Simon Nielsen won Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3 in Amsterdam with Bant Nadu on Sunday.
Creatures (22)
- 2 Wall of Roots
- 1 Sylvan Safekeeper
- 1 Outrider en-Kor
- 1 Noble Hierarch
- 1 Endurance
- 2 Haywire Mite
- 4 Delighted Halfling
- 2 Bristly Bill, Spine Sower
- 4 Nadu, Winged Wisdom
- 4 Springheart Nantuko
Lands (26)
Spells (12)
Nielsen, the 2023 Player of the Year, is putting on an encore in 2024 with a runner-up finish at Pro Tour Murders at Karlov Manor followed by his win this weekend in the Netherlands. His active streak of top finishes moves to five in a row, dating back to Pro Tour March of the Machine in May of 2023.
Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3 will also go down in history as Pro Tour Nadu after more than a quarter of the field played decks built around the namesake card, Nadu, Winged Wisdom. Not only was the deck the most popular, but the Bant version of the deck (with 49 players) put up a Day 1 win rate of 58 percent (the four-color build with 13 pilots put up a respectable 55 percent win rate).
The deck is a creature-combo deck that looks to get Nadu on the battlefield as soon as possible then combo Shuko or Outrider en-Kor with Nadu’s ability to put all the deck’s lands on the battlefield while drawing the rest of the deck to win via recycling channel lands like Boseiju, Who Endures and Otawara, Soaring City with Endurance to remove an opposing battlefield then attack for the win with an overwhelming board. Springheart Nantuko lets the deck create an incredible number of fresh creatures to target while also allowing the deck to just win with a ton of creatures if an opponent puts too much effort on stopping the full combo.
The Nadu deck exceeded expectations, which were already high going into the weekend, putting up the best win rate of any highly played deck in the field while making up five of the Top 8 decks on Sunday. Two other decks reached the Top 8, Mono-Black Necro in the hands of Seth Manfield and Ma Noah, and a single copy of Jeskai Control from Javier Dominguez. But all of the non-Nadu decks were eliminated in the quarterfinals, leaving Nielsen, Daniel Goetschel, Eli Kassis, and Sam Pardee to determine who would hoist the trophy with the legendary bird wizard.
Nielsen and Pardee both advanced to the finals with 3-2 wins in the semis, but the finals only went four games with both players racing to see who could assemble the combo first. As Nielsen got the engine running in the fourth game, Pardee extended the hand so Nielsen didn’t have to go through the loops and got to start his celebration early.
Creatures (24)
- 4 Wall of Roots
- 1 Sylvan Safekeeper
- 1 Outrider en-Kor
- 1 Noble Hierarch
- 1 Suncleanser
- 2 Endurance
- 1 Haywire Mite
- 4 Delighted Halfling
- 1 Volatile Stormdrake
- 4 Nadu, Winged Wisdom
- 4 Springheart Nantuko
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (24)
Spells (10)
The second-most played deck was Mono-Red Storm thanks to both Ruby Medallion and Ral, Monsoon Mage from Modern Horizons 3, but the deck put up lousy numbers. At almost 10 percent of the field, the deck’s Day 1 win rate was only 33 percent, despite players like Luis Scott-Vargas, Jon Finkel, and Kai Budde playing it. The full meta breakdown can be seen below.
The Day 1 win rates show that after Nadu, Boros Energy and Mono-Black Necro had the strongest results for decks with a double-digit number of pilots. Mono-Black Grief only had six players on the deck, but it managed to have a 59 percent win rate.
View the Top 16 decklists from Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3. For all decklists check out the official coverage from WotC.
