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Nightmare Shepard and Mutate, you're gonna love this

[[Nightmare Shepard]] now truly has all the hallmarks of a demon, a steep price for something you need

How? Nightmare Shepard can make infinitely recurring copies of mutated creatures as long as he exists on the battlefield, provided they don't get exiled.

Scenario: You have NS and fat mutated boi. Your opponent is like nah I'm gonna [[Murder]] that shit. Some things happen.

  • It dies

  • Trigger NS, exile that thing make a copy of the whole creature:

According to NS first rules section:

1/24/2020 - The token copies the creature as it last existed on the battlefield before it died, not as it existed in the graveyard before it was exiled.

Plus the new mutate rule:

From todays post - The characteristics of the combined merged creature are copiable.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/ikoria-lair-behemoths-and-commander-2020-edition-release-notes-2020-04-10

So now you exiled a bunch of cards and now have a Nightmare 1/1 with all the card text of your previous mutated creature but we're not done yet. NS looks for non tokens so you need to mutate it one more time:

From todays post - The merged creature is a token if its topmost object is a token. If its topmost object is a card, it's a nontoken creature, even if it contains a token.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/ikoria-lair-behemoths-and-commander-2020-edition-release-notes-2020-04-10

You mutate onto the top of this token and now have a non token copy of your previous mutated creature. You get to start over!

In true demon fashion, he gives you the ability to keep what you worked so hard for with the downside of losing it all, those exiled cards aren't coming back. Make sure YOU kill/sac them so they don't get exiled

Wizards mentioned they had plant cards in the last couple sets, I think I found one.

  • EliShffrn
    Posted 5 years, 9 months ago (Source)

    This doesn't work. If an effect says "You may sacrifice two creatures. If you do..." you can't sacrifice just one creature. Similarly, for Nightmare Shepherd, you can't exile just one of the two components that represented the merged permanent. If a token's in there, it ceases to exist before you can exile it.

    #WotCStaff

  • EliShffrn
    Posted 5 years, 9 months ago (Source)

    So if there's a token portion of the mutated creature when it dies while Nightmare Shepard in on the field, the copy fails to be created because Nightmare Shepard can't exile all the cards as the token ceases to exist while the trigger is on the stack?

    It fails to be created because you can't choose to exile all the components - if Nightmare Shepard weren't optional and just said "exile them and create a token that's a copy of the creature" it'd work.

  • EliShffrn
    Posted 5 years, 9 months ago (Source)

    Thanks :). Just for my clarity for the whole process (I'm my de facto group judge), when the combine creature dies, in gets to graveyard zone, splits into it's sub components. State based actions are checked, the token component ceases to exist because tokens doesn't exist anywhere but the battlefield.

    NS trigger goes on stack because of the creature death. It ask me if I want to make a copy but I can't because I can't exile all components, as the token is gone. So it just doesn't happen.

    Am I understanding each step correctly?

    Yup; if you want exhaustively annoying details on the one thing you have slightly wrong: it asks you if you want to exile all the components, and you can't, so it doesn't make a token.

  • EliShffrn
    Posted 5 years, 9 months ago (Source)

    Thank you. The more detail the better. I edited the post as to spread any confusion. Appreciate the clarification

    No prob, sorry to smoosh your dreams!

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