Combo Killing People With Nethroi, Apex Of Death In Ikoria Standard

Is there any better feeling than having a plan come together? 

You spend time crafting the perfect setup and you’re going to execute it but you still have to go through the process. Finally, it’s done, and you get to see all your hard work come to fruition. Sometimes it’s a plan that yields slow returns over time. Sure, those feel nice but you don’t get the rush of an immediate windfall. 

Throughout history, Magic has had several of those effects.

Now, we get to add another to the list.

Seven mana is a steep cost and ten power doesn’t seem like a lot but you should be able to cobble together a virtual, if not a direct kill. Stay alive, fill your graveyard, and just when you’re on the brink of death, you can steal victory from the jaws of defeat. It will be like the ultimate heist movie.

Where do we begin our planning?

No matter what, you’re going to need a heavy black component to mutate Nethroi. Past that, you need green or white but not necessarily both, so we have our guidelines. Realistically, blue is the best color to pair with Nethroi if you assume you’re going to have to mill yourself heavily in order to set up a winning battlefield. 

You could try to Nethroi for value but when your options are limited to ten power, it doesn’t seem worth the seven-mana investment. I’d only be interested in that if the deck is quite good at setting up Nethroi incidentally or actively wants the 5/5 lifelink body. Otherwise, mutating Nethroi doesn’t seem as attractive as playing Eerie Ultimatum. 

The fact that Nethroi is a creature is definitely a benefit, especially thanks to the reprinting of cards like Corpse Churn, Death’s Oasis, and Fiend Artisan, which is probably the strongest card to pair with Nethroi, no matter which build you’re working on. Milling yourself just to set up Nethroi wouldn’t be a good plan if putting things in our graveyard didn’t help our other cards, so having Fiend Artisan as an enormous threat makes a Plan B viable (or, as we say in the heist business, a “double-cross”).

One of the biggest questions with many of the wedge Apexes is whether you actually need the third color of mana in order to hard-cast them when necessary. For Nethroi, it will be a case-by-case basis. I’d imagine the versions that lean midrange will be interested in casting Nethroi whereas the combo-centric versions won’t particularly care. 

If we’re filling our graveyard, maybe we can combine two different payoffs and have a multi-faceted plan. Curving Gyruda, Doom of Depths into Nethroi is obviously powerful, especially if you’re playing against a deck with sweepers. You’ll consistently be able to threaten lethal.

The easiest way to set up Nethroi is through Death’s Oasis, which is conveniently in our colors! This plan is too easy.

Witch’s Oven and Death’s Oasis were made for each other. I’ve already run afoul of Casualties of War on Magic Arena, which can’t be helped. Should your opponent let you do your thing, there’s no question that you’ll eventually bury them.

Fiend Artisan can find your Cauldron Familiars or a Lurrus of the Dream-Den to get a Witch’s Oven out of your graveyard. If you have high value, cheap targets to return, Lurrus of the Dream-Den is one of the strongest Fiend Artisan targets you could want in your deck. 

The end-game consists of Nethroi returning a pile of Fiend Artisans, Gilded Geese, and typically something big like a Cavalier of Thorns. That should be more than enough to win the game.

The plan with this version is to use Nethroi to return a lot of Edgewall Innkeepers and Fiend Artisans and overwhelming your opponent with card advantage or eventually winning with Thassa’s Oracle. If you go deep enough with Tamiyo, Collector of Tales and Merfolk Secretkeeper, Nethroi can win the game immediately thanks to the singleton Thassa’s Oracle. 

Thankfully, you don’t need Nethroi to win. All the self-mill fuels Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath, which gets you closer to seven mana and pads your life total. You can also function as a tempo deck with Fiend Artisan and Brazen Borrower. Despite being mostly a combo, your opponent still has to react to your early threats, which makes their job of killing you before you kill them much harder. 

There’s clearly some tension between Fiend Artisan and Uro, but in most games, you’ll have a clear path to head down that involves maximizing one or the other. Having both gives you the option to switch gears later if necessary. For the most part, Fiend Artisan will be used to search for additional copies of Edgewall Innkeeper, which will bury your opponent in card advantage, so the size of Fiend Artisan isn’t the most relevant aspect. Additionally, there’s enough self-milling in the deck in Tamiyo and Merfolk Secretkeeper that you might be able to escape Uro with non-creature cards anyway. 

A single copy of Lucky Clover is about where I want to be. There are only twelve adventure creatures and I certainly wouldn’t want to flood on them. 

Corpse Churn is a card you can fire off on Turn 2 if you’re lacking a Turn 3 play. Ideally, you’d wait until you had a premium target to return to mitigate the chance of missing but you don’t always have that luxury. 

With cards like Merfolk Secretkeeper to protect it, Tamiyo is very nice. You get to fill your graveyard, dig for Nethroi or Innkeeper, or return one that got killed earlier. She’s kind of the perfect card for this archetype. I started with two and quickly moved up to four. 

Your Plan A doesn’t have to be the flashiest plan you can come up with either. Sometimes it’s better to get a solid end-game with a ton of power on the battlefield, as that will be good enough most of the time. 

This deck could also have Gilded Goose, Trail of Crumbs, Witch’s Oven, and Cauldron Familiar but I’d recommend playing Death’s Oasis at that point. With no one-mana plays, this deck gets almost gets to freeroll some Indatha Triomes, which improves the manabase to a degree and gives you the option to cast Nethroi if it comes down to it.

Mire Triton and Tymaret Calls the Dead are solid enablers but weak cards overall. Ideally, you wouldn’t have to play cards of that power level, but if we want to stick to two colors, we have to make do with what we have.

Although this deck doesn’t have the self-mill engine of the other versions, it’s much easier to set up a one-turn kill with Ayara, First of Locthwain, Gray Merchant of Asphodel, and some black creatures. Command the Dreadhorde accomplishes a similar goal, albeit with a different set of restrictions. 

You could lean harder on Skull Prophet and Corpse Churn but it doesn’t seem necessary. Getting to seven mana is a tall order for a deck without things like Uro and Cavalier of Thorns, so that’s the main reason I’d want to play Skull Prophet. A better way to ensure you can get to seven would probably be playing Midnight Reaper or some other form of card advantage. Having Umori, the Collector as a companion could also help and wouldn’t require you to sacrifice too much. Playing Umori maindeck is also reasonable.

Again, we’re stuck with Mire Triton and Tymaret Calls the Dead but at least this deck makes good use of the small bodies with its various forms of chip damage. If white had any good self-milling, I’d be happy to explore a version of this deck with Corpse Knight to ensure the combo kill. As is, it doesn’t seem worth it.

I tried to come up with a sideboard plan that would allow us to keep Umori as our companion in sideboard games but failed miserably. You can get part of the way there, but at some point, you’re going to need Aether Gust, Mystical Dispute, and the like. They’re simply too powerful to not play.

In addition to Spark Double being a fine Nethroi target, it’s also a great Gyruda target. Again, this deck is all about putting power on the battlefield, and honestly, it might be doing that with overkill. Fifteen power is probably enough in most instances but this deck probably doubles that with regularity. 

No matter what your plan is, you can enjoy the thrilling conclusion to your well-laid plans with Nethroi.