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Mastermind Plum and the Art of Repeated Triggers

For players who love the quiet to formidable menace of black mana, Mastermind Plum offers a playground of recurring triggers and board-polishing tempo. This Legendary Creature — Human Wizard from Ravnica: Clue Edition arrives with a deceptively calm stat line of 2/2 for three mana, but its true power pops when you lean into the two-step engine tucked in its oracle text. First, every attack is a chance to prune an opponent’s graveyard—and if the card exiled is an artifact, you generate a Treasure token. That treasure isn’t just a shiny perk; it’s a flexible mana engine that can fuel more disruption or bigger plays. Then, as you weave spells with that Treasure mana spent to cast them, you draw a card and lose a life. It’s a delicate balance: a growing resource base paired with a lifecycle cost that keeps you honest. 🧙‍♂️💎🔥

How the triggers work in practice

Let’s break down the two core triggers. On the attack step, Mastermind Plum exiles up to one target card from a graveyard. You can choose an opponent’s key graveyard card, or even smooth your own plan if you’re racing toward a reanimation or fuel-for-a-later-play. The flavor is classic Dimir-esque misdirection: you bleed away their late-game options while quietly building your own tempo. If the exiled card is an artifact, you create a Treasure token. That is not merely coin-flip luck; it’s a direct path to explosive mana as the board evolves. Each Treasure token is a token artifact that offers flexible mana—{T}, Sacrifice this token: Add one mana of any color. The potential to chain multiple treasures into a single turn means you can accelerate your disruption, cast more adversarial spells, and keep pressure on opponents who rely on their graveyards to fuel their own exists. ⚔️🎲

The second trigger lives on the casting of spells: if mana from a Treasure was spent to cast a spell, you draw a card and you lose 1 life. This creates a powerful incentive to include a suite of Treasure-enabling plays—from early ramp to high-impact finishers—that not only progress your board state but also feed your hand advantage. It’s a built-in risk-reward loop: the more treasures you spend, the more you refill your grip—yet every life you sacrifice sharpens the tension between board presence and resource preservation. The net effect can feel like a perpetual engine: exile, treasure, cast, draw, repeat. 🧙‍♂️🔥💎

Building a Plum-powered board-control deck

• Graveyard disruption is your first objective. Use Plum’s attack trigger to remove key threats or recurring threats from graveyards. Target artifacts or non-artefacts—your choice should hinge on what the table needs and what you’re nerving opponents to protect. The treasure payoff makes it less scary to exilethe odd card, since you’ll be able to convert that exile into immediate board impact. 🧭
• Treasure as flexible mana, not just a toy. Treasure tokens let you cast spells with multicolor requirements or expensive removal and counter magic without waiting for a dedicated mana base. The identity is black, but the mana produced by Treasure can be colorless in practice and then channeled into any color spell. This creates a dynamic where you can answer threats, set up synergies with other graveyard-focused or control pieces, and still push for decisive turns. ⚡
• Blow open the game with repeatable casts. When you exponentiate the Treasure engine, you can fuel repeated casts that trigger Plum’s draw-and-life clause again and again. Build around a suite of low-to-mid curve spells that interact with the graveyard or exile effects, so every attack or every big play feels like a mini-turn reset for advantage. The longer the game goes, the more you leverage the artifact-exile to generate momentum. 🔄
• Careful with the life toll. The life loss on Treasure-spent-spells means you’ll want to monitor your life total, especially in multi-player formats where guilt-free burn is common. Pair Plum with life-gain insurance or defensive counterplay to ensure you’re not the one paying the price for every draw you trigger. Balance is the name of the game here. 🩸

Flavor, design, and the collector's eye

The card sits within Ravnica’s sprawling, guild-infused history—here, the inverted, legendary frame and borderless flourish a nod to its special set identity. Designed by Bryan Sola, Mastermind Plum embodies the tension of a master strategist who thrives on information—the kind of figure who loves to turn a graveyard into a resource room and a battlefield into a chessboard. The rare rarity hints at the power to turn even a small swing into a lasting advantage, especially in Commander where players frequently flirt with graveyard play and treasure ramps alike. In terms of collectibility, its nonfoil reprint status and the intriguing set aesthetic make it a conversation piece for players who enjoy the “what-if” moments of MTG design. 🎨🧩

“Attack, exile, and advance the tempo. It’s not just board presence—it’s narrative leverage.”

Why Mastermind Plum shines in board-control archetypes

Mastermind Plum excels when you combine disruption with a flexible mana engine. In a deck that leans into graveyard interaction, you can repeatedly force opponents to reevaluate their plans—especially those relying on key artifact or creature recursion. The Treasure token mechanic is a natural fit for decks that prefer to pay a premium for exceptional late-game answers, rather than grinding out value with a traditional mana-base. And because the card has Commander-legal status, it plays nicely in low-to-mid-range black-control shells that prize consistency and inevitability. The card’s dual triggers create an engine that rewards thoughtful sequencing—attack to exile and create the treasure, then spend that treasure to cast pivot spells that draw more answers and options. It’s a thoughtful meditation on how to convert information into tempo, and tempo into leverage. 🧭⚔️

As a final note, the practical approach to maximizing Mastermind Plum’s power is to lean into synergy rather than raw power alone. Use graveyard-targeted strategies to hamper opponents, and use treasures to fuel the spells that maintain your grip on the game. The result is a board that slowly slides toward your direction, even as your life bar takes a few quick taps. If you enjoy the thrill of long-thinking control games with a dash of treasure-hungry chaos, Plum is a tasty addition to your black-forward toolkit. 🎲💎

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