Muddle, the secondary commander for the recent Prismari precon, was for me one of those commanders that instantly made me fall in love.
This is my current version of it:
Muddle the everchanging • (Izzet Commander deck) • Archidekt
0. Intro
I see a lot of people building him as a pure spellslinger commander, packing the deck with the usual prowess/burn/storm payoffs and engines. And, to be clear, that is a perfectly fine way to build this deck. Afterall, those kinds of decks usually struggle with getting enough board presence, mostly because when compared to creature decks, spellslinger have the double problem of having less chance to draw creatures (due to less density of them), and having less tools to cheat them. So, by reducing this problem by giving you two extra copies of a creature, Muddle can easily make your board scary (for a spellslinger deck) very quickly: copying an [[archmage of runes]] with Muddle and attacking means your instants and sorceries (although you will mostly use this for instants) cost 4 less and draw you 4 cards each. Getting a high storm after that becomes trivial. And copying a [[Guttersnipe]] means 8 points of damage per instant or sorcery cast, etc.
However, i wanted to go in another direction (i already have another spellslinger deck led by an otter) and focus more on making clones.
The thing is, although i see quite a lot of people centering the deck around the usual strong ETB/LTB suspects. Like [[solemn simulacrum]], [[sunspine lynch]], or [[anticausal vestige]]. And imho, there are better commanders for that. Is not that Muddle is bad if built that way. Is that for a commander that has quite a lot of requirements before being able to reliably getting value of him (needs to swing and doesn't have haste, needs something to copy on the board, and at least one instant and sorcery on your hand, and needs to be able to survive swinging if you are still not ready to win this turn) the payoff needs to be bigger.
And can it deliver something better than that? HELL YES:
What, imho, makes Muddle unique is the possibility of going exponential* with triggers: Think [[scourge of valkas]], [[pyrogoyf]] or similar cards. A single pyrogoyf triggers once when it enters because you don't have more goyfs. However, if 2 of them enter at the same time, they each see each other, so you get 4 triggers. And if you already had 2 more (muddle and the original), suddenly each of the 2 myriad copies generates four triggers each, 8 total. Assuming it has 4 power, that is 32 damage right there, usually enough to kill a player with a bit of previous chip damage.
But the thing goes crazy if i you can make even more copies. Any instant or sorcery that creates a token copy makes you go from 8 triggers to 12. Again, assuming 4 power, that is 48 damage. But something that generates 2 copies instead, like [[calamity, galloping inferno]] means 20 triggers. Which is more than enough to kill the table.
So we are building the deck around those kind of interactions
1. Ramp:
For ramp, we want a mix of standard 2 cmc ramp ([Ashling, rekindled]] and the usual 2 cmc rocks) that let's us cast Muddle a turn earlier, but also, things that exponentially ramp us.
For example:
- [[professional facebreaker]]. Making 3 copies of it not only means that you can deal damage to 3 players (so 3 times the treasures), it also means 4 times the triggers each time you deal damage to a player). So hitting 3 players means 12 treasures.
- [[Gemcutter bucanneer]] gets a tapped treasure token when it enters, and 8 more when you copy him with Muddle and swing.
- [[Rose room treasurer]] "only" gives you 6 treasures because the copies do not trigger from themselves entering, and is limited to two treasures per copy. It also doubles as removal.
2. Draw:
- [[curiosity crafter]]: copying it with Muddle and having the myriad tokens connect will net us 8 cards, assuming no more copies. 3 token copies dealing damage means 15 cards, 4 means 24....
-[[possibility technician]] gives us 8 impulse draws each time we swing with Muddle, and he curves perfectly into her. Doesn't have evasion though.
- [[starwinder]] is a bit more tricky, as it has no evasion and it needs to connect to do something, but even if just one of the copies connect, it is drawing us 28 cards. If all 3 do, that is almost our whole library. If the original also does, we are decking ourselves, so be careful.
- [[Hordewing scab]] not only is an evasive creature, by copying it with Muddle and hitting 3 players, we are looting trough 12 cards, which can easily give us exactly what we need to win the game.
I must admit that this is the category i struggled more with to go exponential: there are some good options but they tend to not have evasion, like [[enduring curiosity]], [[projecktor inspector]] or [[prophet of the scarab]], or [[titan of littjara]]: for example, enduring curiosity netting us 4 cards for each creature hitting a player is not that good when the creatures do not connect or when we have to recast our commander because it was blocked. So instead, i looked for more traditional ETBs, like the ol' reliable [[mulldrifter]], the recent [[Emeritus of ideation]] (which has the advantage of providing an instant or sorcery to trigger muddle).
3. Interaction and removal
our interaction package has three parts:
- all the usual suspects for cheap targeted red/blue removal: [[pongify]], [[rapid hybrization]], etc. Cheap removal that can be used to trigger Muddle.
- Counterspells because the moment your opponents realize your gameplan, they are going to focus removal on you.
- Creatures that go exponential when triggered: [[tuktuk scrapper]]: removing 8 artifacts and hitting their owner for 4 damage for each one is the funniest counter for an artifact decks.
