Muldrotha, the Gravetide has been a long time favorite inMagic: the Gathering’sEDH format. Powerfully terrifying, she can flood the battlefield with permanents and lands quickly. She has a variety of play formats, all focused on making sure there are plenty of permanents in the graveyard to pull from.
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Constructing a deck depends on your play format — competitively you’ll want to be unrelenting, but casually you’ll want to have fun. Below, you’ll find a range of options from savage destructiveness to fun tribal decks.
11Muldrotha, The Gravetide
Let’s briefly review the awesome things that Muldrotha, the Gravetide does. For three generic, one black, one green, and one blue, Muldrotha, the Gravetide comes onto the battlefield as a 6/6.
As soon as she comes out, you are able to play a land from your graveyard, plus cast a spell of each permanent type from your graveyard. If you have a creature, enchantment, artifact, and planeswalker in your graveyard you can cast each one of these on each of your turns as long as you have the mana.
10Sacrifice
The most popular build for Muldrotha, the Gravetide,sacrifice decksdoes exactly that: sacrifice cards to build a graveyard for her to pull from. Early game, be sure to provide enough mana ramp to both play Muldrotha and cast permanent spells from your graveyard.
Spore Frog is an excellent cheap creature that will both protect you and build up a graveyard. Its return through Muldrotha will make this little fungal amphibian resilient in the face of your opponents.
Meanwhile, Pernicious Deed is your ultimate board wipe that takes out artifacts, enchantments, and creatures. The best part of Pernicious Deed, though, is that with Muldrotha out on the field, you’ll be able to return permanents to the battlefield faster than your opponents.
9Rats
A casual, but extremely fun way to play Muldrotha is with Rats. Like other tribal decks, the rat strategy swarms the battlefield with tons of creatures. There are a couple of ways to construct this: either with Rat Colony or Relentless Rats.
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Rat Colony is a lower-cost card, one generic mana and one black, that gives Rat Colony +1/+0 for each other Rat you control. Karumonix, the Rat King is the perfect addition: he gives each other Rat toxic 1 giving opponents a poison counter in addition to combat damage dealt.
Plus, he lets you draw cards when he enters the battlefield in search of additional rats.
Relentless Rats on the other hand is slightly more expensive, one generic and two black, but gets +1/+1 for each other Relentless Rats on the battlefield. Thrumming Stone is the perfect artifact for this, giving each spell ripple 4 which allows you to reveal the top four cards of the library and play more Relentless Rats if you draw them.
8Graveyard
With Muldrotha as a graveyard deck, you’ll notice a lot of similar cards being played as a sacrifice, but with a very different focus. There’s still Spore Frog hanging around to help keep you safe, but the focus is on casting spells from the graveyard.
Gravebreaker Lamia is the perfect example of this: not only do you search your library and put that card into your graveyard, but she makes it so that spells you cast from your graveyard are cheaper. Secrets of the Dead will allow you to draw cards whenever you cast a spell from your graveyard.
With Muldrotha out on the battlefield, that’s a lot of card draw.
7Mill
The strategies here are bothself-mill and opponent-millin order to build up a strong graveyard with plenty for Muldrotha to choose from. Bringing back mill cards will keep the graveyard stacked and your opponents’ card advantage to a minimum.
Something to also consider is ways to play cards from opponents’ graveyards since you’ll be filling them quickly.
The captain for this Muldrotha army is Sidisi, Brood Tyrant. Not only does she bulk up your graveyard, but she also gives you 2/2 Zombie tokens for each card milled into your graveyard. Cards like Angel of Suffering, 5/3 with flying and “If damage would be dealt to you, prevent that damage and mill twice that many cards,” combined with Sidisi will build an army and protect your life total.
6Infect
The bane of every magic player’s existence,Infectwill take your opponents down in half the time and keep Muldrotha well-staffed. The name of the game here is to hit opponents hard and fast, making sure that infect counters hit players as often as possible.
Having cards that proliferate counters is especially effective for infect. Evolution Sage is a 3/2 creature that proliferates counters whenever a land enters the battlefield.
The toxic ability is also important to this deck’s success. Blightbelly Rat is the best of both worlds: with Toxic 1 it will give players poison counters in addition to combat damage and it proliferates upon death.
With Muldrotha on the field, this can be repeated multiple times, quickly multiplying poison counters.
5Pod
As with any sacrificial deck, Birthing Pod just has to make an appearance somewhere on the list. This strategy is a little different in its heavier concentration of creatures that can build up to stronger ones.
Of course, getting Birthing Pod out on the battlefield as early as possible is very important to the deck’s success, but having backup win conditions is just as important.
Cards you’ll want to use with Birthing Pod will have enter-the-battlefield abilities. When you sacrifice, you’ll be able to bring them back with Muldrotha.
Fiend Artisan, for example, is a great addition to this deck because of its low mana cost and its own ability to sacrifice and search for creatures. Fiend Artisan gets +1/+1 for each card in your graveyard and can help build up the graveyard with his activated ability.
4Phyrexian Tribal
Phrexian Tribal is pure evil, but a ton of fun with Muldrotha at the helm. Not every card in the deck is going to be Phyrexian, but combined with infect cards, this tribal deck becomes a tough one to deal with.
Plus, every time you do something evil you get to cackle with evil.
Beneath her, Glissa, Herald of Predation, will drive the Phyrexian forces to victory. Glissa helps you build a formidable army of Phyrexian creatures by giving you the ability to Incubate 2 twice, transform your incubator tokens, and give all Phyrexians under your control first strike and deathtouch until the end of your turn.
With cards like Venerated Rotpriest, you’ll quickly poison your opponents to their doom.
3Lands
Land decks are rather popular builds for Muldrotha, the Gravetide. Using Landfall abilities, ramping up to bigger and badder creatures becomes much easier and with Muldrotha you can return lands from the graveyard to the battlefield with ease.
Be sure to put in cards that allow you to play additional lands on your turn so that you can fire off multiple Landfall triggers.
Nissa, Resurgent Animist will be driving the helm with her Landfall ability giving you extra mana and card advantage. Elves and Elementals will need to be a significant aspect of the deck to keep it running smoothly and Nissa finding creatures to play.
Other cards like Azusa, Lost but Seeking will help you play additional lands and gain additional landfall triggers.
2Primal Surge
Another popular deck build uses Primal Surge to gain card advantage quickly with or without Muldrotha. Since Primal Surge exiles the top card of your library instead of discarding, Muldrotha can’t cast them, but the ability to put any permanent on the battlefield without paying its mana cost and repeating the process is too awesome to pass up.
Having Jace, Wielder of Mysteries in the deck will help you avoid losing to self-mill and actually encourage you to keep drawing and milling cards. Muldrotha can bring him back as long as she’s on the battlefield which keeps you same and your hand full.
