Quest for Ula's Temple

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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Highlander Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Quest for Ula's Temple

Enchantment

At the beginning of your upkeep, you may look at the top card of your library. If it's a creature card, you may reveal it and put a quest counter on Quest for Ula's Temple.

At the beginning of each end step, if there are three or more quest counters on Quest for Ula's Temple, you may put a Kraken, Leviathan, Octopus, or Serpent creature card from your hand onto the battlefield.

Amfein05 on Kiora’s Whalecum

6 months ago

Nice! I have a budget version of this deck. I would consider Quest for Ula's Temple and Shark Typhoon.

DreadKhan on The Quackening

11 months ago

I have a Quest for Ula's Temple deck which does some similar things, I liked Dreamscape Artist because it can reshuffle your library as needed, incase you don't have a relevant creature to work with on top. It's technically only 1 mana and a card to Harrow (you get back 2 untapped lands, so it can also helping mana fixing) Blue, and I could be wrong but I think your Commander wants the odd Discard outlet too. A worse (but still potentially useful) piece of Blue ramp is Apprentice Wizard, it's not as good as Dreamscape, it's like Worn Powerstone, which is a good rock if you want bigger ramp to potentially cast a big creature a bit sooner. Thran Dynamo and Gilded Lotus are big ramp rocks with decent ratios. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Cabal Coffers are pretty good together, if you have a lot of devotion to a colour Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx can help, Deserted Temple can untap any land that makes extra mana. Less rampy and more of a big Scry effect, Soothsaying is a neat card if you care about your deck order. Scroll Rack is better but costs more.

Just a general idea, you might throw in things like Reconnaissance Mission, Bident of Thassa, and Coastal Piracy along with some Unblockable or Shadow creatures (Thalakos and Dauthi are the Blue and Black tribes). You can also throw in stuff like Sword of the Animist, Dowsing Dagger  Flip, Prying Blade, Goldvein Pick, Grim Hireling, and any other attack payoffs you can find to generate more value over time. I understand you want a sea-monster theme, but you might want a way to draw some cards/get in some chip damage to soften people up. The only drawback to Shadows is that they can't chump block. If you really want your evasive creatures to be able to chump, there are some small flyers like Spectral Sailor and Thousand-Faced Shadow that have other upsides, these are risk free but are way less evasive than Shadows.

On that note, if you're worried about getting attacked you might look at Propaganda, War Tax, Flood, and Fatespinner are all great ways to make you hard to attack. Mass Diminish, Polymorphist's Jest, Sudden Spoiling, AEtherize, Aetherspouts are all great cards for people to fear.

Callous Oppressor is a funny repeatable theft effect, Ritual of the Machine and Helm of Possession can both steal stuff and are great with tokens, Thieving Skydiver can steal an artifact creature fwiw, Sower of Temptation is a so-so theft effect that shines bright if you can flicker or bounce it, Thalakos Deceiver is probably way better since he permanently steals whatever and can be reanimated, Inevitable Betrayal and Bribery are both pretty sweet.

The biggest (and perhaps best) theft effects are Mass Manipulation and Cultural Exchange, exchange requires bodies but can also be used aggressively to just ruin two players' boards.

Inkwell Leviathan, Lochmere Serpent, Spawning Kraken, Stormtide Leviathan, and Wrexial, the Risen Deep are some relevant creatures I use, some are better than others but there is nothing as bad as Sea Serpent or Bog Serpent, both cards I love but don't use.

If you like Whelming Wave, you might like Spectral Deluge as well.

Hope some of this helps, Big Dimir is a fun deck!

Optimator on Terror of the Deep

1 year ago

Personally, I think Quest for Ula's Temple is a total trap. It only gets a counter roughly 1/3 of turns. They payoff is nice, but not as nice as in a 60-card format where the payoff is proportionally larger and it's easier to have a deck be 2/3 creatures and get the counters up faster.

I had it in my sea monster deck for a long time and it always disappointed. Coral Capers -- (Budget Seamonsters) and Tidal Trouble. Check 'em out!

You'd be far better off with Monster Manual or Elvish Piper, or a big ramper like Traverse the Outlands, Gilded Lotus, etc. Or just another card-draw card.

wallisface on Island walk

1 year ago

Some thoughts:

  • Preordain is not modern legal. The closest thing to it would either be Serum Visions or Opt.

  • It feels like you have no reasonably plan B if you don't draw Quest for Ula's Temple (or if you can't resolve it). This puts you in a really awkward position, as most of the time you're going to be having to do a LOT of mulligans to have something remotely playable. I'd suggest having more viable plan Bs

  • Along the lines of above, you have a bunch of cards that aren't useful at all unless you have Quest for Ula's Temple out - namely Thrummingbird and Fuel for the Cause. Proliferation seems like its useful in such niche situations, that I'm not convinced you should be running it at all - it's only helping you when you're already in a good spot, and does nothing when you're not.

  • A lot of your counter magic is pretty sub-par. I'd recommend stuff like Mana Leak, Counterspell, Remand, Spell Snare.

