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Toys are right up there with Clowns for things you’re terrified of or can’t figure out why anyone would be.Magic: The Gathering’s Duskmourn: House of Horror teaches the latter group exactly what the former is so terrified by.
While the Toys in Duskmourn are mostly there for the red/white low-power aggro archetype, one stands alone: Marvin, Murderous Mimic can lead an army of artifacts to reenact the rebellion of Sid’s bedroom at your own Commander table. This Toy is pulling all the strings, but it sure isn’t playing around.
Sample Decklist
Marvin’s identity is colorless, which means thatyou can only include colorless cardsin the deck. Since the vast majority of colorless spells are artifacts, this severely limits your design options. Thankfully, everything you need to justify your opponents' fear of the malevolent marionette already exists on colorless cards.
Zhalfirin Void
The Commander
Marvin, Murderous Mimic is a 2/2 legendary artifact creature, and a Toy, a new type introduced in Duskmourn: House of Horror. It only costs two generic mana, andit has all the activated abilities of all other creatures you controlthat are not named Marvin, Murderous Mimic.
Activated abilities are always written in the [cost]: [effect] format. When in doubt, look for the colon (:), which is present in every activated ability.
Marvin is a toolbox that acts likea second copy of creatures with activated abilities, including mana abilities. He alsocollects abilities onto himself, allowing you to assemble combosfrom the abilities of other creatures, and to get an extra copy of abilities that are limited to a single creature.
Marvin, Murderous Mimic can be built as a sort of colorless Voltron deck, where each of your artifacts and artifact creatures power it up until it becomes an unstoppable juggernaut.
How To Build The Deck
As a colorless creature with a colorless identity, Marvin, Murderous Mimic challenges you tobuild a deck without access to any colored mana. Thankfully, the introduction and continued support of the Eldrazi archetype give you access to a variety of non-artifact spells that you’re able to use to round out your deck.
The colorless restriction is a big handicap, butit also has some benefits. For example, you get access to All Is Dust, one of the most powerful removal spells in the game, with no drawbacks. And all the utility lands that come into play untapped and make colorless mana are free utility, since you don’t need to worry about mana fixing.
Many of the artifacts you’ll want to include have a higher mana value to offset the lack of a color restriction, butthere are tons of mana rocks and mana dorks available. With a little luck, you should outpace your opponents almost from the start.
The first few times you play this type of deck, you shouldavoid telegraphing that you’re assembling a combountil you’re ready for it to go off. With the right support, you’re able to go infinite while tapped out at instant speed, which is an effective (if obnoxious) way to block an opponent’s win attempt.
Ramp
Colorless decks have limited access to land ramp, and you can’t even use a lot of Commander staples. For example,Arcane Signet and Commander’s Sphere don’t even produce manasince your Commander has no colors in its identity. Thankfully, there are a ton of mana-producing artifacts available.
Thran Dynamo and Hedron Archive both produce multiple colorless manabut cost a little more to cast than they produce immediately. Still, after a turn or two you’ll have a net positive effect and a lot of acceleration. Additionally, both can be used as pieces for assembling a mana engine to produce limitless mana, with only a little effort.
Basalt Monolith is even easier to go infinite with. The decklist includes a handful of options to untap it at a lower cost and one way to increase its mana generation, allowing you tokeep tapping and untapping until you have as much mana as you’ll ever need. If you can get these abilities onto Marvin, that’s even better!
Mana dorks are valuable because of Marvin, Murderous Mimic’s ability to copy them, giving you an extra mana generator as soon as you have both pieces in play.
Palladium Myr is the best optionsince it only costs three mana and produces two colorless. Kozilek’s Channeler is right behind it, at a more expensive five-mana cost. That extra mana does come with a larger body and immunity to artifact-destroying spells like Shatter, but it’s mostly just here for the mana.
Another option is mana reducers. These aren’t quite ramp, but they make your colorless spells or activated abilities cost less, so that you can play them more easily.
Ugin, the Ineffable is the MVP (Most Valuable Planeswalker) in this deck. He does cost six mana to play, but once he’s on the battlefield, hemakes every other spell in your deck two mana less expensive, which makes a full quarter of the deck free to pay from your hand (disregarding lands).
Foundry Inspector costs half as much, but only reduces the cost of your spells by one, and is limited to artifacts. That stillmakes almost every spell easier to playand can be stacked with Jhoira’s Familiar, which has the same effect on both artifacts and legendary spells, like your Planeswalkers.
Abilities can also benefit: Heartstone is a classic piece thatreduces the activation cost of all abilities by one generic manabut can’t take those costs below one. This piece creates multiple infinite combos in the deck, the simplest being Heartstone and Basalt Monolith.
There are a lot of utility lands where the only downside is that they don’t need the colored mana other decks require, but colorless decks get to use them for no drawbacks at all. You canload your deck up with all kinds of lands with extra effectsthat you might need in a pinch and never worry about having the wrong colors.
The “Urzatron” lands, Urza’s Mine, Urza’s Power Plant, and Urza’s Tower, each produce one colorless mana on their own, butif you get all three together they’ll make seven. The deck doesn’t contain a lot of ways to search for lands, but Urza’s Cave can fetch any land, giving you a fourth card to make this combo work.
Draw
While there are plenty of artifacts that draw cards, most are burdened with either a high mana cost to use the ability or have to be sacrificed for it, which doesn’t provide card advantage. As a result, some of your most reliable draw options are lands.
