Niv-Mizzet Reborn - Astral-Living-Genesis

[sweetwaterbob]

Thought I'd just check in to see if there have been any updates since Zendikar? I am still very into this deck and enjoy piloting it. Anything from Commander Legends stick out?

[trevorreznikable]

I was wondering the same thing, I've been playing the deck quite a bit with one single change and I'm hoping to find new ideas to share

[darrenhabib]

Thought I'd just check in to see if there have been any updates since Zendikar? I am still very into this deck and enjoy piloting it. Anything from Commander Legends stick out?

I was wondering the same thing, I've been playing the deck quite a bit with one single change and I'm hoping to find new ideas to share

The only changes I've made were trying out some Zendikar Rising modal land/spells with Glasspool Mimic // Glasspool Shore, Agadeem's Awakening // Agadeem, the Undercrypt, Valakut Awakening // Valakut Stoneforge over some basic lands.

Literally nothing popped for me in Commander Legends for the deck. Bi-colored cards were pretty limited in the set and none of the mono-colored cards gave me any credence for including.

The card that is on my radar is Kaya the Inexorable. The idea of getting the emblem means that you can keep recasting Niv, but also any of the legends in the deck and that includes Primevals' Glorious Rebirth.

[sweetwaterbob]

A deck somewhat similar to this one has been featured in an article on EDHREC https://edhrec.com/articles/epic-experi ... et-reborn/

[Haman]

i played a budget land version, i have problem getting to 5 lands sometimes... or colored screwed. Have to shelve the deck... Sometimes i wondered , for the sake of maximising niv 's draw... putting 35 lands is correct or not

[sweetwaterbob]

i played a budget land version, i have problem getting to 5 lands sometimes... or colored screwed. Have to shelve the deck... Sometimes i wondered , for the sake of maximising niv 's draw... putting 35 lands is correct or not

I've found I tend to aggressively mull so that I have a hand of lands since Niv is our go to card advantage engine.

[Epyon1201]

With the removal of eldrazi displacer would you consider the "two player lands" (not sure what people are calling them) an upgrade over the pain lands?

[darrenhabib]

With the removal of eldrazi displacer would you consider the "two player lands" (not sure what people are calling them) an upgrade over the pain lands?

I've seen the term "battlebond lands" as the first printings were in that set.

Actually I never find life to be a problem so any damage taken from the pain lands isn't really a thing and technically the battlebond lands can come in to play tapped if you are down to the last players standing.
I would just check the prices of the cards and treat them much the same.

If I really take stock of the land base and match it to the color pies of the deck I could probably get a better mix of lands as I've changed the content of the deck quite a bit over the year but haven't adapted to the fact that I don't need pain lands anymore.
I'll do it at some stage soon.

[darrenhabib]

i played a budget land version, i have problem getting to 5 lands sometimes... or colored screwed. Have to shelve the deck... Sometimes i wondered , for the sake of maximising niv 's draw... putting 35 lands is correct or not

I did play a game where I literally mulled into oblivion. It does happen with any deck however and there are 35 + 8 land cyclers, meaning it's like a virtual 42 land deck.

I haven't liked not having one of each basic as you really want to fix on particular colors sometimes with Grave Upheaval, Sylvan Reclamation, Ancient Excavation.
So this was a mistake as I was trying out the modal lands from Zendikar, but they are not important.
I think Valakut Awakening // Valakut Stoneforge is still good enough however.

I can also see that with so many cycle cards that you can also argue that flooding (drawing too many lands) is also quite hard to do.

Binding the Old Gods I feel is a solid inclusion for some land fixing and removal. I'm always on the lookout for Golgari cards as well.

Add

• Island
• Swamp
• Mountain
• Overgrown Tomb
• The World Tree
• Binding the Old Gods

Remove

• Llanowar Wastes
• Glasspool Mimic // Glasspool Shore
• Agadeem's Awakening // Agadeem, the Undercrypt
• Lore Drakkis
• Rhythm of the Wild
• Tamiyo, Collector of Tales

This brings the land count up to 37 plus the other land cyclers, so a virtual 45 lands. I think this is a good compromise between mana screw and mana flooded given the make up of the deck.

