We do not weep for Nadu. This is a sentiment I’ve heard echoed quite a bit across the Magic community, in spite of the rapid adoption of the Simic bird in nearly every format where he was legal. To some extent, it makes sense—this is a card that led to lengthy games that, probabilistically, would be wins but not unlike ‘Krark-ashima’ or similar had a minuscule chance to fizzle. It is, power level aside, the same sentiment that got so-called ‘Four Horsemen’ strategies exiled to the realm of slow play, with the caveat that Nadu, Winged Wisdom skirted the line by adding to the board state; at least Horsemen would 100% lead to a win, even if it took near-infinite permutations to do so. Still, it’s impossible to discount the fact that some individuals enjoyed their time with the bird, and the nearly-6000 decks on EDHREC see that gut feeling affirmed.
But you can’t play Nadu anymore—not in any format where he’s as competent as he is obnoxious. Coming out in a straight-to-modern set constrained his ubiquity, and while Bant Nadu in Legacy holds a cool 1.9% metashare, that isn’t going to cut it. This article isn’t about Nadu though, but instead a Legendary Creature that slipped through the cracks during its release, hidden amidst a horde of new Commander options. Where Nadu took flight almost instantly, Danny Pink became a footnote overnight. They’ve got some similarities though, and I feel Danny here might be just the card to fill the Nadu-shaped hole in you beautiful sickos’ hearts. Combining the play patterns of decks like Paradoxical Outcome in Vintage, Nadu in Modern, and even a little splash of manual Storm across various formats might seem excessive, but I have a hunch you’ll be won over once you see exactly what Danny here is cooking.
“Whenever One or More Counters Are Put on This Creature for the First Time Each Turn”
Danny is like Nadu in many ways, with decidedly lower power in terms of both ceiling and floor. Coming in at a cool 4 mana, without Green, and providing but a single trigger each turn, there’s a lot of downgrades present. Still, undoubtedly the play pattern remains, of scooting your Creatures off to one side once their trigger has resolved for the turn, before making more dudes and repeating the durdly value cycle until someone leaves. Danny here cares about counters, as opposed to targeting, and because of that makes exceptional value of Proliferate, which plays like an X-Cost draw spell once per turn, where X is the number of creatures you have with counters. Notably, Danny also places counters himself, unlike Nadu, and you’re far more likely to get his triggers rolling on others peoples’ turns compared to the bird, as there’s a ton of Instant-speed Proliferate & similar.
To that end, a lot of fantastic utility Creatures incidentally have a counter gimmick. You’ve heard of Pollywog Prodigy & Ledger Shredder, but what about the time counters on Flesh Duplicate? Is your opponent okay with giving you tons of draw from a normal turn sequence, with access to Dreamtide Whale, or fetching while you stare them down with Cosi’s Trickster? A lot of the process of building Danny came down to the realization that ‘oh right, there are good cards in Blue that do counter stuff’. I say good cards loosely, given there’s a Cosi’s Trickster in the list, but just sinking counters on competent bodies allows you to play as a fantastic midrange deck that gets to refill its hand with Proliferate triggers multiple times each turn cycle. This gets even crazier with the last level in Wizard Class, or the upcoming Lyla, Holographic Assistant, which get wildly out of hand every time you hit that first draw trigger. It’s worth noting: Our board is going to be pretty large, especially for Monoblue, so we can actively be pressuring life totals while we trade blows, even as a combo lurks nearby.
+1/+1 in the Pink
There’s an argument that Danny works in a manner more akin to Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain than Nadu, and I see where that comes from. When Danny mentions putting counters on Creatures, that isn’t just ones already on the board—if one enters with a counter, we still get that draw. This incentivizes a player to add in a critical density of creatures like that, functionally cantrips on bodies for a cool 1 mana, which you can then proliferate for further value off of your turn. To that end, we arrive at the biggest chunk of cards in the deck, your {X}-cost Creatures. Before we dive into the actual specific card choices there, it’s incredibly important to highlight the fact that, much in the same vein as Jhoira, these cards are decidedly not great if Danny isn’t around to see them come with card draw attached. Yes, they’re mana sinks, but unless shenanigans are afoot, you won’t see the average EDH player get excited about Endless One. Still, with this density of X-cost spells we have an opportunity to make use of a card you’ve likely only seen in Zaxara, the Exemplary—Elementalist’s Palette. This is a mana battery of sorts, turning our repeated casts of these X-cost Creatures, and other spells, into more mana for exactly that. This can allow us to upcast Walking Ballista, for example, where we’re often just playing it for X=1; I’ve been shockingly impressed with the fact that it scales by two counters each time, and with a little evasion or removal, that vanilla Endless One may be hitting for 8+ damage on the regular.
