Pet Project - Nicol Bolas And A Phyrexian Walk Into A Bar...
January 11, 2024 by
Martin Conmy 
(God-Pharaoh's Gift - Art by Titus Lunter)
What Is This, A Crossover Episode?
There are few things in Magic cooler than the Phyrexians - Elesh Norn and company are so metal their homeland is literally nicknamed 'Machine Hell.' So cool are the Phyrexians that, despite scant typal support, they're already the eighth most popular type in all of EDH. But another villain from the multiverse similarly, if not equally, as cool is one Nicol Bolas - despite his original card being objectively awful, coolness alone has netted him almost 1,000 decks on EDHREC.
But what's cooler than the Phyrexians and Nicol Bolas? There's only one answer to that question - combining them both together. Just like 1 + 1 = 2, cool + cool = double cool. So today's deck will see the God-Emperor making friends with the machine orthodoxy.
If any of you remember Hour of Devastation Standard (back in... 2017. Good God, I am old), you'll remember God-Pharaoh's Gift and all the decks it spawned - throwing cards like Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin or Angel of Invention into the graveyard, then turning them into Eternal thralls of Bolas and swinging in. Unfortunately, God-Pharaoh's Gift hasn't seen nearly as much play in EDH, having a home in a scant 4,925 lists - usually alongside generals like Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun, or with thematic generals like Nicol Bolas, the Ravager. But there's one commander who really unleashes the full power of the Gift...
Getting an It That Betrays back from the dead as a 4/4 Zombie may be powerful - but that's nothing compared to getting it back and then turning every single one of your Treasure tokens into the Eldrazi, resulting in your opponents' permanents ending up on your side of the board...
Dragon Fodder
To get the most out of God-Pharaoh's Gift, we're going to run a lot of massive, high-CMC threats we can cheat into play. The only real roadblock is that we don't really want any legendaries, because they'll non-bo with our general's ability.
But aside from the usual threats, the massive Eldrazi, we're especially interested in cards that deal with doubling, because of our commander's ability to make numerous of a single creature token. Thus it doesn't take long for Angrath's Marauders to get out of hand - let's say we God-Pharoah it back to life, then use Brudiclad to turn our four treasure tokens into additional copies. Suddenly, all damage dealt to our opponents will be increased by 32 times - meaning we've got five 128 power creatures on the field at least.
In a similar vein, it's crucial to note that God-Pharaoh's Gift triggers on each of our combats. That means extra combat effects are especially welcome - we can bring back Bloodthirster, then we'll immediately have at least two other triggers to Eternalize some more dudes.
Massive creatures that create tokens themselves can similarly become value spewing engines in this list. Attack with an Eternalized Ancient Copper Dragon, create an average of ten tokens, then next turn you can swing in with 11 of them, rolling the die that many times too. Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin may be a legendary non-bo with our general, but getting to create five tokens on the first swing is so good we run him anyway.
Scrap Mastery
Running big dudes is only one part of the reanimation equation, of course - we also want ways to put them in our graveyard. Unlike the Standard God-Pharaoh's Gift lists, which relied on creatures like Minister of Inquiries to mill, we're mostly going to be focused on discard.
Many of these are simply the usual suspects - generic discard outlets that are played all over the format like Faithless Looting and Dack Fayden. One card worth pointing out, however, is the criminally underrated Imposing Grandeur. With a general who has a CMC of 6, this card works great - but is much better than other wheel effects like Windfall, in my view. As the Commander format speeds up, more and more generals cost less and less mana - four of the five most played commanders have a mana value of four or less (although, admittedly, the one exception is The Ur-Dragon) - and Imposing Grandeur looks less and less like Windfall, and more and more like a Contract From Below without the gambling.
A lot of our discard effects also aim to do double duty by creating tokens - Big Score, Pirate's Pillage and the strictly-better Tormenting Voice Witch's Mark are all more than welcome.
So Tiny
The final piece of the synergy puzzle is the token makers - and ideally we want the tokens to be as small and insignificant as possible, so we can get as many as possible for as cheap as possible. Here, our deck doesn't differ much from the usual Brudiclad list, and their EDHREC page is of great help.
Flooding the board with tokens admittedly isn't as necessary with this build of Brudiclad - the difference between having ten Pathrazer of Ulamogs and twenty is usually only academic - so we don't run huge numbers of this cards. Our Treasure-producers - like Magda and Curse of Opulence - also fulfil double duty, being ramp at first and then fodder later on.
Fiery Finish
Now that all of our synergies have been built up and our game plan engineered, it's time for the boring part of deckbuilding - filling in the gaps, throwing in staples and adding redundancy.
As with all decks built around hidden commanders, we can't rely on organically drawing God-Pharaoh's Gift every game, so we need replacements. Thankfully, three cards: Dollhouse of Horrors, Dino DNA, and Feldon of the Third Path - can do exceedingly good impressions of the Gift. Red and blue also have plenty of artifact Tutors - Treasure Mage, Whir of Invention, Fabricate, and the risky Gamble and Reckless Handling - meaning we can get our gameplan underway extremely consistently.
Finally, comes the ramp, card draw and removal that every deck needs.
But, along with the usual staples, we're going to be running as many of these effects that also fit in with our gameplan: The Celestus, for instance, combines mana ramp with a way to put cards in the graveyard; Faerie Slumber Party and Release the Gremlins are both removal that puts tokens on our side of the board.
All in all, the deck comes together like this:
Brudiclad, God Pharoah's Engineer
View on Archidekt
Buy this decklist from TCGplayer
Final Parting
I will admit, this deck is easily my favorite that I've written about so far - not only have I built in paper, it's one of the decks you're most likely to see if you sit across from me at an EDH table. The deck's gameplan is so weird and convoluted, even my opponents tend not to mind when I've turned my 11 Treasure tokens into Cybermen Squadrons, resulting in me swinging in for 1,815 damage.
That's all for this week. Leave any of your thoughts and suggestions in the comments - I'd be particularly interested to see if anyone has ideas for pet cards I could make future articles about, so feel free to comment on tag me on Twitter.
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Martin Conmy
Since around M14, Magic has been taking up far too much of Martin's time, to the detriment of his wallet and his social life. When he isn't arguing mono-white is superior to all other color combinations in EDH, or claiming MTG peaked during original Kamigawa, he lives a (relatively) normal life as a student.
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