How They Brew It - Niko's Untap Dancing

 Niko, Light of Hope by Aurore Folny

Johnny Steps

Ah! You're finally awake. It took a miracle, but you're safe now. Do you remember what happened? As you were walking to your car, you got caught in the crossfire of a funky-fresh dance battle. Thankfully, all those sick moves missed your vital organs, so you're gonna be okay.

Let me introduce myself: I'm Michael Celani, and I am the true lord of the dance, no matter what those idiots at work say. For you to fully recover, you need to learn some rhythm so that your body can properly absorb the beats it took. You're in luck: be it tango, rumba, or bowel, I am a true expert in all things movement.

Meet Niko, Light of Hope. They will be your dance partner for the duration of your recovery. Every time Niko, Light of Hope enters the battlefield, they create two Shard tokens. For , you can either cash those tokens in for a card, or you can activate Niko's ability to temporarily transform them into another creature you control for a little while. With that ability, we're going to assemble our own little dance troupe and serve up a ten out of ten beating!

The Untap Dance

Today, I'm teaching you to tango with Niko. All you have to do is follow these three steps (heh):

1. Get a bunch of Shard tokens
2. Cast some creature that has no business being on the battlefield in multiples
3. Turn all of your delicious, delicious Shards into copies of that creature.

In that sense, Niko shares a gameplan with Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer, a commander that's also known for creating a lot of tokens and then transforming them into creatures that have no business being on the battlefield in multiples.

When compared to Brudiclad, however, it's clear that Niko plays a much more focused and methodical game. You're limited to affecting only one type of token, Shards, and even worse, that token type is created by only two cards in the entire game. You're also only able to temporarily affect those tokens, and you have to do it through an activated ability that you have to pay for.

These downsides get balanced out, though. First, Niko is substantially cheaper. Second, you no longer have to resolve a superfluous clone spell before you're allowed to go for the mass morph, which means there's less moving parts you have to worry about.

We fill the void left by those clone spells with much more useful blink spells. You'll mainly blink Niko to make more Shards so that their activated ability becomes more effective, but these spells still retain their generic benefits in a pinch: namely, as protection from single-target removal. Play your cards right, and nothing your opponents do will stick to Niko or any of your value engines.

Since destroying enchantments en masse is already a tough ask for a huge percentage of decks, and since we can blink around most removal spells in the game, we can lean into a far greedier strategy than Brudiclad ever could. We're going to make our ramp our win condition! By turning Shard tokens into an untapper, like Clever Conjurer, and repeatedly untapping big mana rocks, like Gilded Lotus, we can generate tons and tons of mana that we can use to do all sorts of crazy things. Let the untap dance begin!

Shard Times

But first thing's first: how are we going to assemble enough Shards to turn into the perfect troupe of backup untap dancers? Are we going to smash a window by throwing a brick through it? Are we going to drop a bunch of fine china from -- it's blink spells, you know it's blink spells. Fairly straightforward, and there's no sense lingering on it, but for the sake of completeness:

The Quickstep

The most common category of blink spell you'll find in the deck are the instant flickers, which return the targeted creature from exile immediately. They're best used in response to a single-target removal spell, but if you've got the mana and it's going to be your turn, don't hold back. My testing's revealed that you'll need at least six Shard tokens before you can make a play for the game.

Getting to the spells in question, Cloudshift, Ephemerate, and Essence Flux are all extremely cheap. Momentary Blink is slightly more expensive, but it has flashback, while Ghostly Flicker can blink two different permanents simultaneously. Another Round eschews the defensive capability typical to this category for the power to blink your creatures multiple times with one spell.

Slow Dancing

The other category of nonpermanent blink spell you'll find in the deck are the slow flickers, which return the targeted creature from exile at the beginning of the next end step. These are the only spells that can avoid board wipes, since a fast flicker won't leave your target in exile long enough to wait it out.

