Nadu, Winged Wisdom – Modern Horizons 3
Date Reviewed: January 3, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 5
Casual: 5
Limited: 4.5
Multiplayer: 5
Commander [EDH]: LOL
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale: 1 is bad; 3 is average; 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
David
Fanany
Player
since
1995
This card was #1 on my Top 10 list.
It had to be Nadu, didn’t it? If you want to talk about cards that make you ask what the heck just happened, he is arguably the new poster child for that kind of deck – the game states are just as dizzying as anything Memory Jar could conjure up, with people basically turning their entire deck over and putting it into play (and creatures are inevitably more charismatic than artifacts). First impressions can be very deceptive in Magic, but not in Nadu’s case: he looks absolutely insane on first reading, and I don’t think there’s any way to dispel that impression short of something like giving him errata like Arena’s Alchemy version has. As devastating as he is in decks built around him, he’s also unlike some similar cards that have fairer uses, as it’s shockingly easy to stumble into something degenerate without even making an effort. I think it’s fair to say that a creature that got banned almost as quickly as the aforementioned broken jar was not on anybody’s prediction list for 2024, and while we’re always asking what’s next when it comes to Magic, I wouldn’t blame anyone for remembering Nadu and asking that with more trepidation than usual.
Constructed: 5
Casual: 5
Limited: 4.5
Multiplayer: 5
Commander: 5 when not banned, if not more. Imagine the Modern combo deck, but you can’t permanently kill the enabler.
This card was #1 on my Top 10 list.
As of this time of writing, Nadu, Winged Wisdom is banned in Modern and Commander.
Nadu, Winged Wisdom was as sure a shoo-in for top spot as there could have been, and it’s not too hard to see why. Everything about the card screams “we maybe didn’t think everything through completely”…between a statline that’s just good enough to dodge premium removal options (which may have driven Soul Spike stocks through the roof) and an ability that’s worded to be as obnoxious as possible, Nadu quickly began to terrorize every format known to man (except maybe Vintage). The main thrust of Nadu’s puissance is that the ability is agnostic about source and it grants it to every creature, and it becomes perilously easy to just turn, say, a Shuko into your deck being vomited into play, particularly paired with Scute Swarm. The long and short of it is that there is a lot that Nadu combos with (far more than doesn’t combo with it), and it even forfends itself from interaction by being in a good color to facilitate such.
Nadu, Winged Wisdom’s reign of terror in Modern and Commander was mercifully short, as the bin chicken was banned fairly quickly…and it has continued to create chaos in Legacy today, to where ban rumblings have begun there. I think it’s safe to say that Nadu was maybe a bit pushed, and he stands as proof of why you should never trust a bin chicken.
Constructed: 5 (B I R D)
Casual: 5
Limited: 4.5 (it’s still an evasive flier that punishes attempts to remove it)
Multiplayer: 5 (it is no weaker with more opponents, I assure you)
Commander [EDH]: lol
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