Altered Beasts

Concept

Altered Beasts is a midrange deck built around the mutate mechanic. You try to assemble an incredible monster to kill the opponent with.

Game Plan

The deck aims to gradually build a monster by piling up creatures with the mutate ability and by accumulating huge value and battlefield advantage in the process, until it can overwhelm the opponent with one or more large monsters that cannot be dealt with.

In the early game, the objective is to just survive and put out one or more baseline creatures, which cost just 1 or 2 mana to cast, and which will the basis for subsequent mutations.

In the mid game, mutations accumulate growing your creature(s) bigger and stronger, while extra value is generated in the process through the mutate triggers. Sometimes the game can be won already here by just going high enough with one or two creatures.

When it reaches the late game, the deck is capable of supercharging the mutate effects, this is normally done with a timely Auspicious Starrix, which often times totally shifts the balance of power on the battlefield.

Deck Composition

All known versions maintain the same structure which I like to think is organized in three packages:

• baseline creatures

• mutations

• removal

It is important to note that some mutation creatures duplicate as removal, which gives the deck extra flexibility and strength.

The baseline creatures package

include those creatures that should be at the bottom of the mutations chain and should therefore be cast in the early game. There are only a few possible players in this package, they are: Essence Symbiote, Zagoth Mamba and Mysterious Egg.

The Symbiote and the Egg help growing bigger monsters, while the Mamba is a natural killer...

All known versions include exactly 8 cards in this package.

The mutations package

is the core and most numerous package of the deck. It includes all creatures with the Mutate ability and accounts for 25-26 slots in the deck.

The deck wants to cast all creatures in this package for their Mutate cost to leverage the mutate triggers.

I separate creatures in this package in three sub-groups based on the cost of the mutate ability: 3 CMC, 4 CMC and 5 or 6 CMC.

The 3 CMC group includes: Migratory Greathorn (searches for a basic land and puts it onto the battlefield tapped), Vulpikeet (gets a +1/+1 counter), Insatiable Hemophage (drains the opponent), and Huntmaster Liger (pumps other creatures until eot). 

Within this group, the Greathorn is the one the deck should try to play first. It pushes the deck into the mid-game and enables playing multiple mutations per turn. The others, especially the Hemophage and Liger, can be effective finishers if played late enough.

The 4 CMC group includes: Necropanther (reanmates a creature), Majestic Auricorn (gain life), Glowstone Recluse (+1/+1 counters), Cavern Whisperer (make opponent discard), and Boneyard Lurker (gets permanent back from graveyard to hand).

When it gets to 4 CMC mutates, the objective is to continue increasing the mutate count and generating incremental value.

The 5+ CMC group only includes two creatures: Chittering Harvester (make opponent sacrifice creatures), and the decks superstar, Auspicious Starrix (put multiple creatures in play from deck).

At this stage, the deck is ready to go into fireworks mode. The Starrix can put multiple creatures in play in one shot, which may be very difficult to recover for most decks.

The removal package

includes 2 or 3 copies of the only non-creature spell of all known variants: Titanic Brawl. Obviously, creature-based removal in the form of Zagoth Mamba or Chittering Harvester is particularly effective in this type of deck where the mutate mechanism can trigger multiple kills with a single spell.

Conclusion

Altered Beasts, is a very fun deck to play. It is built around a unique mechanic and some practice is required to properly sequence the mutations in the most effective way. The deck can generate some spectacular situations with unbelievable monsters. It can also sometimes fail to assemble a meaningful threat if the cards do not line up properly.

The deck has two main weaknesses: one is super aggressive decks which have the capacity of overrunning the deck's defences before they are properly set up, the other is against targeted removal, which can cause some painful card disadvantage situations.

Signature Cards