Nadu: An Obvious Example of Modern Card Design Failures

It is no secret that modern-day card design is drastically different from what it once was, especially compared to the days when format-defining cards like Tarmogoyf, Lightning Bolt, and Prismatic Ending were the kings of the Modern format. In today's age of broken cards slipping through the cracks of Wizards R&D, leading to metas with clear winners and losers, and obvious format-warping decks, the recent Nadu combo deck stands out like a sore thumb, breaking the format with its namesake card having an undoubtedly broken ability.

For those unfamiliar with Nadu, it grants all creatures an ability that states, "Whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell or ability, reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land card, put it onto the battlefield. Otherwise, put it into your hand. This ability triggers only twice each turn." This allows the deck to combo with a wide range of cards in various ways. The main loop involves using Shuko's free equip cost to dig for Springheart Nakuto, create more creatures, equip further, and draw extra cards while playing extra lands, generating immense mana and insect tokens to continue the loop until virtually the entire library has been drawn through Nadu's ability. It's clear that this is already an incredibly powerful core for a deck, but the deck's Bant (blue, white, and green) mana base makes it incredibly resilient and difficult to interact with as well. The deck utilizes cards like Sylvan Safekeeper, Teferi, Time Raveler, and the One Ring to shield both the combo and the pilot from opposing interaction, making the losses against the deck feel that much more grueling.

Recent Pro Tour statistics from Pro Tour: Modern Horizons 3 continually reflect the idea that Nadu's printing was a mistake, with Nadu boasting a 59.3% win rate and comprising a staggering 20.2% of the field at the most recent Pro Tour. As the event continued, Nadu's lack of balancing consideration became increasingly apparent as we reached the top 8, with Nadu dominating the top 8, and composing the entirety of the final four decks left after round 1 of the top 8. Obviously, the deck went on to win the entire event, with Simon Nielson's impressive understanding of the deck allowing him to pilot it to victory. Although it was impressive to watch the final players pilot the deck and utilize its intricate combos with Springheart Nakuto's bestow ability to loop select cards from the library with endurance, it's hard to refute that watching these decks in action was boring and seemed miserable to play with or against. The lack of interaction with the deck is exactly what players want to avoid, and exactly what the Wizards R&D team should avoid introducing to the game.

For the sake of clarity, the Wizards R&D team states that their design philosophy adheres to the acronym F.I.R.E., which stands for Fun, Inviting, Replayable, and Exciting. In summary, F.I.R.E. means that the goal is to create and print cards that are fun to play with and against, well-balanced, easy to understand, and have new, attention-grabbing effects and mechanics. Although Nadu may tick some of these boxes when placed in a vacuum, the responsibility to ensure these criteria are met extends beyond the card itself and should ensure a card still meets this criteria when interacting with other cards. The concerning part is the number of cards in recent years that follow this same pattern or are even worse by themselves. Obvious offenders that come to mind are Fury, Grief, Uro, the One Ring, Hogaak, and the ENTIRE Companion mechanic, which required emergency errata and still saw several bans. This may not be a large number of cards, especially compared to the number of cards printed with every set, but these are just a handful of the more prominent examples seen in recent years.

Focusing the discussion on Nadu, the question of whether players should just play more removal to deal with it arises, but when threats feel far more impactful than most interaction pieces, this hardly seems like the solution. All in all, there seems to be a general consensus that Nadu is a problem (even beyond the scope of Modern) and something needs to be done. The question we currently face is what is the best way to address Nadu: a simple errata to nerf the ability, banning another piece of the deck or the card altogether, or simply waiting for the format to adapt better to dealing with it. Although no answer seems like the perfect solution, with an errata potentially setting a weird precedent for a paper-based card game, the removal of an enabler from the format potentially being the Bridge From Below banning part two, a complete ban removing the entire archetype from the format, and doing nothing causing many players to simply not want to play out games, Wizards' latest broken Simic design sitting on the chopping block would likely be the ideal, easy solution. However, all we can do at this time is wait and see what course of action Wizards decides is best for the overall health of our beloved formats living in fear of Nadu.