My first attempt at a Nightfall Control deck.
**Now tweaked slightly, and generally improved. (See notes below)
You might first be asking yourself, "If this is a control deck, where is the card draw?" But remember that every card that reads "Summon: Nightfall" essentially is a cantrip... just delayed. There are
26 Nightfall triggers in this deck. One makes it permanently Night. Yeah. On top of that, you've got
Moondial to bolster those with actual, one-sided card draw. Only once per turn, at 5 per hit, it's steep. However, it's harder to remove AND it doesn't die to the Night damage (unlike Staff of Stories, for example).
What else does this deck do?
1.) It uses the Night damage to help finish its opponents off. Especially when paired with
Miris Nightshade's ultimate --
Nyctophobia, adding an extra damage to each tick AND triggering Night itself. That incidental damage adds up. It can also help remove relic weapons a touch faster. Auric Runehammer, I'm looking at you specifically.
2.) It tries to ramp into its higher cost cards using either
Duskwalker (because it's almost always Night) or
Worldbearer Behemoth to supplement our "natural" 2 cards drawn per turn.
3.) It stays alive with repeatable lifegain from
Lunar Magus and
Rindra, the Duskblade, or repeatable blocks with
Dawnwalker, or repeatable 5/5s from
Pillar of Amar. Of course, by the time you get there you're pretty surely winning.
Other cards to think about:
Yeti Furflinger: Nightfall trigger, decent body to block aggro, *harsh* influence requirements, but the Ultimate is great removal. I almost always use it as such, never as a way to get over dudes (2/2 flyer? really?)
Twilight Hunt: Nightfall trigger, lets us either grow our Behemoth and get free sigils OR make our Dawnwalker into a reusable heat-seaking missile.
Praxis Displacer: tempo, pure and simple. Great against Tavrod especially... or anything costing 5+. Can also be used to recycle our own dudes, like to get another Killer trigger, or to use
Miris Nightshade's ultimate again.
Rindra, the Duskblade: as a 4-drop, Rindra is in a tough spot. The other cards *feel* more integral to the deck, BUT I cannot deny the raw power this unit provides. I will likely try adding more to the main as the deck progresses.
Encroaching Darkness: the real win condition. Your opponent takes at least 1 damage every turn, and you now don't. It gets better with Miris Nightshade, obviously. And you don't have to worry about hitting your triggers every turn any more. It just stays. It's a wonderful thing, trust me.
Removal...
Well, that's kind of the rub, isn't it? With a deck like this, there isn't as much space for traditional, hard removal. Maybe that's a mistake. This deck tries to have enough threats that it's hard to draw enough answers for them all. Against Aegis- or Endurance-heavy decks, this list will suffer. It relies
very heavily on
Winter's Grasp as a lockdown tool that also triggers Night. At that point, you're really left with just
Twilight Hunt, and that requires a dude you don't mind potentially throwing away.
Sideboard
This isn't really tuned... at all. I'm toying with some things. The idea of Disjunction is to either combat Armory or to buy back something important, like Nyctophobia or Encroaching Darkness. Steward of the Past does what it does, and as a hate-card it's strong. The rest... removal of some sort. Maybe that's right. Who knows?
Definitely leave thoughts and comments below.
This may be another crazy brew for now... but it can always be tweaked.
*1.22.18 Edit: Tidying up the messy mana, trying
Champion of Mystery instead of Pillar. Unblockable is real, as is his card draw.
*2.3.18 Edit: Removed some of the weaker nightfall cards for more one-sided card draw. Also, more
Rindra, the Duskblade, since he does everything we want. Lastly,
Annihilate because of threat diversity.
Possible replacements could easily be Wisdom of the Elders, Strategize, or even one of the sideboard cards. The downside is that they don't help us hit Nightfalls. For that, maybe it's better to try Nocturnal Observer. Just going to take testing.