Otrimi - My Commander is a land
Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2020 12:13 pm
Ok, I've decided to go with Otrimi, the Ever-Playful as my commander. There's a few moving parts here. The main strategy of the deck is to set mutates on manlands, and then repeatedly blow up nonlands while keeping your giant mutate pile nice and safe, except from Strip Mine. Unless you can get a hexproof and/or indestructible counter on it.
To go hand in hand with this, it's time for my favourite dumb draw engine, namely Life from the Loam, as set up by Intuition. Helps protect our better manlands, keep the land drops flowing, and get value from cycling.
One other thing to note: those big spicy mutate piles can indeed be copied! I did some testing on arena, even. It copies all the abilities of the mutate pile BUT, for purposes of Insatiable Hemophage it will "restart" at 0 since that permanent hasn't mutated. But this does mean that, if your pile dies after you copy it, you can use otrimi to retrieve them and then dump them back onto the now superpile.
original post for posterity:
Just a dumb idea I had, trying to decide if I actually want to do it, and if so, which commander to use. Basically, play a bunch of board wipes, and turn a land into your commander with mutate, then load it up with counters, maybe some equipment.
Full list of options includes:
Brokkos, Apex of Forever - seems like you're paying mostly for the stats, and in this case the land has to go on top for protection, making the stats irrelevant. So likely a bad choice.
Illuna, Apex of Wishes - in this case, you're paying for the trigger, which probably won't have great targets in a deck like this. Plus we're cut off from most traditional board wipes. Don't see it.
Nethroi, Apex of Death - also paying for the trigger, in a creature-light-to-nonexistent deck. Nope.
Otrimi, the Ever-Playful - you do pay for the stats, but the mutate is cheap and you get the trigger. This is an interesting choice since you can load him up with mutates while keeping him protected as a manland. But the land still has to stay on top which is annoying for buffing it up. Also if he doesn't die idk how the mutate gets into the grave. Maybe dredge?
Snapdax, Apex of the Hunt - You're mostly paying for the trigger and double strike, both of which are pretty nice. Stats are low so you're not missing out too much. Being in white gives good board wipe access. Getting it buff enough to kill quickly seems a little tricky though. Other mutate options in mardu are balls, so likely no other mutates.
Vadrok, Apex of Thunder - A weird one, you do get white for wipes, but unfortunately he can't really cast them on his own. Keywords suck and body sucks, so mostly this is about the trigger but idk what I'd want to target, or how I'd get him big afterwards. Some potential but I'm having a hard time seeing it.
Right now I'm mostly thinking Snapdax, but Otrimi does offer some interesting possibilities. If anyone has a Vadrok concept I'd be curious too. The rest seem like poor choices from where I'm sitting.
To go hand in hand with this, it's time for my favourite dumb draw engine, namely Life from the Loam, as set up by Intuition. Helps protect our better manlands, keep the land drops flowing, and get value from cycling.
One other thing to note: those big spicy mutate piles can indeed be copied! I did some testing on arena, even. It copies all the abilities of the mutate pile BUT, for purposes of Insatiable Hemophage it will "restart" at 0 since that permanent hasn't mutated. But this does mean that, if your pile dies after you copy it, you can use otrimi to retrieve them and then dump them back onto the now superpile.
Otrimi, the land
Approximate Total Cost:
original post for posterity:
Just a dumb idea I had, trying to decide if I actually want to do it, and if so, which commander to use. Basically, play a bunch of board wipes, and turn a land into your commander with mutate, then load it up with counters, maybe some equipment.
Full list of options includes:
Brokkos, Apex of Forever - seems like you're paying mostly for the stats, and in this case the land has to go on top for protection, making the stats irrelevant. So likely a bad choice.
Illuna, Apex of Wishes - in this case, you're paying for the trigger, which probably won't have great targets in a deck like this. Plus we're cut off from most traditional board wipes. Don't see it.
Nethroi, Apex of Death - also paying for the trigger, in a creature-light-to-nonexistent deck. Nope.
Otrimi, the Ever-Playful - you do pay for the stats, but the mutate is cheap and you get the trigger. This is an interesting choice since you can load him up with mutates while keeping him protected as a manland. But the land still has to stay on top which is annoying for buffing it up. Also if he doesn't die idk how the mutate gets into the grave. Maybe dredge?
Snapdax, Apex of the Hunt - You're mostly paying for the trigger and double strike, both of which are pretty nice. Stats are low so you're not missing out too much. Being in white gives good board wipe access. Getting it buff enough to kill quickly seems a little tricky though. Other mutate options in mardu are balls, so likely no other mutates.
Vadrok, Apex of Thunder - A weird one, you do get white for wipes, but unfortunately he can't really cast them on his own. Keywords suck and body sucks, so mostly this is about the trigger but idk what I'd want to target, or how I'd get him big afterwards. Some potential but I'm having a hard time seeing it.
Right now I'm mostly thinking Snapdax, but Otrimi does offer some interesting possibilities. If anyone has a Vadrok concept I'd be curious too. The rest seem like poor choices from where I'm sitting.