Creature (25)
- 1x Archon of Cruelty
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1x
Ascendant Evincar
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1x
Ayara, First of Locthwain
- 1x Cavalier of Night
- 1x Coffin Queen
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1x
Corrosive Mentor
- 1x Creeping Bloodsucker
- 1x Crypt Ghast
- 1x Dark Confidant
- 1x Elegy Acolyte
- 1x Eradicator Valkyrie
- 1x Eyetwitch
- 1x Flesh-Eater Imp
- 1x Gumdrop Poisoner *f-pre*
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1x
Haunt of the Dead Marshes
- 1x Hell's Caretaker
- 1x Keen Duelist
- 1x Massacre Girl, Known Killer
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1x
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
- 1x Persistent Constrictor
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1x
Pitiless Plunderer
- 1x Rottenmouth Viper
- 1x Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER Flip
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1x
Solemn Simulacrum
- 1x Twilight Prophet
Instant (4)
Artifact (19)
- 1x Bitterthorn, Nissa's Animus
- 1x Caged Sun
- 1x Elixir of Immortality
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1x
Expedition Map
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1x
Gauntlet of Power
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1x
Jet Medallion
- 1x Lifeline
- 1x Mind Stone
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1x
Park Map
- 1x Pip-Boy 3000
- 1x Poet's Quill *f-pre*
- 1x Requiem Monolith
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1x
Sceptre of Eternal Glory
- 1x Shadowspear
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1x
Sol Ring
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1x
Staff of Compleation
- 1x Sword of the Animist
- 1x Thought Vessel
- 1x Throne of Eldraine
Enchantment (8)
Commander (1)
Land (37)
- 1x Cabal Coffers
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1x
Fabled Passage
- 1x Midgar, City of Mako
- 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
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1x
Phyrexian Tower
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1x
Reliquary Tower
- 1x Susur Secundi, Void Altar
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27x
Swamp
- 1x Three Tree City
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1x
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
- 1x Volrath's Stronghold
Sorcery (5)
Sideboard
Sorcery (10)
Maybeboard
Creature (3)
Land (1)
Artifact (1)
Enchantment (2)
Suggestions
Updates Add
This is a retrospective log of Mort and his development from the past couple months. I've actually been pretty active with him in particular since he's my current main for my secondary EDH group. The long and short of that is, thanks to the FF set, my Yugioh playgroup has picked MTG back up and we'll be switching between the two games going forward. Right now we're exclusively playing MTG while I tinker with the house rules I've written for that playgroup, a collection of bans/restrictions, rules, comprehensive charting of concepts such as turn progression and priority, and catalogs of other various things for Yugioh - it has since been dubbed "Codex Ascardes" by my best friend (henceforth "Swarmlard Guy") because I'm the game master and rules lawyer. Yennyhew, my primary EDH group only plays once every 2 or 3 weeks but my secondary one plays every week. Mort will be taking leave of the primary group, but we'll get to that...
June 20
Game went going with group hug involved, and because 2 present people were playing solitaire combo decks, almost 2 hours passed and very little had actually happened due to the Izzet guy and Ashaya, Soul of the Wild landfall decks going at each other. While I had incredible mana access, my deck's core function is simply too slow to keep up and relies heavily on setup and time as opposed to raw resource acquisition. My good friend, playing Shadrix Silverquill, was in the same boat as me: tons of mana but had to choose between throwing haymakers or setting up. The time problem was on account of the Izzet player resolving big spells that chained into other shenanigans, for which he had to do a fair amount of thinking, but that's to be expected when you resolve Epic Experiment for 12 into Mana Geyser for about 30 with 15+ cards in hand. I, seeing that Mort's core function is too slow despite group hug's acceleration, threw Torment of Hailfire for 29. Shadrix player sighed in relief. Group hug guy chuckled and nodded. Ashaya player shrugged. Izzet player countered it, prompting profanity from the Shadrix player while I contemplated downloading Fate Grand Order. This was when I checked out. I didn't scoop but I was more preoccupied with my phone for the rest of the game. Only consolation is the group hug guy won via Labatory Maniac and 8 copies of Heartwood Storyteller right before Izzet guy popped off again.
