In this experiment, we use the Grizzly Bears–like power level of morph spiders to our advantage by using small Wizards and Birds for their card-advantage superpowers before transforming them into larger creatures with a massive, six-legged Illusion.

For an Ixidron-based deck outside of Commander, I could see two routes. The first, obvious choice is to build a morph deck to reap the benefits of Ixidron by being able to reuse morph effects. Such a deck would have to be slower and more of a control style, perhaps with Vesuvan Shapeshifter, Brine Elemental, Skinshifter, Echo Tracer, and so on, using Ixidron as a kind of finisher and to virtually wipe out opposing creatures.

The second route is to use Ixidron as a kind of pump effect—instead of shrinking our own creatures down to 2/2, we can use cheaper, smaller creatures and then pump them up to 2/2. The first such creatures to come to mind were the likes of Elvish Visionary, Coiling Oracle, and Merchant of Secrets. I was hoping to find enough blue card-advantage weenies to make the deck mono-blue, but it turns out Elvish Visionary and Coiling Oracle are just too irreplaceable for a deck that wants to run so much of that style of creature.

The goal of this deck will be to play a lot of early creatures; draw a lot of cards to replace them, keep the flow going, and find an Ixidron; and then play an Ixidron to close out the game. One of the downfalls of building a deck that focuses on landing a single, large threat is the vulnerability that exists in losing that threat. This led me to want to answer the question of how to close out the game in just one or two turns once the Ixidron lands—including the actual turn it hits the battlefield.

Finally, while I had included a single copy of Vorrac Battlehorns, I wasn’t particularly excited about it. The green member of the cycle, Brawn, will give us the trample while Wonder offers the evasion, so we no longer need the Battlehorns. Adding up the Incarnations I’ve included, we have a total of six, with just eight discard effects, but playing them as a few additional creatures isn’t too terrible either.

"Morph Rush"

• Creatures (36)
• 1 Brawn
• 2 Anger
• 2 Merchant of Secrets
• 3 Wonder
• 4 Cloudfin Raptor
• 4 Coiling Oracle
• 4 Elvish Visionary
• 4 Ixidron
• 4 Merfolk Traders
• 4 Owl Familiar
• 4 Sea Gate Oracle

• Spells (4)
• 4 Shared Discovery

• Lands (20)
• 5 Forest
• 6 Island
• 1 Stomping Ground
• 4 Breeding Pool
• 4 Steam Vents

Buy This Deck

As you may know, one of my favorite things about coming up with these experimental decks is finding cards that are somewhere in the cross-section of bad and interesting and that just happen to fit snugly in whatever I’m working on. Today, that card is Shared Discovery. Probably intended to be played with Eldrazi Spawn tokens in Rise of the Eldrazi Limited, the card just has too much stacked against it. However, for us this week, our plan is to flood the board with otherwise-useless creatures until we find an Ixidron. Shared Discovery both helps us find that Ixidron and takes advantage of those useless creatures. Ancestral Recall would be better—but far less interesting.

Mono-Blue

With all these creatures on the battlefield, mono-blue might also want Thassa, God of the Sea. She’s expensive and has more synergy with contemporary Standard lists, but she is a very powerful card that can make Ixidron unblockable or just be huge on her own. Unfortunately, she’d rarely do both. While the creatures are face-up, they fulfil her devotion, but when Ixidron lands, Thassa becomes a morph with the others. Without sufficient devotion, she’d stay face-up but then it’d be hard to hit devotion again, as the face-down morph creatures would provide no .

The mono-blue edition of the list would also have cleaner—and cheaper—mana. Instead of shock lands, I can imagine the list running Lonely Sandbars to help dig even faster and throw away excess lands. Of course, the loss of shock lands and non-Island land types also means the loss of Incarnations. To help Ixidron push through quickly, Equipment or Auras may be necessitated. Aqueous Form, Lightning Greaves, and Whispersilk Cloak were all mentioned above, and a suite including those, or just perhaps some Fleetfeather Sandals, could round out a mono-blue edition of this Ixidron-and-blue-weenies list.

Well, if you’ve ever wanted to create an army of colorless, typeless 2/2s without morph, I hope this deck is everything you’ve been looking for!

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com