I'm happy to see Mutilate back. I still remember
the days when this was how monoblack held the
Elves and Goblins and Slivers at bay. I remember
the rise and fall of Damnation, and of monoblack
control with it. I'd be happy if this heralded a
new age of monoblack control, although I doubt
it will, since MBC was already popular in
Innistrad before this showed up. But still,
Black was missing a solid, dependable boar wipe
(and a reason to think twice before stuffing in
a lot of dual lands to support a splash of this
and that). I also like how this goes so well
with Liliana's new theme of amassing Swamps. You
can use Liliana's Shade and Liliana 3.0's first
ability to make sure you've got enough to kill
what you need to kill, and if Liliana's Ultimate
has gone off, not only can you cast this with
the tap of a single Swamp, but you can easily
pump your Shade to survive it. It also comes
just as the lion's share of Black's targeted
kill has lost its "can't be regenerated" clause.
I don't think regeneration is really going to be
relevant until we get some better creatures that
have it, but it's nice to see that if the next
block gives us a blazing tournament staple that
regenerates, we have options.
So, it seems like every year people talk about
the "return" of mono-black control. I don't like
using the word "return" in contexts like this -
if you like a deck, you could play it whenever
you want, whether that was in a sanctioned or
unsanctioned arena and whether or not anybody
else is playing it - but Mutilate makes a strong
case for this being "the year." There's a debate
about whether the key card in mono-black control
in its second golden age around the Odyssey era
was Mutilate or Cabal Coffers, but that doesn't
take away from the fact that Mutilate gives
black decks access to something that they really
often need (the most unrestricted
one-creature-removal spells don't help once
people start generating tokens or chaining
one-mana creatures). Heck, it's even not
terrible in two-color decks, as long as you have
enough basic lands.
Today's card of the day is Mutilate which is a
four mana Black sorcery that gives -1/-1 for
each Swamp you control to all creatures until
end of turn. As this will generally be
-4/-4 or more in a mono-Black deck it is a very
effective board sweeper that can be supported by
either large creatures that survive the effect
or ones that return from the graveyard. In
either case this is a solid option for Black and
even multicolor at half strength in response to
token swarms which should have this see play in
current formats across several deck themes,
particularly Multiplayer as is expected for
global effects.
In Limited this is a major bomb and often
game-changing, somewhat more in Booster where
the deck can be mono-Black, and is an easy first
pick or solid start in a Sealed build. The
non-targeted mass removal potential is a big
advantage in the format and the somewhat
controllable level of creatures to be removed
can be beneficial in some situations.
Supported with targeted removal for an
opponent's larger creatures, some large
creatures of your own, or if available lower
cost ones for a fast recovery and this can be a
reliable tempo changer when needed.
Multicolor decks and the format's reliance on
having creatures keep this from being an ideal
card in every scenario, so careful consideration
is recommended to maximize the impact on an
opponent without compromising yourself equally.