Each of these are more expensive, at two mana, but they also have substantial utility included. Well, mostly: Getaway Glamer is a slow flicker stapled to the world's worst removal spell, but Parting Gust and Swift Spiral are both genuinely useful. Parting Gust can also be used to exile any enemy nontoken creature, while Swift Spiral is stapled to Twining Twins, which is a legitimate threat when it's possible to make six or so Shard tokens into a copy of it.

The End Step

Finally, we've got a few permanents that can blink Niko as a triggered ability. The deck doesn't run too many of these since they tend to step on one another, but having a decent chance to hit one in a game is always helpful. Soulherder and Teleportation Circle both flicker a creature at the end step. Skybind is absurdly powerful on the face of it, since its Constellation combos well with Niko's token-creating ability. Just make sure Niko doesn't have summoning sickness by the time your turn rolls around; you can always choose to exile a different creature instead.

Backup Dancers

It's time to talk untappers, so put on your... untap shoes and meet me in the ballroom. Like the blink spells before it, our twiddlers are largely redundant inclusions: Clever Conjurer is going to work just as well as Kelpie Guide when it comes to repeatedly exercising a Sol Ring. All that matters is we hit one of them. However, there's two exceptions worth calling out: Nimbleclaw Adept and Fatestitcher. 

Nimbleclaw Adept can untap two different permanents with each activation, but once it's done, it's done: you're only allowed to activate that ability once each turn. You'll get a much bigger initial burst of mana, but Dramatic Reversal or Village Bell-Ringer are both ineffective if you choose it as your untapper of choice.

Fatestitcher is the most expensive of the twiddlers, coming in at four mana, but it has an extremely important ability: its unearth . By paying the unearth cost on a creature, you can return it from the graveyard to the battlefield for a turn with the caveat that, if it would leave the battlefield, it goes into exile instead of anywhere else. Because Niko already exiles their targeted creature as part of their transformation magic, unearth's usual downside is negated entirely: exile is exile, and Fatestitcher is happy to return from it at the end of the turn, freed of its looming curse.

Back and Forth

Enough warmup, let's get to the meat of the performance: the stuff that's worth untapping. The bulk of this will be permanents that make more than one mana, since, when they're combined with a twiddler, it turns that twiddler into a Sol Ring at minumum. There's more here than just raw resources, though. Let's take a quick look:

Land, Ho

One of the simplest ways to get a permanent onto the field that makes more than one mana is to play it as your land drop for the turn. Bouncelands, like Arid Archway, Azorius Chancery, and Guildless Commons, all fit the bill. Though they enter tapped and bounce a land back to your hand, once they're on the field proper they always tap for multiple mana with no further investment.¹

Lotus Field and Azor's Gateway take this to their logical extremes. Lotus Field taps for three mana at the cost of two lands, meaning they scale even better with your army of untappers, and though Azor's Gateway takes some time to set up, that's another thing your untappers can help accelerate. If you can flip it, you'll easily be making twenty or more mana an activation, which will win you the game in short order.

Rock 'n' Roll

Good ol' fashioned mana rocks can do the trick, too. You've heard of Sol Ring, but a well-kicked Everflowing Chalice can also lead up to a devastating turn. Gilded Lotus goes even further, as it's three mana per tap, just like Lotus Field. Nothing scales better than Empowered Autogenerator, though, which grows its power with each activation. If you play and untap it five times the turn it comes down (which is not infeasible in this deck), you're gaining fifteen mana right off the bat.

Other Stuff

It's not just mana rocks you'll want to untap, though. Card draw lands, like Minas Tirith and War Room, can save you in a pinch if your hand is looking rough. Thousand Moons Smithy trivially transforms into a land that only makes one mana, but each mana comes with a free Gnome Soldier. Making an army of 10/10s for casting Gilded Lotus sounds pretty good to me.

The last thing worth untapping is something that makes more untappers. You can spend and tap Gilraen, Dúnedain Protector to fast-flicker Niko, and then use your twiddlers to do it again. Don't overdo it, though: twelve Shards is more than enough to win the game. Twiddle your lands, not your thumbs!