There’s a whopping eight Creatures in the deck that are functionally 1 mana value Creatures that enter with counters, and another six at mana value 2. That’s a profound density, and in terms of opening one of those fairly vanilla creatures you’re sitting at over 70% in your opening hand, or over 90% with the first mulligan accounted-for. Of course, some of these do additional things, such as Omarthis, Ghostfire Initiate being truly absurd here, but at their core we’re imagining this pile as a suite of cantrips on bodies, from which proliferation extracts additional value. Suffice it to say—you’re gonna be drawing an absolute truckload of cards. You’ll have noticed something though, that nearly all of these cheap bodies that enter with counters aren’t Blue, in spite of the deck’s color identity. In fact, over half of the nonland cards in the deck are Colorless, with 11% of our pips being actual {C}, and we intend to capitalize on that.
More Like Danny Colorless
Colorless is the worst color in Magic, and it comes down to opportunity cost. I am an advocate for playing Monocolor, as can likely be ascertained by my coverage of so many niche options in single slices of the pie, but Colorless eludes me still. After all, even given the support it’s gotten in things like Commander Masters and Modern Horizon 3’s Eldrazi, the secret 6th color of Magic still falls short because of what other colors are able to do in conjunction with these tools. We’ve seen Monogreen strategies add Eldrazi Confluence for Instant-speed removal, or Null Elemental Blast for on-stack interaction, and because Monocolor can afford the opportunity cost associated with playing a critical mass of lands that tap for {C}, it can make sense to treat them like Colorless is a ‘splash color’.
Here though, we’re very much committed to the promise of being a quietly two color strategy, complete with synergies for our masses of grey cardboard. If your manabase can afford it, Selective Obliteration is going to be a one-sided board wipe, as anyone with the hubris to play a Multicolor Commander reads the text again and recognizes it looks for only Monocolor options to leave alive. Ugin’s Mastery means every one of our cheap, repeatable Creatures that enter with counters comes with a 2/2 rider, and we can readily flip them through Danny’s Training ability. Liberator, Urza’s Battlethopter also says Artifact, but here the Colorless component also comes into play, giving us an incredible Shimmer Myr that also grows and draws with Danny. Between Omarthis & Liberator, Danny has allowed the various close-but-too-jank Colorless Commanders to have a home where access to a real Color spreads out their utility; as someone who’s tried time and again to build Omarthis, for one, he’s far more at home here than in the Command Zone.
A critical aspect of all of these Colorless options, however, is that unless {C} itself is listed discounts can wholly reduce their cost to 0. Anything that makes Colorless or Creatures cheaper lets you cast am X=1 Endless One for free, and with Danny on the board that’s basically a Gitaxian Probe on legs…or tentacles. While the deck does a lot with both its gimmick of Colorless as a true second color, and even reactive Counter placement, the bread & butter is being a so-called ‘manual storm’ strategy, drawing close to the Jhoira comparison above.
A Winning Stormula
Geralf, the Fleshwright turns every cast beyond the first into a Danny trigger, and that alone should tell you where this is headed. Yes, the somewhat-forgotten hybrid between two things Blue does worse than other colors, being storm & Zombie typal, comes home to roost under Pink’s advisory wing. To a similar extent, Glaring Fleshraker doesn’t enable a Danny storm quite as cleanly, but is itself a damage wincon, and produces mana to recast our cheap counter Creatures. Coupling it with Cloudstone Curio, the totem of ‘something horrible is about to happen’ in Commander, we can loop things like Endless One to draw the Library, and go from there. We actually have a variety of ways to do things like this, from cost reducers along the line of Cloud Key, to Uthros Research Craft being a 3 cost Jhoira in Blue. Due to the fact that some of our X-cost Creatures are Artifacts, and some aren’t, we need a fairly even split of payoffs for either type, as unfortunately many of our available combo pieces only work with one or the other.
There is another way to rapidly accrue value with Danny though, as we begin to storm off: Recall effects. Retract, Hurkyl’s Recall, & Rebuild form a step ladder of sorts, with Paradoxical Outcome at mana value 4 and one of our last cuts. Each of these, in their own way, helps to put a ton of our Artifacts back in our hand, to be recast and draw via Danny, or just as a means of protecting them from errant Vandalblasts or similar. Not every single one of our Artifacts love being bounced, but enough of the important ones do that we’re fine to commit to this path for the list. It’s efficient deckbuilding to have our protection double as efficient paths forward for the gameplan, and Ripples of Potential is no different, saving our pieces if a board wipe is placed on the stack. Finally in this vein is the questionable Displacement Wave from Magic Origins. As far as my Scryfall searching went, this is the only mana-value specific wipe Blue has access to, and being able to cast it for X=3 and keep Danny while sending the rest back is a profoundly cool board wipe. Kind of shocked this effect hasn’t been printed more, ala a Blue Ritual of Soot.
