Foxy
- Oct 7, 2020
- 9 min read

Build-A-Beast Workshop

Welcome to Build-A-Beast Workshop where all your childish dreams of creating some Nightmarish abominations can become reality! Our Manager Otrimi, the Ever Playful will help lead you to victory with your weird mutated monstrosity. And if any parts of your mutation get destroyed, Otrimi is a pro at bringing them right back.

Overview

Otrimi wants to be the head of a stack of big ol' mutated creatures and win through the sheer value of his mutations, or by dealing enough Commander damage to our opponents to wipe them out of the game. To take advantage of the mutate stack, we need some normal creatures to act as the base for our Mutations. Our staff at Build-A-Beast is (almost) entirely non-human, as we can't use those pesky Humans as mutate targets. The two most important qualities we look for in our targets, oops I mean "staff", is either Indestructible or Hexproof. This makes our whole stack of Mutated creatures is also Indestructible or Hexproof, something we find very desirable in our cute little abominations. Finally, to protect us from having our whole stack of built up mutations we have several ways to bounce the whole thing back to our hand to replay over and over to keep abusing those good Mutate triggers.

Nuclear Power House

It takes a lot of power to generate this many Mutations in our deck and there is no better way to create mutations than with a little bit of nuclear power. So what are we using to make this power? Good old fashioned ramp! Our first few pieces or Ramp will double as Mutation targets with our Mana dorks. Birds of Paradise is amazing for Mana fixing and if we use it to Mutate onto it also gives our stack flying. Evasion is never a bad thing for getting in Commander damage. Elves of Deep Shadow, Elvish Mystic, and Lanowar Elves are traditional Mana dorks. Apparently Elves make good Mutation targets. Fertalid is another good target and combining it with Glowstone Recluse can give us additional counters to keep the Ramp train going. Polywag Symbiote reduces the cost of our Mutations so we can save more of that nuclear fuel for later, and it gives us a little bit of card filtering. Migratory Greathorn and Parcelbeast are Mutant pieces that can Ramp us into further Mutants once they are on the field. Arcane Signet and Sol ring are our generic Artifact Ramp, and for spells we have Rampant Growth, Migration Path, Cultivate, and Kodama's Reach. All good fuel for our nuclear power plant!

Find-A-Mutant

It's time to dig for some more Mutants to add to our pile, and the best way to do that is to draw as many cards as possible. Auspicious Starrix is both a way to dig and another piece to fuel our Mutation triggers. The more we can mutate onto a single stack the bigger the pay off will be. Beast Whisperer, and Polywag Symbiote both trigger every time we cast a creature with Mutate, drawing us into more Mutants. Lifecrafter's Bestiary gives us a card at the low cost of one Green Mana, and we get that nice little Scry at the begining of our turn. Dreamtail Heron, Parcelbeast, and Sea-Dasher Octopus are our Mutant card draw targets so make sure you stock up on these before you leave the shop. Season of Growth may not let us Scry when we add to our Mutant pile, but when we cast them we have to target a creature we control so we do get that all important draw trigger. Reconnaissance Mission, Coastal Piracy, Bident of Thassa, and Thieving Otter all help us draw cards when we hit our opponents with our creatures, something we hope to be doing every single turn. Finally, Hunter's Insight is a fantastic way to fill our hand, as we will often be able to cast it when we connect with our Commander allowing us to draw six easily.

Outfitting Your Beastie

So we've got the fuel to make our Mutations, now we need a few more things to add to our Mutant pile. Including our Commander, we have a total of 19 mutants in this deck, which means our workshop can find itself a little light on mutants at times. But no worries, we have enough card draw pieces in this deck that we will often find ourselves with plenty of targets. So what do our beastly pieces do? Cavern Whisperer is awesome at hitting some pesky cards from out opponents' hands. Chittering Harvester forces our opponents to sacrifice every time we mutate. Sometimes forced sacrifice can feel underwhelming, but it gets around things like hexproof and indestructible if your opponents have only a few creatures on board. Being able to consistently trigger this ability can be backbreaking for decks that want just a few big creatures out in play. Now Dirge Bat doesn't give our opponents the choice and we can kill a Planeswalker or Creature of our choice. Remember, Build-A-Beast Workshop is not responsible for injuries incurred while building your beastie. Gemrazer hits artifacts and enchantments that may be dragging us down, and Sawtusk Demolisher will Beast Within any Non-Creature permanent we don't like. Souvenir Snatcher can build us up an army of the other player's Mana rocks, keeping all those Sol Rings for ourselves. Big Daddy Archipelagore can tap down so many creatures it's unbelievable. We've got this store on lock down with all this control. Auspicious Starrix, Dreamtail Heron, Parcelbeast, and Sea Dasher Octopus give us card advantage from our deck, while Mindleecher gives us a little from our opponents. Boneyard Lurker, Brokkos, Apex of Forever, and our manager Otrimi all help us bring our mutants back from the return bin to be played with over and over again. Migratory Greathorn is an excellent piece of ramp to keep us fueled for turns to come. Finally Glowstone Recluse makes our mutant stack bigger and bigger every combat.

