revised;
Deck based around
Thassa, Deep-Dwelling
. All the creatures in this deck have ETB effects that can be repeated with Thassa. The exception being
Alrund, God of the Cosmos
, however we can flip the bird into Alrund with Thassa.
This based on personal opinion, but this is the order of ETB effects from most powerful, to least. All these are meant to be triggered with
Thassa, Deep-Dwelling
, however you can also use
Flicker of Fate
in place of Thassa in a pinch. The real use of Flicker however, is to evade enemy removal, re-target
Banishing Light
, or fire off another exile with
Elspeth Conquers Death
. It can also be used in an offensive/defensive way by flickering enemy creatures with a lot of counters on them, or a big stompy we don't want to swing this turn
-
Solemn Simulacrum
When he comes in, you get a land, and with a bounce another land. That's 2 lands extra on top of the one you can play. Turn 5 can have you going from 4 mana -> 7, then next turn -> 9, etc.. It's not impossible to out ramp ramp decks using this method because it's so consistent and after the initial cast, it's a free land a turn
-
Barrin, Tolarian Archmage
Send stuff back to their hand. If he comes in with a Thassa out, that's two bounces you can get. He essentially controls the board state and doesn't allow the opposition to get a good footing.
-
Shipwreck Dowser
Very powerful when your bouncing this every turn to get a spell back, even more when that spell is
Unsubstantiate
. You can essentially lock them out of their high cost spells from ever hitting the board if you get these three going together. Pulling back a
Search for Glory
or a
Flicker of Fate
for protection doesn't hurt either
-
Charming Prince
/
Thassa's Oracle
This is how we find what we need and ensure consistency in our plays. Early drops, fix mana, find the parts we need for whats in play, etc. It's hard to say which one is better, Thassa lets you dig a bit deeper, and kicks off devotion for
Thassa, Deep-Dwelling
. However,
Charming Prince
will let you flip a
Alrund, God of the Cosmos
turn 3, and having that potential extra 2 cards a turn is extremely strong early game. Being able to scry sometimes is also better than just digging deep for a single card.
-
Icebreaker Kraken
This locks down the board and paired with the second ability of
Thassa, Deep-Dwelling
ensures it stays locked. There's only 2 non snowlands out of 25 lands in this deck, and with the earlier
Solemn Simulacrum
combo its not hard to cast for .
Every single source of blue devotion except for Thassa, Deep-Dwellling, is from a requiring creature. That means we just need 2 other blue creatures on the board for Thassa to change. Its not uncommon have the opposition recasting the same few spells for most of our set up and then for us to be suddenly swinging in with 10+ seemingly out of nowhere. If everything plays right up to that point, you have plenty of mana to be tapping down with Thassa if they do manage to get things to stick on the board anyways. It will only take a swing or two with Thassa and a
Alrund, God of the Cosmos
. All the spells you've casted have been gotten back with
Shipwreck Dowser
and most of the creature removal is being repeated with
Barrin, Tolarian Archmage
. This means when everything is set up, you don't need to be casting spells out of your hand to progress or control the game. This lets you hold more defensive spells and boosts Alrund even more. Ideally you want your final board state to be;
and early game this state is more important;
obviously this is ideal and you won't get them to always stick, the important part is finding a
Thassa, Deep-Dwelling
. Everything else can be worked towards with the right plays. There's a lot of surprise flexibility with these cards that people don't necessarily see or think about. For example, it might be advantageous to flicker a key piece with
Charming Prince
, either with Thassa endstep bounce or a
Flicker of Fate
, forcing that piece into exile until their endstep. Very useful if you think the board is going to get wiped and you want to save something. Maybe you chump block something with a
Shipwreck Dowser
,
Flicker of Fate
to avoid damage, and get the flicker back. Alternatively you could block and pump her prowess by flickering other chump blockers, triggering their ETB's. Kills, bounces, more lands. There's a few possibilities and your gonna get the spells back bouncing a Dowser at some point so they are almost always worth to take even if it just means they cast a low 3CMC two turns
Deck is weak against Haste, and go wide strategies. Its not great tradeoff to be bouncing a single 2cmc creature every turn, as they can just cast it again with another low cmc creature. Usually the strategy is to still be as disrupt as you can, make creature trades in favour of trying to get Thassa activated faster, stalling and eventually locking everything down with
Icebreaker Kraken
A lot of Legendaries make
Search for Glory
an obvious choice, hitting everything except instants, Prince, Dowser, Solemn and Oracle. Also why we don't run 4 copies of some things. There's no worst feeling drawing into a third Barrin so just have 2 : D. There's 7 cards in this deck that can be used as protection, and can be retrieved easily. It's not uncommon to cast the same unsubstantiate or flicker over a dozen times without ever finding another. There's also 2 copies of
Elspeth Conquers Death
, but the real power of this card, comes when you use it with
Flicker of Fate
since its the only source of permanent removal in this deck. Everything else is either bounced or
Banishing Light
.
Finally,
Lithoform Engine
, good way to get an extra bounce with Thassa, another ETB, clone an Elspeth or a creature, etc. Powerful in this deck, but only late game if it gets to that point. The extra value early game is almost always better suited to getting to the correct game state
- 2x Banishing Light
- 1x Castle Ardenvale
- 1x Castle Vantress
- 4x Charming Prince
- 4x Cloudkin Seer
- 2x Elspeth Conquers Death
- 4x Flicker of Fate
- 10x Island
- 2x Mystic Sanctuary
- 3x Orvar, the All-Form
- 9x Plains
- 3x Roaming Ghostlight
- 4x Shipwreck Dowser
- 3x Temple of Enlightenment
- 4x Thassa, Deep-Dwelling
- 4x Unsubstantiate
