Morph Decks

Posted on March 19, 2018

Hello!

Inspired by last week's Madness Deck's article, and seeing as how we are still in a Month that begins with the letter "M" I figured I should do a week on March Morphs. Sure, it may not roll off the tongue like March Madness, but it's still alliterative. And there are a ton of morph cards out there, so we have a lot to choose from!

Today I wanted to make some fun morph decks for you! Five decks below that could not be more different are here for your perusal!

So, let's get started!

Fun with Flips! -- Casual | Abe Sargent

Sorceries (4)
4 Cultivate

Enchantments (4)
4 Secret Plans

This is my kind of deck. This is where I like to go with morph. Tricks and traps for folks that don't know what I am running, because it's unknowable. And lots of flip triggers.

This deck adores flip triggers. Scry 2! Destroy target artifact/enchantment! Regrowth something back to your hand! Redirect a spell or ability to another target! Bounce a lot! You get the idea. By loading up these morph triggers, the deck should get some long-term results by seeking out quality over and over again. (Notice that Unblinking Bleb gives the whole team scry 2 when you morph something up, by the way).

Where the deck gets really cool though is with Weaver of Lies

Isn't that a great card? This deck seeks to use Weaver of Lies to reload your entire team and flip them back over en-masse so you can continue to harvest flip triggers. The cool thing is that you can reload your Den Protectors and such for another run. Also note that with the dorks that have megamoprh and such will still keep their +1/+1 counter, so you can flip and re-flip multiple times to build up an Ainok Survivalist.

Also, note that Oracle changed Weaver so it works with megamorph. It now reads: "When Weaver of Lies is turned face up, turn any number of target creatures with morph abilities other than Weaver of Lies face down." That's pretty important to know when using it in decks like this that cross the streams.

And there we have it. Flip triggers for the win.

So what now brown cow?

W/U Control -- Casual | Abe Sargent

This deck seeks to use more traditional controlling elements in Blue and White to control the table, with enough morph options out there to mess with folks.

The morph here serves to give you powerful creatures such as Exalted Angel, powerful answers like Stratus Dancer and Willbender and Kheru Spellsnatcher. We even have a little removal with Hidden Dragonslayer and a little bounce with Thousand Winds. And then that's it and we can call it. We add in Baneslayer Angel and Blinding Angel for their abilities, as well as some bounce, counters, and card drawing from other sources. And we are good to go!

Don't forget the value of Hidden Dragonslayer generally, as well as in a shell like this. Most of the creatures you want to kill with it are already big enough to count, so the destroy restriction isn't as big in play as it might seem, especially in multiplayer. And it's got megamorph so it gets to 3/2 lifelink.

And if it's not the right game or board state, and you are going against a bunch of dorks that aren't eligible for killing, you can cast it as essentially a White version of Child of Night. Nothing wrong with that.

So now that control is done, what's next? Great question!

Rakdos Smash! -- Casual | Abe Sargent

This deck was suggested to me by Ire Shaman.

That's a strong body of work for a good and valuable Red dork. Like Hidden Dragonslayer, it's a powerful 2-drop and you can just drop it then. But if you want to megamorph it into a menace 3/2 feel free, and you'll only have spent one Red mana that turn which lets you to potentially cast the top card that was exiled. Ire Shaman is a good, solid body and I wanted to surround it with good cards as well.

You can work on discard with Blightning, Hellhole Rats, and Singe-Mind Ogre. You can blow stuff up while dealing damage with Smash to Smithereens. There's Lightning Bolt.

But the key here was having stuff to clear a path for your beaters, almost like a tempo-aggro deck that wants to cast some early dorks and then counter/bounce answers or blockers, this deck wants to do the same with discard and removal. I pulled Murderous Redcap for Ghitu Slinger because I wanted a faster body and something cheaper to cost with the Ire Shaman. Flip a Shaman on the 4th turn and you can cast a Slinger but not a Redcap. Similarly, I like the Blistering Firecat as you can cast it for morph at three instead of the full four for the Ball Lightning effect if you want.

I hope you enjoy!

Good, what's next? How about a faster aggro deck?

Okay, you got it!

White Weenie Soldiers -- Casual | Abe Sargent

Planeswalkers (2)
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

Enchantments (1)
1 Mobilization

Artifacts (2)
2 Veteran's Armaments

This deck was inspired by Frontline Strategist. Here let me show you:

This guy works wonders in a Solider deck. Preventing most (or all) of your opponent's damage while allowing all of yours is pretty keen. I can't tell you how any times I've run into someone morphing this up to Fog for a turn and using that to really push back a major assault. I've seen this at too many kitchen tables not to respect it to this day, and if you haven't had the pleasure of unleashing this surprise at a kitchen table, well, then how about this week?

The deck then digs into other fun Soldier cards, a number of which have been churned out during the years. Every creature is a Solider, and many are Slivers. What I mean is this:

When you have enough of these in your deck, the Soldier deck feels like a Sliver deck where every dork gives a bonus to your crew. All of the above creatures were in my first cut of the deck, but some were pulled on space as I preferred the consistency of early plays like Precinct Captain, Preeminent Captain, Whipcorder, and Brimaz, King of Oreskos to have a quick board presence, and then leaned on Sliver-esque Lords that would grant stuff to my team for the rest of the deck.

One cool trick here is Enlistment Officer to fetch some more value from your Solider deck, plus we can churn out dorks with Elspeth, Knight-Errant and Mobilization. Both of those tools also have other things they give to my deck.

Don't sleep on Veteran's Armaments. Isn't it pretty keen here? I think so too! Every soldier needs to wield the weapons of war, right? So toss this on a newly arrived dork for free, or leave it on something strong like Brimaz or Precinct Captain and get that nasty smash in!

Soldier on my friends, soldier on.

Let's do one more quick deck and call it. A quick callback.

Morphing Egotists -- Casual | Abe Sargent

Instants (4)
4 Dispersal Shield

Artifacts (4)
4 Sensei's Divining Top

I have built a version of this deck before for you, and there was even a Scourge Theme Deck called Pulverize that did this core concept of breaking Scornful Egotist. The goal of the deck is to use the Egotist and other High Casting Cost dorks to fuel cards and effects that will hurt when they look at the casting cost of the card in question. Scourge debuted with a Casting-Cost-Matters theme and the Egotist was the powerhouse of that concept, and all of the good cards were in that vein. Can you imagine a Torrent of Fire dealing eight damage in Limited? Drawing eight cards with Rush of Knowledge? It was intriguing.

I also added in cards like Maelstrom Djinn, as well as suspend stuff like Deep-Sea Kraken and Greater Gargadon. Then we have some engines to break things and I call it. Here, let's take a look at the cards.

And that's pretty much a fun and crazy casting-cost matters deck!

That's an article! Five morph-inspired decks, each of which goes in a different direction. Control, aggro, combo, and more.

Morph is one of the most interesting and outside-of-the-box abilities to me of all tome, and it's great to see it hit print over and over again. Now, Wizards, can I finally get my morph legendary Commander? Thanks!