Nicol Bolas, the Dragon God EDH (EDH / Commander) [Revision 8]

Having talked to my pod, they were happy to let me use a planeswalker as my commander, despite not otherwise being a legal commander.

This deck has a theme of "What would Nicol Bolas want to do?"
And then you do that.

This is my second take on the deck, after running it for the last few months. As much as I wanted to use various Deserts, because Amonkhet made it appropriate to do so, the fact that Bolas is an inflexible 3 black pips means that I needed more colour sources than colourless. So I put in a few more dual lands to try and get around that. But this deck is definitely slow, with a high average CMC and some somewhat slow tap lands. But that's just the Grixis way.

You may note that I'm missing 2 versions of Bolas - Nicol Bolas the Ravager, and Nicol Bolas, The Deceiver. The latter is more interesting because Visage of Bolas is a tutor specifically for that card, yet I don't run it. Why? Because these are the cards I've managed to buy as singles from my LGS, and I've not found a copy yet to buy at a non-inflated price.

This deck also struggles against flying creatues, with few ways to block fliers or other forms of evasion without playing removal. Removal is honestly this deck's main saving grace, because without it, the deck really struggles.

Ways to Improve the Deck

1. Remove Grave Betrayal for a lower CMC card. I've never managed to have it in hand / on the board with a removal piece in hand (like Damnation). The closest I ever got, I'd gotten a few Planeswalkers out and was ready to ultimate a few of them anyway and win the game (the opposing Flash tribal deck took great exception to that, and I didn't end up winning that game anyway ahaha).

2. Branch out and include more planeswalkers. There's a large collection of Planeswalkers from this faction that thinks they're "cool" and "doing the right thing", called the Gatewatch. Now, they've got good cards sure, but they're filthy members of the Gatewatch. If you could look past that, then they might be okay. But that's too great a concession from me.