Got a chance to run it, and...ha, well, it's about as clunky as one might imagine. The ramp is actually pretty strong despite not running any of the fast mana artifacts, but it tends to peter out pretty quickly. Problems include: (1) lands really aren't that hard to kill especially when they're usually being animated into pretty small creatures, and (2) it really takes a pretty excruciating amount of mana to keep animating, and (3) it applies very little pressure, and (4) it's really easy to run out of juice.
I don't know that I can do all that much with the deck concept as it is. It's funny but bad. There are definitely some minor upgrades but I think the strategy itself is just not going to be good, to the surprise of no one. But I can see some alternative avenues that would probably have more juice:
-dump onto a really well protected creature - easily the best option being
Elusive Tormentor // Insidious Mist. It dies to sac or mass bounce/exile/-x but otherwise is basically unkillable, and it's in blue so you can just counter the random grave pacts. Probably just run 1-2 of these bases, with lots of tutors and control. If it somehow dies you can either recur it, or just make a mutate stack of actual mutates like a chump.
-play mutate onto a bouncy dude like
Glitterfang, which leaves you basically the same amount exposed as with most manlands, but with the downside that you can't stack things super deep but you can retrigger them over and over, so that's neat. You can also put the mutate on top of the glitterfang to get some more significant hits in.
The downside to the first plan is that it really goes best with BUG because of ET and the preponderance of strong mutates in those colors, but both bug commanders are built around recurring mutates from the grave which ideally won't happen.
The downside to the second is that you're stuck playing red most likely, with white also having options, and those options generally sucking. Though there are also some blue options, so maybe it could work? Screw it, let's list them all out:
Archwing Dragon
Blinking Spirit
Brightling
Darting Merfolk
Dimensional Infiltrator
Fleeting Image
Glitterfang
Lantern Spirit
Palinchron
Skywing Aven
Selenia, Dark Angel
Thalakos Scout
Viashino Sandscout
Wydwen, the Biting Gale
some more efficient than others. By color they're mostly blue and red, with a few white. So Jeskai could work. It does mean you get garbage tier mutates but that was already true. Since you have to replay them frequently it matters less ofc. Could also go temur, but then you've got the lack of board wipe problem. Sultai kinda splits the difference between lack of wipes and lack of bouncy boys.
Idk, I'll probably play this version at least a bit more first.
darrenhabib wrote: ↑3 years ago
You can use bounce lands to return your mutate land and all the mutate creatures so that you can cast again for triggers;
Simic Growth Chamber,
Golgari Rot Farm,
Dimir Aqueduct. Bounce lands also go nice with
Exploration and
Burgeoning.
Academy Ruins to keep putting
Boompile,
Nevinyrral's Disk,
Oblivion Stone back on top.
Entomb can either put a mutate creature for
Otrimi, the Ever-Playful or put
Life from the Loam to get your dredge on.
Kederekt Leviathan is great with the
Life from the Loam dredge plan.
Gaze of Granite as another sweeper.
Sensei's Divining Top to go with all the fetch-land and tutors and it allows you to setup
Auspicious Starrix and
Parcelbeast better. You can always put it on top of library when you do one of your mass destruction spells. You know what I mean its basically impossible to get rid of.
Search for Azcanta goes nice with
Life from the Loam, and you look to transform it so that its a land for the purposes of your deck.
Tempt with Discovery is too risky as opponents can get a
Strip Mine,
Wasteland,
Ghost Quarter,
Tectonic Edge, etc, which are the bane of this deck.
On that note some number of protection cards is necessary.
Disallow,
Tale's End,
Voidslime are the most versatile when it come to stopping spells and
Strip Mine type effects.
Tragic Lesson can be used as card draw and as a way to protect your setup by returning the mutate land so that you can recast for more triggers.
If you play
Crop Rotation then you can use this as a versatile tutor, and then even use it to protect your mutate land by using a bounce land to return them to hand in response to a
Strip Mine or whatever.
The deck screams for
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and
Cabal Coffers to help pay for your spells.
Mirage Mirror is interesting in that you can turn it into lands and creatures.
Easy cuts
Sylvan Scrying,
Expedition Map,
Grim Tutor,
Crux of Fate.
Bounce lands are decent. Tbh I also want more basics though too. Land problems, man.
Ruins might be a little too combo-y for me. Granted I can do a similar thing with the GB mutate, but I have to keep hitting mutates.
entomb is a good call for sure.
leviathan I'll probably exclude for violating the "non mutate targets that aren't lands or other mutates" principle. Also it's kinda pricey for the effect.
I had in gaze but holy crap does that cost a lot to be effective, ugh. Maybe we could actually afford it but it seems awful.
top and search are both reasonable, could potentially try to fit them in.
In my current meta strip mines are really rare so that's not a big concern tbh. If everyone is getting lands we can just get a land that protects itself (i.e.
Breeding Pool can regen through strip mine). And we can afford the cost with all those lands.
I think the tutors are pretty crucial tbh. At least the versatile ones like grimmy.
Mirage mirror is really weird. I think you can put the mutates on top, then then still copy a land or something for defense when necessary, although it'll lose all the mutates when it's transformed. Honestly I'm not 100% sure how that interaction works though. I wish the card existed in arena for testing.