Marionette Apprentice is a new MTG Modern Horizons Artificer card that can be cast for 1B and is set to be a key feature in sacrifice decks. This card improves on its predecessor — Marionette Master — in several ways, working in many decks to drain opponents’ life totals.
MTG has a wide variety of Creatures that emulate the card Blood Artist’s effect, with Marionette Apprentice the latest to debut. These cards are excellent pieces of a life-draining engine, quickly stacking up with multiple death, sacrifice, or creation triggers to whittle down opponents’ life totals in small, repeated increments.
Marionette Apprentice is specifically a callback to the Kaladesh block’s Marionette Master. Marionette Master has seen consistent play in Artifact and Token decks in the years since due to its powerful burn effect.
Marionette Apprentice looks to play an equally key role in this archetype — as well as more general Blood Artist-style strategies — by generating more widespread burns that do less damage but trigger more often.
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Where Marionette Master only triggers when Artifacts hit the grave, Marionette Apprentice also adds Creatures into the mix. Additionally, Marionette Master deals large chunks of burn damage to a single opponent at a time, but Marionette Apprentice’s burn effect damages every opponent when it triggers.
Aside from Marionette Master, this card’s nearest point of comparison is Mirkwood Bats, the infamous, extremely powerful common from the Tales of Middle Earth set. Mirkwood Bats still has a slight advantage by burning each opponent when tokens are created, but Marionette Apprentice’s Creature trigger makes the card more applicable outside of primarily focusing on Artifact tokens.
With no shortage of Blood Artist Creatures available in MTG, Marionette Apprentice still stands apart from the pack thanks to its power and reliability, making it a serious contender for inclusion in a wide array of death trigger decks.
