Creatures that mutate gain the abilities of the lower cards. Does abilities include power and toughness?
Asked by Murphy77 3 years ago
In a deck posted on tapped out, the deck notes speak of escaping Polukranos, Unchained then mutating Brokkos, Apex of Forever over it to create an 18/18 creature. The wording of mutate on the cards says that the top card gains abilities of the bottom card. If abilities include power and toughness, this changes a whole lot about how magic is played.
Ok -thanks - still seems odd to me as the counters have raised the P/T of the lower card (they have already been placed and the P/T of the lower card has changed) before the top card is mutated onto it.
October 30, 2020 2:01 p.m.
TheRealSpecialK says... #3
Murphy77 While counters do technically add to the P/T of a card, they do so independently of the card. The difference is BASE power and toughness. Lets say a 1/1 creature is equipped or has an aura on it that modify its P/T by +2/+2. The creature's total power and toughness is 3/3, but its base power and toughness is 1/1. If a creature with base power and toughness 3/3 mutates on to that creature, because the equipment/aura are still attached, its new base power and toughness would be 3/3, and total P/T would 6/6. Counters work the same way. The Base power and toughness of Brokkos, Apex of Forever is 6/6, but just like an equipment or aura, the counters are still on it, so it would be an 18/18.
October 30, 2020 2:41 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #4
Once the cards are mutated together they're treated as a single object for as long as they're on the battlefield (they come apart again if the object moves to another zone). The +1/+1 counters apply to the entire mutated creature, not just one piece of it.
October 30, 2020 2:57 p.m.
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Rhadamanthus says... Accepted answer #1
The way mutation works, the creature only has the P/T of the card on top. The reason your example results in an 18/18 creature is because of the +1/+1 counters involved. Mutating doesn't make counters go away, so we have a base P/T of 6/6 with 12 +1/+1 counters for a total of 18/18.
October 30, 2020 11:12 a.m.