Decades ago, Wizards of the Coast believed in bad cards.
In recent years, Wizards changed their stance. Modern sets no longer have room for bad cards, and the advantages of including bad cards do not outweigh the impact on card pool quality, particularly in casual play and draft.
Prismari Artistry and Rootha, Mastering the Moment nod to the old idea that bad cards (and bad decks by extension) allow players to engage in an upgrade process that encourages exploration, investment, and identity.
While Rootha, Mastering the Moment has exciting and explosive elements, especially when paired with cards that produce non-legendary token copies and extra combats, in this deck she is a highly unfocused artist juxtaposing incongruous elements.
Rootha asks us to tap out precombat for a big spell and rewards us with one big(ish) flying elemental. Meanwhile, other elements of the deck reward us for casting multiple small spells, or encourage a reactive gameplan, or suggest a wide tokens strategy.
Juxtaposition is a core element of postmodern art. But Rootha’s deckbuilding juxtapositions fail to deliver a cohesive gameplan for today’s audiences.
Piloting this list out of the box, some hands encourage a slow, control game where we keep Rootha in the command zone until we cast Blasphemous Act, wipe the board, cast Rootha, make a 9/9, and attack one player. Other hands would encourage us to commit multiple expensive spellslinger creatures to the board to accrue incremental value.
This all feels too fair, too easy to disrupt, and would make us the target of everyone’s ire.
If we want to be both hated and susceptible to disruption, let’s at least put some power behind our punches.
Rootha is cut. Muddle, the Ever-Changing is in.
As a commander, Muddle asks very little and promises a lot—cast one spell and we can either copy our favorite nonlegendary creature with a strong static ability or use Muddle’s myriad to trigger enters effects, opening up meaningful deckbuilding avenues.
Leaning into Prismari Pianist, we can pair Young Pyromancer, Third Path Iconoclast, and Saheeli, Sublime Artificer with Indomitable Creativity and Divergent Transformations.
Or—we can explore an energy build utilizing myriad to trigger energy granting enters abilities.
Or—we can use Muddle’s elemental typing to make use of our recent Lorwyn cards, including the trigger doubling Twinflame Travelers.
Or—treasure and artifacts, or steal and sacrifice, or stax, or…
Roll for Initiative
… initiative. Great for budget builds, all of our initiative cards are under fifty cents except the Tome, which is currently $2.27.
Designed with commander in mind, this small suite of cards pairs beautifully with Muddle. Muddle’s myriad triggers will allow us to finish venturing through the Undercity in two turns, Bloodboil Sorcerer can sacrifice our myriad tokens post damage for goad value, and Tomb of Horrors Adventurer doubles our second spells, advancing both our enters and tokens plans.
Initiative will take some of the pressure off us while we set up later combat combo turns. Assuming the player to our left attacks us to gain the initiative, value loving MTG players will be drawn to duking it out for initiative while we amass the biggest benefits.
Adventurer’s Toolbox
No good adventurer ventures into the Undercity without a toolbox.
Hand smoothing, stealing, token generation, damage, artifact destruction, bounce, and selection, our toolbox has a little bit of everything.
Similar to the feeling of venturing through the Undercity, our enters creatures provide many avenues of play that will help us adapt to the board. A few big threats? Muddle copies Sheild Broker or Agent of Treachery. Lots of little threats? Fury. Pesky tokens? Aether Channeler and Jill, Shiva’s Dominant. Just looking for value? Trumpeting Carnosaur and Pinnacle Monk. Need a smoother hand or a little of everything? Aether Channeler and Charming Scoundrel are here to help.
And with myriad, we do everything twice.
Do it Again
Drawing two cards, stealing two creatures, or blowing up two artifacts is cute, but any deck relying on triggered abilities needs ways to double up. Unfortunately, many of the good ways to double up are expensive.
Prismari Artistry comes with some ways to rebuy our enters abilities. Inspired Skypainter, Rite of Replication, and Twinflame all create at least one, but ideally many, token copies of our nonlegendary creatures. We can stack Redoubled Stormsinger’s ability to double Muddle’s myriad tokens, and Rionya, Fire Dancer will create one token copy of a creature each combat plus an additional copy for each instant or sorcery we have cast.
We will add Starfield Vocalist as a straightforward enters doubler and Twinflame Adventurer to double the myriad triggers on Muddle, with the small side benefit of also doubling Fury.
Any one of these doublers will advance our game plan. Stacked, eight copies of Agent of Treachery or Fury triggers will quickly overwhelm opponents.
Extra Combat
But why stop at eight when we could have an enormous, non-infinite number of triggers?
