Dear Azami: Water Polo With Sea Creatures

Welcome to another week of Dear Azami!

My name is Dave Meeson, and the team here has graciously let me take the reins for the week. Once upon a time I wrote a budget column here at Star City
called Tribal Thriftiness, and this here site here has always been in my heart. When I saw that Sean was looking for some folks to pick up a week and help
out, I hit the old Internet Rolodex and immediately volunteered.

I read the column regularly, and I do wonder each time if I could actually be helpful to the poor souls who write in every week. My Commander philosophy is
… not aggressive. It’s not that I don’t want to win, or that I specifically cannot win, but I’m a Johnny through and
through, and Commander will always be one of those formats where Amazing Things Happen Accidentally, and if I can do my small part to help those things
happen, then I’m all for it. To that end, my Commander decks usually want to do something specific more than just generically “winning.” I have an Ulamog,
the Infinite Gyre deck that is a blast to play and a Medomai the Ageless deck that is pretty horrible, but it is all foiled – it’s just full of
Draft castoffs. I also love tribal decks and wish Wizards would print more Pirates so this Ramirez di Pietro deck could get finished.

I read Kyle’s letter and immediately knew this was the job for me. He had me at “no anthropomorphic creatures.”

Hi Kyle! I bet when you sent in your letter to Dear Azami, you didn’t expect that you’d get a response from an actual qualified water polo player! I’m
proud to say that my high school varsity sports letter was from being on the swim team, and we played a heck of a lot of water polo as a post-practice cool
down. Sure, I’m shaped more like a water polo goal now than a swimmer, but we’ll skim over that piece of trivial detail and get on to the deck.

The Creatures

Out:

With all of the high-casting-cost Octopi and Leviathans in the deck, the first things that should go are the guys that ultimately will prevent you from
casting the rest of your beasts when you draw them. Polar Kraken and Jokulmorder are just eating up too much of your resources and don’t give you anything
really exciting for the amount of punishment you have to endure to get them going.

Similarly, I wanted to remove the guys that had requirements on when they could attack, and nothing else. Sure, they’re still good for blocking,
but their otherwise-generic bodies aren’t exciting when they’re just sitting there glassy-eyed and useless because they can’t find a body of water on the
other side of the battlefield to splash around in. Come on Harbor Serpent, at least Pirate Ship can still shoot down a Birds of Paradise!

And finally, I took out of some of the guys with less-than-interesting bylines for their casting cost. Sorry Tidal Kraken, but being unblockable just isn’t
worth the extra two mana over Shipbreaker Kraken.

In:

Tidal Force is a nice bit of board control, giving you the ability to tap down troublesome attackers and blockers, and the fact that he triggers every upkeep means he’s especially powerful in multiplayer games. I wanted a couple more early plays for the deck, and Coral Barrier fits
perfectly with your other early drops, providing defense with a relevant ability (in this case, another body to pick up a polo mallet later in the game).
Reef Worm will start out small and keep getting bigger, and it can force your opponents to use exile-style removal on it instead of the much bigger things
that are still to come. Sandbar Serpent is good early when you want a creature and helps you get to your more relevant creatures in the later stages of the
game. Slithermuse is a great blocker that will help you catch up (if necessary), or can act as a lategame hand-filler. And there’s always
something good in Commander for Jace’s Mindseeker to cast for free!

That still leaves us two more slots to fill later.

The Mallets

Er, artifacts.

Out:

Crucible of Worlds and Quicksilver Fountain had some synergy with some of the creatures in the original deck, but since we’ve removed at least half of them
we can kick these non-weapons to the curb with them. Caged Sun seems too slow ultimately to have a huge impact on the game once it comes online, especially
since it costs as much as a Kraken itself.

Cloudstone Curio strikes me as an unusual card in this deck since there aren’t a huge number of “enters the battlefield” abilities that you want to reuse
over and over.

Sword of the Paruns is the weakest of the included equipment, and I bet we can find a better mallet.

In:

Now here are some polo hammers! Ronin Warclub is a great weapon in this deck since you don’t really care which of your no-hands-havin’ monsters is
picking up the extra damage, just so long as one of them is. Kusari-Gama gives you a great way to either force through damage or kill a bunch of
opposing creatures at once and is reasonably costed for all its abilities. Hammer of Ruin makes sure you’re winning the equipment race and is another
cheap-to-cast, cheap-to-attach weapon.

Loxodon Warhammer is the card I had dreams about when I first read your Dear Azami letter. True story! I had a dream of a Breaching Hippocamp holding a
Loxodon Warhammer between his teeth, bursting out of the water and smacking a polo ball straight between all of Wrexial, the Risen Deep’s legs … or …
whatever they are. Tentacles?

Extraplanar Lens is the cut-rate Caged Sun. It doesn’t make your blue guys bigger, but it does come down early enough that it can actually ramp up your
ability to get those big guys on the board. Your monsters are already going to be pretty decently sized, so I don’t think you’ll miss the extra +1/+1.

We still have two slots to fill. Let’s get that done.

The Spells

Out:

We need what limited spell-based interaction we have to really count, and the generic old Counterspell isn’t cutting it. We want something that either hits
a bunch of spells or gives us another reward at the end.

