Moritte of the Frost is an uncommon Legendary Creature card from Magic the Gathering’s Kaldheim set. This Snow Creature builds on the Shapeshifter tribal theme in Blue and Green for the set, while also providing the ability to “clone” any permanent card you control. While some players will argue that five mana and a double Blue mana cost may make it less able to be “splashed” in various decks, what Moritte allows you to do by turning the cloned permanent into a legendary Snow permanent can’t be overlooked.

As is commonly the case with Shapeshifter creatures, Moritte is a Changeling, meaning that they count as all creature types at once. Moritte also has an interesting take on the “clone” effect. 

“You may have Moritte of the Frost enter the battlefield as a copy of any permanent you control, except it’s legendary and snow in addition to its other types and, if it’s a creature, it enters with two additional +1/+1 counters on it and has changeling.”

As it stands, Clone Tribal decks continue to be quite popular in Commander, especially in Blue and Green. There are dedicated Clone strategies led by a wide variety of Legendary Creatures, such as Sakashima of the Thousand Faces, Riku of Two Reflections, Volrath, the Shapestealer, The Mimeoplasm, Momir Vig, Simic Visionary, and more. Moritte of the Frost can help out any of these Commander decks, as well as spawning some of their own with Snow as a subtheme.

Also, with the many Shapeshifters released in the Kaldheim set, we could also see Moritte leading a new breed of Shapeshifter Tribal deck. While there haven’t been many brewers around this strategy, all it takes is one extremely powerful card printed in the Blue and Green color pie to be worth cloning for the strategy to gain quickly in popularity. It also helps Moritte that there are other Tribal decks happy for its services. With the release of Adventures of the Forgotten Realms set brought with in Tiamat, an extremely powerful Legendary Dragon who can make use of Moritte of the Frost, because it’s a shapeshifter, and therefore, technically also a Dragon. 

How good is Moritte of the Frost outside of Commander? The power level of Moritte is limited by whatever your best card happens to be in play at the time which you play them. But, it helps that any non-Changeling creature you play can be copied into a beefier Changeling version. Also, Moritte can add to your Snow permanent count and could even copy a land you control to make it Snow, although five mana for that particular effect is somewhat silly and costly.

Moritte of the Frost is very similar to a popular Clone card from War of the Spark, Spark Double. The difference with Spark Double is that while it only copied creatures and planeswalkers you control, the planeswalker would get an additional loyalty counter. Moritte can also copy planeswalkers, but doesn’t get the additional counter. Spark Double was only Blue and not both Blue and Green, making it able to fit into many more decks easily. Still, Moritte seems like a lot of fun. 

The most obvious Kaldheim Standard legal deck that Moritte of the Frost could impact on the release of the set appears to be Temur (Red/Blue/Green) Ramp. That three-color deck often features Obosh, the Preypiercer as a Companion, which restricts the deck to playing only spells with odd numbered converted mana costs. Moritte falls right into that category, and has powerful creatures such as Terror of the Peaks and Beanstalk Giant, plus Ox of Agonas out of the sideboard. 

Moritte is especially strong with Terror of the Peaks, as any creature that comes into play under your control then has its power dealt damage to any target. Since Moritte gains two power if they come in as a creature, this is going to deal a ton of damage, especially if Obosh is also in play. Also, if you copy a creature that has Adventure on it, such as Bonecrusher Giant or Beanstalk Giant, and Edgewall Innkeeper is in play, you also get to draw a card.

After the rotation of Throne of Eldraine, however, Moritte of the Frost’s options dwindled considerably. However, Moritte is still plenty popular in Commander, especially in certain builds of Tiamat Dragon Tribal, as well as Jorn, God of Winter Snow Tribal. Even Koma Serpent Tribal and Atogatog Atog Tribal are working in the Frosty changeling.

Are there any other neat synergies you can think of with Moritte of the Frost? How would you play Moritte of the Frost?

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