Dumb Dorks

There is one last category of cards we should look at before we get to the big finale, and it's a bit of a combination of the previous two categories. As Niko is a four-cost commander, early ramp is crucial in powering them out on turn three. Instead of the usual suspects, like Mind Stone, though, why not focus on creatures that make mana?

These two-mana dorks have two purposes in the deck. Not only do they let us cast Niko earlier, they can act as good targets for our Shards if we can't find an untapper. You'll be able to get at least one mana out of each of them. Palladium Myr is especially good for this, since it pays for its own Niko activation and makes each of your Shards add . It's the most flexible ramp spell in the deck, since you can either turn your Shards into it or use it as a payoff for your twiddlers.

Manlands are also a decent way to get the same effect. We're focusing on manlands with very low activation costs, like Blinkmoth Nexus. Simply turn it into a creature, then exile it to Niko to turn your Shards into lands for the turn. This is nowhere near as effective as the dorks or untappers, but it gets the job done, especially if you found yourself with a glut of blink spells but very little ramp.

The Big Leagues

So you've got your six twiddlers, you've got your Sol Ring or Lotus Field. What could we possibly need all that mana for? Well, my lovelies, it's time for some dirty dancing, because these spells are all -rated.

Resolving a huge spell will swing the game in your favor... very wildly. Most on the list draw cards, be it Finale of Revelation, Pull from Tomorrow, Silver Scrutiny, Sphinx's Revelation, or even Transcendent Message, which doesn't even need untappers for you to draw a ton off of it. Alternatively, remove a bunch of threats and get passive card draw through the whole rest of the game via Extraordinary Journey, or make an army from nothing with a huge Finale of Glory.

And it's a little bit win-more, but actual Niko Aris is also a decent way to make more Shards or just draw a bunch of cards if you need it. Believe it or not, you can actually cash in Shards for cards by paying . Inefficient, but the option's always there!

Don't spend all your mana, though, because the ultimate prize is drawing into an extra turn spell. There's no sense in holding all the cards if you're not going to play them, and an extra turn spell solves all those problems at once. It untaps all your lands and twiddlers, handles any summoning sickness, gives you an extra combat, and draws you a card to boot. Make as big as possible, draw as many cards as you can, and then use them on your next turn to end your opponents!

You Got Served

...Fine, okay, extra turns are nice, but pirouettes do not a dance routine make on their own. We do actually have to win the game somehow, and we should leverage our Shards to do it. Feel free to experiment in this section with what works best against your playgroup; if combat tends to get shut down, try for a more combo-centric kill.

One way you could close out the game is with huge unearth creatures, leveraging the strategy we learned from Fatestitcher. Six Cityscape Levelers should be enough to end a game, or if you somehow can't close everything out with the massive advantage you've gained, Kederekt Leviathan can reset the board to something more reasonable.

A gigantic, difficult-to-block creature with annihilator 3 can also do the trick. With how much ramp this deck can leverage, the casting cost on Pathrazer of Ulamog is negligible.

The most fitting way to end the game, though, is with one final untapper: Halo Fountain. The thing about our twiddlers is that they kinda have you, y'know, tap themselves to untap other permanents. Get enough of them tapped, and Halo Fountain can untap them all one last time for a victory!

Step Off

With that, you should know everything there is to know about untap dancing. Wait, you said I started teaching you the tango at the start of this article? Uh... aren't tangos tap dances? I swear, I know a lot about this subject and did not rob you blind while you were unconscious.

Like How They Brew It? Hey, me too! Come check out our Discord and meet up with a bunch of like-minded weirdos brewers. And then, check out the other stuff I do on my website, including a ton of other Magic-related projects. Hope to see you chatting with us soon!

View this decklist on Moxfield

1. If you're wondering about the other lands that make multiple mana, I've got bad news: the presence of the three bouncelands unfortunately means Temple of the False God can't make the cut, and there's too few basics for Karoo to make sense. Ancient Tomb and friends are decent upgrades, but they're expensive.