Niv-Mizzet Reinvents Gates

Hi it's me your extremely jet-lagged boy writing directly from the Cambridge area for the next 5 days. Oh god I'm so tired, I spent the entire night on the plane and must've slept for about 4 hours total. To celebrate the coming christmastime, and my absolutely delirious state, I decided to make a Rainbow Niv deck with Fires of Invention and Guild Summit with a buncha gates. It draws a TON of cards, ramps a whole bunch, and hopes to drop its big stuff on the board as early as possible.

Niv-Mizzet, Reborn

I was looking over my decks and realized that while I've done quite a few 5-color Brawl decks, I've never built the most satisfying and fun value engine commander of Niv-Mizet, Reborn. Most of the removal and big haymakers in the deck are dual-colored, trying to maximize the chances to draw at least 5 cards anytime we cast our big boy commander. On top of that, we run the other powerful 5-color commanders as possible powerful finishers later in the game when we've got tons of mana to work with thanks to our ramp and our Fires of Invention.

The Ramp:

As mentioned previously, we need to ramp up FAST. We run Gilded Goose, Incubation Druid, and Paradise Druid as our mono-green mana dorks that tap for any mana, as well as Arcane Signet and Chromatic Lantern to fix our mana as our pieces of ramp that can't be found with our commander. We also run Growth Spiral, Leyline Prowler, and Feyburrow Elder as our pieces of ramp that can be found with Niv. The idea here is pretty simple. Get a ton of mana, draw a ton of cards, and win the game with big guys.

Gates and Advantage:

Here we see 4 of our non-multicolred cards, but it's extremely worth it to just keep drawing lands as much as possible. Guild Summit provides us a consistent source of card advantage every turn if it stays on the board, and Circuitous Route lets us ramp up for our Fires of Invention while drawing more cards if Guild Summit is on board. We run Fires of Invention as another way of not having to deal with all the ridiculous color requirements, and to help us keep casting our commander if he gets countered or killed. Drawn from Dreams works too well with Fires to not be running in the deck, and the only card that Niv can find in this group is Escape to the Wilds, which has amazing synergy with all our cards, getting us card advantage (though not draw), and ramp. 

Direct Removal:

We run a lot of pieces of cheap direct removal to give us access to deal with any of the threats that can be thrown at our face. We run Tyrant's Scorn to deal with early threats or bounce a creature to either dodge removal or as an answer to overwhelming midrange aggression. Angrath's Rampage and Bedevil to hit creatures, planeswalkers, or artifacts. We run Assassin's Trophy as the best piece of direct removal in standard, and Deputy of Detention to temporarily deal with any nonland permanent annoying us on the board. The most amazing part of this collection of cards is that every single one of them can be found from our commander's ETB effect, effectively allowing us to continually deal with most threats our opponents can throw at us.

Sweepers:

We're not counting only on direct removal, we have access to 5 multicolored 'sweepers' to help deal with the board in this deck. The deck could also be running a Gates Ablaze but I'm too weak to cut the Ethereal Absolution from the deck. We run Deafening Clarion as a possible early sweeper, which also has the 'secret mode' of giving our creatures lifelink in the rare occasions when we get into a race. We run actual board clears Kaya's Wrath and Time Wipe to go with our powerful ETB creatures. Casualties of War is an incredibly evil card to run with a lot of ramp, as if we get in on early enough it can feel like our opponent got Plow Under cast on them, and late enough we can get a 5-for-1 on our opponent's stuff. Solar Blaze is the worst of these 'sweepers' in the deck, yet it does wonders versus powerful green ramp strategies and decks running Nissa, Who Shakes the World. With all these sweepers, the deck should rarely find itself without answers to whatever our opponent is trying to do.

Win Conditions:

Let's be honest, these are the cards that really excite you. These are the big dudes, the messed up cards, the things that'll make your opponent go "C'MON DUDE!" after you play them. We start off with the wonderful 3cmc planeswalkers Teferi, Time Raveler and The Royal Scions, providing us with early threats, card draw, and generally annoying the hell of our opponents with these busted early threats. If our opponents remove them, that's less removal for our truly enormous threats in the deck, and if they don't you can keep snowballing on them. We have two big bombs that cannot be found with our commander, and it's the two other 5-color cards in the deck. Kenrith, the Returned King is insanely powerful (and my favorite commander at the moment), and in this deck he'll be mostly a huge threat that activates a lot of other cards in the deck, draws us cards, gains us life, and reanimates stuff. He works fantastically well with Fires of Invention as we can play him and activate him at the same turn. Golos, Tireless Pilgrim is a similar story, allowing us to ramp up (and find our Field of the Dead early on) every time he gets on the board, as well as being activatable to blow our opponents out with our powerful expensive spells. We run Ethereal Absolution because I think the card is hilarious, though it could be replaced with a powerful planeswalkers like Ral, Izzet Viceroy or Garruk, Cursed Hunstman. I still believe Ethereal Absolution works best because enchantment removal is rarer than planeswalker removal in this format, and the card deals with midrange strategies and graveyard strategies much better. We run a Hydroid Krasis as just a huge powerful flampler that draws us cards and gains us life, it's a perfect card for a deck with quite a bit of ramp. Finally, the card I'm most excited about is Emergency Powers. The original version of this deck I built had Narset, Parter of Veils to really blow opponents out with this card, but I find it to be pretty unneccessary in the current construction of the deck. This card is really powerful way to make use of all our ramp and Fires of Invention to recur cards in the late game, draw a ton of cards if we are losing in card advantage, and mess with our opponent's hand if we are threatened by something they're holding.

The Lands:

G A T E S

Ah, gates! I've done a lot of work with budget gates deck, but I'm beginning to feel like these dopey tapped lands might be quite powerful in 5-color brawl decks.  I've started running Guild Summit in my Kenrith deck and the card draw you get from this adds so much consistency it's amazing. On top of that, Fires of Invention completely removes the gates' downside, making them absolute winners in a deck that wants to draw a lot but also has ridiculous mana requirements. Of course, the deck will struggle quite a bit against an aggressive Tajic deck or something of the sort, but those are extremely rare in the format full of Nicky Bs, Kenriths, and Golosi (Goloses? Goloss?). Anyways, the deck runs 29 lands, with only 4 basics in 2 Islands and 2 Forests. It runs most of the gates except Gateway Plaza, and the deck also runs a Plaza of Harmony for further color fixing. The manabase is, as always, open to most changes. I'm using a lot of tap lands including the scry lands to fix our draws because Fires of Invention lets us keep up with the mana race by not suffering from the tapping.

Well, I'm going back to bed now. The room's spinning, I feel like garbage, and the jet lag has absolutely destroyed me. Apologies for being less consistent this week, I still have two finals to go through.