Every now and then Wizards of the Coast prints a card so powerful that even reasonable folk start to wonder if it might end up getting banned. Sure, many sets have a card or two that get the less experienced players up in arms. Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines, Etali, Primal Conqueror and The Roaming Throne each inspired some players to wonder if a ban might come down. It's very rare for a card to be so bad for the format that the rules committee decides not to trust players to self-regulate what is OK in their playgroup.

This year the "big problem" needs no introduction. In case some of my readers have been living under a rock, let me introduce you to Nadu, Winged Wisdom.

This three-mana Simic Bird Wizard has a 3 power, 4 toughness flying body and a party trick that would make the most broken Simic commander green with envy. Nadu gives your creatures the ability that whenever they are the target of a spell or ability, reveal the top card of your library and if it's a land card, put it onto the battlefield, otherwise put it into your hand. The clever minds over at Wizards of the Coast decided that limiting this ability to only twice each turn would be sufficient to keep it from being too much of a problem.

The most egregious flaw in Nadu's design is that the lands are put onto the battlefield without having to be tapped. This is elementary stuff and it's shocking that such a simple brake on its potential wasn't included. Nadu lists have been tearing up the competitive EDH scene since it became legal in the format. It doesn't seem like this Bird Wizard is going to outpace Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy as the best Simic cEDH commander. We have certainly had powerful cards printed before, and Thassa's Oracle is still legal in EDH, so I won't try to guess what Nadu's eventual fate will be. I strongly doubt that Nadu will be added to the ban list.

I mostly don't care either way whether Nadu gets banned or not. I was lucky enough to open not one, but two of these powerful cards. While I want to play them, I don't want to build a Nadu deck. I don't play enough cEDH to be interested in maximizing his value as a commander. What I'm hoping to do is find a place to put Nadu where he'll be strong and synergistic without just taking over games.

I want to find out how Nadu feels at a more casual power level in the 99 of a deck that can put him to use but not run away with the game because of the value he brings.

In the House of Elrond

I'll bet you didn't expect a side-trip to Middle Earth, but that's where we're going to start.

My first copy of Nadu went into the only Lord of the Rings deck that I still have together. I've played a few LoTR decks and wrote about a lot of them last summer, but only one has proven to be unique, interesting and fun enough to stay in its sleeves.

Elrond, Master of Healing rewards you for playing cards that scry, letting you put a +1/+1 counters on your creatures. You can read that column here. I've been tweaking the deck in small ways and while it doesn't always win, it usually leaves me feeling like I did stuff and had a shot.

My theory is that a deck like Elrond is going to be putting +1/+1 counters on target creatures on a regular basis, and that should let me make the most of what Nadu brings to the game. I added Nadu to the 99 and played the deck but Nadu hasn't managed to hit the table or even show up in my hand yet. Sometimes that happens with new cards, but I'll keep at it until I see him show up and get to experience how the deck plays with a Nadu on the battlefield.

While I'm optimistic that Nadu will make Elrond better, I didn't add any combo pieces to try to break the bird wide open. I just hope to see how big an impact Nadu has on an already fun and fairly enjoyable deck.

That's one Nadu accounted for. I still have one more Nadu to throw into a deck. After a lot of thought, I decided I didn't have any decks that would make for a good fit, so I needed to build a new one.

Ever Playful

I didn't want Nadu in the command zone so I needed a commander who would uniquely let me get the most out of him, but also not make the deck too powerful. I play a lot of casual games so I didn't want to roll in with some ridiculous list that would just run away with games.

My solution ended up being to find a commander who cares about a mechanic that targets, but that isn't particularly powerful. There are a lot of commanders that play with mechanics that aren't that great, and from among them I was able to find one that both targets, and that would probably be a lot of fun to play.

Otrimi, the Ever-Playful is a six mana Sultai legendary Nightmare Beast who can be mutated onto a non-human creature for 1BGU. Mutate is an ability from Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths that allows you to merge two creature cards into a single creature. The mutated creature has all the abilities (the text boxes) of all the cards that make up the creature, and its other characteristics are derived from the topmost card or token.

Mutate targets a non-human creature, so I'll be able to trigger Nadu any time I cast a creature for its mutate cost. If the target creature being mutated is removed before the spell resolves, the creature being cast will still enter the battlefield as a creature. It just won't be added to the existing creature that was being targeted.