---

I did a deck build specifically around The World Tree and making a Gods deck with Golos which you can check out the full logic here => viewtopic.php?f=35&t=32555
Now The World Tree is a color fixing land potentially and then the ability is relevant in a deck that can play bi-colored Gods.
At the moment the deck only has The Locust God. But you could easily include a God package into the deck if you wanted.

If you read my thread on The World Tree Gods deck then I explain a goal of wanting to win on the activation. However within this particular deck you don't need to include outright win activation, but rather of value.
The thing with most of the Gods need a particular amount of devotion in order to become creatures. Becoming creatures is basically the way to win so you need to include enough to cover getting enough devotion for each color.

Card	Dev	Dev Need	Dev Got	Stats
Thassa, Deep-Dwelling	u	5	4	6/5
Keranos, God of Storms	ur	7	6	6/5
Klothys, God of Destiny	rg	7	10	4/5
Esika, God of the Tree	gg			1/4
Karametra, God of Harvests	wg	7	5	6/7
Athreos, Shroud-Veiled	wb	7	5	4/7
The Scarab God	ub			5/5
Phenax, God of Deception	ub	6	7	4/7
Total Power				39

These are a Gods package that I am currently trying. You'll notice that the devotion needed is not actually met by any of the Gods by themselves. But the thing is that they are just fine cards on their own.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn will add one devotion to each color if in play.

Now two of them are not bi-colored in Thassa, Deep-Dwelling and Esika, God of the Tree.
I think they add enough to the deck with Thassa blinking out Niv and Esika giving more mana earlier and I'd be fine just casting it as "The Prismatic Bridge" as the deck is full of fatties and likely to hit something good.
I'd also add Mirari's Wake just because it is a card that allows you to cast fatties in times of not doing Plan A, and having The World Tree as such a valuable activation is pretty great. You only need 6 lands with one being The World Tree with Mirari's Wake.

I would be nice to have ways to search for the The World Tree as well, just because it is so good at color fixing for you once you have 6 lands. Knight of the Reliquary can be used for this.

As far as what you could take out for these, it's a little hard to do same guild color swaps. But it is only 10 card swap which isn't too hard.
I trying swaps at the moment to see what a version of the deck feels like with a The World Tree God mini-sub theme.

[darrenhabib]

My goodness Elimination Ritual is just like custom made for this deck.

• Bi-colored.
• Literally no permanents of 2 cmc or less in the deck.
• Allows potentially casting another spell in turn.
• Golgari to fill color quota better.

[trevorreznikable]

It would destroy signets, sol rings, other mana vaults/crypts etc and some small creatures.

[darrenhabib]

With Culling Ritual being a slam dunk I'm also eyeing up Velomachus Lorehold and Beledros Witherbloom.
Beledros Witherbloom can untap your lands which is another Wilderness Reclamation effect so that you can use mana to cycle cards during opponents turns.
Velomachus Lorehold also has a relevant ability as there are a number of spells that it can cast.
The best use of both these Elder Dragons is if you have a early "mini" Hypergenesis or Living End and you are still needing to setup for bigger plays.
I couldn't really justify cutting a Boros card for Velomachus Lorehold unfortunately as he would be part of a cascade into play plan and by that point his ability isn't that needed.

Add

• Culling Ritual
• Beledros Witherbloom

Remove

• Saheeli Rai
• Binding the Old Gods

[Dunadain]

I'd like to thank you for introducing me to this absolute mess of a deck.

I alwasy feel like I should find a combo deck to round out my deck collection, simply cause I like having a lot of options when choosing what to play, unfortunately I don't find combo decks very fun after playing it 2-4 times, I've played this online with friends a couple times, however, and I'm still having a blast. We'll see if I'll actually try to get the deck in paper but congrats on making a psuedo-combo deck that I enjoy and my playgroup can stomach, I wasn't sure that it was possible.

