Papa Nurgle's Chief of Medicine
Commander / EDH
1622 VIEWS
Third Experiment Progress II —Sept. 18, 2023
Mortarion continues to be promising in tests. As of now, I am doing final tests before rolling out a prototype of the deck, which will mainly just be missing its higher price tag cards such as Black Market Connection and The One Ring. Some old cards have resurfaced that I think are worth testing such as Planar Bridge, but whether or not they stick remains to be seen. I'm confident in what I've got enough to roll it out at game night. There will likely be adjustments to the list, and possibly even change in direction, but this will just be a field test. My work is far from done.
Where Mortarion, Daemon Primarch has gone right:
Fulfillment: I cracked the code for his flavor, and ever since, I've been increasingly excited to unfold it. Rather than a more direct emulation of Mortarion's powers through -1/-1 and poison counters, I've gone the route of group drain to mimic his aura of miasma with Lim-Dul's Hex, Dogged Pursuit, and the like, all to much delight. Tests have felt right. I still am keeping my fingers crossed for mono B cards that efficiently distribute -1/-1 counters to opponents' creatures only or similarly debuffing cards, but what I've got here is fine. Polluted Bonds was the idea of a good friend, who has always loved the card but doesn't want to build a deck just for it, and it's incredibly on-flavor for Mortarion and how his Plague Marines operate. That said, there's always the chance that even more goodies will come my way, but I digress...
Resilience: Once the deck gets rolling, between the constant stream of ugly boys and surprising adeptness with life gain, the deck doesn't just roll over and die. I'm currently tinkering with some life gain sub-thematic cards like Gumdrop Poisoner since some of them also are a bit on-flavor for Nurgle since he...uh..."cooks" things, but I'm going to refrain from anything drastic until after Mort's debut. I think that despite his relative slowness and low initial power output, he'll do well against the usual contenders like Zurzoth, Chaos Rider and Shadrix Silverquill.
Efficiency: Unlike this deck's prior iterations, how Ashling, the Extinguisher couldn't deal with more than 1 person and how Braids, Arisen Nightmare always seemed prone to bite off too much, Mortarion is equipped well to deal with multiple opponents through the slow drain and steady stream of disposable ugly boys. This also means I can pump the brakes as a physical threat and let decks like Marwyn, the Nurturer draw aggro whilst still nickel and diming everyone.
Where Mortarion has gone wrong:
Misfiring: Between needing mana rocks to play Mortarion faster and ways to offset his need of life loss, misfiring hurts bad. When I draw too many acceleration pieces or too many life loss sources, things risk falling apart altogether. It's not an incredibly high chance because the deck doesn't need too much access to each of those to function, but the chance is there. I've mitigated it through flexible mana rocks and and life paying mana dorks, but the existing card pool cannot solve this problem. It's simply a problem inherent in him being the commander and I've made peace with that.
Passivity: Needing to reserve my strength to avoid being beaten to death while I bleed myself means I can't seriously pressure opponents until several turns in, and the slow drain doesn't start putting in work until people are falling into kill range of myself or another player. I've moved into the mindset of brainstorming what spot removal to include, which will be a phase all of its own, but it will all likely have to be cheap options like Dismember and Deadly Rollick. Spot removal will only be a partial solution, but like Mort's chance of total misfires, this is an inherent challenged brought on by my more casual build, and I can live with this.
If the field test in about 2 weeks goes well, I think Mortarion, Daemon Primarch may solidify himself as the final commander of my now decade-old mono B commander deck. Fingers crossed.