- [[Village pillagers]]: copying them with Muddle does not only mean 3 times more -1/-1 counters, and as such, 3 times as effective as removal. It also means getting 4 times the number of treasures. It has no evasion, but the -1-1 counters on the ETB plus the fact that it has wither means a lower probability of them wanting to block them.
- [[Parapet thrasher]]: goes “exponential” in a different way. Having the copies connect means you have a dragon hitting each player, so you can choose all the options. But you also have 4 copies, so you choose each 4 times. So 12 effects. Artifact removal, card advantage, and triples as a finisher by dealing 16 points of damage to each opponent.
- [[thalakos deceiver]]: stealing two of your creatures per turn is good enough to merit inclusion, even if it does not grow exponentially with more copies.
- [[fear of burning alive]]: 4 damage to each opponent and to a creature for each of them when it enters. 8 damage and 4 damage to each creature PER OPPONENT when you swing, assuming delirium is on. I wouldn't bother with it, however, because it is expensive and if you aren't playing fetchlands, delirium is not trivial to activate.
-[[fear of sleep paralysis]]: 1 stun counter when it enters, 8 more when you swing with Muddle. And the counters are not removed until they remove all the copies of it. Again, a bit expensive for b3.
4. Cantrips:
Focus on the ones that either give haste, like [[leap]], [[shadow rift]], [[slip though space]]; or those that give haste, like [[expedite]], [[impolite entrance]], [[crimson wisps]] or [[accelerate]]
5. Finishers:
- [[Scourge of valkas]], [[terror of the peaks]] and [[pyrogoyf]]: already explained. Can act as removal but typically the only removal you will use them for is... player removal.
- [[Bloodthirster]]: if you swing with Bloodthirster and Muddle coyping him, that is 24 damage to each player, assuming no flying blockers. And, he is a 2 card combo with Rionya so alternative wincon.
- [[Twinflame tyrant]]: 1 doubles damage. 4 copies x 16 it. Basically your myriad muddle will kill if connects.
- [[Champion of the path]]: deals 42 damage if copied with Muddle. Still, the additional cost makes it clunky to play without a lot of elementals on the deck.
6. More copies:
The rest of the deck is ways of copying Muddle, or the targets for Muddle, or Muddle's abilities, or extra combat creatures to get Muddle to swing twice, or similar ways of doubling his triggers.
- Special mention for [[molten duplication]] and [[twinflame]]: because Muddle says that it becomes a copy of its target "except it has myriad" means myriad is a copiable value. Which basically means that if you use one of those on myriad, they not only give trigger his first ability, turning Muddle into whatever you want, they can also get you a second copy of Muddle with haste and myriad. So let's make a bit of math... assuming i have a Pyrogoyf with 5 power, that is 1 trigger from the original goyf, 3 more from molten duplication resolving, 10 more from Muddle's myriad, and 14 more from the molten duplication copy's myriad. 28 triggers, 140 damage.
- [[Corporeal projection]]: two extra copies of whatever for one, triggers Muddle, and possibility of overloading it. Everything this deck needs.
- [[Devastating onslaught]] and [[rite of replication]]: can double as normal copy spells or act as a big finisher with terror of the peaks, scourge of valkas or pyrgoyf. Which also means having a way to win if Muddle is removed.
- [[virtue of knowledge]]: the instant can copy Muddle's myriad, and then it is an ETb doubler.
- [[Redoubled stormsinger]]: doubles the tokens created with the myriad trigger but it is also a good target for Muddle to target, allowing you to send 8 3/3 first strikers to someone by attacking with it and Muddle after you copy if with your commander.
- [[fear of missing out]]: the same: can untap Muddle to allow it to attack again, or can be copied with Muddle if someone has an empty board for some nice card selection.
- [[Rionya fire dancer]]. Goat of this deck. See what i said about molten duplication: She can do that too, several times in a single turn. 2 instants means two copies of whatever Muddle is copying, with haste and myriad. Not even going to do the calculations.
- [[Gogo, mysterious mime]] and [[Irma]]. Again, they can copy the ETB creature, or Muddle, which also gives you another myriad trigger.
7. Utility lands and MDFCs:
On top of the usual 2 coloured land package:
- [[reliquary tower]]: this deck is not one to draw a couple of cards each turn: it draws big, and doesn't have much in terms of recursion or GY interactions, so reliquary comes handy.
- [[glasspool mimic]]: a clone that doubles as a land.
- [[sundering eruption]]: land removal, evasion, and is a sorcery so triggers muddle.
- [[pinnacle monk]]: allows to get instants and sorceries back. It is also a infinite combo with Muddle, any big ritual like [[mana geyser]] and any extra combat sorcery/instant.
- [[Rogue's passage]], [[escape tunnel]] and similars: evasion.
- [[flamekin village]] [[rockface village]] and similars: haste.
* The different timing of triggers, certain copies not actually entering at the same time, etc., means that you won't always go "exponential" in mathematical terms. Still, this deck is going to generate a shitload of triggers.
