Hello TappedOut user who undeniably plays Commander and doesn't have a ton of money to spend on cardboard! Do you wish you could play your dumb 8 mana Sea Monsters in Modern and unleash your inner Timmy like you can in Commander, but feel like you can't because you fear death on Turn 4? Well fear not, because this deck allows you to dump at least one these 8 mana Sea Monsters onto the battlefield before that Hollow One kills you! All of this and more can be yours thanks to the Quest for Ula's Temple, so long as three creatures have been revealed from the top of your library since the enchantment resolved. Once active the Quest effectively becomes an Aether Vial for Leviathans, Serpents, Krakens or Octopus by allowing us to drop an uncounterable sea monster at the end of each of our turns without any regards to casting costs. The primary targets for this effect are Stormtide Leviathan, Scourge of Fleets and Elder Deep-Fiend, all with their own unique purpose. Stormtide Leviathan provides evasion as well as a one sided Ensaring Bridge effect on an 8/8 body, quickly ending games of Magic and is easily our best creature to cheat in. Scourge of Fleets is also fairly good to cheat in, most likely being able to wipe our opponent's board and likely trading favorably with anything that wasn't bounced to the hand, and is typically better than Stormtide in match ups like Dredge. Elder Deep-Fiend is easily the worst of our sea monsters to cheat in with Quest, but thanks to Emerge is the only one of these creatures we can foreseeably cast without needing the Quest. While this is a good package of creatures to cheat in, we need to be able to not only get our Quest for Ula's Temple online with 3 counters for this gameplan to work but also need to cast the enchantment as soon as possible to win. This is accomplished by running 30 creatures as well as the Eternal Scourge + Serum Powder
engine to help us mulligan into a hand with a Turn 1 Quest for Ula's Temple similar to how Colorless Eldrazi decks use Serum Powder to mulligan into Eldrazi Temple. Furthermore, the deck runs Judge's Familiar, Merfolk Trickster, Harbinger of the Tides and Venser, Shaper Savant so the deck can still operate as a Mono Blue Tempo deck to not only keep us alive long enough for the Quest to activate but also potentially win the game on their own while keeping our creature count high for a higher probability of creature flips. As far as the land base is concerned, the deck runs 18 Islands and a playset of Halimar Depths due to the fact that it allows us to sculpt the top of our library for free to guarantee creature flips with a Quest in play. Notably, there is no Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx as while a large Blue devotion is easily attainable with this deck the fact that our deck is very dependent on Blue mana early in the game makes the opportunity cost more than the potential benefit most of the time.
As for the side board, we run a combination of both Negate and Dispel to help stave off against Control match ups because a Cryptic Command or Path to Exile can really ruin our day. Vapor Snag helps us stave off aggro decks a bit better, especially against early Hollow One, Prized Amalgam or Arclight Phoenix. Tormod's Crypt is the premier budget graveyard hate card in the deck, and is run at 4 for this reason. Threads of Disloyalty is great against decks like Humans, Pyromancer, Death's Shadow, Tarmogoyf and Delver of Secrets
as it allows us to take their key creatures. Finally, Ceremonious Rejection helps a bit in the Tron match up which is horrendous anyways but every little bit helps.
Overall, the deck comes in at around $50 with the most expensive cards being Venser, Shaper Savant and Quest for Ula's Temple itself taking up a majority of the cost. Honestly, this deck should do fine at FNM and at worst is a pretty funny meme deck which can steal games against a lot of the decks in the Modern metagame. If you're just starting out in the format, want a cheap deck that creates fun moments or if you like beating your opponent down with a bunch of Commander bulk rares then you'll definitely get enjoyment playing this deck.
