How to Beat Nadu, Winged Wisdom in Modern
The Modern RCQ Season kicked off this past weekend and Nadu is still legal. I am not here to talk about how it should be banned. Everyone knows the deck is broken. The top 4 of the Pro Tour was all Nadu, the Top 4 of the SCG was all Nadu. It sports a problematic winrate and it probably won the last RCQ near you. The deck is insane and no one is really gonna argue against that.
However, for the next (at a minimum) three weeks Nadu, Winged Wisdom will be legal. The correct option is to play the broken deck, but if you don’t have the cards or aren’t able to I am here to go over the best sideboard, or even mainboard options, to beat the deck.
How To- Nadu Comboing
To best disrupt Nadu, it is key to understand how the deck combos. The initial combo is quite simple and the Endurance loops are quite frankly rather irrelevant. Your opponent will often concedes before you really have to explain how you don’t need Thassa’s Oracle and that you can loop your lands while also avoiding a 4-horseman combo.
Regardless, Nadu Winged Wisdom and either Shuko or Outrider En-kor allow you to repeatedly target your creatures at no cost. This combined with Nadu’s ability “Creatures you control have ‘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.’” allows you to amass an incredibly advantage in cards and lands. If you don’t kill that turn you are set up incredibly well for the following turn. Once a Springheart Nantuko is found every land drop gives 2 more Nadu triggers. Once these 3 are assembled you are incredibly incredibly likely to go through your entire deck and from there you then generate infinite mana, bounce/destory all their permanents except for basics and if you have a Non-summoning sick creature and Noble Hierarch you can attack for infinite damage by creating infinite noble hierarch copies.
If you would like to learn more about Endurance loops, this 7 page document outlines them.
Mainboard Options
Wrath of the Skies (Jeskai Control OR other Energy Control shells)
The current best deck against Nadu is Jeskai Control which has access to 3 maindeck Wrath of Skies. Wrath of the Skies beats up hard on Nadu as it can often be a 2 Mana clean boardwipe against Nadu, even killing Urza’s Saga. If you think Nadu is going to be especially popular at your next RCQ mainboarding the 4th Wrath in Jeskai is not entirely unreasonable.
Volatile Stormdrake (Mirror)
Another great option for a deck that has an exactly 50% winrate against Nadu is Nadu. To ensure that the mirror match goes smoothly, Volatile Stormdrake is a great mainboard option to both get rid of your opponents Nadu and Supply you with your own.
Sideboard Options
Surgical Extraction
If you are fighting against Nadu and can get a copy in the graveyard Surgical will permanently deal with the rest. It is very important to avoid casting a Surgical when your opponent is representing a Chord because it doesn’t really matter if you remove 3 from their when their 4th is now on the field. Post surgical it should be significantly easier to win, however a Titania could present a real problem and I would keep that in the back of your mind.
Rakdos Charm
Rakdos Charm is an awesome and very flexible card that can straight up kill your Nadu opponent if they have sufficient creatures, or it can kill a Shuko to prevent them from going off in the first place. It is a bit below rate for all of it’s effects so it isn’t by anymeans the best sideboard card but it certainly is good especially given it can be two mana kill your opponent at its peak.
Wear // Tear
Wear / Tear is both flexible and efficient. 1 mana to kill an enchantment is great. Being able to stone rain a Saga for 1 mana can be back breaking and hitting Shuko is good aswell despite being a poor exchange in terms of mana. If you can fuse this spell to hit both Nantuko/Saga and a Shuko then you are really cooking. Overall spell is good and also great against Necro.
Toxic Deluge
Toxic Deluge is good because it is a 3-mana boardwipe. It will often miss Nantuko as if Nantuko is bestowed only the creature it is enchanting will be destroyed and the Nantuko will stay alive and well. This will be worse on the draw and needs back up disruption to really win as otherwise Deluge will just be a road bump. Nadu is a broken card so it is very hard to beat.
Force of Despair
Force of Despair kills Nadu without targetting and can often hit other creatures that were cast before it. It isn’t perfect but this spell is free and effective.
Plague Engineer
Plague Engineer doesn’t really look like it would do much vs Nadu. It doesn’t hit Nadu, Outrider, or a bestowed Nantuko. However, Nantuko, the 3rd combo piece creates 1/1 insect tokens. By naming insect you prevent insects from ever being able to be targetted because statebased actions will always be checked and kill the tokens before the Nadu player ever gains priority to target them.
Collector Ouphe
Collector Ouphe is a road bump but will hopefully buy enough time for the deck you are playing to win. It turns off Shuko and Ring but doesn’t stop Outrider from comboing with Nadu. I wouldn’t recommend Ouphe as your go to disruption piece but if you are in a meta with a lot of artifact decks it can be a reasonable choice to bring in even if Nadu isn’t the reason its in the sideboard
Damping Matrix
Damping Matrix is as close to a full shut off piece as you can get. It is played primarily in Living End, a deck with a great Nadu matchup and turns off both Shuko and Outrider. It also hits a ton of other random cards such as Yawgmoth.
Harsh Mentor
Harsh Mentor is pretty fine. It punishes fetches and it stops the combo but between the Rise of Burrenton Forgetender and the maindeck Volatile Stormdrakes it isn’t as a good an answer as many people believe it to be. Nadu is incredibly powerful and more disruption is needed than a two-mana 2/2 that doesn’t even fully turn off the deck.
