60 to 100: Niv to Light

All of the Colors, Please

Hello! Welcome to 60 to 100, a series where we convert beloved decks from 60-card formats to Commander.

In our last installment, we looked at Splinter Twin to celebrate the card's recent unban in Modern. This time, I'd like to honor one of our fallen comrades. Jegantha, the Wellspring has been poached from both Pioneer and Modern. In 60-card formats, Jegantha's deckbuilding requirement was too easy to fulfill.

This lead to a lot of decks effectively getting a free 5/5 creature as the eighth card in every opening hand. In Commander, Jegantha faces the opposite problem. Due to Jegantha's color identity, it can only be included in a five-color Commander deck.

Fortunately, I have just the thing. Today, we're going to be porting Pioneer Niv to Light to Commander. Let's take a look at our source material and get to work.

What Does This Deck Do?

Niv to Light is a toolbox-style deck that uses Bring to Light to search for situational cards to answer the opponent's threats or to bring out Niv-Mizzet Reborn and get a bunch of cards through his enters trigger. Bring to Light can also fetch a couple of "haymakers" in the form of Omnath, Locus of Creation and Valki, God of Lies. The win condition is simply smashing the opponent's face with your big Dragon while you answer opposing threats with removal spells like Vanishing Verse or Leyline Binding. This shouldn't be too hard to adapt to Commander.

A Commander and an Elk

Niv-Mizzet Reborn is an incredibly powerful card draw spell that sits in the command zone. His presence means the deck won't have to include as many draw spells as an ordinary Commander deck would. Slots that would normally be occupied by draw spells are usually better used on blink effects to use Niv's enters trigger over and over again.

Jegantha, the Wellspring is essentially a mana dork you have access to every single game that taps for enough mana by itself to cast your commander. Having so much extra mana available to cast Niv-Mizzet Reborn has the added benefit of rendering command tax a non-issue for the first several times you cast him.

The Gameplan

One of the biggest boons the deck gets from having both a commander and a companion is that you have double the amount of guaranteed cards each game and can plan accordingly. When playing this deck, I will generally mulligan with the following plan in mind:

• Step 1: Cast a cheap ramp spell like Birds of Paradise, Delighted Halfling, or Noble Hierarch.
• Step 2: Pay 3 mana to move Jegantha, the Wellspring from the companion zone to your hand.
• Step 3: Cast Jegantha, the Wellspring.
• Step 4: Use the burst of mana from Jegantha to play most of the cards remaining in your hand.
• Step 5: Use Jegantha to cast Niv-Mizzet Reborn and replenish your hand.

You may notice that there isn't a win condition outlined in this plan. That's because there are a variety of approaches you can take, often killing different players in different ways. The fun of a deck like this is in drawing a bunch of cards and finding out how you're going to win by looking at them!

Win Conditions

The simplest approach to winning a game with this deck is commander damage. Cards like Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder and Atarka, World Render are here to give Niv-Mizzet Reborn double strike. A Niv-Mizzet with double strike will kill an opponent in just two combat steps.

In addition to giving Niv-Mizzet Reborn double strike, I've included a few ways to increase Niv's power. Knight of New Alara grants our commander +5/+5 to further expedite commander damage victories while also buffing most of the deck's other creatures and making regular combat damage victories more achievable. Halana and Alena, Partners provide a similar effect on their own and will place double the amount of +1/+1 counters while in play alongside Knight of New Alara.

Mana Cannons just might be my favorite card in this deck. If the board gets too clogged up and you can't safely attack with your creatures, plan B is finding Mana Cannons and using it to either burn an opponent out or begin clearing the board. Magic: The Gathering is a much easier game when almost all your spells are miniature Flametongue Kavus.

Ramp

The first layer of ramp in the deck is the one-mana ramp spells. Birds of Paradise and Delighted Halfling are givens, as they both tap for all five colors. Noble Hierarch and Ignoble Hierarch make the cut for providing three colors. Sol Ring is included because it can help pay to add Jegantha, the Wellspring to your hand and cast artifact mana rocks like Arcane Signet.

