Lochmere Hard Control

Standard UB (Dimir)

SeriousSquid

Creature (16)

• 3x Eye Collector
• 3x Lochmere Serpent
• 4x Merfolk Secretkeeper
• 4x Overwhelmed Apprentice
• 2x Vantress Gargoyle

Land (23)

• 14x Island
• 9x Swamp

Instant (14)

• 4x Didn't Say Please
• 4x Drown in the Loch
• 2x Into the Story
• 4x Thought Collapse

Sorcery (7)

• 2x Blood for Bones
• 1x Bond of Insight
• 4x Thought Erasure

---

Sideboard

Creature (7)

• 2x Brineborn Cutthroat
• 3x Cerulean Drake
• 2x Vantress Gargoyle

Instant (6)

• 3x Mystical Dispute
• 3x Noxious Grasp

Sorcery (2)

• 2x Ritual of Soot

---

Maybeboard

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Revenge of Ravens

---

Got a copy of Lochmere Serpent at the ELD prerelease and decided to build a control deck around it.

Gameplan is pretty linear. Start by establish some blockers and begin milling the opponent to enable Drown in the Loch . Then play Thought Erasure and Counter-spells to trade with anything that won't trade or get blocked with the 1-drops A single 1/1 or 2/2 sticking and dealing damage to you isn't a big deal. Dig for Lochmere Serpent and Vantress Gargoyle and when they get out hit with evasion as quickly as possible. Sometimes Vantress Gargoyle get's enabled by turn 3 in which case it either wins outright or drains your opponent of their removal which is nice.

Decent in arena BO1 but not stellar. However did 3-1 locally in BO3 as local meta seems to have converged toward playing expensive power permanents like Questing Beast , the linear nature of which are pretty easy to face with counter magic and noxious grasp. Thinking draw-go is dead they've let their guards down.

Loss was to mono-red aggro to which... I mean... chose your battles.

Notes:

The reason there are no dual lands is partly economic, that I don't own the shocklands, but mostly risk balance. The deck needs needs to make plays on at least 2 out of the 3 first turns to survive and a tapland blocking a counter spell or a scry is the difference between life and death. Also guild-gates and lifegain lands don't have the land suptype which plays poorly with Lochmere Serpent

Sideboarding is pretty straight forward. Remove 3-mana counter spells and thought erasures and replace them with the appropriate sideboard cards.

The deck can use an additional Bond of Insight and one fewer Thought Erasure depending on meta. Pulling back 2 Drown in the Loch from the graveyard with Bond of Insight while uncovering a Lochmere Serpent is about as good as it gets.

Date added	4 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is not Standard legal.
Rarity (main - side)	9 - 4 Rares 13 - 11 Uncommons 15 - 0 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	2.68