Nicol Bolas Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on April 29, 2024

Nicol Bolas | Illustration by D. Alexander Gregory

Nicol Bolas is one of the five Elder Dragons that gave EDH its glorious name. It was also one of the only cool Grixis legends to build an EDH or Commander deck around for quite a while. Today we’re paying homage to one of MTG’s greatest villains. And don’t count him out, as some people are sure haven’t seen the last of Bolas yet.

As a Grixis /Dimir aficionado, it’s my task today to harness evil in MTG and bring it to you. This is a midrange/attrition deck that aims to mine peoples’ resources to make sure that when our general arrives, he finds as little resistance as possible. Also, we’re going to do a little bit of Nicol Bolas typal here, so every single iteration of the villain is going to be present, as well as cards that contain Bolas in the art.

The deck is loaded with value creatures, 2-for-1 creatures, and ways to attack our opponents’ resources. It’s a low-level casual/budget deck, so keep that in mind at all times. With that out of the way, let’s see what makes this deck tick.

The Deck

Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal | Illustration by Steve Prescott

The Commander: Nicol Bolas

Before we begin, isn’t Nicol Bolas, the Ravager a better choice for the commander of this type of deck? Probably yes. But here we’re designing for fun and theme, and let’s keep in mind that our commander costs 8 mana and doesn’t impact the board, exactly as Richard Garfield originally intended.

Nicol Bolas is one of the five original Elder Dragons. It has a somewhat painful mana value of , and if that wasn’t enough, each turn you have to pay to keep them alive – that’s early MTG for you folks. We’re not going to be worried about 3 mana each turn by that point in the game. The idea here is to hit our opponents, preferably those with more cards and fewer defenses, so to speak. We’re not going to get that many attacks with Bolas, but those that get in will surely count.

To support our commander, we’re relying on some cards to reduce the cost of a dragon and specific cards that give dragons haste. We also have the Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves package to offer some protection and allow our commander to hit straight away. We also have some sweepers to help reach the late game in a good spot to compete.

Creatures

Most of this deck’s creatures are value creatures that affect everybody’s board. For example, creatures like Burglar Rat, Liliana's Specter, and Plaguecrafter will demand players to sacrifice something or discard a card. Here, “each” opponent makes all the difference in comparison to “target” opponent.

Baleful Strix will give us a card and trade with something else, the perfect 2-for-1 creature.

Bladecoil Serpent is beautiful in this deck and gives tremendous value from turn 6 onward. Our mana base is already set to generate anyway and obtain maximum flexibility from the card. 

Spark Double can give us another copy of what we need, be it a creature or planeswalker.

BolasTheme

In Bolas's Clutches and The Eldest Reborn are good value cards and have Bolas in the art, which counts for the theme as well. Deliver Unto Evil and Dark Intimations also offer good value and synergize with our 4-5 Bolas planeswalkers, as does Hour of Devastation. There are six total Bolas cards among dragons and planeswalkers.

Interaction

We play more like a tap-out deck, and as such, I opted against counterspells. We have a lot of targeted removal that gets creatures and planeswalkers, like Bedevil and Bitter Triumph. Aside from sweepers, the deck’s also good at containing single threats with the edict effects. Black EDH staple Torment of Hailfire can be a good control tool or win condition.

Sweepers

Here we have interesting options. Toxic Deluge is a flexible sweeper, and we have other options like Crux of Fate, Cyclonic Rift, and Hour of Devastation. Creatures will only stay on the battlefield if we choose so.

Discard

We’re making our opponents discard consistently, so cards like Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal, Tergrid, God of Fright, and Prince of Thralls can give us bonuses when our opponents discard cards or sacrifice permanents.

Dragons

Finally, we have dragons and some dragon synergies. Our commander is a dragon after all. We’re playing some dragons like Decadent Dragon or Nicol Bolas, the Ravager, and ways to ramp our dragons like Nightscape Familiar, Sarkhan, Soul Aflame, and Dragonspeaker Shaman. This Sarkhan card in particular can become a Nicol Bolas when we cast it and bash our opponents. Dragon Tempest is in the deck solely to play Nicol Bolas with haste, enhancing its power.

The Mana Base

This deck has ugly mana requirements, and for that we’ll have to play a higher number of dual lands and tri-lands. We’re playing traditional cycles of dual lands, like the shocklands, the filterlands, the surveil lands and the Battlebond lands. Of the 35 land cards in the deck, almost 30 are dual lands or tri-lands. Signets are also a good piece to filter our mana into the desired colors.

We’ll also need mana rocks to cast our expensive spells as early as possible. Cards like Chromatic Lantern, Orb of Dragonkind, and Carnelian Orb of Dragonkind make sense in a deck that wants to ramp dragons and give them haste. Lantern becomes more useful than ever when your cards cost . Relic of Sauron is also very fitting in this deck because we can get not only 2 mana in any combination but also the card advantage and filtering option.

The Strategy

The strategy of this deck is to play midrange/control in the first few turns, getting some value, playing some sweepers, and the like. This deck has high-cost cards and tends to be very slow, so our sweepers like Toxic Deluge and Hour of Devastation are key to not getting bashed early on. You’ll be playing some cards to mine opposing resources here and there while developing mana rocks.

