Nadu, Winged Wisdom is often regarded as one of MTG’s biggest design mistakes of the past few years. Because Nadu grants its card advantage ability to all creatures you control, any zero-mana way to reliably target your own creatures becomes a problem in its vicinity.
While Nadu was quickly banned in Modern after consistently putting up dominant results, the card has managed to survive in Legacy all this time. In fact, the most recent ban announcement didn’t even address Nadu as a potential concern.
Well, following the bans designed to weaken Reanimator and Eldrazi strategies, it appears Nadu has emerged as a format frontrunner. In this weekend’s Legacy Showcase Qualifier with a Pro Tour invite on the line, Nadu combo took first, second, and third place. Let’s dive in and see what makes this deck so powerful and potentially problematic for Legacy moving forward.
Nadu Combo in Legacy
During Nadu’s reign of terror in Modern, the most common way to win the game was to pair Nadu with Springheart Nantuko and Shuko. Shuko provided you with a free way to target each of your creatures, while Springheart Nantuko gave you a constant source of creature tokens to target with Shuko, so long as you were able to keep revealing lands from the top of your library and putting them into play.
Legacy Nadu combo utilizes a similar idea, but with some potent upgrades. The biggest step up is Nomads en-Kor. Nomads en-Kor accomplishes the same task that Shuko does, except it’s a creature as well, allowing you to generate even more value and get your engine started.
From there, there are a couple different paths players can take when it comes to building their Legacy Nadu combo decks. One popular direction is to go the “Cephalid Breakfast” route, adding Cephalid Illusionist to the equation.
With Nomads en-Kor and Cephalid Illusionist in play together, you can continuously target Cephalid Illusionist and mill your whole deck. You’ll mill over some copies of Narcomoeba, and can flashback Dread Return to resurrect Thassa’s Oracle and win. This gives you an easy avenue to victory, and Nomads en-Kor+Nadu can help you dig for Cephalid Illusionist just fine.
Rather than going down the Cephalid Illusionist route, however, you could instead stick to a more green-focused build with Green Sun’s Zenith. This is what the Showcase Qualifier winner opted to do. Green Sun’s Zenith, besides finding Nadu, can grab Sylvan Safekeeper and Bristly Bill, Spine Sower to keep the Nadu triggers flowing, with the intention of eventually attacking for a bunch of damage.
This version of Nadu combo misses out on fast, curve out starts with Nomads en-Kor and Cephalid Illusionist but makes up for it by being a bit more resilient and consistent. Both strategies are valid and very strong in Legacy’s current state.
Supporting Elements
Whether you’re playing the Cephalid Illusionist or Green Sun’s Zenith variant, a lot of the supporting cast remains the same. Both decks play a decent chunk of cantrips and disruption to buy time until you can execute a combo.
In the cantrip slot, Brainstorm and Ponder are as good as they come. Both cards synergize perfectly with Fetchlands, allowing you to keep cards you want and shuffle away those you don’t.
For disruption, Force of Will is a no-brainer. Force of Will is good against opposing combo decks and simultaneously pushes your combo cards past opposing pieces of interaction. On top of that, Swords to Plowshares is a super efficient answer to any creature that the opponent could play.
There’s a lot of overlap between Nadu combo decklists, but one difference between those that favor Cephalid Illusionist and those that don’t is that Cephalid Breakfast typically makes use of Urza’s Saga as a way to find Shuko. This makes sense, as Shuko combos with Cephalid Illusionist just like Nomads en-Kor does.
The green midrange builds have heavier color requirements and tend to eschew Urza’s Saga in favor of more Fetchlands and Dual lands. In either case, Nadu is the center of attention.
Cause for Concern?
Overall, Nadu is in an interesting spot right now in Legacy. From a diversity standpoint, it’s unclear if Nadu is much of a problem. It doesn’t have an overwhelming meta-share, and there are other combo decks, like Painter, that are quite popular as well.
Still, after causing so much frustration during its small stint in Modern, if more players continue to pick up Nadu combo in Legacy, it wouldn’t be shocking if the card ends up on Wizards’ watchlist. Even outside of the combo, Nadu is capable of generating so much value and winning a fair fight just fine.
Its immense size makes it tough for decks like Izzet Delver to deal with, and it matches up perfectly versus Dragon’s Rage Channeler. Its card advantage ability is immune to Orcish Bowmasters, too. Game planning for Nadu combo is not an easy feat and following such a dominant performance in the Showcase Qualifier, expect to see Nadu combo rise in numbers.