Nightmare Nuu

I remember when I first saw the Mask.

I was at a tournament with some friends, on a break from my passion hero Uzuri, Switchblade, disappointed with how weak she had felt after a year of tinkering with her across various formats. I was trying to blow people up with Katsu, the Wanderer, having a ton of fun, but feeling a little lost. My local judge ran over to me in the middle of my game and shoved a phone in my face to show me the card that would change me into something evil, something crazy…

The brewer of 9 Chi Nuu, or as it came to be known, Nightmare Nuu.

Nuu, Alluring Desire was a hero I immediately started brewing with on release. From the second I first saw her at the Pro Tour in LA, I was throwing decklists together on Fabrary. I didn’t care how little we knew of her, I was constantly tinkering and trying to figure out what her deck would look like. I was trying early builds focused on Double Trouble and the new mystic reactions as soon as the intro deck videos were spoiled. My early conclusions with the hero were that she felt powerful, but her matchups felt incredibly polarized, like a more extreme Uzuri - not what I needed. In certain matchups, her hero power was largely textless, and she was little more than an Assassin with a slightly more reaction-focused plan.

However, with the reveal of the Mask, it was clear to me the plan the developers were encouraging with Nuu, using it to disrupt throughout the game before building a big banish to use her hero power on. I immediately began testing with the card, and it was clear that Mask was worth warping the deck around. I tried 6 chi, 7 chi, even 8 chi - and then Archon Alters and I came to a very funny conclusion.

“In which matchups do you not want max chi?”

So I began testing.

The skeleton I had generally been working with for Nuu was 33 blues and 12 reactions. A reaction count any lower than that, and Bonds of Agony became too inconsistent for my liking; and any less than 33 blues made transcending felt inconsistent. So given the skeleton, the first draft of Nightmare Nuu was formed.

It’s hard to fully explain the power of Mask. When you read the card, it seems like a forced neutral trade in which neither player gets an advantage. However, essentially “forcing” a block after reactions is incredibly powerful, and puts the opponent into no-win situations.

Often in Assassin, your opponent will just not block you, accepting that they still have a playable hand after one forced discard. But what about the Mask, now leaving them with an unplayable 2-card hand? Likewise, sometimes the opponent will overblock the effect, playing around reactions and playing a small, efficient hand. Again, Mask means the 1-2 cards they were planning on keeping are now 1 card less, making it even less likely they can do anything on their turn.

Both of these postures are generally incredibly strong against the Assassin class - but they do not work against the Mask. Very little plays around it efficiently, and therefore maximizing our available Mask activations would help us get the most out of this strategy.

Over time, the deck began to feel fragile. There were turns that were merely a blue stealth plus a Mask activation, or turns where no Transcend cards were drawn. I thought maybe the idea of a 9-chi list was bad, but stuck to the core concept anyway, determined to make the deck work. 

I began to realize a lot of the stealth cards in the deck were largely textless, and that transcend payoffs probably had a lot of play in the deck. I also began looking at a card I had largely ignored before this: Beckoning Mistblade.

The cards above initially registered as draft chaff, but as I began working them into my list, I found I was able to push multiple disruptive blues with Mistblade, getting more consistent arsenals even after activating Mask with Second Tenet, and pushing on-hits through blocks with Tide Chakra. These were the tools I needed to fix some of the major consistency problems of the list; and with them, I found a gameplan that felt tuned and clean.

Now that you understand how we got to this point, I’d like to detail the list and matchups to explain how you can get full power out of Nightmare Nuu - and the philosophy behind the deck - to set you up to make personal adjustments to the decklist and playstyle. 

Abusing Mask and disruptive blues is a core idea of the deck, so at least one Mistblade appearing should make a lot of sense. However, why are there no Outsiders daggers? Largely, they just aren’t very good in the deck. 

Daggers help you take advantage of larger hands; and specifically, the Outsiders daggers discourage your opponent from blocking with specific cards. Besides requiring sideboard space to have the right daggers for every matchup, they also encourage your opponent to make what is largely the correct and highest value play: not blocking in the first place, and trying to outrace you. 

The second Mistblade, on the other hand, allows you to abuse Levels of Enlightenment better, allows the deck to force through even larger turns, and punishes the opponent for not blocking - encouraging them to make the low-value play of blocking us out in a list constantly forcing a discard after blocks.

Equipment utilization is incredibly hard in this deck. Tunic powers most of our best Bonds turns, as does the arm and legs. Generally, I suggest saving our equipment for Bonds turns, but there are always exceptions to this. Sometimes Wave can be strong for pushing through an on-hit your opponent clearly respects, and Stilettos can be used as a reaction to your opponent blocking with armor and trying to get a power turn. Tunic can be used for double Mistblade turns to really trap your opponent with no right answers, but also can be used for Codex of Frailty, as is Assassin tradition.

