Illuna, Apex of Polymorphs
Approximate Total Cost:
Some thoughts:
- The mana base is definitely lacking. I hope to pick up fetches, shocks, tangos, etc. in all colors eventually, but I'm not there yet. This makes the effectiveness of something like Skyshroud Claim significantly worse, but it's still by no means bad and will only get better as I upgrade.
- The primary tension while building this, imo, is making sure there is enough token creation while also making sure none of it is prohibitively expensive or in the form of a permanent I wouldn't mind Polymorphing into. I leaned into this as heavily as possible and there are no permanents except for Illuna and the creatures I want to morph into.
- Mutate isn't a great mechanic. Working with it is generally clunky and ineffecient. The best I could think of doing to get repeatable value from Illuna without including other mutate creatures (aka, not worth polymorphing into with perhaps one exception) is to bounce it back to my hand with an Unsummon effect. Bonus points if I ensure that it is on the bottom of the mutate stack (so it won't be legendary) and copy that stack with something like Progenitor Mimic or Quasiduplicate before bouncing it to hand and re-mutating onto a token copy for multiple mutate triggers.
- I knew I wanted to go lighter on the Polymorph payoff creatures since they are effectively being tutored up, and in a game of commander it shouldn't be a struggle to hard-cast most of the ones I chose. I don't know if I stuffed enough of them in the deck though. There are certainly more options to choose from, but I don't own some of the better ones I could think of, and they ain't cheap. I thought of The Locust God and Consecrated Sphinx to enhance token production, draw, and synergize with each other, but decided against it. Another thought was Vigor and then adding in stuff like Chain Reaction and Blasphemous Act to go with it, but I don't own a Vigor yet. Figuring out the ideal number of fatties to include will take some testing to figure out I suppose.
- I wish there were more non-permanent ways aside from Selvala's Stampede to cheat fatties from my hand and into play. Through the Breach might be worth it, but I'm not sure. Brainstorm and Cavalier of Gales can help me set up a polymorph with a creature "stranded" in my hand.
- My instinct is that the ideal outcome for the deck is to mutate trigger or polymorph into Kederekt Leviathan. Then with Illuna back in hand I'm free to mutate again, or perhaps just hit the leviathan with something like Life's Legacy and unearth it whenever my opponents commit too much to the board. Shenanigans with Worldspine Wurm seem fun too.
- Feedback is very welcome since this is not the type of deck I normally would build and I probably did some stupid things with it.
