Sunday, July 12, 2020

Help, I'm Addicted to Mutate Decks

Mutate decks all basically work the same way - you pile creature on top of creature, usually allowing to become an enormous monster, and do whatever you can to keep the ever-growing list of triggered abilities rolling.

So, I came of age in Magic when dual lands were rare, and so the Triomes - three-color lands (that actually count as their land types, which is extra special for me for some reason) that you can cycle for 3 - have been inspiring me to make a number of wedge-color decks that are built around mutating.

Right now I have Indatha/Abzan (W/B/G,) Ketria/Temur (U/R/G) and Zagoth/Sultai (U/B/G)... I think I've also got a Raugrin/Jeskai (W/U/R) one in there... I've kind of lost track.

Here's the dirty little secret, though: once you've got the cards to make one or two of them, you basically have them for all of them. Indeed, the only cards I'm really missing are full sets of the actual Triomes - I currently only have 8 rare wildcards and I'm being conservative, though I have at least one of each triome, and 4 of Indatha and Ketria (the latter I burned 4 wildcards on, as it was the only one I didn't have any from.)

Green is naturally a pretty good color for mutate decks, as it's creature friendly and boosts mana generation. If you toss in a few Seasons of Growth, you'll be very happy, as both of its effects will seriously help (as a deck that's entirely built around casting spells targeting your creatures, you have a huge card-draw engine.)

I also like using this instant... I'm blanking on the name and having issues with Gatherer at the moment - it costs G and gives the target hexproof and +1/+1 until end of turn. While I've gotten into the habit of using Keep Safe - 1U, counter target spell targeting a permanent you control. Draw a card - to protect my monsters from removal, this one I find is more versatile (as it helps with abilities as well as spells) and being cheaper also means you're more likely to be able to cast it when you need to.

While I've talked about Glowstone Recluse before, another exciting creature is Auspicious Starrix. This is basically a finisher - when you mutate it (also it's 6/6, so it's a good "top" creature) you exile the top X cards of your library, where X is the number of times the creature has mutated, and then you put all the permanent you exiled that way into play.

Now, on one hand, this does mean that you're putting a bunch of mutate creatures onto the battlefield as (*wrinkles nose in disgust*) normal creatures. But there are a ton of ways this becomes utterly insane. First off, having a wide board is a nice change of pace for a mutate deck. But also, lands get thrown out there as well, meaning if you've got a lot of basic lands (which, admittedly, I don't in any of my Triome decks, though spoiler alert, I also have a mono-green mutate deck) you suddenly have a crap ton more mana to work with.

Anyway, I've been trying to wean myself off of these decks by building a cycling deck (it doesn't work yet) and a mono-black deck that's all about killing my own creatures (it sort of works).

I'm curious about what other design space exists with the mutate mechanic - it feels potent - but I also think that this will likely be the defining mechanic for Ikoria as a setting, so they'll have to want to go back there.

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