Additional combat steps allow us to get another batch of myriad tokens and open the door to ending the game immediately. The creature options of Combat Celebrant and Port Razer are excellent options to copy with Muddle alongside our Redoubled Stormsinger or Rionya.
Imagine: Muddle copies Celebrant. We attack with Muddle, Celebrant, and Redoubled Stormsinger, exerting the original Celebrant. Our myriad trigger creates two copies of Celebrant that will exile at end of combat, and Stormsinger creates two more copies that will stick around until end of turn. Next combat, we attack and exert Muddle, untapping the two Celebrant tokens created by Stormsinger. Myriad triggers creating two more tokens that will exile at the end of this combat, and Stormsinger creates six more copies of Celebrant, bringing us up to eight copies that have not yet been exerted this turn.
Less infinitely, Full Throttle is exactly what we are looking for. Full Throttle is on the expensive side for a budget build and has been slowly rising over the past week of writing this article. If you want one below $5 before it is reprinted, now might be the time to pick one up.
Overpowering Attack is anti-synergistic as a post-combat spell, but given that any combat doubling will ultimately be good for us and it is a rare case of an extra combat card hovering around the $1 range, this budget build will include it.
Send Them to the Couch
Why stop at just multiplying combats and enters abilities?
Entering a world where things reasonably go our way, we have a Twinflame Traveler, Muddle, and Sawhorn Nemesis in play. Muddle copies Sawhorn and attacks. With Double myriad, we have the original Sawhorn, Muddle, and four copies of Sawhorn. If we choose the same opponent each time, they, and all their permanents, will take quattorsexagintuple damage.
Unless they block.
But we have plans for that.
Cheap blue spells that make our creatures unblockable and replace themselves are exactly what we are looking for. Muddle will skate through multiple combats unharmed, dishing out damage and triggering enters abilities. Artful Dodge and Distortion Strike are particularly good as they replace themselves with an additional copy, advancing our gameplan for another turn. Despite not being an instant or sorcery, Gossip’s Talent does a little of everything by smoothing our draws, making muddle unblockable, and retriggering enters abilities when our other creatures connect.
And for good measure, we can include a couple more ways to sneak in damage in our manabase.
Protection
For all this to work, Muddle has to stick around, and once our opponents are in on the joke, it is unlikely that they will be interested in seeing what happens when we untap with Muddle in play. We have a Lightning Greaves that comes with the deck to prevent sorcery speed removal, but we will need to remove the greaves if we want to target Muddle with our unblockable spells. There are many options out there, but we are landing on Veil of Secrecy, You See a Guard Approach, Mizzium Skin, and Dour Port-Mage as our protection suite.
Veil of Secrecy making Muddle unblockable is exactly the synergy overlap we are looking for. You See a Guard Approach can tap a creature, offering a poor impression of unblockable and otherwise provides hexproof for one mana. Mizzium Skin offers a small toughness boost against a mass damage-based board wipe while also offering to protect multiple creatures. Dour Port-Mage rebuys our enters creatures, provides protection from removal, and draws cards when our myriad tokens are exiled.
Cutting Room Floor
We are no longer a deck interested in big spells. We need one spell a turn, ideally one of our spells that make Muddle unblockable, and that’s it. We are cutting big spells, most creatures that synergize with spellcasting, and clunky removal. Our goal with these cuts is to shape Rootha’s unfocused juxtapositions into Muddle’s clear plan.
The cuts are:
- Rootha, Mastering the Moment
- Dance with Calamity
- Dirgur Focusmage
- Rousing Refrain
- Leitmotif Composer
- Surge to Victory
- Prismari Pianist
- Mana Geyser
- Renegade Bull
- Throes of Chaos
- Harmonic Prodigy
- Volcanic Torrent
- Thunderclap Drake
- Volcanic Salvo
- Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer
- Big Score
- Veyran, Voice of Duality
- Archmage Emeritus
- Storm-Kiln Artist
- Plargg and Nassari
- Rootha, Mercurial Artist
- Dig Through Time
- Stormcatch Mentor
- Chaos Warp
- Determined Iteration
- Prismari Charm
- Magma Opus
- Replication Technique
- Reality Shift
- Creative Technique
- Resculpt
- Island
- Abstract Performance
- Terramorphic Expanse
- Furygale Flocking
- Temple of the False God
Cleanup Step
Muddle’s mechanical flexibility provides many strong avenues for deckbuilding.
This week, we landed on a toolbox build that provides a wide range of gameplay options. Next week, we will revisit Muddle in a tightly focused budget stax build to really bring the ire of the table on us.
As always, Table for Four believes in fun, kitchen table Magic and meaningful juxtapositions.
