Locking Up Modern with Nahiri Prison
Prison decks have been growing in popularity in Modern. The format has become more linear than ever and Prison decks have taken advantage of it with their access to infinite of combinations of lock pieces like Chalice of the Void, Ensnaring Bridge, Blood Moon, Rest in Peace, Stony Silence, Leyline of Sanctity, Suppression Field and Rule of Law. And that's just in the deck we are going to discuss today, which is Nahiri Prison! The deck comes to us from Corey Zell who top 4'd an SCG IQ!
Nahiri, the Harbinger
We want to play Nahiri when we have our opponents completely locked out as her ultimate is a clean win condition. Besides just winning the game, she offers us card filtering, which can be very helpful in a deck with no other library manipulation and a mish mash of narrow cards to ditch like dead sweepers or irrelevant lock pieces. One thing to note about her plus ability is the “may” text on the card. If we are very satisfied with the cards we have in our hand, we do not have to discard any. Her minus ability acts as a good removal spell and makes her floor closer to Utter End than anything. If that is the floor for the card, that is not too bad. Her flexibility makes her the perfect center point for the deck.
Chalice of the Void
Chalice of the Void is a great lock piece in the format and is crippling when played on turn one with the help of a Simian Spirit Guide. 1 is the most common number you'll put Chalice on but it can be right to play it for 0 or 2 depending on the situation. Chalice for 0 can lock out Mox Opal decks or Living End. Chalice for 2 is often what you put the second Chalice on because most deck's answers cost 2 mana now. It locks out cards like Abrade, Assassin's Trophy, Echoing Truth and Destructive Revelry, which often slams the door on a game.
Blood Moon
Blood Moon is a polarizing card. It is a knockout bunch for the big mana decks (Scapeshift, Amulet Titan, Tron) and can hamstring greedy manabases in three color decks. Sometimes it is abysmal, like against Burn but the card has so much potential power. Blood Moon and board wipes are an odd combination but they help each other. The fear of being unable to play their creatures in the future makes holding creatures in hand to avoid a Wrath or Anger a risky proposition.
Ensnaring Bridge
Ensnaring Bridge is our way of locking out creatures from attacking us. We want to play Ensnaring Bridge as soon as we can, and get our hand size as low as possible after this, only keeping the key cards like Nahiri, the Harbinger and a board wipe in hand. This card is fairly easy to play, as long as you can get your hand size as low as possible after playing this card. Be aware of Noble Hierarch or Ornithopter and Signal Pest shenanigans sneaking by your Ensnaring Bridge.
Anger of the Gods, Day of Judgment, and Wrath of God
Can you see why we grouped all of these cards into one section? I hope so… The split of sweepers offers good coverage for the format. Day of Judgment is there to throw the scent off of Wrath of God for Meddling Mage purposes. Anger of the Gods covers us against the rising hordes of graveyard mobs like Arclight Phoenix, Bloodghast and Prized Amalgam. These matchups get even better after sideboarding with Rest in Peace, but having 3 Angers make even Game 1 potentially winnable. The biggest mistake in general I see players make is they save these board wipes for when our opponent “has too many creatures”, which can be correct, but we are ultimately aiming to get rid of their board as quick as possible, so we can set up our planeswalkers and lock pieces, you may often find yourself sending an Anger of the Gods at 3 creatures.
Simian Spirit Guide
We are mainly looking to exile this to play a spell a turn early, or to help with mana in our Plains-heavy deck. This card is a part of all of the deck's best draws and should probably be banned in the format.
Hazoret the Fervent
Even though it is just a one-of, we are using it as a way to get a early, hard to deal with threat onto the board, and swing when we get the chance, utilizing the ability of Hazoret to discard useless cards in our hand in order to deal damage to our opponent or to turn on Ensnaring Bridge.
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
This is our win condition. It is awkward having to run a blank in the deck, but Emrakul's ability to shuffle back assures that discarding to Nahiri will not leave you stranded without a target for her ultimate. Emrakul also assures we cannot be milled out, which won't come up often but can be really important in odd situations like against Blue Black Mill or if an opponent ultimates Teferi, Hero of Dominaria.
Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Chandra, Torch of Defiance is a potent threat in Prison decks in all formats, and she is great here as well. Chandra acts as a draw engine and can add chip damage, or allow us to double-spell by producing mana. 4 is an important number for toughness in the format right now, so Chandra's minus matches up well. Her Ultimate is one of our ways to close a game and probably our best way if there is an Ensnaring Bridge in play.
Abrade
Abrade serves as a flexible removal spell that is not dead against the creatureless Prison decks in the format. We already have a ton of dead cards in the matchup but at least Abrade adds to our ways to break through.
Journey to Nowhere
Journey to Nowhere may seem odd here in place of Path to Exile but with the importance of Chalice of the Void on one, picking the two drop removal spell makes more sense. Like Path, Journey exiles its target which is huge in a graveyard centric format and it can help snipe annoying disruptive creatures like Kitesail Freebooter and his Human pals, Gaddock Teeg or Selfless Spirit. The cheaper interaction is vital in the format and helps stabilize after a sweeper or make the opponent play even more creatures into your sweeper after you Journey to Nowhere their first guy to undo all of their pressure.
Leyline of Sanctity
Leyline of Sanctity provides us hope for matches against combo decks like Storm and Burn as well as protects us from discard like Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek. Midrange matchups can be tough due to our lack of filtering and the opponent's discard can be enough disruption to pick us apart by targeting our Blood Moons and Chalices. Getting a Leyline out turn 0 is a gamebreaker against Storm or Burn, as they are unable to target us with Grapeshot and other burn spells such as Lightning Bolt and Lightning Helix.
The Sideboard
As a white deck in Modern, Nahiri Prison has access to the best sideboard cards in the format. Rest in Peace, Rule of Law, Stony Silence, Runed Halo and Suppression Field all line up against decks in the format and are just some of the options available to the deck. This deep pool of cards means the deck can react and change to adapt to any metagame.
See you guys next week!
This deck has been a blast for me to play! I truly do enjoy the feeling of complete silence (and maybe a little destruction due to our board wipes), and then an Emrakul hitting the board. This deck typically does well game 1, and is backed by key cards in our sideboard.I hope you all enjoyed Nahiri Prison, and I look forward to seeing you guys next week!
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