It’s no secret at this point that Nadu, Winged Wisdom was a design mistake. This incredible Creature combo card was forced out of Modern and Commander, and for good reason. However, there are still formats players can utilize the card if they wish.
Obviously, Legacy is one of them, but another format where Nadu went unpunished for quite some time is Canadian Highlander. Canadian Highlander is an intriguing competitive Singleton format where instead of focusing on a banlist, there’s a points list that features many of MTG’s most pushed designs. Each player can utilize 10 points worth of cards in their 100-card decks.
While some truly busted cards will take up a decent portion of your point total (such as Ancestral Recall at 8 points), there’s been an increase in 1-point cards on the list over the past couple years. Yesterday, three cards were newly added to the 1-point list, and all three have major combo applications. Let’s start by discussing the elephant (or Bird Wizard in this case) in the room.
Nadu, Winged Wisdom: 1 Point
Nadu, Winged Wisdom is an interesting card in the Canadian Highlander format. It’s a strong combo piece alongside other Creatures and cards that can target your Creatures for free, such as Nomads en-Kor. That being said, Canadian Highlander features an array of combo shells, many of which feature combos that are significantly more powerful (such as Flashhulk).
Where Nadu combo gets its edge, though, is with the fact that the combo cards in the deck are almost exclusively not pointed in the format. This means that you’re free to use your points on tutors like Intuition and Urza’s Saga as well as fast mana like Mox Emerald.
The Canadian Highlander council mentioned that Nadu’s power level combined with the versatility of the associated combo pieces made the creature-combo environment in the format feel quite homogenous. The lack of points associated with any of the major combo cards in the Nadu deck only exacerbates this issue.
By making Nadu worth one point, the elite legend becomes less of a straight free-roll for creature-combo decks. This change definitely seems worthwhile. Nadu should still remain quite prevalent in the format, but as the council notes, Nadu’s inclusion in decks will now have to be a “conscious decision rather than an afterthought.”
Balance: 1 Point
The next card that has been raised to one point in Canadian Highlander is Balance. Despite the name, it’s incredibly easy to make the card have an unbalanced and devastating effect on the game. This is because Balance doesn’t force players to sacrifice Artifacts, Enchantments, or Planeswalkers.
As a result, decks like Paradoxical Academy and Time Vault combo are free to play out their cheap Artifacts, then cast Balance as an insane catchup mechanism against any Creature decks.
Even though Balance has survived this long off the points list, a couple factors contributed to its rise in popularity. A high density of potent threats have been printed over the last few years, causing more strategies to play Creatures to the board. Some of the best threats, like Psychic Frog and White Plume Adventurer, were recently added to the points list as well.
While these Creatures have encouraged players to play more to the board, the council notes that this shift has only made Balance a more punishing card out of combo decks. Raising Balance to one point as a way to keep combo decks in check makes a lot of sense. Every point in Canadian Highlander matters, especially for Time Vault decks whose primary combo piece is worth seven points to begin with.
Merchant Scroll: 1 Point
Lastly, we have Merchant Scroll being upgraded to 1 point. Merchant Scroll is a unique case, because it wasn’t too long ago that Merchant Scroll was worth 1 point in Canadian Highlander. The main reason Merchant Scroll was removed was actually to help strategies that rely on specific, high-point cards.
Most notably, Merchant Scroll can tutor for Ancestral Recall and Flash, which are valued at eight and seven points, respectively. Since this change, though, the council has noticed an adverse effect on the format. Ancestral Recall and Flash strategies became too consistent, which was a cause for concern.
This importantly comes after a previous points change announcement that reduced Spellseeker from one to zero points. Survey data suggested that this change was rather controversial. Mainly, some players weren’t happy that Ancestral Recall control decks were able to find their broken Instant more easily at little cost.
Spellseeker remains at zero points, but Merchant Scroll has been readded to the points list as a way to slightly hinder these top performing archetypes. It’s very clear overall that the council is working to address the rise in combo in hopes of making the metagame more balanced and diverse. Only time will tell how the metagame adapts, though we feel these changes should bring some minor improvements.