Poppet Stitcher – Midnight Hunt
Date Reviewed: October 25, 2021
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.25
Casual: 3.67
Limited: 4.25
Multiplayer: 3.00
Commander [EDH]: 3.33
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
David
Fanany
Player
since
1995
Presumably, you’re using Poppet Stitcher to upgrade your own tokens. Technically, I guess you could try and flip it and then use a Donate-style effect to make all your opponent’s tokens smaller, but that seems a little more convoluted than necessary. So if we’re assuming he’ll be used in the “conventional” manner, then you’ll have to keep an eye on the timing. Even if you can create three or more tokens in the same turn you cast him, you don’t get the Factory until your next upkeep, so there might be a space to use him with cards that grant him flash. Even outside of a deck that rushes to flip him, he might have use as a backup to Young Pyromancer and similar effects in the usual style of strategy. Even with their limitations, a stream of 2/2s is nothing to laugh at, and his wording opens up all the usual kinds of synergy you expect (flashback, rebound, etc).
Constructed: 3/5
Casual: 4/5
Limited: 4/5
Multiplayer: 3/5
Commander: 3/5
I’ve always found the Chucky movies quite scary, so if I ever get this guy in a booster, you can be sure I’ll be putting him at the back of the card box.
Poppet Stitcher is an interesting sort of payoff for decks that want to cast a lot of spells or just make a lot of tokens. The obvious synergy is that, when transformed, Poppet Factory takes away decayed from the Zombie tokens endemic to the set and even makes them bigger, and the Poppet Stitcher only needs to see three creature tokens to flip into a factory. You can even flip him back if it’s not advantageous, which makes for some fun with using a mass of spells to build an army and then empowering them next turn.
Poppet Stitcher’s main weakness is that he needs time to fire. A 2/3 with no protection isn’t the hardest thing in the world to kill, particularly since he’s unlikely to want to come in before you’re in a position to try and flip him. He’s definitely capable of pushing massive damage through, but I think his weaknesses are definitely relatively exploitable if you’re prepared.
Constructed: 3.75
Casual: 4
Limited: 4.75 (pretty sure he’s nuts in Limited, which is why he’s mythic rare)
Multiplayer: 3
Commander: 4 (in a well-supported tribe, with some neat tricks you can pull off)
Poppet Stitcher
When I look at this card the first thing that comes to mind right away is: “How do I get this into a fun storm type deck?” Casting low cost instants and sorceries to build an army of zombies at the end of your opponent’s turn and then transform this card at the beginning of your upkeep for an army of 3/3 creatures sounds pretty good to me! I don’t believe the current standard environment has great low cost instants/sorceries compared to modern and legacy, but you could still give it a shot with cards like Fading Hope, Consider, and Play with Fire for a U/R strategy, there’s a few cards in the current standard that could help with the aggro token strategy. I think where this card shines is limited, this is a build around in draft/sealed. If you pull this, it’s quite easy to make a 40 card deck strategy with the limited number of instants/sorceries within the booster packs and be competitive and win your draft pod. You’d likely only pull one in draft so you’d need to be aggressive in your strategy and focus on card draw, deck filtering, and holding on to your low cost spells to swing with 3 or 4 3/3 zombies! I run a U/R Prizmari Storm deck in commander, this is going to be included I think as an alternate win strategy. At the end of my turn I can pump out 6-7 instants/sorceries and hold the Mana Drain in hand just in case my opponent has a board wipe, then on my turn they get alphaed with 7 3/3 zombies!
Constructed: 3/5
Casual: 3/5
Limited: 4/5
Multiplayer: 3/5
Commander: 3/5
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