  • With only 20 lands, you have absolutely no chance of being able to cast Volition Reins or Akroma's Memorial, so I'd suggest ditching those. I'd also suggest getting rid of Quicksilver Amulet, as it's also going to take waaay too long to cast with your manabase, and generally just feels very clunky/slow

multimedia on

2 years ago

Hey, Professor's version is interesting, but in my opinion rushed and doesn't have many cards that can setup Runo to transform which is odd since in his deck tech that's number one goal... Sakashima of a Thousand Faces is an excellent upgrade. Sakashima as well as Spark Double are not even mentioned in his deck tech and they're some of the more unique and fun effects to play with Krothuss.

There's only 6 cards to setup Runo which means consistently unless you draw Top, Remora or Study early game for draw, every game, it will be difficult to transform Runo. Using Entomb effects to help to setup Runo just to get a sea monster into your graveyard doesn't seem very good. There needs to be other uses for Entomb effects; Buried Alive at least gets you more than one creature such as Wonder. There's no reanimation here thus Entomb effects after Krothuss are only being used to get Wonder. The first changes to consider are to add more setup for Runo. Ramp is important, but I think you can afford to cut a few of the lesser rocks such as the Diamonds and Commander's Sphere.

The lack of reanimation options in Professor's version when playing black I disagree with because realistically the only way you're going to get good sea monsters onto the battlefield are more ways to cheat their mana costs. Quicksilver Amulet and Quest for Ula's Temple are good, although Quest is slow/unreliable, but you really need more. The second changes to consider are adding some reanimation replacing some of the lesser high CMC nonsea monster cards such as Octopus Umbra.


The Professor mentioned Hullbreaker Horror in his deck tech, but didn't expand on how powerful it is with Krothuss. It's most likely the best sea monster with Krothuss since when copied it can combo with mana rocks to continually bounce all your opponent's nonland permanents. When you control two or more Hullbreakers then any 0 CMC artifact with Sol Ring is infinite cast/colorless mana/nonland bounce.

Mox Amber when you control Runo/Krothuss is infinite blue/black mana with Sol. Any 2 CMC artifact that can ETB untapped to make mana + Sol can be infinite casts/bounce of all nonland permanents. By adding Everflowing Chalice and/or Amber then the Hullbreaker combo can make other sorcery speed effects that bounce less needed such as Consuming Tide and Inundate. Sol Talisman doesn't work with Hullbreaker because of suspend thus it could be cut for Chalice or Amber.

Because you have Thassa, God of the Sea then Wormhole Serpent isn't needed even though it's a Serpent it's not one you want to copy with Krothuss since it doesn't do much for five mana including not helping Runo to transform. In my opinion if you're going to play creatures who won't help Runo to transform then those creatures better give you something else that's worth playing/copying them with Krothuss. Striped Riverwinder and River Serpent are examples of lesser sea monsters who are actually really good for Runo because of their quick one mana cycling. Copying them with Korthuss isn't much better than copying Wormhole, but the difference is they can help Runo to transform and you can get two draws.

Good luck with your deck.

ReticleMouse on Deep Sea Monsters

2 years ago

how have you not included Quest for Ula's Temple in this deck? even if the deck isn't full to the brim with said creature types, a 1 drop enchantment that lets you play your biggest creatures for free?? seems like a no brainer

Ravenot on Octo-Jesus

2 years ago

Great commander, unfortunately he's not the first Sea-Monster Tribal commander. Here are my insights from playing Sea-Monster Tribal for many years (One of my favorite decks):

You don't have enough snow-permanents for Icebreaker Kraken. Either cut him or swap in snow lands. If you keep him in, I'd also recommend going all in and adding Dark Depths/Thespian's Stage, Marit Lage's Slumber and Replicating Ring as a strong synergy package that fit your theme. They can be game-winners.

Unless you add a lot of sac outlets or play in a heavy-sacrifice meta, Biolume Egg  Flip is a dead card in this deck as the only cards that will allow you to flip it is Living Death and Rot-Tide Gargantua.

Scourge of Fleets in my experience is often a dead card that only works if you include a heavy island-swapping package such as Quicksilver Fountain and Stormtide Leviathan. Otherwise it's mostly a token-killer and there are much cheaper token sweepers than 7cmc for that. I tried running that for a while, but found the island-shenanigans slowed the game and made the deck more annoying than fun for players.

Quest for Ula's Temple, as much as I want to love the card and it's flavor, was a huge miss in my deck with 26 sea monsters. It would often take half the game to go online, and was always removed before it did any value. I'd recommend it only if you include a heavy top-deck manipulation packages such as Scroll Rack.

I'd cut the vampire sub-theme, vampires generally don't synergize well with Sea-Monsters.

Neurok Stealthsuit is a straight upgrade to Whispersilk Cloak for protection, and I've tended to find Thassa, God of the Sea and Deepchannel Mentor have more value for unblockable utility.

Some suggested cards: Reef Worm can quickly get out of hand with Stromkirk. Bident of Thassa can put in some real work when you go wide. Kiora Bests the Sea God is instant value that Stromkirk can later take advantage of. Ominous Seas leans in to blue's draw spells and can be activated at instant speed to make some blockers when you need them. Elder Deep-Fiend is good utility. Extract from Darkness is great recursion for your big CMC monsters or for utility from your enemies graveyards. Gift of Doom is perfect protection for your commander as you can throw one of his tokens at it when it's needed.

Optimator on Deep Blue Sea

2 years ago

Quest for Ula's Temple is a trap. I highly recommend dropping it. I ran it in my deck Coral Capers -- (Budget Seamonsters) and it very rarely worked how I wanted it to

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