MTG Salvation

To help introduce some of my students to commander I threw together a couple janky decks for them to play against each other. This one turned out a bit more fun to play and a bit more competitive than I expected it would be. It can certainly operate without the Omniscience and that will make it even more budget, I just happened to have one and throwing down a giant hand without paying anything for it is tempting enough for me to put it in there.




The general plan is simple; play merfolk, use bounce spells on your own guys to maximize the impact of enter the battlefield triggers or on your opponent's to make life harder for them, use counter-spells when they seem like they would have the most effect, flop around on dry land. I'll have a bit of a breakdown of the deck up soon, possibly tomorrow morning.

So, to be entirely fair, this is kinda my first shot at building a commander deck from scratch. I’m in no way new to magic but I’m no wizened ol’ master either, just a guy who’s been playing Magic off and on more or less since it started.

This deck started out as something slightly different: Here was my initial list : and I just kinda built it out of cards I had laying around to help some of my students learn how to play commander this summer. Turned out, I kinda liked the deck so I tinkered with it a bit more with cards I had, made a couple trades and put in less than $20 towards the deck so far. The original build was notably budget, the current list is not significantly more expensive but I’m still tinkering with it and while my personal budget is as much of an issue as anyone .



Flip flopin' fish:

The commander of this deck, Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca has abilities based on tapping other merfolk, as does the Lullmage Mentor. I’ll touch on both of these cards a bit more later but they’re notable because just how handy their abilities can be. As your commander (that only costs 3 cmc) Kumena will most likely show up in your games while Lullmage is just 1 in 99 and he might not always drawn there are a couple cards in here that will help you search for other merfolk to help you get him. He might not always be your first choice but it’s often a good one. As such there’s a minor tap untap theme going on in this list.

Merrow Commerce allows you to untap all merfolk (which is pretty much all your creatures) you control at the end of your turn while Quest for Renewal can allow you to untap at the end of each other players untap step. There’s no reliable way to get these cards out but they just feel right in here. If you can get them out (especially Quest for Renewal). While these cards don’t represent


Merrow Reejerey is in here and a fine way to untap some creatures (it’s not hard to find yourself casting merfolk with this deck) but generally speaking it’s not going to amp up your tapping power too much but it will do so a bit. There are a few fish-folks with flash in here so it can also be used for a bit of trickery when it comes to blockers your opponent might not be expecting.

Wake Thrasher is hurt a little bit by Merrow Commerce but you’ll most likely still have lands untap at the beginning of your turn but is made more viably as a defender if you’ve got Quest for Renewal out and you’re tapping all your creatures to do things during everybody else’s turn.

Throne of the God-Pharaoh seemed like a no-brainer to me, most times you’re going to be having some number of creatures tapped at the beginning of your endstep (since the un-tapping takes place at the end). Damaging your opponents is a good thing.


School o' Fish:

Since the commander’s abilities are based on tapping creatures (merfolk specifically) you’ll find it useful to go as wide as you can. There are only a handful of cards in here that make tokens. This is a contributing reason as to why the creature count is a bit high.

The least of the cards that’ll help you go wide (at least in regard to this deck) is Master of Waves, he doesn’t make merfolk tokens (they’re elementals) so you can’t tap them to do stuff and in most situations they’ll all die if he does ( the Immortal Sun can help you here but the Immortal Sun can help most things). That’s not to say they’re of no use to you. Since most of this deck is blue there’s a good chance you’ll have a pretty high devotion to blue so there’s a good chance you can be making a pretty solid block of elementals and a handful of 2/1 (blue) elementals ain’t bad thing to have.

Lullmage Mentorcan help a bit in this category but only so much, countering spells is a thing this deck does but only so much with 8 counterspells but if you’ve got seven merfolk laying around untapped he can overcome that limitation. This can possibly wind up getting you a pretty large chunk of merfolk but a lot of things need to be in play to make this anything close to a consistent card engine.

Aquatic Incursion is a bit of an iffy addition to the deck but because it makes two tokens and while pricey adds more evasion (probably the real focus of the deck).

Deeproot waters, clearly, can get you a bunch of merfolk especially if you can get it out early but that’s a luck shot.

Bigger fish:

Most of the merfolk in this deck have pretty small bodies but there are a lot of ways to make them bigger. Of the 99 are 5 merfolk lords (Merfolk Sovereign, Merfolk Mistbinder, Master of the Pearl Trident, Lord of Atlantis and Merrow Reejery) giving all your other merfolk +1/+1. Master of waves helps out elementals but the only ones in this deck at this point are the ones he makes. Streambed Aquitects can be used to give a guy +1/+1 as a tap ability.

8 cards either give, increase the number of of counters on your merfolk (one being your commander)( Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca, Hadana’s Climb, Forerunner of the Heralds, Deeproot Elite, Shapers of Nature, Vineshaper Mystic, Vorel of the Hull Clade and Novijen, Heart of progress)

In short, the merfolk may come out with mostly small bodies but they tend to become fairly big consistently.

Evasion:

There’s a great deal of evasion built in here. Master of the Pearl Trident and Lord of Atlantis both give all your merfolk island walk and Streambed Aquitects can either pump up a creature and give him island walk or make an island for all your island hoppin’ pals to skip on through and maul your opponents. Aquitect’s Will will permanently give an opponent an island. Herald of Secret Streams will make all your creatures with +1/+1 counters (which can be a lot) unblockable, Waterspount Weavers will pretty regularly give all your creatures flying and the Deepchannel Mentor will make all your blue creatures (including those elemental tokens) unblockable.

Anyway…. I could go on but this is still a work in progress. Any thoughts or comments are appreciated.