Gor Muldrak, Amphinologist

This commander offers blanket protection to you and all your permanents from the singular creature-type, salamanders, while also adding salamander creatures to the field in a partial-parity. This anti-tribal control deck aims to alter opponent's creature types to take advantage of protection, disrupt tribal strategies, and overall transmute your opponents' resources to control the board-state. The deck's primary win condition is to swing with creatures, or its commander, into defenseless opponents.

Combos & Strategies

Strategy 1: The Salamanders Within

Cards that let us convert creatures into salamanders are extremely important. Unnatural Selection is our best support card in this regards, but other support can be found with Standardize, Imagecrafter, Mistform Mutant, Amphin Mutineer, and Amoeboid Changeling. Metamorphic Alteration can also be used to transform one of our opponent's creatures into a vanilla salamander, or change one of our creatures into something deadly controlled by an opponent. Maskwood Nexus makes all of our creatures salamanders while also making changeling-salamander tokens.

Strategy 2: Disrupting Decorum

Our next strategy is to punch salamander-shaped holes into our opponent's strategies. Our deck contains many removal and nullifying cards that thematically "transmute" our opponents most powerful creatures and spells. Metamorphic Alteration is the best example, as we can use it to nullify the abilities of a creature and simultaneously make them a salamander. Enchantments like Frogify, Imprisoned in the Moon, In Too Deep, and Kenrith's Transformation, as well as spells like Beast Within, Pongify, Rapid Hybridization, Reality Shift, Resculpt, Ravenform, Curse of the Swine, Turn to Frog, Mercurial Transformation, Kasmina's Tranmutation, Oko, Thief of Crowns, and Amphin Mutineer provide us with plenty of ways to snipe-away combo pieces and disrupt our opponent's board states. Verdant Touch can be used to break parity and disrupt creature counts at the end of your turn, controlling who gets salamander tokens from our commander.

Strategy 3: Amphibious Control

Continuing with our control theme, Sudden Substitution, Swan Song, Frilled Mystic, and Mystic Snake provide us with thematic counter options, Green Slime lets us even counter some abilities. Wrong Turn and Illusionist's Gambit help us pit our opponents against each other. We can buy time through board-wipes such as Aetherize, Aetherspouts, Oversimplify, Curse of the Swine, and Whelming Wave. Ego Erasure can disrupt tribal decks during a key moment. Finally, Mystic Reflection can prevent our opponents from gaining a creature advantage in a turn, by replacing all the creatures they would get with more salamanders, or just gaining control of them entirely with Gather Specimens.

Strategy 4: Breaking Parity

Our commander dishes out salamander tokens to the player with the fewest creatures, but we can manipulate that to some degree with Maskwood Nexus, Sandwurm Convergence, and Verdant Touch. Since our removal spells often leave a creature behind as well, we can safely remove problem creatures without disrupting each player's creature count. But having salamanders on our side can still be good for triggering things like Beastmaster Ascension. We can also use the salamander tokens as fodder for Cultural Exchange, Djinn of Infinite Deceits, or Helm of Possession. Remember though that our creatures cannot be blocked by salamanders or damaged by them so long as our commander is on the field.

One particularly vicious combo is using Verdant Touch, Callous Oppressor, and either Helm of Possession or Djinn of Infinite Deceits to temp-steal our opponent's lands, then trade them back or sacrifice them for more permanent steals. Some play groups may find this particular strategy a bit too spicy.

Strategy 5: Simic Being Simic

Like any good blue-green deck, we'll want to ramp for ages: Arcane Signet, Simic Signet, Harrow, Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, Quirion Elves, Birds of Paradise, Rootweaver Druid, Veteran Explorer, and Sakura-Tribe Elder all help this goal.

Strategy 6: Protect our Commander

With as much grief we'll be giving our opponents, they'll be eager to turn their salamanders on us as soon as our commander is off the table. Mask of Avacyn and Swiftfoot Boots can protect our commander from being targeted, while Tamiyo, Collector of Tales and Tajuru Preserver protect us from having to sacrifice our commander as well. Darksteel Plate can make our commander indestructible, and spells like Tamiyo's Safekeeping can provide instant protection.

Strategy 7: Odds, Ends, and the Jank

Some cards require special discussion regarding their inclusion in this deck. Usually they combo well with certain other cards, and other times they dont.

• Dismiss into Dream - this enchantment adds the illusion creature type to all our opponent's creatures, which can combo with Artificial Evolution to instead make them all salamanders. Where it really shines however is the added text it adds to our opponents creatures, which turns things like Unnatural Selection or Mistform Mutant into repeatable creature-destruction machine guns.
• Artificial Evolution - besides the combo with Dismiss into Dream (above), this spell can help us turn-off lord-anthems that our opponents are playing, change our commander from salamander-hate to another creature type for more effective counter-play, or re-align one of our other anti-tribal cards to better play with salamanders.
• Callous Oppressor - This creature can let us temporarily take control of our opponents' creatures so long as they are not of a specific creature type. With creature-type manipulating cards like Unnatural Selection, we can easily evade this negative. This can pair nicely with Helm of Possession or Djinn of Infinite Deceits as we can trade away the creature we temporarily control for a more permanent control.
• Coastal Drake - Since we can manipulate creature types, this creature can either bounce our opponent's creatures or save our own, helping us manipulate the creature count, remove obstacles, and reuse ETB effects. We can use Artificial Evolution to better hate on salamanders or our opponent's tribal theme.

Potential Upgrades and Substitutions

Song of the Dryads is an excellent inclusion if you have the budget for it, and could replace one of our temporary transformation spells like Turn to Frog or Kasmina's Tranmutation.

Lightning Greaves and Heroic Intervention are reasonable upgrades for protecting our commander. They could replace Mask of Avacyn and another temporary transformation spell like Turn to Frog or Kasmina's Tranmutation.

As we're running many cheap instants, Isochron Scepter is another potential upgrade and could replace Coastal Drake.

If you need to tighten your buget Swan Song and Oko, Thief of Crowns could be replaced with Wings of Velis Vel and True Polymorph, Birds of Paradise can be swapped for a Utopia Tree, and Helm of Possession could be replaced with an Expedition Map. Any non-basic lands that are outside budget could be replaced with basic islands or forests.