As we slowly approach the beginning of Aetherdrift spoiler season, players are starting to learn more and more about the set. Things don’t properly kick off until January 21st, but MTG designer Mark Rosewater ensures players aren’t waiting to twiddle their thumbs. Ahead of every major set, Rosewater releases his iconic teaser, setting the MTG community alight with speculation.
On top of his recent teaser, Rosewater has also recently been discussing mechanics once intended for Aetherdrift. According to MaRo, Mount was originally designed for Aetherdrift, before being brought forward for Outlaws of Thunder Junction. Reportedly, this was done to replace a mysteriously more complex mechanic with a “mutate-ish quality,” which sounds wild. If you know anything about Mutate, it’s little wonder Wizards decided to go in a different direction.
What is MTG Mutate?
Banding gets a pretty bad rep for complexity purposes, but it doesn’t hold a candle to Mutate. Originating from Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths, Mutate involves stacking non-Human creatures on top of one another. This already creates a ton of complex questions that can make Mutate incredibly powerful to wield in the right hands.
Generally, Mutating on top of a creature will reward you with a benefit. Mutating on top of other creatures that want to Mutate triggers a chain of abilities, which can provide ludicrous amounts of value. Creating a massive single resource that you can trigger repetitively is an easy way to pull ahead of opponents.
Things get confusing, however, when interacting with a Mutate creature. What stats does it have? What are the creature’s keywords? What happens when it gets removed? Here’s a quick list of points in case these points are difficult to discern:
- Whenever you Mutate, you can choose to have a creature placed on top of the pile. If you do, the Mutated creature has that creature’s stats.
- Mutated creatures gain the keywords of every creature in the stack (Flying, Haste, First Strike, etc.)
- If you target a Mutate target in response to a cast, the creature being targeted gets removed, and the Mutated spell resolves as a creature. No Mutate triggers occur.
- If you bounce a Mutate creature with something like Unsubstantiate, the entire pile of cards returns to your hand.
The last point, in particular, allowed Mutate to thrive as a powerful combo deck during its time in Standard. Abusing Goldspan Dragon’s ability, you could create infinite mana while recurring spells from the graveyard repetitively with Vadrok, Apex of Thunder. Between this, and creating massive chains of Mutate value, some players remember the Mutate mechanic fondly.
That’s why when MTG designer Mark Rosewater suggested that we almost had a Mutate-esque mechanic in Outlaws of Thunder Junction over Saddle, players began asking questions. The biggest one of those: does this mean Mutate will return in the future?
Mutate’s Potential Return
Both Saddle and the scrapped Mutate mechanic represent the same idea. In both cases, the idea of a creature riding an animal is the end result in terms of world-building. Mark Rosewater did say, however, that the Mutate-esque mechanic was far more complex than Saddle. This may be the reason that Saddle ended up replacing the nameless Mutate mechanic.
While many players like Mutate, a great deal more found the mechanic really difficult to track. The amount of bizarre corner cases created by Mutate is an understandably long list. Having to look up the MTG rulebook every single time an unexpected interaction pops up with Mutate can be rather tiring. Considering Commander is Mutate’s main home at the moment, the mechanic is currently primed to encounter bizarre rules interactions.
While Magic prides itself on being the most complex game in the world, alongside having the most rules of any game in the world, there is a step too far. When players struggle to reasonably figure out what to do with a mechanic, that can muddle gameplay in an unenjoyable way. Banding saw a departure from MTG due to complexity and overall redundancy. Mutate is far from redundant, but the complexity does make the potential return of Mutate extremely surprising.
One important thing to remember with this particular mechanic, however, is that the Mutate-Saddle-esque thing is not Mutate. Rosewater did specifically say that this mechanic was a lot more complex than Saddle, but that doesn’t automatically make it as complex.
Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter. In the end, Mark Rosewater decided to move away from the mystery Mutate mechanic to Saddle because “Saddle was simple and more intuitive.” Saddle just sticks the Crew ability on a creature, and makes the reward strictly ability-based. Many MTG players shouldn’t have trouble understanding this.
This does mean that mechanic complexity is a reason for abandonment, which makes the return of Mutate a bit more questionable. Currently, Mutate sits at both a 7 and a 3 on the Storm Scale. While the latter of these numbers may seem rather exciting, this is only “On a return to Ikoria.” Sadly for Mutate fans, we aren’t scheduled to return to Ikoira any time soon.