff cards—a little removal, a little counterspell action, a little utility. Cruel Ultimatum might be more accurately grouped under the Nicol Bolas Accessories section, but hey, you can’t get more Grixis good than Cruel Ultimatum.

So without further ado, here is my ultimate Nicol Bolas deck – featuring four Nicol Bolas cards – ready and waiting for Hour of Devastation!

Nicol Bolas

Bennie Smith

Test deck on 06-30-2017

Commander

Creatures (24)

Planeswalkers (4)

Lands (39)

What do you think? How would you go about building this differently? Are there any obvious inclusions I overlooked?

New to Commander?

If you’re just curious about the format, building your first deck, or trying to take your Commander deck up a notch, here are some handy links:

Commander Primer Part 1
(Why play Commander? Rules Overview, Picking your Commander)
Commander Primer Part 2
(Mana Requirements, Randomness, Card Advantage)
Commander Primer Part 3
(Power vs. Synergy, Griefing, Staples, Building a Doran Deck)
Commander Starter Kits 1
(kick start your allied two-color decks for $25)
Commander Starter Kits 2
(kick start your enemy two-color decks for $25)
Commander Starter Kits 3
(kick start your shard three-color decks for $25)