This New Ping Commander Is BUSTED! | Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin | $50
Hey friends and welcome back to Budget Commander! Do you want to play a Rakdos deck that kills the table in a hurry, while also drawing silly amounts of cards? Well I've got the budget brew for you: here's my $50 list for Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin!
The Ultimate Ping Commander!
Move over, Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph, there's a new best Ping Commander in town: Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin not only grows in size as we lower our opponents' life totals 1 point at a time, but also impulse draws a card each time too! With the amount of amazing pingers in Rakdos colors, our Ob Nixilis can easily trigger 10+ times per turn cycle, drowning our opponents in value while we effortlessly 1-shot them with our giant flying trample commander! So let's load up on ping cards, play our commander, and fly straight to value town!
The heart of our deck is, of course, our pingers. The best ones in our deck either 1) reliably trigger multiple times per turn cycle or 2) are super cheap to cast, with the best being both. Some examples of the best pingers in our deck are Manabarbs, Spiteful Visions, Roiling Vortex, and Underworld Dreams, as they're all guaranteed to trigger Ob Nixilis multiple times per turn cycle, growing him super quick while giving us access to tons of cards to play until our next end step.
Our deck must focus on being as mana-efficient as possible: while Ob can "draw" us a lot of cards, we only have until our next end step to actually cast them, so we're going to be pinched on mana trying to cast everything. That's why my lists have very low mana curves, peaking at 2mv and having nothing over 5mv.
Our removal package is a huge highlight of the deck: cards like Pestilence are all-stars in the deck because the ping-based board wipe can repeatedly clear the table of opposing creatures while also essentially reading "Pay B: draw a card and put a +1/+1 counter on Ob Nixilis," which is nuts! We can also turn all our pinging into removal with Chandra's Incinerator. I also love that our commander grows so large that he's usually able to survive a Chain Reaction, making our burn-based wipes one-sided!
The final piece of the puzzle is protection. I know that protection isn't a sexy subject when talking about deck construction -- and EDHREC's userbase seems to totally forget about it -- but it's particularly important in this deck. The fact is that this deck, while very very strong, is only strong when our commander is on the battlefield. Every turn we untap with Obby on the battlefield increases our odds of winning exponentially, and we only need like 3 turns with him out to win games! Therefore it's in our opponents' best interest to kill him asap, and it's in our best interest to stop that!
I included multiple ways to cheaply make Obby indestructible, like Armor of Shadows and Professor's Warning, and multiple ways to redirect spells away, like Bolt Bend and Wyll's Reversal. These cards might not be sexy but they're going to win you tons of games!
$50 List
The first list has everything you need to start dominating tables: solid ramp, great pingers, powerful removal and a handful of strong protection. Play Obby, ping opponents, and win!
$100 List
The $100 list has some massive upgrades to the deck, with the remaining best pingers like Burning Earth, Pyrohemia, and Kederekt Parasite. We've also dramatically increased the amount of spells we can cast each turn with Prosper, Tome-Bound generating tons of treasures for us. But the biggest upgrade is All Will Be One, which is a 2-card combo with our commander Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin to deal infinite damage to all of our opponents!
Further Upgrades
There are still tons of cards you can add to the deck to make it better:
- Removal: Delayed Blast Fireball, Blasphemous Act, Chandra's Ignition, The Meathook Massacre
- Ramp: Jeska's Will, Birgi, God of Storytelling, Urabrask, Dockside Extortionist, Seething Song, Talisman of Indulgence, Mana Crypt, Jeweled Lotus
- Pingers: Mayhem Devil
- Big Damage: Passionate Archaeologist, Seize the Day
- Protection: Lightning Greaves, Deflecting Swat, Malakir Rebirth, Tibalt's Trickery
- Tutors: Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor
- Lands: Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Leechridden Swamp, Ancient Tomb, Takenuma, Abandoned Mire, Blood Crypt, Luxury Suite, Sulfurous Springs, Bloodstained Mire, Haunted Ridge
Next Week: Narset?
I didn't realize that Narset, Enlightened Exile is the fourth-most popular commander this week according to EDHREC! That's good news for me because I've been making Izzet Spellslinger lists for over a decade now, so Go Wide Prowess is right up my ally. I'll knock that out, maybe Kiora Sea Monsters after that, and maybe Spy Kit the week after!