Get Out of Me Shop

Other than our little mutating beasties how do we keep our workshop free of customers we don't like? Well Reclamation Sage and Trygon predator will take care of Artifacts and Enchantments clogging up our store with ease. Aetherize lets us swing in with our stacked up mutant and have a little protection for the swing back, and Deadly Rollick will often be a free spell we can use to kill a big threat coming our way, or even a big blocker annoying our mutant. Wingrace's Judgement and Beast Within are super versatile removal as they can hit pretty much everything that might stand in our way. That little 3/3 beast that our opponents get from Beast Within means nothing to us, we'll just bulldoze right on over it. Finally, Gaze of Granite gives us access to a board wipe that gives us the option to selectively not kill our giant creature stacks. This card is phenomenal against go-wide token decks as casting X for zero or one can quickly wipe out that player's team leaving them open for a devastating attack.

Friendly Staff

So now we know all about our mutation possibilities, let's look at who we can actually target to mutate onto. (Almost) every creature in this deck can be a Mutate target, remember we can only Mutate onto Non-Human creatures. Beast Whisperer, Pollywag Symbiote, and Thieving Otter were all discussed earlier as card draw pieces, but they double as the base our Build-Your-Mutant technology. Birds of Paradise, Elves of Deep Shadow, Elvish Mystic, Fertalid, and Llanowar Elves are out little Mana dorks that be turned into the most adorable abomination your heart could ever desire. Since one of our most consistent win conditions is through Commander Damage, we need to make sure we can consistent deal large amounts of combat damage to our opponents. Cold-Eyed Selkie, Elusive Tormentor, Silhana Ledgewalker, Trygon Predator, Ukkima, The Stalking Shadow, and Wydwen, the Biting Gale give us that all important evasion with ease. And we don't want to have the painful feelings of getting our big ol' mutate stack removed again and again, so how about we throw some built in protection. Darksteel Myr is a cheap way to get our stack Indestructible, same as Predator Ooze. Gladeover Scout and Slippery Boggle give us Hexproof, while Troll Ascetic gives Hexproof and Regenerate! Hexproof is probably the best thing we can have to start off a mutate stack so always look for ways to start your stacks with one of these cards as the base.

Diversity Hires

So, little secret, not all of our staff is technically mutate targets. We have to Humans (EW) in our shops. Being able to mutate only onto Non-Humans means these two shop keepers aren't good targets. It won't come up often but you have to be very aware of what's on your board so you don't accidentally try to Mutate onto one of them. Our built up beasties are prime targets for removal so having Eternal Witness is incredibly useful. She can pull back our most useful mutants right back to our hands to be cast again and getting all those beautiful mutate triggers. Slippery Bogbonder has the ability to give one of our creatures a Hexproof counter, a way to give Hexproof to a stacked up Mutant to make it harder for our opponents to get rid of once its already become a force to be reckoned with.

Rinse, Wash, Re-build!

Limited to 19 Mutant outfits we can through on our Build-A-Beast, we're bound to run out of steam at somepoint, so how do we keep this train rolling? By returning our stacks to our hand over and over again we get to we get to re-build our beast as many times as we want in any combination we can think of! First way we can do this is by Mutating onto Wydwen, the Biting Gale lets us pay Blue and Black and one single measly life so everything we've Mutated onto it comes back to us. Crystal Shard is another way to put stuff back to our hand because obviously we won't stop ourselves by paying the one. Aetherize is obviously meant to save us from taking a big hit to the face, but it can save some very important creatures of ours if they are in danger of getting removed during combat. But what if they do die? Well Build-A-Beast Workshop is very good at refurbishing our old pieces into brand new ones! Otrimi our fearless leader gets us back one creature every time we get to deal damage, easy enough with Trample on a 6/6. Boneyard Lurker can let us re-mutate dead Mutaters, and Brokkos himself can mutate right from the graveyard. And our good ol' Human, Non-Mutating creature Eternal Witness gets back those we've lost.

Protection Plans

Every good business needs to offer a strong protection plan to its customers and Build-A-Beast has the best of them all. We've already talked about our Indestructible, Hexproof, and Regenerative Mutate targets, But you've got to remember all our bounce abilities also save us from removal. Heroic Intervention is a premium protection spell. Hexproof and Indestructible for two Mana all at Instant speed? There's no green deck that doesn't want this in there and our Mutation Workshop is no different. Finally, Swiftfoot Boots is repeatable little outfit we can add to our Mutants. You may be thinking "Why isn't Lightning Greaves available in this shop for my Mutant?" Well Lighting Greaves gives our Mutant Shroud which means it can't be targeted, including by our own spells. This means we couldn't target it with our other Mutate creatures, and the stack couldn't grow.

Plagarism

All our Mutants are copyrighted and reproduction is strictly forbidden without prior approval. That being said, Spark Double has our prior approval! Copying a stack of Mutants means the entire stack gets copied. Mutating onto Spark Double means your get all the Mutation triggers the original stack would have gotten. Now we can bounce the original stack and replay them out, essentially doubling our Mutants. Now we didn't throw many copy effects in this deck due to confusion. Its hard to keep track of what each stack was when it was copied and how that changes as new Mutations occur. Too much to keep track of. You can use them, and they're certainly good, but bring a notepad cause you'll need it.

Deck-stras!

How can we power up this deck. Guardian Project is another great draw effect we can add to the deck to keep the Mutation engine rolling hot. Temur War Shaman is another Crystal Shard like effect that bounces our stacks of Mutations for repeated casting. And of course we already discussed the power of copy effects and the difficulty that comes with them.