This brings me to my decision to remove Mort from the group. While peeps are pretty open about the power levels they'd like, Mort even at his best is simply too slow, and I was too ambitious to accept just how inadequate Mort is for a Bracket 4 group. He costs too much, is less stable than other decks in that group, and frankly is the single most boring style I've ever tried. Winning via Blood Artist and its bazillion copycat cards is tiresome, unimaginative, and incentivizes not interacting with my friends. Right now Mort was my only deck capable enough to stand in that group, so for now I'll bum decks off friends until Alela, Artful Provocateur is back up and running. It's going to be a lot of work having decks for different groups, but it is what it is. Better I restore Alela and buff her up so I can resume my pillow fort trolling than try to make Mort punch above his weight class.
Since then, I've been further trying to refine Mort's flavor and stability. My 2nd group is far slower, capping at low Brack 3 with Mort as the current kingpin as everyone else is on precons with fewer than 10 changed cards. This was really when I started to notice how much I loathe braindead death procs because legit threats were removed from my presence. This group intends to stay low power because, as we learnt from Yugioh over the years, high degrees of power are answered with similarly high degrees of interference. Scale down the power and you can safely scale down inteference. Yennyhew, Mort bled my friends at what felt like breakneck speed. He was ending games in about 45 minutes despite the ambient smalltalk and rabbitholes we tend to go down that stop games long enough to forget whose turn it is. This all said, optimization is no longer an issue. Mort will be built to fight with flavor and good old fashioned fisticuffs. My physical deck is a weird in-between of his former direction and new but it's been fun just straight-up trading punches with The Swarmlord, Davros, Dalek Creator
, and Garnet, Princess of Alexandria. Commander damage deaths happen almost as much as regular ones, if you can believe it! Died to Garnett commander damage just this past week.
I'm not going to recount the events at my 2nd group because, honestly, too many cards are still in the deck that have long since left the blueprint like Dictate of Erebos and Damnation. What I can do, however, is log my thoughts on facets of the deck and how I intend to refine them.
Flavor: Mort churning out ugly boys for going under busses and regular assaults is fine and well, but what I'm really looking for are elements of plague, decay, and undeath to offset goodstuff cards like Kain, Traitorous Dragoon. Whether it's rad (counters for my opponent's exclusively), -1/-1 enablers, or revival engines, I have high hopes for this front. Lowering the power level opens up a lot of doors. Heck, we don't even really kill commanders. This means I can more safely splash in on-theme equipment such as Wand of Orcus.
Strategy: As aforementioned, the mercy shown to commanders (unless you swing in, then you're liable to get your commander dogpiled), so introduction of on-theme equipment can better emphasize that Mort is, in fact, the star of the show. Not the Plague Marines. Not insert death proc here. The commander. I will retain the production line of ugly boys, but am looking to scale back the life loss from its former bursty nature and focus on a slow self-bleed so my assembly line is more limited but more stable. The ugly boys will get their kills here and there, but they're more to keep the armies busy so Mort can swoop in for decapitating strikes. I don't think I want to go down the route of gigantic buffs like Nightmare Lash but I'll consider them all the same.
Power: By virtue of producing so many tokens with half-evasion, even the slightest buff can make them threatening. I'm currently on a somewhat anthem-heavy build that I anticipate straying from in time. Anthems tied to other abilities such as Caged Sun and Ascendant Evincar will stay. Why I'm taking such a cautionary stance on anthems is knowing how much they make the ugly boys snowball. It's common for me to have more than 5 ugly boys at a time, and when they're all 5/5...that's far above the group's ability to effectively defend against. Tacking on wither only exacerbates the issue and I'd really rather keep the wither than the anthems for flavor reasons. Mort himself will be compensated through equipment, and then further he will be supported by an adjusted lineup of creatures.
I'll report back on the more specific facets in my next entry soon (I hope). Had to make some hard decisions, and though I feel the sting of having purchased cards I will no longer be using, this will be for the best in the long term.
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Revision 207 See all
(2 months ago)
| +1 |
Archon of Cruelty
|
main |
| +1 | Persistent Constrictor | main |
| +1 | Rottenmouth Viper | main |
| Date added | 6 years |
| Last updated | 2 months |
| Legality | This deck is not Commander / EDH legal. |
| Rarity (main - side) | 16 - 0 Mythic Rares 38 - 0 Rares 9 - 2 Uncommons 9 - 8 Commons |
| Cards | 99 |
| Avg. CMC | 3.31 |
| Tokens | Astartes Warrior 2/2 B, City's Blessing, Faerie Rogue 1/1 B, Food, On an Adventure, Phyrexian Germ 0/0 B, Robot 2/2 C, Shapeshifter 3/2 C, Treasure |
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