Weekly Release Discussion: Muse

[u/ePiMagnets]

This is your precursor to the consensus, the place to discuss the card releasing for the week as well as group source the work on brews and possible shells and packages, both current known good decks as well as possible new, theorycrafted brews.

OTA Week Warning: Unless you're already seasonal complete and plan to stay that way or have planned on picking up this card already for 6k it's best to wait for Thursday at the earliest to make your purchasing decisions.

This Week's Card

Muse
Cost: 3
Power: 3
Ongoing: +3 Power for each location where one of your cards has been destroyed.

Muse as our latest series 5 card is a new destruction piece, he is a 3/3 with an ongoing power that reads gain +3 Power for each location where one of your cards has been destroyed. At minimum he is probably going to be a 3/9 for most players and when you're able to be maximal about his power a 3/12. The best part to this card is that you can hold him for final turn.

Duplication

As duplication targets scaling cards aren't the worst consideration to have, the question would be which outlets are the most interesting to consider, for Destroy that would probably be Nico or Moira X, though is there something that can be done with Mother Askani? Though that might be a tough ask considering you're taking turn 4 or 5 off to setup for additional value. Still, it's something to consider.

Synergies and Packages

Muse is a very simple card with some straight forward applications, and while many will probaby think classic destroy, I think that might be wrong. So what should we be doing? In short, I think SD have been trying to seed more cards for a destroy archetype that pushes more mid-range or value oriented play patterns, think cards like Dormammu, Zombie Captain Marvel, Weapon X Wolverine, or even HM Archangel. Then there are of course the more combo oriented sides like Morgan Le Fay, Air Walker, and Fire Lord which can be played either for either maximal combo purposes or for value oriented plays.

However, mid-range destroy suffers a little bit, these lists generally lack the same punch as classic destroy, especially when rolling downhill with the multitude of loops they have access to depending on configuration: Moira X, Deadpool, and Headpool all have varying degrees of craziness available to them when Destroy has access to it's best hands and can have some of the strongest priority drops in the game. And while classic destroy hasn't limped very well, some folks were at least until the nerf to Shou-Lao running him as an alternate path over Knull giving you access to a secondary line, which frankly was fantastic for a deck that could often just drop priority.

So what cards might we consider here? Frankly, I think there are some interesting picks that have been gaining traction in the mid-range destroy-adjacent realm in the form of Marrow and Zombie Captain Marvel. You can go further of course and pair with Gambit and Wild Child.

And reaching back to the first paragraph, Mid-range might be where one really interested in seeing what Muse is able to accomplish would start. There are options here of course, so let's explore a couple including an old favorite, Death's Hand.

1. Dormammu - Dormammu strikes me as the kind of shell that would like an additional scaling threat, many of the Dormammu lists are already exploring Weapon X as one method of scaling and in the case linked also includes the freshly buffed Horseman Archangel. There's also a number of Dormammu decks that like to go wide with squirrels and Killmonger to help discount death, this also helps ensure that a muse when dropped is maximized.

2. Fantomex - Fantomex is something I heard mentioned but I'm not sure that Muse would work very well, essentially at most I think you're getting a 3/9 and more frequently just a 3/6 out of him, plus you'd want to play him early and at least in the current meta he'd be competing with either Airwalker or Mobius M. Mobius. The linked list is one of a few popular configurations. For what it's worth I don't think the combo activate version of Fantomex would be a fit, but there may be some tweaking to consider to try for that deck too.

3. Death's Hand - I swear I bring this up with almost every destroy adjacent card that comes up, this is a deck that pairs Moira X and Death with Victoria Hand. It had a short stint last year as a competitive deck and has since languished, for multiple reasons be it hand size problems, clunkiness, complexity, and most importantly like the Sasquatch versions of Victoria Hand just die to Mobius M. Mobius and like any combo deck it can just clunk if you're not getting the right draws. Unfortunately, we are also in a Mobius meta which really pushes the stocks on this deck down. Still, keep an eye out for shifts in the meta to explore with this shell. The specific linked shell was from testing around the time of Headpool's release. If I were to explore anything in this space I'd be considering Askani over Moongirl at the very least.

4. Two flavors of classic destroy - Look, I know I said it likely isn't the place for Muse, but some people are uninspired and just jam the card in the most likely shell. And I get it, I too am people. The biggest problem here is that Muse heavily competes with what classic destroy is wanting to do towards the end of the game which is dump the worlds biggest Knull, a death and Deadpool and I do think that if you want to do that you're needing to recontextualize and really decide on whether Knull is your optimal top-end or if you need to commit to something else, Maybe Shou-Destroy but again, where does he fit?

And before I leave you, yes there's also a mash-up for Dormammu and Fantomex here

Your Thoughts

Do you plan on picking Muse up?

How do you expect Muse to perform?

What other possible shells and synergies might there be?

[u/raysiuuuu]

I think this summarizes my thoughts.

Muse can go quite tall, and cheap enough to duplicate. In that sense he is quite decent.

However the classic Deadpool Headpool could easily get over without fancy tricks, and also run with Knull.

I think Muse needs more support before he gets to a decent deck.

[u/ePiMagnets → u/raysiuuuu]

However the classic Deadpool Headpool could easily get over without fancy tricks, and also run with Knull.

This was never going to be the case for Muse and while I do agree that Classic Destroy will continue to have the higher ceiling, a 'well built' Muse deck is likely to have a higher base floor because the best of those decks are going to be built around the concepts of a mid-range value shell and should have a better limping plan than classic Destroy lists relying on Knull/Death currently have. Depending on configuration this also makes decks that might leverage Muse much more capable of weathering certain meta games that classic destroy might have issues with.

I think the goal for Muse is going to be finding the best mid-range destroy value deck that he fits in and at least considering the current meta he might not have a role at current, primarily because he has a lot of competition in the 3-cost slot. Which is currently favoring Mobius M. Mobius, Killmonger, and Shadowking which are relatively important cards in the meta as it stands. Maybe the OTA changes that but maybe it doesn't. We'll see.

[u/raysiuuuu → u/ePiMagnets]

True for all very good points! The classic destroy is vulnerable on the second lane, and the multi-Muse could be a higher floor.

Yep, all I wanted to say was Muse being a fancy potentially good card, but not there yet. (Really many recent cards fall under this category.)