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Writer's pictureDakota Ricci

Simic, Selesnya, and Sultai Mutate in Pauper.

Pauper is hands down my favorite format to deck build in. Reducing the card pool to just commons offers some interesting deckbuilding possibilities. Although Pauper is considered to be "legacy light" I enjoy playing outside of the box strategies to see if we can make something competitive. Today we'll be looking at the Mutate mechanic from Ikoria as part of three different decks. We have a Selesnya aggro version, followed by a Simic version that is closer to midrange. These two have similar mutate payoffs. We'll finish up with a super midrange list in the Sultai colors. The Sultai list has a very different payoff package than the Selesnya and Simic decks, which is very exciting. All three lists were made with competitive play in mind so you can decide for yourself which you'd prefer.


Selesnya Mutate


Simic Mutate


Sultai Mutate

Payoffs

Besides the mutate creatures themselves, this package of Mysterious Egg and Essence Symbiote are your major reasons for playing mutate. Both the Selesnya and Simic lists use these creatures to stack counters on our mutate creatures to give them some extra presence on the battlefield. Costing one mana helps Mysterious Egg stay efficient and curving into Essence Symbiote, into a turn three mutate creature is a powerful curve. The life gain from Symbiote is also huge against burn decks and stabilizing against aggro decks. Mutate Creatures



Wizards put a lot of care in designing these cards with strong abilities. Vulpikeet synergies very well with Mysterious Egg and will get two +1/+1 counters when we mutate, three if we have Essence Symbiote in play. Getting a 5/6 flier on turn three is very aggressive and is the core of the aggressive Selesnya list. Migratory Greathorn shows up across all three styles of play as an on curve 3/4 for a three mana mutate costs, and it fixes our mana by fetching basic lands. While it lacks any evasion of its own, we have Almighty Brushwagg as a trample creature to mutate onto and has a strong pump ability to use the extra lands we fetched into play. This combination can make a Greathorn worthy of fear on the battlefield in both the Selesnya and Simic lists. The Selesnya version also runs Healer's Hawk to grant both lifelink and flying when we mutate on to it. Dreamtail Heron is a fantastic card advantage engine in both the Simic and Sultai decks. Having flying makes it a threat in combat and makes it great at carrying +1/+1 counters. Cavern Whisperer is in a similar spot with its built-in Menace, but goes after the opponent's hand instead of drawing us cards.

Mutate Targets

Creatures with multiple abilities make for great mutate targets as we've discussed already. Almighty Brushwagg is included in both the Selesnya and Simic lists and synergies greatly with the fetch ability on Migratory Greathorn. Healer's Hawk gives the Selesnya list away to get both flying and lifelink on a mutate threat, with the flying being great for aggression while the lifelink will keep your life total stable. Silhana Ledgewalker is absolutely insane if you can mutate on to it. Hexproof means you won't have to worry about getting two for one'd unless the opponent has an edict effect. Making it so that your creature can't be blocked except by creatures with flying is super aggressive and will act as unblockable against a lot of decks in the format. Undying Creatures

The Sultai list is unique as it uses undying creatures to mutate on to for resiliency. The way this works is if you have a Dreamtail Heron mutated on to a Young Wolf and the Heron is killed, the undying trigger will count the Young Wolf and Dreamtail Heron as one creature and will bring them back as is with the Heron on top of the Young Wolf but with a +1/+1 counter. This is huge as your opponent will need at least two pieces of interaction to deal with your massive threat. This is the reason the Sultai deck is avoiding the Mysterious Egg and Essence Symbiote package, as the extra +1/+1 counters would prevent the undying triggers from working. We had a stacked article this week with three different mutate lists. The Selesnya and Simic lists can be pretty aggressive out of the gate, while the Sultai list is very midrange. If you're looking for more pauper content then check out the other articles we have on the website, or subscribe to our YouTube channel where we have deck techs for you to test out. Join our discord if you're looking for a place to chat about any decks you're currently working on. Go follow us on Twitch where we play Magic Arena every Monday, but tonight we'll be updating our Theros cube live on stream so make sure to join us! I hope these decks sparked some interest, thanks for reading, and joining the Fellowship!




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