This deck arose out of the fact that I had wanted to use Stormtide Leviathan for a long while, and I saw the Quest for Ula's Temple one day while searching through cards on Gatherer.
The concept of this deck is that to maximize quest counters, the deck has to be as creature-heavy as possible.
Grozoth
, Inkwell Leviathan, and Stormtide Leviathan are the heavy hitters, while Kraken Hatchling, Augury Owl, and
Silver Myr
all let me build towards them in safety.
This is a deck with an average CMC greater than 4. Mana management is of course a major part of this deck. Shortcuts are abound in this deck, with Ula's Temple being the obvious first example. Grand Architect and Silver Myr provide alternative means of short-cutting if I'm up against enchantment removal, and the +1/+1 is highly useful.
Grozoth allows me to put all of the other Grozoths, as well as Inkwell Leviathans, into my hand (if only Stormtide had cost 1 more!) Once that happens, Ula's Temple means a constant surge of deep-sea monstrosities heading into the field.
Once Stormtide Leviathan is on the field, non-Islandwalk and non-Flying creatures can only defend. It's pretty much the finisher of the game, even considering the power of Inkwell.
I thought "What the heck," and decided that Augury Owl would be a great addition to my deck because I can manage land flooding (ba-dum-tsh) or other timing-dependent cards and I can still do chip damage with it as well.
Once I playtest using proxies, I will be able to discern whether I have too few low-mana options, poor turtling (ba-dum-tsh), too much ramp, and not enough speed.
I think I've gone a little too far towards artifact creatures in its current incarnation.
