Hello happy people! I hope your day is going well!

Are you enjoying the Core Set 2021 spoilers and previews? I hope so! I was honored to do the spoiler for CSI here with Glorious Anthem! (You can check it out here).

Today I want to scratch my Commander itch after seeing a potential leader that pinged my Abe-dar. What leader?

Niambi: Take 2

Niambi, Esteemed Speaker has a few things going for her! She's incredibly cheap so she can come down reliably on turn two. As long as you have the mana untapped, you can have the Niambi to follow.

Now don't slip past that flash. As you know, leaders with flash have a great deal more to offer. You can flash block. You can flash trade with a x/2 that swung your way. You can flash out at the end of a turn and then untap and swing. She's great with the flash!

She also has the ability to self-bounce like Whitemane Lion. With her 2-drop status and flash, she basically is a two-color legendary Whitemane Lion. You can flash her out to save a dork from removal or death in combat, or to reload an enters-the-battlefield trigger. You can block and then bounce the blocker. The attacker that was blocked is still blocked. You also net life as you do this so you will help yourself out while guzzling up that mana.

Finally, you can spend three mana, tap her, and then discard a legendary dork to draw a pair of cards. From one to two! Draw those cards, which is sweet in this case.

What do I want to do with Niambi?

Great question!

I want to make an Azorius version of Equinaut.

What is Equinaut?

Equinaut is a Bant colored deck that uses the self-bounce of dorks like Fleetfoot Panther to trigger three sets of things: Enters-the-battlefield triggers like Aura Shards, cast triggers like Equilibrium, and the leaves play or self-bounce triggers of Azorius Aethermage.

By combining these triggers into a self-bouncer, you can net value with the massive slate of three types of triggers. Niambi, Esteemed Speaker is a great leader for this build as she will self-bounce and thus cause a load of triggers of various types to fly. What I want to do is to strip out the Blue and White parts of Equinaut and create my take on Niambi.

Ready?

Niambi, Take Two isn't the only card from Core Set 2021 to make the cut. Rambunctious Mutt is here as well bringing his enters-the-battlefield madness to the table to smash artifacts or enchantments that your foes control. Isn't he cute?

In order to get some more legendaries, I increased the amount of planeswalkers in the build. These include three planeswalker Teferis. I want to run every Teferi card where possible as Teferi is her daddy. Literally. So, I managed three planeswalkers and one Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir.

One of the key themes in my deck is to run dorks where possible. I want to increase my creature range, so I have creature removal, creature bounce, and creature counters! You'll love to bounce a Voracious Greatshark or Draining Whelk for more countering. You can flash out your leader to bounce once and then counter something you didn't otherwise have an in-hand counter for.

Glen Elendra Archmage has some odd synergy here too. Don't see it?

1. Drop Glen Elendra Archmage and do any triggers you have,
2. Sacrifice it to counter something special. It returns as a 1/1 and will trigger your enters-the-battlefield triggers.
3. Self-bounce it to your hand with any self-bouncer.
4. Recast for triggers as a 2/2.
5. Repeat

As you can see it has some mad synergy just like the other counters for recursiveness.

As you can see, Core Set 2021 is not the only recent set I am dipping into. Hello Luminous Broodmoth! Now I hate having my stuff die and we run a ton of cards to keep that from happening. But let's face it. It's going to happen! When it does, you can bring that dork back to the table even better. I have only a small number of innate flyers so most will recur. And that recursion? It'll trigger your ETB triggers. Note that once they are back you can self-bounce them and then keep up the pressure with more and more and more triggers! And creatures!

Don't forget this engine either. You can tap something to tap down a big card before self-bouncing it.

It also can set up a self-bounce where you cast it and begin a chain like this:

1. Flash out Whitemane Lion
2. Cast trigger 1 mana for Equilibrium - bounce an opposing dork
3. Net one enters-the-battlefield trigger somewhere, like Spirit Bonds.
4. Tap it to tap something with Opposition
5. Return the Lion to your hand.
6. Net, you spent for bouncing, tapping, and a 1/1 Spirit token.
7. Repeat.

