Making Clues With Nyla, Shirshu Sleuth in Commander

Nyla, Shirshu Sleuth | Art by Douzen

Welcome to another deck tech showcasing a new commander. For this week, let's take a look at Nyla, Shirshu Sleuth, the Shirshu companion of expert bounty hunter June (depicted in the Avatar set as June, Bounty Hunter).

Nyla has a really powerful sense of smell and uses this advantage to help June track her targets. In Magic, this means being able to create a lot of Clues – but we're getting ahead of ourselves, that's for the next section!

Just like in previous articles, we're here to...

• Highlight interesting game plan(s) for a new commander.
• Build a budget-friendly (~$40) "Core" power level deck following these plans.
• Work through important card categories and discuss notable inclusions.
• Include a deck list and a deck checklist.
• Go through mid-budget upgrades (<$20 per card) as options to invest more into this strategy.

What Does Nyla, Shirshu Sleuth Do?

Nyla's most exciting ability is creating a large number of Clue tokens if we exile a high mana value creature card from our graveyard. There are many ways to take advantage of this powerful ability, including cards that like creating and sacrificing artifacts or tokens – and cards that like having a lot of artifacts in play.

The basic game plan is this:

1. Get a high mana value creature into our graveyard.
2. Cast Nyla and create a bunch of Clues.
3. Use cards that synergize with these Clues to build an advantage.
4. Disrupt our opponents' plans with all sorts of spells.

So how are we going to pull this off? Let's go through these categories in order.

Getting a High Mana Value Creature Into the Graveyard

One of the easiest ways to get a high mana value creature into our graveyard is by discarding it to its own cycling ability. This way, we only have to pay a few mana to get a six-, seven-, or even eight-mana creature into the yard.

These creatures also naturally help us draw more cards/find more lands, which is already what we want to be doing in the early game. Win-win!

There are also a few creatures we can get into play for much less mana than their actual mana value, either with improvise, morph, or prototype. Once these creatures die, they'll be perfect targets for our commander.

Artifact/Clue Synergies

Artifacts/Clues Entering or Dying

Especially in recent sets, has emerged as a color that cares about artifacts and tokens entering, dying, and being sacrificed.

Creatures like Arcbound Condor, Pactdoll Terror, Al Bhed Salvagers, Susurian Voidborn, and Mirkwood Bats are great examples of ways this strategy has been boosted in just the last few years.

And don't forget older classics like Disciple of the Vault and Marionette Master!

Artifacts/Clues Staying on the Battlefield

But it's not just about artifacts entering and dying in various ways – a board full of Clue tokens can also be powerful just by being on the battlefield.

Cards like Armix, Filigree Thrasher and Demonic Junker provide useful disruption. All-star Equipment like Adaptive Omnitool, Cranial Plating, and Nettlecyst can threaten to end the game quickly, especially stacked on top of each other or on other cards with similar abilities like Monoist Circuit-Feeder and Brotherhood Vertibird.

Finally, cards like Academy Manufactor and Foggy Swamp Visions can turn Clue production into a sudden burst of advantage.

Sacrificing Clues at Will

Clue tokens do have the built-in ability to sacrifice themselves for , but some cards reward us for sacrificing them for free (most notably Persuasive Interrogators, the card with the initial highest synergy score with Nyla).

Clue sacrifice engines can allow us to produce lots of mana, filter through or draw cards, create a formidable threat, or reanimate a ton of creatures at once.

Black Disruption

Now we understand how to get our proactive, Clue-centric plans up and running. But which cards in our color identity can we use to stop our opponents from executing their game plans?

Bone Shards and Bitter Triumph are targeted removal spells that also allow us to discard high mana creatures for our commander to harvest for Clues.

Consuming Corruption and Tendrils of Corruption can take down a large opposing threat while undoing some of Nyla's life loss.

The new on-theme printing Raven Eagle and the classic lands Bojuka Bog and Scavenger Grounds disrupt opposing graveyard-based strategies.

Finally, Archenemy's Charm is a great reason to be in mono-black, as it serves as a versatile removal, recursion, or lifegain spell as the game state requires.