Nin, the Pain Artist was one of several new Magic: The Gathering Commander cards revealed at PAX East 2011 in Boston. Nin costs just two mana to field, has a good degree of synergy with a variety of cards, and is an interesting option for the blue/red Commander deck, commonly associated with Niv-Mizzet and Jhoria decks.
Nin, the Pain Artist
RU
Legendary Creature - Vedalken Wizard Rare
XRU, T: Nin, the Pain Artist deals X damage to target creature. That creature's controller draws X cards.
1/1
Nin, the Pain Artist is cheap and compact, and won't cost too much to play over and over as she dies (And she will, a lot) unless you give her some protection. There's obvious combo potential here with Stuffy Doll and Consecrated Sphinx, but the real question is, can Nin really hack it in Commander with 2 already extremely powerful and sometimes broken choices filling her wedge space?
Our current answer is no, but we're still going to love playing with Nin - as long as we're quite certain our the playgroup that particular evening won't be running Tier 1 Commander decks.
One of our greatest fears with Commander hitting the mainstream was that the format would continue to become more net-decky and less of what made EDH great, the diplomacy and camaraderie of a game filled with multiplayer mayhem.
Commander will feature sanctioned events, but they will be unrated. We're slightly dubious that this is going to have players bringing their fun concept Commander decks to play with, and the field will indeed be overrun with decks speeding to combo wins as quickly as possible.
One reason Commander really attracts players is the 100 card singleton aspect, but as the game's cardpool continues to expand and more cards are released that do more or less the same thing with different names/costs (i.e. Demonic Tutor/Diabolic Tutor), players have already begun to turn 100 card decks into much less than that from a probability perspective.
It all comes down to the spirit of the game and it's really up to each playgroup to regulate their own Commander experience. That said, Nin, the Pain Artist should be great fun to play with in casual blue/red builds that can combo out, but don't instantly win.
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