The reactions are part of what make this deck so insanely powerful and hard to block. However, it’s important you make careful use of these cards. While your chance of drawing a “Runeblade hand” - a hand of all non-attacks with no way to convert to damage - is incredibly small in the deck (around 10% through a 9-turn game) it is still important that you try to keep these out of arsenal, and that you aren’t afraid to block with them. Generally, an attack in arsenal helps avoid these Runeblade hands, as well as helps you abuse double Mistblade. Pitch stacking these reactions in fatigue matchups is also very important, and something to consider if it’s worth playing for based on how slowly your opponent is playing. 

The stealth cards are the other backbone of the deck, and help us to either disrupt the opponent every turn, or to draw cards and maintain tempo. These cards are a large part of the power budget of the deck, and are incredibly important to resolve for as high value as possible. Bonds of Agony in particular can be our sole win condition in certain matchups, requiring pitch stacking to force through; but it can also be a nearly-impossible-to-block attack that we use to disrupt our opponent off of their power cards.

These are the other disruptive blues the deck runs. While Surgical Extraction is way more common than the other two, Rowdy Locals and blue Cut Down To Size allow us to consistently take multiple cards out of the opponents hand with them plus a chi. Just be careful with blue Cut; if it is hitting, just arsenal the chi, but if it isn't, feel free to Mask.

Most Nuu lists are on all chi except these three, so let’s talk about them. Both of these targeted chi can be awkward because, if you draw them with another chi, it can be hard to transcend both of them and still have a turn. This is easier to deal with in a Nuu deck that is using chi to activate Mask, which requires an attack anyways. Sacred Art can be clunky because it requires two cards to fully activate, and both of its non-transcend effects are pretty minor. These are all valid reasons to cut these Chi - but in the 9 chi list, our goal is to keep our opponent on 2- or 1-card hands, so consistent hand disruption is too important to warrant cutting any of these. 

Our sideboard is built in a way that is largely meant to be intuitive. We have a main board of 54 cards, so before every match, choose two sideboard cards to slot in as 3-ofs (and check that you have de-chi'd). If you wish to include more than 2 of these, such as in the Kano matchup, cut some Tide Chakra to fit more cards. In the Nuu mirror, don’t forget to cut Levels of Enlightenment. There is some recent talk about cutting Surgical in the mirror as well, but I have found it to be pretty hard to consistently disrupt and activate chi going down to 27 blues.

One of the main reasons to play Nightmare Nuu is this matchup. Your goal is to double disrupt every turn until they pop equipment, then you can relax and be more patient with disruption. If they are playing the matchup more patiently, fatigue can become a real option, and pitch stacking for a powerful swing turn can be important. 

Another of the main reasons to play Nightmare Nuu is the advantage in the mirror. While playing around reactions and blocking smart is an important part of the matchup, double Mistblade and a higher chi count means we generally steal and keep tempo very easily. Save up for big chi turns; otherwise just use chi to Mask.

A matchup I was nervous about my first few times as Nightmare Nuu that I’m now convinced is favored. If you’ve played the Ranger vs. Assassin matchup, you’ll know it’s incredibly tempo based, and our deck is incredibly good at keeping tempo. If they can get tempo early, it can be very difficult. However, I go second in this matchup and hope I don’t draw a non disruptive first turn so that we can steal tempo early and keep it. 

The most advanced game of rock paper scissors I know! If they stack, and we bring in Oasis Respite, and fire Bonds early, we are in trouble. If they tempo, and we don’t bring Oasis in, and go all in on Bonds, we are in trouble. Try to get a read for which plan they’re going for and board appropriately, and the matchup feels swingy but winnable. We prefer they go tempo, so generally I risk it and bring in the oasis against a blind opponent, and just hope that if they’re stacking I’m able to get a bonds to 15 through Oasis dud draws. If you know your local Kanos are stackers, Exude Confidence can be a powerful sideboard card for the matchup.

Aggro aggro aggro! This matchup is incredibly draw dependent on both sides. We are trying to play as large of numbers as possible in a deck that largely has bad numbers, but as the lists go away from ward and more to 2 card plays, we get more play in the matchup and some of our disruption gets turned on. Levels is our most important card here and one we are building and playing around all game. 

You may initially think this matchup is a bye for Nightmare Nuu, but it can be very tough if the opponent knows the matchup. They are basically an aggro deck in the matchup, and we are trying to deny go again and dominate, while setting up a double attack chi turn to close out the game. Play incredibly patiently and try to extend the game as much as possible, as their banish is your friend for getting 20+ damage turns. 

I hope you have fun with the list, and if you have any comments please feel free to reach out to me either in the comments or on discord. I’m pretty active on purple discord @purpleabby10 and I’m always willing to talk about our favorite succubus!