-Cheers!

[darrenhabib]

I'd like to thank you for introducing me to this absolute mess of a deck.

I alwasy feel like I should find a combo deck to round out my deck collection, simply cause I like having a lot of options when choosing what to play, unfortunately I don't find combo decks very fun after playing it 2-4 times, I've played this online with friends a couple times, however, and I'm still having a blast. We'll see if I'll actually try to get the deck in paper but congrats on making a psuedo-combo deck that I enjoy and my playgroup can stomach, I wasn't sure that it was possible.

-Cheers!

Yeah often combo decks just become solitaire merry go rounds so playgroups just get bored of playing against them. This deck however has a pretty quick resolution to everything and play groups are usually not salty about the outcome of putting a bunch of fatties into play.

As long as you're not having to start from scratch with the land base then most of the cards are pretty affordable. I tried to do a budget section but things change so much over the course of a year that what was expensive might be cheap and what was cheap could be expensive now.
At the moment the cards that are over $10 are Dragonlord Dromoka, Kaya, Ghost Assassin, Aurelia, the Warleader, Gisela, Blade of Goldnight, Beledros Witherbloom, Dragonlord Silumgar.
All these cards can be interchangeable with other cards so don't feel the need to splash out on these.

[Dunadain]

Yeah often combo decks just become solitaire merry go rounds so playgroups just get bored of playing against them. This deck however has a pretty quick resolution to everything and play groups are usually not salty about the outcome of putting a bunch of fatties into play.

Pretty much

I do have a question: in you rprimer you make it sound like Astral Slide is a really importnat part of the deck, but in the 4 games I've played thusfar, I havn't been able to find it once and I haven't really needed it, cards like Vanish into Memory have been good enough. So out of curiosity, how hard do you try to find Astral Slide or do you just play it if you draw it, without worrying too much?

[darrenhabib]

I do have a question: in you rprimer you make it sound like Astral Slide is a really importnat part of the deck, but in the 4 games I've played thusfar, I havn't been able to find it once and I haven't really needed it, cards like Vanish into Memory have been good enough. So out of curiosity, how hard do you try to find Astral Slide or do you just play it if you draw it, without worrying too much?

A very good point. In truth the Astral Slide has been more about how I came up with the general construction of the deck, rather than the importance to actual game play.
It's obviously great if you naturally draw it, but by the nature of the deck there are very few tutors for these cards so you are on the whole playing a % of chance to draw it. So it's more like an achievement unlocked, rather than an important part of the game.
I'll change the primer to reflect this. However I did play a game last night and had Astral Slide in my opening hand and it was a big part of how that game played out. This is my way of saying keep playing games and you will find a game where it is a factor and it'll be a lot of fun to have that side of the deck play out.

[GeorgeGone]

Any thoughts on how Glimpse of Tomorrow could change the list? Having Warp World available on 3 seems stellar.

[darrenhabib]

Any thoughts on how Glimpse of Tomorrow could change the list? Having Warp World available on 3 seems stellar.

I've also been theory crafting and playing with Codie, Vociferous Codex and Plargg, Dean of Chaos and so thus thinking about all the zero cost suspend cards for general ideas.

Glimpse of Tomorrow is at its best with ways to go wide with permanents. Things like tokens.
Currently if you cast Glimpse of Tomorrow early in this deck then you'll probably be trading mostly lands with some random cards.
Now the random flips could be good, but going down lands is going to be problematic if your random hits are not much of a clock.

You could configure the deck to have Dockside Extortionist and Glimpse of Tomorrow as your only hits as a way to try and get as many treasures to make the Glimpse better.
You'd realistically want to take out as many non-permanents from the deck as well.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn ability to fill your hand (and subsequently graveyard with discard) with cards wouldn't be very relevant to this combination of cards however.
When everything costing 3 or more it's hard to spam the board with permanents to make the Glimpse of Tomorrow better.

