Decklist: URG Zada, Hedron Grinder

Today's BFZ spoilers gave us quite the Johnny tool. A friend and I had challenged each other to build a deck around an RTR gem; unfortunately we never really got any traction, and the deck fell onto the backburners. That is, of course, until this card was spoiled today. Can you guess what the RTR card was?


That's right, Zada is a beast with Nivmagus Elemental. Up until now, the only weapons we had in our arsenal to take full advantage of Nivmagus were Ink-Treader Nephilim and Precursor Golem. Although they seem like decent alternatives, they're both vulnerable to your opponent's spells, meaning a Doom Blade can potentially turn into a Plague Wind, killing your entire board for two mana. Furthermore, the Golem caps out at 3 copies, and the Nephilim is no joy to cast.

Now we get this magnificent Ally to help round everything out! Sure he's legendary, but we only really need one in play anyway. Now most Nivmagus decks online focus on a deck played by Gerry Thompson at pro-tour RTR that rely on Phyrexian spells to pump up the Elemental for free and kill the opponent with a turn two Assault Strobe or Tainted Strike. Death's Shadow acts like a back-up Elemental.

A strong brew, but I was looking for something a little more Johnny-esque. My build focuses a little more on on having your creatures targeted; that means cards like Wild Defiance, and my favorite Awakening Zone to make sure we have a lot of creatures to produce copies.

Let's take a look at the build, shall we?

PERMANENTS

4x Nivmagus Elemental
3x Zada, Hedron Grinder
3x Precursor Golem
4x Wild Defiance
3x Awakening Zone

SPELLS

4x Shadow Rift
4x Leap
2x Crimson Wisps
4x Gigadrowse

LANDS

4x Khalni Garden
(Add lands to taste)

MAYBEBOARD

4x Livewire Lash
3x Ink-Treader Nephilim
2x Mercy Killing
4x Ground Rift
3x Flamekin Harbinger

This is obviously a preliminary decklist, which I haven't had a chance to try out since Zada was only spoiled today. I'm probably going to add more utility, cards to help us draw into our engine, as well as additional token producers. The main stars here are obviously Zada and the Golem; everything else just allows us to benefit from their engine. Shadow Rift + Precursor Golem, for example, lets us draw three cards and have three 3/3 unblockables for a single blue mana. If our token production has been good, we can target Zada instead and draw a good chunk of our deck. Shadow Rift also lets us get a pumped-up Nivmagus through.

I'll post an update once I've had a chance to test out this brew. Let me know what cards I missed in the comments!