Nick Valentine, Private Eye "Rise and Shine, it's Millin' Time" - Plot Twist #5

Welcome back to Plot Twist, the series where we build a Commander deck that starts out telling one kind of story only to throw out a plot twist mid-game. If you're joining us for the first time, welcome! I'd encourage you to check out the previous articles in the series to get a sense for the types of stories we're looking to tell.

This week, we're celebrating the release of the Fallout Universes Beyond decks with a couple of firsts for Plot Twist: we're doing our first mono-colored deck, with Nick Valentine, Private Eye as the commander, AND our first combo deck. Or, that is to say, our first deck that has a combo in it, because our decklist isn't running a lot of redundant effects or tutors. I personally happen to like decks that can combo off (the game's gotta end eventually), but I also want my decks to play out a little differently every time I play them.

How Does Nick Valentine Work?

After I finished writing about The Wise Mothman last time, I started looking through the other commanders from the Fallout decks, and Nick Valentine was one of a couple that stood out to me. Nick's first ability, which prevents him from being blocked by nonartifact creatures, seems like a situationally better version of intimidate. While I could see that being relevant in some sort of artifact creatures Voltron deck, it's not particularly important to what we're trying to do today.

Instead, Nick's second ability, "Whenever Nick Valentine or another artifact creature you control dies, investigate", is what immediately caught my attention. With Nick Valentine, Private Eye on the battlefield, our artifact creatures replace themselves with a Clue when they die, helping us stay even on cards (albeit at the cost of two mana) , but what really got my gears turning was what could happen if we made those Clue tokens into creatures themselves. (Hint: things could quickly spiral out of control).

Doing the Twist

In looking over Nick Valentine's EDHREC page, we can quickly see that... not a lot of people are drawn to building a deck with Nick just yet. He's only got 23 decklists registered as of the time I'm writing this, but then again, the Fallout decks have only just been released. Still, we can see that the 23 founding members of the Nick Valentine Fan Club™ are doing a few things we might expect: they're making lots of artifact tokens, with cards like Sai, Master Thopterist, James, Wandering Dad, and Academy Manufactor, and then hoping to turn those tokens into a win with Urza, Lord High Artificer and Mechanized Production.

And while those are certainly powerful ways to play mono-blue, and we're running a few of those cards ourselves, we're going to instead focus on effects like Cyberdrive Awakener, March of the Machines, and Rise and Shine that turn our artifact tokens into creatures in order to add a fresh twist to our next game of Commander.

The Combo

Since this is our first foray into building a combo deck on Plot Twist, I wanted to do something a little different. While we could certainly build a mono-blue combo deck that won with Thassa's Oracle, Laboratory Maniac, or Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, I opted to cut those cards from the final deck. Instead, we're running a combo built around Nick Valentine, Private Eye himself: with Nick and March of the Machines in play, any time another artifact creature dies, Nick will trigger and create another Clue token that will become a creature due to March of the Machines and die to state-based actions because March of the Machines makes it a 0/0, triggering Nick all over again. 

We end up with a loop of infinite creatures entering the battlefield and dying, but that doesn't get us anywhere by itself, so how do we turn that into a win? With Selhoff Occultist and Altar of the Brood of course! (Full disclosure: like you, I had never seen Selhoff Occultist before building this decklist). With Selhoff Occultist or Altar of the Brood out, we're now able to mill our opponents out thanks to the Clue tokens entering the battlefield or dying. 

There's one problem: if we don't have a way to remove Nick Valentine, Private Eye, March of the Machines, Altar of the Brood, or Selhoff Occultist to stop the combo, the game technically ends in a draw because the loop of Clues-turned-creatures will never stop.

Luckily for us, the deck is running sacrifice effects, like Ashnod's Altar, Krark-Clan Ironworks, and Trading Post, that are able to sacrifice one or more pieces of the combo in response to Nick's, Altar of the Brood's, or Selhoff Occultist's triggers so we can end the combo after milling our opponents out. These three are also excellent ways for us to kickstart the combo by sacrificing another artifact creature (of which there are quite a few in the deck) to trigger Nick's ability the first time.

Whew, that was a lot! Let's see what else the deck is doing.

Other Powerful Things to Do with Artifact Tokens

While we have the one combo in our back pocket (and a handful of ways to tutor up parts of it in Fabricate, Tamiyo's Journal, and Whir of Invention), at its core, this deck is about making a ton of artifact tokens and then turning them into a win.