If you were to build around Glimpse of Tomorrow then you could add token creators instead. There are a myriad of bi-colored token creators that you could play.

At this stage I don't think adding Glimpse of Tomorrow is going to be a better plan to the Living-Genesis, but not to say you can't build around it specifically.

[Moonlighter]

I'm eyeing this for my next build. I've been changing my deck-building strategies to try and be more about fun-to-play rather than grind-to-win. I'm just wondering if you think Harness Infinity has a use for a Golgari spot in the end-game? Or am I missing an obvious bad interaction there? Does it just cost too much mana to get either A) a sweet Hypergenesis or B) a more sculpted Living End? It seems like it grants you the ability to more effectively swap strategies if you've already blown your load on one or the other.

[darrenhabib]

I'm eyeing this for my next build. I've been changing my deck-building strategies to try and be more about fun-to-play rather than grind-to-win. I'm just wondering if you think Harness Infinity has a use for a Golgari spot in the end-game? Or am I missing an obvious bad interaction there? Does it just cost too much mana to get either A) a sweet Hypergenesis or B) a more sculpted Living End? It seems like it grants you the ability to more effectively swap strategies if you've already blown your load on one or the other.

I don't think it would come up all that often that you'd cast it. There are 4 mass reanimation to the 1 Hypergenesis so you are still happy to keep your graveyard stacked. Two of the cascade cards are permanents so wouldn't go to the graveyard (without help), which means the plan of getting your graveyard to then cascade into Hypergenesis is a little less consistent.
But Golgari slots are always welcome so maybe you could give it a try in your build to see if it comes up as a play.

[Moonlighter]

Huh. Sorry for spamming here, just having thoughts rereading your list. No Mistveil Plains? Seems pretty easy to trigger, and counts as a Plains for all the Landcyclers... Decent way to get One of your targets back on the bottom of the deck for redundancy. Let me know if you've thought of it and I missed it.

[darrenhabib]

Huh. Sorry for spamming here, just having thoughts rereading your list. No Mistveil Plains? Seems pretty easy to trigger, and counts as a Plains for all the Landcyclers... Decent way to get One of your targets back on the bottom of the deck for redundancy. Let me know if you've thought of it and I missed it.

Definitely not spam
Mistveil Plains was in the original build but I took it out after about a year due to (I think) literally never using it. The 2x white permanent might have been a factor, my guess is that the most likely candidates for that are Niv-Mizzet and Astral Slide in play and if you are blinking for massive card draw then chances are that I was probably drawing into mass reanimation anyway so never ended up using the Mistveil Plains but rather hard cast a Primevals' Glorious Rebirth (or whatever).

[demonicpic]

This deck looks like so much fun to play, thank you for posting the primer! Is there a reason why you don't use a full set of fetches in the unlimited budget lands build?

[darrenhabib]

This deck looks like so much fun to play, thank you for posting the primer! Is there a reason why you don't use a full set of fetches in the unlimited budget lands build?

It's not super important but because Niv-Mizzet trigger reveals the top ten cards of library, if one of them is Hypergenesis or Living End then you put it on the bottom of your library and now you know exactly what your cascade cards are going to hit. However if you shuffle your library then you'll lose this information.
Now there are a lot of shuffle effects with the land cyclers so it's not like I play massively around this, but it definitely can play a role.
That's why I've avoided fetches with the deck in general, however Mystic Sanctuary is powerful enough to run the extra fetches. If you wanted to run more then go ahead.

[demonicpic]

It's not super important but because Niv-Mizzet trigger reveals the top ten cards of library, if one of them is Hypergenesis or Living End then you put it on the bottom of your library and now you know exactly what your cascade cards are going to hit.

Very clever! I'm glad I asked, I knew you had to have a reason!