Monstrosity is a keyword action that is the text of multiple activated abilities of monster creatures in Theros. When the monstrosity effect takes place, the creature becomes monstrous, many times triggering an ability of that creature.

According to Magic’s comprehensive rules, a creature being monstrous is simply a condition of that permanent. Its monstrousness isn’t directly related to an ability, text, or a continuous effect—it simply is monstrous. That means that removing its abilities—with a card such as Humility—or forcing it to become a copy of something else—with a card such as Cytoshape—will not affect whether a creature is monstrous. Similarly, the +1/+1 counters that come with becoming monstrous have no direct correlation to the creature’s monstrous status. It can have +1/+1 counters without being monstrous, and removing its counters won’t end its monstrousness.

Therefore, if we, for example, have an Artisan of Forms that is a copy of a Nemesis of Mortals, and we make our Nemesis of Forms monstrous (giving it 5 +1/+1 counters), and we then later change our Artisan of Mortals into a Colossus of Akros, it will be an indestructible 10/10 with defender and 5 +1/+1 counters on it, making it a 15/15, and, since it’s still monstrous, it will have trample and be able to attack as though it didn’t have defender. And, if we later decided to make the Artisan into a Grizzly Bears, it would still be monstrous, even though monstrous would no longer mean anything and even if the counters had disappeared, such as by the hand of an opponent’s Vampire Hexmage.

Artisan of Mortals

To start, we want to find the creature that has the cheapest monstrosity activation. At face value, they all appear to have similar costs, starting around 6 (with Fleecemane Lion as the exception). (Polukranos can be activated for 1, but as a legendary creature, it doesn’t play well with the Artisan.) However, one has some extra text. Nemesis of Mortals’s activation starts at 9, but it’s reduced by 1 mana for each creature card in our graveyard. Since paying 5 or more takes all the fun out of the deck’s premise, the Nemesis is the best we’re going to find; however, that sits well with me, as it means I know I’ll be building a graveyard deck from the start, and I do love graveyard decks.

Forbidden Alchemy will help us search out key pieces while putting other key pieces into our graveyard. Note that while we do want creatures in our graveyard, we would like to at least have an Artisan and a Nemesis, as we’ll need both of these on the battlefield to start things off. A Nemesis in our graveyard doesn’t do us much good. And similar to Forbidden Alchemy, we’ll include four copies of Wood Sage, an odd and forgotten card (forgotten quite possibly due to its low Commander power) that can dump many cards into our ’yard while finding required creature combo pieces.

Colossus of Forms

For a little diversity, and to show off another sweet trick, we’ll include Shipbreaker Kraken as a Colossus alternative. While it won’t give us as big a creature as a Colossus will, and while it doesn’t have a continuous monstrous effect, there is an upside. Imagine this scenario: We control a nonmonstrous Artisan of Forms—that’s a copy of Nemesis of Mortals—and a Shipbreaker Kraken. We cast a spell targeting the Artisan/Nemesis, triggering its heroic Clone ability. In response to our own activation, we cast a spell targeting the Artisan/Nemesis, and it becomes a copy of the Kraken. The monstrosity ability resolves, giving it 5 counters (because it was the Nemesis’s monstrous activation); however, since it’s now a Shipbreaker Kraken, that ability triggers, allowing us to tap down four opposing creatures. And even if we later shift the Artisan into another, non-Kraken form, those creatures will remain tapped. It’s a complicated chain of copy effects, monstrous statuses, +1/+1 counters, and continuous effects created by activated abilities that no longer exist, but it all works out.

And if you want to use all three of Theros’s themes of “Gods, Heroes, and Monsters,” make a monstrous Artisan and then copy an opponent’s God, such as Heliod, God of the Sun. You’ll have a monstrous God with a heroic triggered ability. (You could do it with your own God, but you’d have to sacrifice it.)

Artisan’s Tools

We’ll also need spells to actually target Artisan of Forms. This was the hardest part of the deck for me. Simic Charm seemed great, and I almost went with Whim of Volrath, as it’s the cheapest buyback spell I could find. In the end, though, I settled on Planar Chaos’s Evolution Charm and the original Ravnica’s Darkblast. Evolution Charm is the perfect fit, as we can use it to return key combo creatures, we can use it to fetch necessary lands for fixing, and we can target the Artisan while simultaneously giving it flying, which means we’ll often be able to end the game immediately.

On the other hand, Darkblast seems to be a pretty awkward fit. Other than Shipbreaker Kraken, Darkblast is our only removal, and it only gives -1/-1. It also isn’t a great effect to hit our Artisan with, as it’s negative, but my thinking is that, since the heroic trigger will resolve first, the -1/-1 won’t be as big a deal. For example, if we copy a Colossus of Akros with the trigger, by the time the Darkblast actually resolves, we’ll have at least a 10/10, so our spell will only bring it down to 9/9. Also, Darkblast has huge upsides, in that it helps us put cards into our graveyard and is a spell we can return when we want to trigger heroic again—or just want to kill an opposing X/1.

Our final trick is my old standby Necrotic Ooze. It imitates the Artisan in that it can becomes monstrous; however, it won’t be able to reproduces a Colossus’s indestructible or trample or a Kraken’s tap-four-creatures superpower. However, it does have the upside of being able to activate on an otherwise empty board—we don’t need a monster on the battlefield to key off, and we don’t need a spell to trigger any heroic shenanigans. And the good news is that the cost reduction is part of Nemesis of Mortals’s activated ability, which means the Ooze copies that part as well. We can pay to give our Ooze 5 +1/+1 counters if we have enough creatures in our ’yard. The bad news it hat once our Ooze uses a monstrous ability, it will be monstrous, leaving it unable to benefit from further such effects. (Read: Don’t pay 10 mana for 10 Colossus counters if the Ooze has already paid for 5 Nemesis counters. It won’t do anything.) Also, don’t forget that Necrotic Ooze can imitate both Sylvan Caryatid and Wood Sage if we have any in our graveyard.

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• Creatures (23)
• 2 Shipbreaker Kraken
• 3 Necrotic Ooze
• 4 Artisan of Forms
• 4 Nemesis of Mortals
• 4 Sylvan Caryatid
• 4 Wood Sage
• 2 Colossus of Akros

• Spells (15)
• 3 Darkblast
• 4 Evolution Charm
• 4 Forbidden Alchemy
• 4 Zombify

• Lands (22)
• 4 Island
• 4 Swamp
• 5 Forest
• 3 Drowned Catacomb
• 3 Hinterland Harbor
• 3 Woodland Cemetery

Buy This Deck

That’s it for this week’s experiment. I hope you enjoyed! I have an idea for Five-Color Devotion a.k.a. Gods Tribal, so that could be next week. However, new Commander preconstructed deck previews should be starting soon (as of this writing . . . but they may have started yesterday for all I know!), so who knows what next week will bring?

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com