Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths preview season is here and with it comes the unveiling of the set’s mechanics. A set based around massive monsters means the majority of the mechanics will involve creatures, though one fan-favorite does return. Let’s dive into the new stuff first.
Mutate
Mutate gives you two ways to play the card. You can simply cast the creature for its converted mana cost or you can play it for its mutate cost. Mutating requires a non-Human creature target, then allows you to put it above or below the target. Once it resolves, you end up with the power and toughness of the top creature and it has all the abilities from each creature in the stack.
Often you’ll want to make the biggest creature the top one, but you can also play around spells or abilities and opt for the smaller body, but still utilize all the abilities. Notably, if the target dies in response to you casting the mutate spell, the creature will enter the battlefield as a creature, though no “whenever this creature mutates” abilities will happen. You can mutate a creature multiple times, allowing multiple Mutate abilities to trigger in any order you choose.
Companion
Companion cards are legendary creatures whose ability requires a unique deck-building rule. When following the deck-building rule, the legendary creature card can be your Companion and start the game in your sideboard, face-up, and can be played at any time you can cast it. You can only have one Companion per game and it can only be played from your sideboard once, then it is in the game and treated like any other card.
The Companion deck-building rule doesn’t apply to your sideboard, but your deck still has to follow the rule after sideboarding to be able to use the Companion mechanic. You can also ignore the companion mechanic and just have the creatures in your deck to play normally with their enters-the-battlefield ability. Keep this in mind in limited, especially.
Keyword Counters
We’ve been putting +1+1 counters on creatures for a long time; now we get to add abilities as well. Spells and abilities allow us to add counters that grant: flying, trample, vigilance, deathtouch, lifelink, reach, hexproof, first strike, and menace.
Cycling
Cycling is the returning mechanic for Ikoria. We’ve seen many different costs for cycling through the years, but Ikoria will only feature mana costs to cycle. Mark Rosewater mentioned that in order for all the cards to be focused on making monsters, the set would require something to do early, and cycling fits the bill, allowing you to trade cards early for cheap to find answers to bridge you to the late-game where deploying monsters is much easier.