Partly inspired by Raphmajere's building of Zal Mega-rush, I wanted take another under-utilized hero and make them competitive. I've spent way too much time playing with mages, so Nish was my obvious choice. Also, a lot of the reasoning for this deck comes from Hit em with all you got.
So, what do mages have going for them? The answer is easy, offense. They have the most powerful, damage efficient spells in the game, and those spells can't be mediated by armor, or really defended in any way. I should mention that by damage efficient, I mean they do the most damage per resource.
But Kamman, Nish's ability is such a good controlling maneuver, I want to run a control mage deck! Well, you're in the wrong place. To run a control deck, you need cards that counter attacks, control the game, or heal you significantly, allowing you to wait out your opponent until your late game win condition kicks in. Mages have few counters, no heals, and no late-game win conditions. Look at the high cc human allies. You're paying a lot of resource for little attack power, but a lot of health. Sure, peoples are going to have trouble taking board control away from you, but why would they bother? Look at what other heroes can do for 6-7 resources- cast KP, bumping probably several allies by 2 attack each, bringing in a 5-6 damage shadow ally, mind controlling your beasts and damaging you- basically the high cc human allies only work when they can be buffed, so that they become threatening, and mages have no good buffs.
What do I mean by threatening? It's what He-man has called inevitability, basically that you will do more damage to their hero with your allies than their allies can do to you, forcing them to attack your allies rather than your hero. What this means is that any other hero will gladly ignore your sandworm or aeon and beatdown your hero.
So what you need to do as Nish (or any mage) is constantly have a threatening board position, meaning your allies are always doing the greater potential damage. To ensure this, you need to be using damage efficient allies, so that your resources are converted into the most potential damage. This forces your opponent to attack your allies rather than your hero, allowing them to act as a meat shield, your only really defensive measure as a mage.
The problem here of course is that your allies will likely die before doing damage, which is where portal comes in! Portalallows you to attack the enemy hero, while simulataneously forcing your opponent to deal with your over-threatening allies and thus "meat-shielding" you.
Now, this is essentially the idea behind a gravebone deck, and shadow allies tend to be more aggressive than human allies, so why use nish? Well, the most damage efficient ally is in the human side (blake). The human allies that are most cost effective are 1-3 resources, meaning it is easy to make sure that you use exactly all of you resources each turn, maximizing your damage. Last, the human allies tend to be more durable than the shadow allies, while being as damage efficient. This means human allies act as a better meat shield. The counterside is that the shadow allies have cooler bonus abilities, but that's not as much a concern here. Last reason is Nish's ability- using allies in this way causes your opponent to constantly focus and attack your allies, meaning you rarely have board control. After your "meat shield" dies away, Nish's ability clears the board, preventing that opposing board control from translating into damage to your hero.
So inspired by these ideas, here's my take on the most competitive Nish deck possible. It's probably not quite tier 1, but it can get near 50% win ratios.
Nishaven
4x kris
4x puwen
4x blake
3x aldon
3x birgitte
4x fireball
4x lightning strike
2x nova
4x portal
3x bazaar
4x bad santa
2x SS
There are two main ways to play the deck, which can be varied depending on which hero you are facing, what sort of draw you get, and whether you go first or second.
Allies first
If you go first, or if the opponent hasn't played an ally by turn 2, go can go ally-first-spells-second. In this scenario, you play your cheap allies and win some early board control and damage. This also works against priests, who should have no trouble destroying a late game portal, making your saved up allies worthless. A kris-puwen-aldon-LS combo should give you early game board control, no matter who you play. You should play for board control until turn 4-5, at which point it should become clear that your opponent is going to gain board control from you. At that point, use all your remain hits to go after their hero. If you can bring the hero down at least 10 life points with the early rush, you've done your duty. If you don't think you can get in 10 damage to the hero, then you should be using the other play strategy, or stop after kris.
At this point we're at turn 4-5, you've done 10+ damage with your early allies, and the opponent is slowly gaining board control. Don't be in any rush to use your ability. Use spells, even a nova if you can, to maintain board control. Use a SS to slow their attacks, buying you a few more turns before Nish's ability becomes critical. Your opponent will be holding onto a good card or two until after you play your ability, so make them wait on that card. Judge how much damage you can do with spells per turn, versus what their allies can do. If they can only hit you with less than 5 damage per turn, hold your ability and wait for their good stuff to come out. Try to wait until your SE gets to 8 before using your ability, as your second ability will be available shortly after.
Late game, you can either finish them with spells or with a portal-weenies combo.
In this sort of game, don't be afraid to sac portals, as you are using your allies early and saving your spells for later anyways.
Spells/draw first
If you are playing someone with a good early game rush, hold off on your allies. This can also be a good strategy against warriors, as crippling blow and retreat silence your allies that might later be more deadly in a late game portal combo. Play a bazaar or bad santa early to keep your card draw high. Use a fireball turn 3, either on their hero, or on an aldon (I don't think any other ally really warrants a fireball). Turn 4 go for a Lightning strike. Look for the board clear asap, especially if they've built up a strong ally base and did good damage to you early. Turn 5 nova works well, or just using a LS, or a FB + Bazaar
Notes
Some notes on blake- he can be killed by so many card in the current meta, that he's only recommended when you are certain he will get damage in to the hero- so either you go 1st against a shadow hero and he has nothing out by your turn 2, or otherwise exclusively with a portal. Blake
Notes on Fireball
All of your allies (minus birgitte, of course) are damage efficient when used with portal. Kris is even damage efficient when used without portal, and in fact should probably primarily be used without a portal unless you have an aldon around and an extra resource to kill. If you don't play a kris in your first turn or two, don't feel bad saccing it. Although it is still damage efficient when played late game, it will run your through your deck faster for less of a punch, so for me kris is the one ally in which card use and advantage should be valued over damage efficiency.
Draw engines
What!?!? Bazaar
To be damage efficient, you need to be saccing a card every turn, and using as many of your resources per turn as possible. Thus I opt for the two most efficient draw engines in the game, bazaar and bad santa. If you're really worried about card advantage, think of it this way- bazaar will keep your opponents hand flush with cards, so bad santa will give you mad card advantage. Otherwise, you'll just have to have trust in your deck that bazaar will help you more than your opponent (which I have argued is possible elsewhere).
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