War Room fits into almost any deck, but the fewer colors your commander has the better. In a colorless deck, it’s a straight “pay three, tap, draw a card” effect. Early in the game or when your hand is full, it also provides mana, making it a great utility land.
Mikokoro, Center of the Sea has a similar effect to War Room, but itcosts one less mana and gives each other player a draw, as well. This is a better option for group hug decks that want to feed your opponent cards or multicolor decks where the life loss of War Room can be problematic, but it also fits here as an option.
Fomori Vault isn’t technically a draw effect, but we’ll count it. For the same cost as War Room, plus a card from your hand, you canlook at as many cards on the top of your library as you have artifacts and put anyone into your hand, then put the rest on the bottom of your library. You don’t get a card advantage, but you do get to look for the card you need.
The best drawing option, but perhaps a prohibitively expensive one,is The One Ring. Each time you tap it you’ll add a burden counter, then draw cards equal to the number of burden counters on it. The drawback is that on each of your upkeeps you’ll lose that much life.
Marvin, Murderous Mimic provides a way to circumvent that drawback: Marvin only gains the activated abilities of your creatures, and the one ability that drains your life is triggered. If you can turn The One Ring into a creature,Marvin can draw a ton of cards without worrying about losing any life.
Ugin, the Ineffable, from the ramp section, also provides a type of draw effect. His first loyalty ability exiles a card from the top of your library to create a 2/2 Spirit token, andwhen that token dies you get to put the card into your hand. This works best as a way to sacrifice or destroy your creatures, but also allows you to bluff, attacking recklessly with what your opponents will assume is a creature you want to die to get the card.
Iron Defense
If your opponents realize what Marvin, Murderous Mimic is capable of, they’ll probably try to kill him as soon as he hits the board. The normal spells you’d use to protect your commander and important permanents aren’t available in a colorless deck, so you need to dig around for cards to really protect them.
Darksteel Forge is a must-have, despite the high cost. Itmakes all of your artifacts indestructible, which applies to 92 percent of your nonland permanents. Add Cryptothrall to that to give them all Hexproof and your board will be practically untouchable.
If you don’t have those protective pieces in play, your opponents might try to hit you before you’re able to get them out, butEldritch Immunity will give them a nasty surprise. For one colorless mana, you can give one of your creatures protection from all colors for the rest of the turn. Or overload it for five mana to protect all of your creatures.
When your artifacts are inevitably scrapped, there are plenty of ways to bring them back, and whenever one of your artifacts is destroyed, Scrap Trawler allows you tobring another artifact back to your hand from your graveyard, as long as it has a lower mana value. Myr Retriever does a little better, allowing you to retrieve any artifact from your graveyard, but only when Myr Retriever dies.
Myr Welder allows you to exile artifacts from graveyards, and then use those artifacts' activated abilities. This not only allows you to copy some of your opponents' abilities, but it also allows you toretrieve important effects from your graveyard.
Myr Retriever can pull off all the same combos as Marvin, Murderous Mimic, but it takes a little longer to set up. This makes it an excellent backup commander if your opponents are too focused on Marvin.
Deck Tech
This decklist is chock-full of combos, from simple to complex. We won’t cover all of them, but will explore a couple that will help you to pick out the rest.
Karn, Silver Golem, and Karn, The Great Creator both can turn artifacts into creatures. This allows you togive Marvin, Murderous Mimic the activated abilities of any artifact in your deck, from Sol Ring to The One Ring. It also allows you to destroy your opponents' zero-mana artifacts, including Treasure and Food tokens.
Agatha’s Soul Caudron and Myr Welder have similar effects:exile a card from a graveyard, and one or more creatures will gain the activated abilitiesof those cards. Agatha’s Soul Cauldon gives creatures' abilities to all of your creatures with +1/+1 counters, while Myr Welder can take any artifact’s ability.
Both cards give the option toborrow abilities from your opponents, and then copy them to Marvin, Murderous Mimic. Myr Welder also gives you a backup in case Marvin keeps dying, allowing you toexile combo pieces to assemble the combo on itself.
Any creatures (or artifacts animated by Karn) capable of producing two mana per tap can pair with Farmstead Gleaner togive Marvin, Murderous Mimic access to infinite +1/+1 counters. He can then attack for lethal, or use those counters to copy Walking Ballista’s ability to burn all of your opponents down. Swap out Farmstead Gleaner for Pili-Pala for infinite mana.
There are no timing limits on this combo, soit can be done after getting an attack past an opponentif you have any of the cards that allow you to play artifacts with flash for a surprise lethal blow.
Most of the same combos are copied by Myr Welder and Agatha’s Soul Cauldron, without the need for either Karn.
Voltaic Construct allows you to create a couple of combos without Marvin, Murderous Mimic, or Myr Welder. Working with Steel Overseer and Cryptic Trilobite, you candistribute as many +1/+1 counters onto your creatures as you want.
The list includes several options for evasion, so you’ll likely be able to get something through your opponent’s defenses. There are alsoseveral ways to take advantage of the extra +1/+1 counters, including Walking Ballista and Triskelion, which can turn them into direct damage, and Mindless Automaton, which can use them to draw cards.
The Staff of Domination can be a combo piece in a pinch, but it’s mostly there as apayoff for the variety of infinite mana combos, which can be assembled as quickly as turn 2. Unlimited mana isn’t useful without a win condition to spend it on, and Staff of Domination allows you to draw until you find the card you need to end the game.