We have other ways to turn our tokens into creatures in Cyberdrive Awakener, Katsumasa, the Animator, Rise and Shine, and Workshop Elders. In particular, I love that we have two cards that give us a way to suddenly turn ALL of our artifact tokens into creatures, with Cyberdrive Awakener and Rise and Shine, but we also have two slow, grindy ways to do so each turn, with Katsumasa, the Animator and Workshop Elders. That way our deck can be a little more resistant to mass creature removal.

We also have some downright busted things that we can do with our artifact tokens without ever having to animate them. Arcbound Ravager can relive its glorious Standard days by sacrificing all of our artifacts (there are 34 in the deck, and many more that make artifact tokens) to turn them into +1/+1 counters. Don't forget: Ravager can always sacrifice itself in response to a removal spell, allowing you to put its counters onto another creature thanks to its modular ability. Kappa Cannoneer is poised to become a massive, unblockable threat as a side effect of our deck doing its thing, while Masterful Replication can turn all of our artifacts into copies of the most powerful artifact on our board, be it Kappa Cannoneer, the Construct token from Urza, Lord High Artificer, or even something like Cyberman Patrol.

Making Ridiculous Amounts Quantities of Tokens

Now that we know the various avenues our deck has to win, how are we going to pump out ridiculous amounts of artifact tokens ? Academy Manufactor puts a lot of work in here because it turns the tokens we make from Forensic Gadgeteer, Nick Valentine, Private Eye, and Tamiyo's Journal into a Clue, a Treasure, and a Food.

We've also got Efficient Construction, Faerie Artisans, Sai, Master Thopterist, and Summoning Station to build up a mass of tokens as we cast spells and sacrifice artifacts. Summoning Station seems like it will be amazing in any game where players are making Treasure tokens, and Faerie Artisans can make for some amazing stories because its power level scales with what our opponents are doing.

Even some key pieces of our interaction package, like Access Denied, Canoptek Scarab Swarm, and Spell Swindle, leave behind a bunch of artifact tokens for us to use however we see fit.

Busted Artifact Stuff

We're running a few powerful cards, like Urza, Lord High Artificer, Karn, Scion of Urza, Mystic Forge, Tezzeret the Seeker, and Unwinding Clock, that are staples in artifact-centric decks like this one. They'll help us generate a lot of card advantage and close out the game if we need a little assistance to get across the finish line. 

We've also got some strong, synergistic cards, like Cybermen Squadron, Dollhouse of Horrors, Nyssa of Traken, and Retrofitter Foundry, that don't do too much by themselves but will really pop off when we get a critical mass of mana or artifacts in play. We'll likely want to hold off on these cards until we've started to build up a mass of tokens or other artifact creatures, though, because they can look pretty threatening on their own.

A Few Extra Twists for Good Measure

Since we're building both an artifact deck AND a combo deck this time, there were no shortage of strange cards I came across in my Scryfall searches. Encroaching Mycosynth is relatively new and has synergies with so many things our deck is looking to do (it'll also sometimes result in all of our nonland permanents getting destroyed by a Vandalblast, but what a story that will be!). I love it with Cyberman Patrol in particular because it'll make blocking really dangerous for our opponents.

Rootwater Diver is a niche Regrowth effect, but for only one mana in mono-blue we'd be hard-pressed to find a better option. Tamiyo's Journal is the sort of tutor that shouldn't annoy our opponents too much and that shines in a deck like this. It seems like Forensic Gadgeteer is a card advantage engine that cares about clues and reduces the cost of activated abilities, which is perfect for this deck but might end up being amazing in all blue artifact decks. Lastly, Vedalken Humiliator will sometimes be a Humility in this deck and is absolutely a card I need to slot into a few of my decks ASAP.

Here's the full decklist for you to peruse:

Roll the Credits

I hope you enjoyed reading the latest edition of Plot Twist featuring Nick Valentine, Private Eye. Next time you sit down for a game of Commander, see what sort of plot twists you can add to take the game's narrative in a new direction.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's deck and what cards could find a home in it in the comments below or on Archidekt. The Maybeboards of my decklists are always filled with cards I thought could work but didn't make the final decklist.

You can find me on Instagram at @girtenjeff, and you can check out my other articles here or see what decks I'm currently playing here. 

Stay tuned to see what other twists and turns are headed your way in the next edition of Plot Twist.