Nicol Bolas and the Amazing Shrinking Hand

I splurged a fair amount this month on MTGA (I blame severe pandemic-induced boredom and WoW being in the very nadir of the between-expansions doldrums) and I'm definitely going to budget how much I'm spending on digital cards, I have been very hesitant to burn wildcards, but I realized I had luckily gotten a few key cards already for what appears to be a popular deck.

It's also built around Nicol Bolas, who has been in my collection (in its far less valuable Chronicles edition) since 1997, though this, of course, is a new incarnation of him: Nicol Bolas, Dragon God.

The big bad of the War of the Spark and the entire arc leading up to it (making him basically the biggest villain in MTG since Yawgmoth - though get back to me on Emrakul) is a beast of a Planeswalker.

For UBBBR (cheaper than his original incarnation!) Bolas starts with 4 loyalty and has a passive that lets you use the planeswalker abilities of any other planeswalker on the board. His +1 lets you draw a card and then forces the opponent to exile either a card in hand or a permanent they control. For -3, you can destroy a target creature or planeswalker (which admittedly was probably a bigger deal in the planeswalker-heavy meta when War of the Spark came out, but still!) and for -8, any opponent who doesn't have a legendary creature or a planeswalker loses the game, and that's opponent, not player, so no worries if someone Bedevils in response.

So, the deck that I'm playing is, unlike most of mine, pretty close to an established deck build. It's a nasty control deck that is all about wiping out enemy creatures and shrinking the opponent's hand while forcing them to discard.

It runs three different planeswalkers, typically, with Nicol Bolas, as well as Liliana, Waker of the Dead, whose +1 requires both players to discard a card, and then if an opponent can't, they lose 3 life. Coupled with Bolas' exiling ability and four Thought Erasures, not to mention Narset, Parter of Veils, whose passive prevents opponents from drawing more than a card per turn, so you can prevent draw-heavy decks from getting around the hand-shrinkage.

I tossed in a Liliana, Dreadhorde General just because I have one, and it's a nice card to have in any deck that focuses on Black - though its "draw a card when your creature dies" passive can make the other Liliana's ability hurt you a bit more (though, you know, card advantage.)

Shark Tornado can give you a win condition, as you'll be playing tons of cards to pump out sharks (I was cheap and only burned a single wildcard - the official list puts 4 in.) And then two Extinction Events can sweep the board pretty amazingly.

Anyway, it feels mean sometimes, but that's control, baby!