Indatha Mutate

As someone who did not play during the Tarkir years, I don't actually know off hand what the "wedges" are off the top of the head, despite knowing the Ravnica guilds in my sleep. I actually think I've figured out the Alara shards (center colors: Bant is White, Esper is Blue, Grixis is Black, Jund is Red, and Naya is Green, right?) but with Ikoria returning to the wedges, I couldn't really tell you a Jeskai from a Sultai.

So I'm calling this new deck Indatha, after the Indatha Triome that is the Black/Green/White wedge.

It's my first attempt at a mutate deck, and I've got to say, it's a lot of fun stacking up these crazy mutant creatures with all their various effects. That being said, I need to refine the deck significantly (I really only went with that color combination based on the cards I have.)

Still, the Mutate mechanic has proven pretty exciting to play with, and while I lost a lot of matches before I could get the engine running, so to speak, and I certainly burned through some of my wildcards building the deck (but if I ever want to make another B/G/W deck, I'm pretty set for lands) I think the deck has started to take shape now that I've shifted into a bit more ramp-up with the green. I think I'll probably be putting more life gain in it as well to buy me some time (probably with the Auricorn... thingie, a mutate creature that has vigilance and gives you 4 life each time you mutate.)

My most recent game was against a mono green deck, and after swirling Vulpikeet, Paradise Druid, and that Auricorn thingie together, I created a monster that no massive hydra was capable of hurting - I could fly over the defenders, get big enough to block, and as long as I never tapped it for mana, the Vigilance kept it hexproof at all times, which I could tell the other player was very frustrated by, as they really, really wanted to use various "fight" spells and such to smack the thing out of the sky.

Having basically only made Ravnica decks so far (they're the archetypes I'm most familiar with) it's fun to use this crazy weird stuff.

I think any mutate deck is going to be weak to black's creature removal. Red is a bit of a threat, but if you can pump your dudes up fast enough, they'll be out of range of burn spells as long as you're careful about what creatures you're blocking.

And I suspect that that's why I'm seeing a lot of people playing black decks with tons of removal and deathtouch creatures.

I was able to make this deck by dumping most of my remaining gems into several Ikoria packs, which means I'm going to try to be disciplined and not drop any more money into the game at least until August. I recently discovered a long list of promo codes, however, that gave me several packs as well (even some that had theoretically expired, going all the way back to Guilds of Ravnica.)

Anyway, much as I've become somewhat anticipatory when thinking about taking my D&D campaign to explore the rest of the multiverse, it's also sort of fun to build a deck set in this very different setting. It's also giving me some ideas about what sort of monsters the party should be facing there (mid-fight mutations, I think, essentially giving every monster a second phase.)