I've built and played Otrimi before, and I don't think the deck stayed together for very long. That's more about me than about Otrimi - I build and take apart decks at an alarming rate. I always loved the look of this playful Nightmare Beast and it's nice to have an excuse to circle back to him.

The biggest risk with mutate is putting all of your proverbial eggs in one basket and then having a lot of work get tossed into the bin thanks to a cheap removal spell. A Nadu with three creatures mutated onto it would represent a four-for-one in terms of card disadvantage. A one-mana Pongify could remove a creature made up of four cards and representing the investment of possibly over a dozen mana. In my first Otrimi deck I don't think I took this matter seriously enough, but this build had me rethinking my approach.

Hexproof creatures are essential if you want to play mutate cards in a removal-heavy meta. Slippery Bogle and Gladecover Scout are in the list along with a handful of higher mana value options. There are a few ways an Otrimi deck can try to get value out of what it is doing and one way is to load up as many mutations onto a single creature as possible. Hexproof will go a long way towards making that strategy work.

A fun way to play with mutate is to create a mutated creature and then make token copies of it. The token copy would have all of the mutations (cards) that make up the original creature, with all of their textboxes and the name, mana value and power/toughness of the card on top. In this deck's first game I didn't end up doing much with Nadu but I was able to swing a flying Spawnwrithe mutated with a Dreamtail Heron over successive turns. Nobody had removal when they needed it and nobody had flying blockers, so once I had gotten a few swings in, it became clear I'd get the win.

Finding interesting ways to squeeze value out of the mutate mechanic is the core goal of this deck, so Viridian Joiner fit in beautifully. In that first game I was able to mutate a Pouncing Shoreshark on top of it so that I could tap Joiner for four mana instead of one mana. I'm sure there are other cute cards that work well with mutate, and I look forward to upgrading this deck as I discover new tricks Otrimi can play on my tablemates.

In subsequent games my Otrimi deck played a bit closer to what my expectations were, and I haven't yet been able to get Nadu onto the field to target with mutate cards. Either I only got Nadu out when the end was already near, or I didn't have mutate cards in hand, or Nadu just never made an appearance.

I think that while it might be very satisfying, the bottom line is that if you want to play with synergy around a powerful card but you want to stay at lower, more casual power levels, you need to not have the card show up in every game. When it makes an appearance and puts in work, that's great. The more the new card appears and powers up your gameplay, the more you'll be pushing up in power and risking having games where you are pubstomping. The goal, after all, is to have balanced games where everyone feels involved and has fun.

Waiting For Nadu

When I build these lists, I generally try to focus on making sure that I have at least a semblance of an appreciation for all of the basic needs of a deck, but I also tend to lean into what a deck really wants to do. In this case I really wanted to play a lot of mutate cards, and I wanted to make sure I had plenty of mutate targets. When I looked at the actual decklist I was pretty stunned at how many creatures I had assembled, but many of them are functionally more like auras with Bestow than actual creatures. They may stand alone, but their purpose is not to be cast as a creature - the goal is to mutate onto other creatures.

That doesn't mean this is a great, table-wrecking powerhouse of a deck, but that's very much not the point. So far it has proved to be an entertaining list to play at lower powered tables. It has the capacity to run away with a game, but it's intentionally lacking the kinds of impactful finishers that you commonly find in high powered Sultai decks. It's also worth mentioning that this list is what I've been playing in paper, with the cards I had available at the time I was building the deck.

Otrimi Mutate | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Otrimi, the Ever-Playful