It's a key part of the deck and twins with both Blind Obedience and Thalia, Heretic Cathar which will help slow your foe down while you are using your machine. But the Opposition is also good as an emergency answer to something you need to find a better answer for later as you can tap a land like Maze of Ith, an artifact, or a dork. The only things you can't tap are planeswalkers and enchantments, and it's not like that matters anyway, right?

One final trick is this dork. Because you can bounce any number of your dorks you can save your team from mass removal, draw a ton of cards, self-bounce two or three for cards to keep the card flow going, and loads more. You can also use this to save engines like Opposition and Cathars' Crusade from removal both targeted and mass.

Ready for my deck? Okay here we go!

Niambi's Equinaut | Commander | Abe Sargent

• Commander (1)
• 1 Niambi, Esteemed Speaker

• Creatures (39)
• 1 Angel of Invention
• 1 Azorius Aethermage
• 1 Bygone Bishop
• 1 Cloudblazer
• 1 Deadeye Navigator
• 1 Deputy of Acquittals
• 1 Draining Whelk
• 1 Elite Guardmage
• 1 Ephara, God of the Polis
• 1 Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1 Jeskai Barricade
• 1 Karmic Guide
• 1 Kor Cartographer
• 1 Kor Sanctifiers
• 1 Luminous Broodmoth
• 1 Man-o'-War
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 Quickling
• 1 Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage
• 1 Rambunctious Mutt
• 1 Recruiter of the Guard
• 1 Reflector Mage
• 1 Restoration Angel
• 1 Serra Ascendant
• 1 Shrieking Drake
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Soulherder
• 1 Spell Queller
• 1 Stonecloaker
• 1 Sun Titan
• 1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
• 1 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
• 1 Thistledown Liege
• 1 Venser, Shaper Savant
• 1 Voracious Greatshark
• 1 Wall of Omens
• 1 Watcher for Tomorrow
• 1 Whitemane Lion
• 1 Yorion, Sky Nomad

• Planeswalkers (7)
• 1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
• 1 Jace, Unraveler of Secrets
• 1 Narset, Parter of Veils
• 1 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria
• 1 Teferi, Master of Time
• 1 Teferi, Temporal Archmage
• 1 Venser, the Sojourner

• Instants (5)
• 1 Eerie Interlude
• 1 Familiar's Ruse
• 1 Mana Drain
• 1 Paradoxical Outcome
• 1 Teferi's Protection

• Enchantments (6)
• 1 Blind Obedience
• 1 Cathars' Crusade
• 1 Equilibrium
• 1 Opposition
• 1 Smothering Tithe
• 1 Spirit Bonds

• Artifacts (6)
• 1 Chromatic Lantern
• 1 Cloudstone Curio
• 1 Darksteel Ingot
• 1 Panharmonicon
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Thought Vessel

• Lands (36)
• 4 Island
• 4 Plains
• 1 Adarkar Wastes
• 1 Ash Barrens
• 1 Azorius Chancery
• 1 Castle Vantress
• 1 Celestial Colonnade
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Fabled Passage
• 1 Flood Plain
• 1 Flooded Strand
• 1 Glacial Fortress
• 1 Hall of Heliod's Generosity
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Irrigated Farmland
• 1 Kor Haven
• 1 Maze of Ith
• 1 Meandering River
• 1 Nimbus Maze
• 1 Port Town
• 1 Prairie Stream
• 1 Reflecting Pool
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Sea of Clouds
• 1 Seachrome Coast
• 1 Sejiri Refuge
• 1 Temple of Enlightenment
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Tranquil Cove

Buy This Deck Export text format

And we go!

Did you enjoy my Niambi deck? Anything in here that you liked or what to see in your own build? Did I inspire anything? Did I miss something? Just let me know and have an awesome (and safe) day!

P.S. Ever wonder what it's like to live car-less in America? A society that is overly reliant on the car? Find out what it's like and what I do to deal with it over on my ongoing series of Living With H.D over on YouTube.