In:

Spell Burst is the counterspell you want in this deck since there may be turns where you have nine mana but no giant sea creature to play. I’m filling the
last two spell slots with more mass removal that you can tailor to hit your opponent’s creatures but not your own. Wash Out can sometimes leave an
important enemy behind, but often it will be a one-sided board wipe since all of your creatures are mono-colored. Aetherspouts not only can wipe out an
attacking horde, but can force your opponent to either re-draw those creatures for the next several turns, or lose them onto the bottom of their deck.

Lands

I am probably the worst person to give advice on Commander manabases. When I first started playing Commander, my Johnny brain told me that it was going to
be a lot more fun to stick to the true “there can be only one” nature of the format, and that included the basic lands. Sure, it means you end up
using old Homelands lands (Castle Sengir, I’m looking at you!), but it made a lot of sense to me at the time.

Out:

There’s not much card-drawing here, and while I can appreciate the desire to not be chucking giant monsters into the graveyard, I think Reliquary Tower
would be better served as either (1) something that produces colored mana or (2) something with a better effect than just preventing you from discarding.
The Islands come out so we can add some more goodies.

In:

Cephalid Coliseum does some nice card filtering in the mid-to-lategame when you need to be dropping hefty creatures as often as possible. Nykthos, Shrine
to Nyx works amazingly with all of the UU and UUU costs in the upper right hand corner of those monsters and helps you keep pumping them out. Faerie
Conclave is one more creature with questionable hand status to pick up a weapon and help you sneak in those last few points of damage while Darksteel
Citadel and Seat of the Synod are two more artifacts that can be Reshaped later in the game. And Thawing Glaciers will help provide you with a steady
stream of Islands all game long.

I did also consider some other lands that made more guys, like Urza’s Factory or Stalking Stones, but look at those Assembly Workers. They clearly have
hands and that just will not do.

Putting it all together, we get the following:

Commander: Sun Quan, Lord of Wu

Dave Meeson

Test deck on 11-30--0001

Commander

Creatures (28)

• 1 Pirate Ship
• 1 Man-o'-War
• 1 Wall of Kelp
• 1 Giant Oyster
• 1 Seasinger
• 1 Walking Sponge
• 1 Sandbar Serpent
• 1 Deep-Sea Kraken
• 1 Draining Whelk
• 1 Slithermuse
• 1 Kederekt Leviathan
• 1 Inkwell Leviathan
• 1 Gomazoa
• 1 Lorthos, the Tidemaker
• 1 Guard Gomazoa
• 1 Stormtide Leviathan
• 1 Phyrexian Ingester
• 1 Jace's Mindseeker
• 1 Colossal Whale
• 1 Shipbreaker Kraken
• 1 Tidal Force
• 1 Tromokratis
• 1 Kraken of the Straits
• 1 Sigiled Starfish
• 1 Scourge of Fleets
• 1 Chasm Skulker
• 1 Coral Barrier
• 1 Reef Worm

Lands (17)

• 1 Thawing Glaciers
• 1 Remote Isle
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Faerie Conclave
• 1 Seat of the Synod
• 1 Lonely Sandbar
• 1 Cephalid Coliseum
• 1 Darksteel Citadel
• 1 Academy Ruins
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Tolaria West
• 1 Soaring Seacliff
• 1 Halimar Depths
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Haunted Fengraf
• 1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1 Myriad Landscape

Spells (54)

• 1 Kusari-Gama
• 1 Umezawa's Jitte
• 1 Ronin Warclub
• 1 Quicksilver Amulet
• 1 Sol Ring
• 21 Island
• 1 Capsize
• 1 Basalt Monolith
• 1 Wash Out
• 1 Sword of Light and Shadow
• 1 Crawlspace
• 1 Sword of Kaldra
• 1 Loxodon Warhammer
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Fabricate
• 1 Extraplanar Lens
• 1 Reshape
• 1 Power Matrix
• 1 Rhystic Study
• 1 Followed Footsteps
• 1 Spell Burst
• 1 Ponder
• 1 Inundate
• 1 Expedition Map
• 1 Everflowing Chalice
• 1 Hammer of Ruin
• 1 Quest for Ula's Temple
• 1 Argentum Armor
• 1 Strata Scythe
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Bident of Thassa
• 1 Whelming Wave
• 1 Aetherspouts

So how did we do at sticking within the boundaries of Kyle’s budget?

Total: $35.79

Once you apply the $20 coupon you get for being chosen for Dear Azami, you’re looking at making some nice improvements for under twenty bucks. My advice?
Take the rest and take the girlfriend out for a nice pasta dinner. After some carbs and a bottle of wine, maybe Nekusar won’t be quite so scary.

Another way this deck could ultimately go is to add a second color. Wrexial, the Risen Deep is a great commander for a sea monster deck, and getting some
black targeted removal spells might help shore up a deficiency in the blue-only version of the deck. Of course, you’d have to change the name of the deck
to something like “Night Water Polo.”

Thanks to Sean and Jess for letting me take over the column for a week! I had a great time channeling my inner Azami, and hopefully, you enjoyed it too! Dear Azami is still accepting submissions from prospective authors for upcoming weeks, so if you’re interested in writing for Dear Azami just send an email to dearazami AT gmail.com and let the team there know!

Email us a deck submission using this link here!