• Creatures (54)
• 1 Archipelagore
• 1 Auspicious Starrix
• 1 Aven Fleetwing
• 1 Baleful Strix
• 1 Beast Whisperer
• 1 Boneyard Lurker
• 1 Cavern Whisperer
• 1 Centaur Battlemaster
• 1 Chittering Harvester
• 1 Cold-Eyed Selkie
• 1 Dirge Bat
• 1 Dreamtail Heron
• 1 Elvish Mystic
• 1 Essence Symbiote
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Gemrazer
• 1 Gladecover Scout
• 1 Glowstone Recluse
• 1 Honest Rutstein
• 1 Insatiable Hemophage
• 1 Ivy, Gleeful Spellthief
• 1 Llanowar Elves
• 1 Lumberknot
• 1 Migratory Greathorn
• 1 Mindleecher
• 1 Muldrotha, the Gravetide
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 Nacatl War-Pride
• 1 Nadu, Winged Wisdom
• 1 Nightshade Dryad
• 1 Parcelbeast
• 1 Peregrine Drake
• 1 Poison Dart Frog
• 1 Pollywog Symbiote
• 1 Pouncing Shoreshark
• 1 Primal Huntbeast
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 1 Sacred Wolf
• 1 Sawtusk Demolisher
• 1 Scute Swarm
• 1 Sea-Dasher Octopus
• 1 Setessan Oathsworn
• 1 Silhana Ledgewalker
• 1 Slippery Bogle
• 1 Souvenir Snatcher
• 1 Spawnwrithe
• 1 Stormchaser Drake
• 1 Temur Sabertooth
• 1 Timeless Witness
• 1 Triton Fortune Hunter
• 1 Trumpeting Gnarr
• 1 Vine Mare
• 1 Viridian Joiner
• 1 Yisan, the Wanderer Bard

• Instants (4)
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Chord of Calling
• 1 Deadly Rollick
• 1 Worldly Tutor

• Sorceries (3)
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Rampant Growth

• Artifacts (1)
• 1 Sol Ring

• Lands (37)
• 7 Forest
• 7 Island
• 7 Swamp
• 1 Bonders' Enclave
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Dimir Aqueduct
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Fabled Passage
• 1 Golgari Rot Farm
• 1 Mortuary Mire
• 1 Myriad Landscape
• 1 Opulent Palace
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Simic Growth Chamber
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Vivid Creek
• 1 Vivid Grove
• 1 Vivid Marsh

Buy This Deck Export text

The point of this exercise is to build a lower-powered deck that can really put Nadu, Winged Wisdom to good use if I get it into play. If you want to power this list up I would probably point you away from Otrimi and towards a more powerful commander like Mudrotha, the Gravetide. You could still keep the mutate theme but build the list with graveyard shenanigans in mind, setting yourself up to have the ability to just cast Nadu out of the graveyard.

Mudrotha is in today's list, but you would want to lean into self-mill and play fun stuff like Splendid Reclamation and Rise of the Dark Realms alongside your mutate theme. Building around too many themes is in itself risky. Decks that try to do too many things often risk doing none of them well, but what matters the most is your enjoyment and that of your tablemates. If you're keen to have a stronger deck that can go in lots of different directions, I'd have you look into graveyard strategies with Muldrotha in the command zone.

Final Thoughts

When you build for a low power meta, it can look like a deckbuilder just doesn't know what they are doing to anyone used to playing higher powered games. I did get a game in with this deck where it was crystal clear that I was just outclassed by two of the three other decks, and the result was pretty close to a non-game for me. It wasn't a bit of fun, but that has everything to do with having games that are (or are not) made up of decks that are at the same power level. Sometimes I'm the one with the deck that is a bit more powerful than the table I'm playing at. It happens.

I definitely do not think Nadu, Winged Wisdom needs to be banned. I do think whoever decided to have those lands enter the battlefield untapped should be fired. I'm not even kidding.

I think Nadu is amazing in a casual or even a low powered deck even if the deck can target him as long as you're not running any of the zero-cost activation support cards that set you up to run away with the game. Any time you're on a dozen or more lands and everyone else is at three or four, you need to question whether you're pubstomping or not. You might not be, but it's healthy to have that moment of introspection to see if you're being a jerk to your buddies by playing a deck that is too much for the table.

My banlist thoughts revolve almost entirely around the experience of how fun they are at casual tables and I've never been very concerned with cEDH. The card I'd probably take the closest look at is Drannith Magistrate, not Dockside Extortionist, Nadu, Winged Wisdom, or even Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, a card I've long hated for the way it just locks certain types of decks out of the game until they draw into removal.

Good thing I'm not on the Rules Committee, eh?

That's all I've got for today. If you build a Nadu deck, by all means build it to the power level of your meta, but don't underestimate how impactful it can be. There will probably be games where it really has a game-breaking impact, but the same can be said for an awful lot of other cards when in the right deck or the right situation.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!