Nadu'ing it! The Future of Simic in EDH

Nadu, Winged Wisdom by Gossip Goblin

"What happened here? It has to be a last-minute change, right?" - Magic players reading Nadu, Winged Wisdom

Welcome back, readers! When it comes to creating content for Magic: The Gathering, and especially covering first impressions of new cards and how they will impact various formats, it's inevitable that there will be times where you don't get it right. Mostly, the best you can do is learn from it, and apply the lessons learned to future content. For this particular article, I want to dwell on a card I got very wrong from Modern Horizons 3: Nadu, Winged Wisdom.

Nadu First Impressions

During my initial write-up of Modern Horizons 3 cards I thought could have an impact on the cEDH metagame, I intentionally left out cards that could theoretically spawn entirely new decks. I focused instead on cards that could supplement existing strategies and shells, and therefore largely left it out of my writeup. That said, multiple people asked me about it at the time, and I truthfully articulated that I thought Nadu was going to be a "flavor of the month" deck that ultimately would fail to convert at the highest level and people would pick their Kinnans back up again. My reasons were

1. The deckbuilding constraints are quite high with Nadu: you need a much higher land count than other decks as well as a very high creature count to hit the critical mass of objects that interact well with Nadu's combo potential while still leaving space for interaction.
2. The bar to cross was high. Kinnan was a strong deck putting up an impressive conversion rate and even winning multiple large events.
3. Three mana is a lot to pay for a commander in a two-color deck. Higher priced commanders usually demand the partner mechanic or more colors to be viable in cEDH.

Combining all these factors, I believed Nadu was largely going to be a whiff in cEDH, quite the opposite from my expectations of its impact on 60 card formats.

What Actually Happened

As predicted, Nadu is certainly the flavor of the month. Players have reached for their Nadu's in droves and, surprisingly, not at the expense of Kinnan's representation. The only event I've had the opportunity to cover personally since Nadu's release has been the Cowtown Throwdown, which broke cEDH tournament records with over 250+ players!

While Nadu did not perform well on camera, the conversion rate for the deck was solid. Of the 14 players that played Nadu, 2 of them converted to the top 16. While this isn't definitive, the data across all tournaments with 60 or more players since the beginning of June tells a much more convincing story about what is happening with the competing Simic commanders.

When I went searching for Nadu's conversion to compare to the performance of Kinnan's, I suspected I likely had underestimated Nadu in cEDH, but I had no idea just how lopsided it was. Kinnan representing 56 entries compared to Nadu's 53 is similar in total representation and popularity, but the conversion rates are where things get messy.

A measly 7.14% top 16 conversion for Kinnan.

Yikes.

Nadu, on the other hand, has the highest conversion rate for decks with more than 10 entries in large tournaments since the start of June with a preposterous 33.96%!

So what happened? There are a few reasons I have to explain this dominant outbreak:

1. Brewer's advantage. This concept is traditionally overrated by cEDH players who enjoy brewing new decks but is a real thing that is certainly at play here given how weird and niche the Nadu combo actually is. This is not the first time we have seen the brewer's advantage at play either. Winona is a fantastic example of a powerful deck that can feel like it wins out of nowhere if you're unfamiliar with what matters and what can happen if it's left unchecked. The decline of Winota speaks heavily to the expiration of the brewer's advantage, and I expect these early Nadu figures to drop as players begin to adapt to its play patterns.
2. The floor on failing to combo is high. This is a concept best illustrated by Worldgorger Dragon combos. Worldgorger Dragon, when stopped mid combo, leaves the comboing player with no permanents in play at all, or can even lead to drawing the game in some instances where the graveyard is tampered with. The floor there is really really low. Nadu, on the other hand, when stopped mid-combo, still has drawn cards and advanced its mana. The nature of the combo allowing you to stop and try again on another turn without much additional investment gives the deck a lot of staying power in the grindy games that are becoming all too familiar to the current cEDH tournament scene.
3. The deckbuilding constraints are lower than they looked. As seen in this decklist from the Top 16 of Cowtown Throwdown, the deckbuilding constraints for the Nadu deck turned out to be much less extreme than initial builds seemed to imply. Early builds of Nadu contained an abundance of zero-mana creatures, such as Phyrexian Walker and Ornithopter, to enable the combo, but are largely dead cards for setting up the combo or interacting with the table at large. The deckbuilding asks seemed intense, but with the innovations of using cards like Scute Swarm, Springheart Nantuko, Displacer Kitten, and Field of the Dead to create more creatures and reset triggers, much of the deck slots were freed up to allow for more interaction and tutors, giving the deck a much more typical mixture of cards for a cEDH deck. The final note about the deckbuilding aspect of Nadu is that it is perhaps the deck that uses Clone effects the most efficiently in the format, a card category that has only gotten more of a spotlight the more the format moves in the direction of creature-based combos.
4. Nadu is a broken card. The card hadn't even been legal for an entire month before it had a Pro Tour win under its wing, a feat which is shared among precious few other Magic cards that are still legal to play with in Pro Tour formats. Nadu is clearly much more powerful than the designers believed it to be, and the strangely worded stopgap of "twice per turn" that Nadu gives to each creature you control is close to useless in stopping its overwhelming combo potential. Nadu is a messed up card and is likely to eat a ban in Modern sooner rather than later given its dominance in that format and we will see how long it lasts in other eternal formats as well. For the time being I don't think it is in any danger of being banned in cEDH but that could easily change if this dominant tear continues.

These are the primary reasons I believe Nadu has seen so much early success in large cEDH events but the question still remains, will it continue to dominate?

Adaptation?

The next natural progression for any metagame at this point is the adaptation phase. Nadu has come out of the gates swinging, and it is up to the cEDH tournament players to make the choice: adapt or join. Most will try to adapt and there is a chance Nadu goes the way of Winota, falling out of favor to be replaced by more colorful and resilient creature combo decks. There is also the chance that Nadu builds as they stand can't be adapted to efficiently or consistently and the deck will continue to dominate. Of course everything in-between is a possibility as well as both Nadu and non-Nadu cEDH decks adapt to the grindy, creature-infested games permeating cEDH tournament play.

For fans of Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy, though, it may be time to put the deck on the shelf for the moment. The conversion rate of Kinnan is appalling, and the Bird is now clearly the word when it comes to Simic creature-combo. Kinnan may have its time in the sun again soon, but for now it's time to try something else.

It's Okay To Be Wrong

I was completely off the mark when it came to my expectations of Nadu's impact on cEDH, and while I expect the stock in the broken bird to fall as players adapt and new cards are printed to brew and iterate on, the current numbers are so strong that even a sizeable decline in popularity and performance from where the deck is at now leaves it both high above its Simic competitors and well within the conversation for top choices in the format.

The combo can get complex, especially in the face of potential interaction and stax pieces, but the power of the deck is high so if the Nadu combo is appealing and fun to you, or if you just want a change of pace, Nadu is a great option. Needless to say, Nadu is here to stay, and with even higher stakes cEDH events just on the horizon, I expect much of the top cEDH talent to go seeking some winged wisdom to soar to victory.

If you have played with or against Nadu in cEDH, let me know what your impression was! Thank you for reading!