Dan of Steel
So winning the game often comes by way of storm, but beyond that are we on any plug & play lines? Being Bracket 2, we’re actually disallowed two-card combos, so that’s out of the question, but a few neat interactions exist that help push us forward. As mentioned earlier-on, Lyla, Holographic Assistant and Wizard Class draw an absolute boat load of cards, but doing so on another player’s turn procs The Watcher in the Water, making infinite 2/2 Tentacles that just need to live a turn to swing out. Twenty-Toed Toad is also a Bracket 2 all-star, being more midrangey (and fun in the midgame) compared to contemporaries like Laboratory Maniac. Chief Engineer as a means to help swarm the board is obvious, but don’t knock other Convoke enablers for helping spit our X-cost Creatures out! Zephyr Singer is often going to be a free Creature that gives our growing board evasion, helping promote a more fair damage wincon, and coupled with Cloudstone Curio it’s a great way to loop through draws if you have a great enough density of bodies to Convoke.
In a similar vein, our interaction suite is wholly synergetic, with Zephyr Singer’s cousin, Wicked Slumber being either a free draw 2, by stunning our own Creatures, or as a means to tap down those of our opponents’. Coupled with Proliferate, these stun counters can stop threats from ever untapping, so be on the lookout for them within the list. While we don’t have a game changer like Cyconic Rift, Wave Goodbye is often going to be enough, trading Sorcery speed for likely keeping your entire board intact. Both Borne Upon a Wind and Prologue to Phyresis can kickstart our gameplan on opposing turns, given much of our strategy only lets us spit out bodies on our turn, and Prologue creates a timer for Proliferations, turning 10 into a table kill. Pushing to victory with Danny isn’t straightforward, as this section might have you realize, but he generates enough value to be worth your time.
Example Decklist: Nadu’s Brother, Daniel
Our manabase is one of the biggest components that sets this deck apart, fully accounting for the fact that we have a significant buy-in to Colorless in terms of our actual pips. Just fewer than half of our lands can produce Colorless mana, and lands that can produce either, like Ipnu Rivulet or Lazotep Quarry, are basically dual lands. A ton of our Lands actually do things with counters on top of being Colorless producers, either placing them on our Creatures, in the case of Ruins of Oran-Rief or The Monumental Facade, or even on themselves (such as with Crawling Barrens). Turning what would be a greedy manabase into one that benefits us is part of what draws me to Monocolor, as you couldn’t do this with actual color requirements around.
Decklists are kept updated, and may change with set releases.
Something that struck me recently is that this is the third deck in as many articles where I went ‘Damn, I should add Tezzeret, Cruel Captain‘. Whir effects, or those such as Tezzeret, the Seeker are worse here because our X-cost Artifacts die immediately upon entry, so we’re already pushed to tutors which go to hand such as Scour for Scrap. Cruel Captain doesn’t just find our critical ‘free’ Creatures, he also untaps them and adds a counter if they’re Artifacts…and we can make use of that ultimate, which just so happens to also put counters on Creatures. If you enjoy Monocolor I’d highly recommend getting your copy(s) now, because I have a hunch Tezz is going to be a mainstay tutor target going forward, entirely because he can go functionally anywhere. The last of our tutors is a classic Drift of Phantasms, finding Geralf, Fleshraker, Elementalist’s Palette, Semblance Anvil…or even just ol’ Tezzy, the scamp.
Pink is the New Green/Blue
We do not weep for Nadu, but to some extent I sympathize with those who played the bird. Here was a novel, highly technical Commander with multi-format play, and unlike the previously-banned Golos, Tireless Pilgrim there were some neat things to be done. I say this as a legendary hater of Golos, the epitome of a ‘five color slop’ Commander; this is fairly obvious, but as an itinerant of the church of Monocolor Golos’ flavor of goodstuff is functionally Commander heresy to me. Jokes aside, what I’m trying to get at is that Nadu had direction, he pointed out some easy, perhaps too easy, combos and urged you to play around them. Danny does much the same, turning a fairly vanilla pattern of filtering the resource of counters into card draw, and making it far more interesting with his Nadu-esque phrasing.
It goes to show that the technical side of Magic’s templating still makes it the widest canvas for playing around in, across Eternal Formats in card games. Tweaking how you say something just a tic can vastly alter its play pattern and popularity, and who knows if Nadu would be so reviled if he only triggered on spell targeting. Assembling that beautiful pattern of combo pieces, reactive value generation, and good old fashioned Blue interaction makes Danny a compelling puzzle, and one I feel you could even push to higher brackets if stax were added. After all, not unlike Urza or Nadu, Danny just needs a few triggered abilities to spiral out of control, meaning you could readily employ your Grafdigger’s Cages and Cursed Totems while you rack up value. It shocks me how under the radar Mr. Pink has flown, with both counters and card draw being fairly popular themes, but I just chalk that up to the Dr. Who product’s bloat, akin to Harold & Bob’s underrated nature.
Until next time, Nadu or do not—there is no try.
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