After casting cards like Plaguecrafter, Soul Shatter, Sheoldred, and a planeswalker like Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God, you should have the battlefield under control and somewhat leveled. Many of our cards can make opponents sacrifice their creatures or discard their cards. After you have 6-8 mana, it’s time to get the most out of our expensive cards. Having dragons in play and casting Crux of Fate to destroy non-dragons, or something like the dreaded overloaded Cyclonic Rift turns the game in your favor. Our commander shines in these scenarios. If you cast Bolas and it immediately dies without attacking anyone, you’ve wasted a bunch of mana. It’s better to wait until people spend their resources, or when you have equipment to protect it or other ways to give it haste.

Combos and Interactions

Although there aren’t any combos or complicated interactions here, there are a few tricks up this deck’s sleeve.

A card like Tergrid, God of Fright gives us immense value in combination with cards that say “each opponent discards a card or sacrifices a creature.” Casting Tergrid and following with a planeswalker like Angrath, the Flame-Chained or something like The Eldest Reborn is back-breaking.

Bladecoil Serpent allows you to pay more than 2 blue mana, or black mana, or red mana. Blue mana gives cards, black makes opponents discard, and red gives the serpent +1/+0 and haste. It’s a detail I originally missed.

What’s better than having a powerful planeswalker like Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh? Having two copies. That can be done with cards like Spark Double, or the passive ability of Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God. Sometimes a quick way to victory is using Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God to mimc the +2 or +3 abilities from other planeswalkers, including your opponents’, and reach the ultimate quickly.

Due to template reasons, Nightscape Familiar will only reduce the cost of a spell by , so it can’t reduce our commander’s cost by . The cost reduction ability only applies once per spell. 

Rule 0 Violations Check

With this deck, Rule 0 is basically: “Guys, I’ll ramp some dragons and get value, with nothing too fancy.” There’s hardly any Rule 0 violation here.

Budget Options

After searching online for the card prices, some of the cards are really expensive, so let’s talk about them in greater detail.

Creatures

Our most expensive creatures are Nicol Bolas, the Ravager, Sheoldred and Prince of Thralls. These cards together account for almost $50. Rakdos, Patron of Chaos, Marchesa, the Black Rose and Thraximundar are some possible replacements, because they fit the value theme. Rakdos will make our opponents sacrifice creatures, while Marchesa can return our small value creatures to the battlefield. Thraximundar hits people hard while profiting from the sacrifice our cards promote.

Planeswalkers

Sarkhan, Fireblood and Liliana, Dreadhorde General are each in the $10 range. As alternatives, Firkraag, Cunning Instigator is a creature that’ll cause mayhem on the battlefield, while Rivaz of the Claw helps with dragon ramp.

Instants, Sorceries and Artifacts

Torment of Hailfire, Cyclonic Rift and Agadeem's Awakening are very expensive too, accounting for almost $70. Of these, I’d say Agadeem's Awakening can go, and I’d keep the other two. Some budget replacements are Wretched Confluence, Aetherize and Doomsday Confluence. The Meathook Massacre is another $30+ card that’s not integral to the deck’s plan, so we can replace it with Drag to the Bottom. 

Lands

Yes, we all know that good budget lands are the bane of multicolor EDH decks. The trick with mana bases is to play whatever good lands you have in that colors, and upgrade as you see fit. At the casual level, you can up the basic land count, or add more ways to get what you need like Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse, Ash Barrens and landcyclers.

Ancient Tomb is the most expensive card in the deck overall, and in a deck filled with expensive cards it’s a strong land to have around. That can be replaced with a basic land. You can replace the surveil lands for the scry lands, and remove the shock lands for check lands, preferably those that count Swamp. Another tip is to use the tainted lands like Tainted Isle and Tainted Peak.

In short, the land swaps look something like this:

• Tainted Isle for Watery Grave
• Tainted Peak for Luxury Suite
• Temple of Malice for Blood Crypt
• Temple of Deceit for Undercity Sewers
• Dragonskull Summit for Steam Vents
• Drowned Catacomb for Morphic Pool
• 2 Basic Swamp for Ancient Tomb and Sunken Ruins

That’s a mana base that fits most players' budgets, and with these alterations, we’re cutting almost $200 worth of cards.

Other Builds

This kind of deck can rely more on the discard/draw aspect, aiming to drain our opponents each time they draw or discard. In this case, we’d play more wheel effects, or cards like Megrim / Liliana's Caress.

You can also build a much more dragon-oriented typal deck, although there are much better dragon commanders. Or a superfriends deck focusing on Bolas planeswalkers and proliferating.

We can also build a more powerful deck relying on Nicol Bolas, the Ravager as the commander, with a more concise discard theme and blink effects for our ETB discard creatures. The deck can still play Nicol Bolas as a finisher later on.

Commanding Conclusion

Baleful Strix | Illustration by Nils Hamm

Creatures in MTG have become much more powerful than their Legends counterparts. Nicol Bolas is a relic of the past, and it’s hard to justify playing it when we have much better options at the same mana cost or lower. At the same time, there’s historical value in bringing an iconic villain to the game table.

Here we have a casual level deck that takes ideas from Tergrid, God of Fright EDH decks and Nicol Bolas, the Ravager EDH decks, and mashes them together with a little bit of dragon typal. Let me know what you think of my card choices in the comments below, or on our Draftsim Twitter. Thanks for reading guys, and stay safe out there.