Commander Deck Tech: Marvin, Murderous Mimic

Every once in a while, Wizards of the Coast releases a commander that painstakingly and obviously has a lot of potential. A simple card that opens up thousands of possibilities and becomes an incredibly fascinating piece in Magic: The Gathering.

In today's article, we'll discuss and build a deck for one of these commanders. We'll also show you how to play with it and a few of its main strategies.

Duskmourn's aesthetic might be quite different from previous Magic: The Gathering sets, but this type of character - a murderous puppet! - is very welcome. Marvin, Murderous Mimic is a master of mimicry, as it copies other creatures and looks like an innocent puppet at the same time.

Marvin's most valuable asset is its ability, which can copy any activated ability on a creature you control, as long as they don't share the same name. This detail makes it incredibly fun, considering you can build an entire deck around creature abilities you want and are available in colorless decks.

As expected, we'll build a deck that takes advantage of the synergy between artifact creatures, Marvin, Murderous Mimic, and its ability, which copies effects. We'll focus on creating as much mana as we can, as well as use artifact abilities, and control the board as much as we can. We'll also make our threats just a tiny bit inevitable.

This deck consistently creates value from artifacts, and controls the game progressively with them. The main game plan is to control your opponent until you find a window of opportunity to explode, which works really well with this commander, as that's the best approach for its strategy.

This is our list for today:

Creating Mana

Cards like Basalt Monolith, Thran Dynamo, Palladium Myr, and Everflowing Chalice make sure you'll always have a lot of mana to use. Forsaken Monument and Karn, Silver Golem also extract a significant value from your colorless lands and creatures.

Your mana dorks can also turn Marvin, Murderous Mimic itself into a mana dork. It can then create mana when you need or set it up for a specific combo. The most obvious would be to put Palladium Myr and Pili-Pala in play, as this will throw Marvin into a crazy loop. You'll tap it to create two colorless mana and pay two mana to untap it, and then create mana of any color as many times as you want. Of course, infinite mana combos don't win the game unless you have an out, such as, for instance, a Walking Ballista, which we also play.

There are other infinite combos in this deck. For instance, Rings of Brighthearth and Basalt Monolith are an excellent way to end the game with Walking Ballista. You can also be more creative and use Staff of Domination to make sure enemy creatures remain tapped at all times.

Untapping Artifacts

Besides the aforementioned Pili-Pala, we have many ways to extend our interactions between our artifacts, like Voltaic Construct and Cryptic Trilobite. They are essential in this deck, considering Marvin, Murderous Mimic will be able to copy their abilities, and then potentially untap other artifacts.

Other cards, like Clock of Omens, Voltaic Key, Manifold Key, and Unwinding Clock, will make your commander multiply mana and abilities more and more. This interacts really well with the other effects it can copy. Furthermore, these cards are great with mana rocks and other artifacts that you need to tap to use. They're also great to make sure your creatures are always available to block.

Abilities Worth Copying

This deck also includes a few activated abilities that are more interesting and palpable to copy. If your opponent uses a spell like Skyshroud Ranger, you will happily be able to use its ability to play many lands.

Out of all the creatures we play in this deck, one of my favorites is Endbringer, which is a true Eldrazi-shaped toolbox. You can tap it to deal 1 damage or tap it and pay a colorless mana to prevent a creature from entering combat, either as an attacker or blocker. You can also draw a card with it, but you'll only pay mana instead of tapping it.

Unfortunately, Marvin can't copy Endbringer's untapping ability, as it is a triggered ability, not an activated ability. However, of course, we've already discussed the many ways you'll be able to tap and untap Marvin, as well as how to get unlimited mana with it. This means you can win a match with Endbringer and other key units incredibly fast.

We can also copy Ulamog's Dreadsire's ability to turn our puppet into an efficient way to create 10/10 Eldrazi tokens. You can even use Giggling Skitterspike to turn Marvin into a Monstrosity and set up powerful attacks.

Copying Gingerbrute's ability will make our commander practically unblockable. You can also sacrifice it and gain life as an answer if your opponent tries to destroy it or even take it off your battlefield.

Myr Welder lets you exile creatures from a graveyard, and then gains their activated abilities. In turn, you'll be able to copy this creature's ability with your commander, so you'll be able to recycle its effects when your opponents can't destroy Myr Retriever.

Farmstead Gleaner works almost like Pili-Pala, but, instead of creating mana, it will give us a +1/+1 counter. I don't even have to say it is perfect when we can make our commander unblockable and deal lethal damage, isn't it?

There are many other cards like this in this deck, like Triskelion and Malevolent Chandelier, and many others that are not included in it, like Scarecrone or Amaranthine Wall. We could stay here for hours discussing their countless abilities, pros, and cons. But we won't do that today.

I'll just stress that Marvin, Murderous Mimic is extremely customizable and fun. It will get stronger whenever another creature with an activated ability comes out. It is a very flexible legendary creature, and its flexibility makes it relevant at all times. Furthermore, considering Commander is a very flexible and free format, if your friends let you use colored cards in your deck, it will be even more powerful.

Colorless

However, 99% of the time we'll need to stick to colorless cards, so we need to discuss what they do best.

All Is Dust is a phenomenal removal that doesn't affect Marvin or most of your other artifacts, and Warping Wail is quite versatile, considering it even lets you exile problematic creatures. Selective Obliteration resembles All Is Dust, but it lets your opponent pick which cards they don't want to exile, so it might just be useless against certain decks.

Null Elemental Blast is great and interacts really well with multicolored permanents; it is a great representation of Eldrazi identity. We can say the same for Ugin, the Ineffable, as its -3 lets you destroy colored permanents.

Karn, the Great Creator is a control tool that disrupts your opponents considerably, as it disables some of their artifact abilities. It punishes mostly mana rocks and decks that rely too much on artifact activated abilities - which, ironically, often look a lot like our deck.

In this article, we're discussing high-performing cards, mainly because this deck is full of small combos, and its strategy focuses on maximizing their flow.

So, many of the cards in it make it quite expensive, like Urza's Saga. Sensei's Divining Top and Fountainport also just slightly improve this strategy, so you can replace them with cheaper options.

Still, removing cards like Walking Ballista and All Is Dust from this deck is incredibly difficult. Removing a Giggling Skitterspike or Inventor's Fair will be less prejudicial in these cases.

This is how we built our budget version:

In the end, Marvin, Murderous Mimic is everything I expected from a commander. It is solid and does a lot on the board, but requires a well-built deck that doesn't instantly lose the game when it is not on the board. Many decks nowadays can't say the same.

If you're willing to create your own rulesets with your friends, I suggest exploring a monoblue version of Marvin, Murderous Mimic. You'd be able to play creatures like Aphetto Alchemist and Drafna, Founder of Lat-Nam in this version, so it would be quite powerful. You could even play something funnier, like Callous Deceiver.

What did you think of this commander? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!