The real power in this deck comes from creatures that can tap for five mana. When coupled with untap effects, like Kiora's Follower, Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset, and Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler, you can generate an arbitrarily large amount of mana and go nuts.

Interaction and Removal

This deck is pretty light on counterspells, and you should be saving them for board wipes and your opponent's win conditions. The ones that did make the cut are versatile counterspells that can also function as removal, like Ertai Resurrected and Drown in the Loch, or best-in-class options, like Dovin's Veto. The only outlier to those two categories is Ionize, which was a later inclusion to up the dangerously low number of Izzet cards in the deck.

For single-target removal, there are a number of removal spells across multiple color pairs. The goal is to primarily play single-target removal that can hit more than just creatures. Vanishing Verse is arguably the best of the bunch, being able to exile everything from a Drannith Magistrate to Rhystic Study.

Board wipes and mulit-target removal spells are the highest quality interaction in the deck. Convert to Slime removes three permanents from the board and sometimes even gives you a huge Ooze token. Deafening Clarion is a board wipe that hits smaller creatures and leaves your larger threats, like Niv-Mizzet Reborn and Jegantha, the Wellspring, alive. Merciless Eviction is one of the hardest hitting board wipes in the deck and one of only a few cards Bring to Light cannot search for.

Tutors

While you can't play four copies of Bring to Light in a Commander deck, you can come pretty close by adding other similar tutor options. Ringsight can search for any nonland or nonartifact card in the deck when Niv-Mizzet Reborn is in play, albeit without casting it for free like Bring to Light does. Eladamri's Call fetches any creature in the deck, most notably Atarka, World Render, which cannot be found with Bring to Light.

Draw

As I've already said, this deck doesn't require much in the way of draw spells. With that in mind, I've only included a few powerful options to help refill your hand without Niv-Mizzet's help. Talion, the Kindly Lord and Kraum, Ludevic's Opus sit in play and draw cards when your opponents play the game. Conversely, Tome of the Guildpact and Up the Beanstalk let you draw cards when you play the game.

Brago, King Eternal and Soulherder are here to repeatedly blink Niv-Mizzet Reborn. They're both obscene card advantage engines in this deck and will be kill-on-sight targets for your opponents. Most importantly, they both trigger at different points in your turns and don't conflict with one another. Having both in play is usually overkill, but I really enjoy overkill.

While not technically a way to draw cards, Lilah, Undefeated Slickshot allows you to cast all of the deck's multicolored instants and sorceries twice. This helps nullify the card disadvantage of single-target removal spells. There are only 18 of these cards in the deck, but nevertheless Lilah has pulled her weight and then some in each game I've cast her.

Recursion

The Scarab God is the only creature recursion method included in the deck. That might sound a little deranged, but in my defense there are 3 ways to search for him, this deck includes a lot of draw, and he is very difficult to remove!

Niv-Mizzet, Supreme is a recursion engine for the deck's instants and sorceries. This card hasn't come up for me very often while playing this deck, but I think it really adds to the toolboxiness of the deck and was very good the couple times it hit the board. I do think this is definitely the deck's flex space and would be interested in adding other Bring to Light targets in it's place like Omnath, Locus of Creation.

Manabase

Five color mana bases can be very finicky. I've chosen a base of 10 fetch lands (five of which are banned in Pioneer!), 10 shock lands, and 10 surveil lands with several five-color lands and utility lands. If you were looking to speed the deck up, the surveil lands could be replaced with the original dual lands. I find the card selection to be worth the speed reduction.

36 lands seems lacking for a deck with mana requirements like this one's. After my first couple games, I tried swapping out the one basic land of each type I initially included for the Alara Reborn cycle of land cyclers. These creatures are all dual colored, meaning they can be put into your hand from Niv-Mizzet Reborn's enters trigger, and they each cycle for the two basic land types of the colors they are. You can cycle them to find your shock and surveil lands, making each of them slightly slower fetch lands that you can reanimate with The Scarab God.

Cavern of Souls is kind of a five-color land, but only for the creature type you name. I typically find myself naming Elk as I would much rather have to recast Niv-Mizzet Reborn than have Jegantha countered. Arena of Glory acts as another way to give Jegantha haste, alongside Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler and Rhythm of the Wild.