What lurks beneath the surface of the sea?
Peanut Butter and Jellyfish, or course!
Well, there's also Squid, Octopus, Whales, Starfish, Krakens, and Leviathans. You may need a bigger boat.
This is a fun/random deck that started out on Magic Duels and rekindled by some conversations here on tapped out. The main combo on Duels that proved to work very effectively was an odd combination of
Esperzoa
and
Strider Harness
. I would be able to return and replay the Esperzoa every turn and attack for 5 damage and 4 mana. Not the most exciting thing, but still got the job done against the computer campaign.
I've thought about what else might work with Esperzoa, but didn't really get anywhere. It just seemed too "meh" to bother.
Today I gave it some more thought and actually spent a few minutes on gatherer to find that I could have some fun with this one.
Esperzoa
is the main glue that holds this thing together. The basic aggro from a single Esperzoa seemed alright, and I thought it would pair better with Swiftfoot Boots since it costs less than
Strider Harness
and the hexproof will probably come in handy once the other tricks come to fruition. I needed to find something else that would be worth while to return and replay every turn and I was happy to come across the Wellsprings.
Ichor Wellspring is a great card draw engine allowing you to draw an extra card every turn for just 2 mana if you bounce it back to your hand with Esperzoa. If your opponent destroys it to stop the draws, at least you still get another draw for the road. Mycosynth Wellspring every turn becomes a ramp machine that allows you to build into the higher cmc creatures a lot more reliably. Go Blue!
So I got lucky when going through my options to find
Chasm Skulker
. I love how this guy fits in because all that extra card draw ramps up this guys presence quite a bit by gaining +2/+2 every turn. If you're opponent can't deal with it right away then you can just aggro turn after turn with a growing mass. If you can get some counters stacked onto him before he gets himself dead then you are blessed with a bunch of 1/1 Squid babies with Islandwalk. It's pretty cool.
Things are starting to shape up. I'm very happy with the core combo, but now I need to deal with Islandwalk.
Stormtide Leviathan
came up and takes care of things all on his own, but at a huge cost. Its good that Merfolk is a thing because there are several things that can turn lands into Islands to ensure some massive unblockable action.
Sea's Claim
is the only enchantment in mainboard that takes care of that and is also the only one drop in the deck. I actually like how it could totally screw your opponent by simply changing a land into the wrong color right off the bat. There are 8 more options for this in sideboard for maximum "screw you" potential with
Aquitect's Will
and Spreading Seas. The other main board option is
Quicksilver Fountain
, but I'm debating between that and Spreading Seas. Spreading Seas would work nicely with Chasm Skulker as another draw, but the Fountain slowly shuts down your opponents mana base. Unless of course you are playing against another blue deck, but then you can just take those out and replace them with counter spells. I like the idea of the Fountain as a more potent long term option so I'm going to stick with that for now. Also, the flavor text on
Sea's Claim
is wonderful.
Sigiled Starfish is a decent body to stop early attacks, and the Scry 1 for free isn't bad at cycling cards to get to what you need faster. To ensure variety in sea creature types, this guy fills a quota.
Void Stalker
in another great deterrent by being able to grab any other creature and pull it back into the ocean. It's actually a pretty fun mechanic. Combine that with Swiftfoot Boots for the Hexproof and your opponent will have to think about what they put on the field because it will probably just get swallowed up.
Speaking of swallowed, Colossal Whale is great. If you are allowed to build up to one of these guys the game is definitely going in your favor, and you won't be far from victory.
Lorthos, the Tidemaker
is probably a bit much, but would be a huge play towards the end of the game that would be pretty much unstoppable if you can pay the 8 cost. Also, quota's must be met and this was my favorite Octopus. Elder Deep-Fiend is a close second. Actually, after thinking about it I do prefer Elder Deep here because I can cast it much cheaper by emerging a Chasm Skulker which I can break open to release a bunch of unblockable squids for a finisher on my upcoming turn. That's much better :)
Scourge of Fleets rounds out the "win harder" category by blowing away your opponents battlefield to clear a nice wide path for all of your creatures to finish off your opponent.
I added in a pair of Artificer's Epiphany for a little more draw and since I should always have an artifact it's just straight draw. I like it.
And that's pretty much it. Basically Merfolk without the, well, Merfolk. Very much themed on the ocean and banking on Flying and/or Islandwalk to beat down your opponent while a handful of random sea creatures slow your opponents board to a crawl while their mana base literally floods.
I'm really excited that the budget for this deck is so small, under 2 TIX online and about $30 in paper. The Elder Deep-Fiend does up the cost slightly, but i think its a worthy upgrade and still under 5 TIX altogether. For maximum value you could have another Fiend, or even a full playset since it works so well with the Skulker. I'll have to play around and see what other options may present themselves, but I'm pretty happy with the outcome here. Let me know what you think in the comments section, and don't forget to vote :)
