The last few months, I've been devoting most of my time to this Double Rainbow set of mono-colored decks, and it's taken me away from the TGZ dial more than I wanted to.
Fortunately, the drought has brought a downpour of things that I'm ready to talk about, and there's better way to segue into more water metaphors and cool deck designs than with Theros' resident female Poseidon, Thassa.
WHY THASSA?
With two sets of mono-colored decks now, my Deck Portfolio and this "No Two Set-Symbols Alike" requirement has gotten particularly challenging when choosing a Commander.
At the outset of constructing the new-bordered Mono-Blue deck, I thought it was going to be Sakashima the Impostor, because I love the card to death, and I was going to make Rayne, Academy Chancellor, my old bordered Commander. Weird choices, I know, but when it comes to my Portfolio, I do want to have some gender balance as well as some uniqueness.
While I know Thassa is a significantly more playable Commander than my initial picks, this wasn't so much a conscious choice to build around. That will sound strange logically, because to some this is all painted cardboard, and liking cards over others based on function can be generally silly.
However, it's not uncommon for me to be scrolling through Gatherer or waist-deep in a box of cards looking, and I'll have some inclination or instinct that draws me to a card. Often, the cards that my unconscious likes and picks aren't ever as good as Thassa is, but this odd predilection is something I've tried to hone as an artistic component to deck design. Being invested in the cards this way can often help keep you interested and motivated to power-up your design.
THE STRATEGY
There are two goofy, gimmicky names I've given to the philosophies behind which I play Thassa. The first is the design theme, which is universal for most of the God creatures, save Purphoros and possibly Heliod, and that is a "Devotion To Devotion."
What I mean by this is that we're strictly avoiding all permanents without blue mana symbols so that we can get our Commander online. Like most of the God cycle, combining Thassa with evasion and enough mana to do it ensures we have a cheap, serious, and consistent threat in blue, which should be scary, because blue doesn't have this card. I mean, the next best option is Thada Adel, and she is less than half as powerful, and much better against mirrors and other decks with blue in them.
Our "Devotion to Devotion" design is predicated on the color's biggest shortcoming- it's obvious lack of dedication in mana cost to the creatures we want to be playing. Again, because it's Blue, and there's always a back door, we innately have a back door- asset protection in the form of counterspell. In short, what we play, we have to be able to protect. Especially if it's Thassa.
Again, this is where design helps us again, because our strategy gimmick can come into play. I call it "High Tide, Low Tide." This strategy refers to Thassa's presence as a creature on the battlefield. In "High Tide," our 5/5 General is alive and attacking. This is the point where her value swells to its highest point, because she either turns the game into a 5-turn clock herself, or a less-than-8-turn clock with her and some friends.
Yet even at "Low Tide," which your opponents will probably be looking to control, Thassa provides insane value. Access to scrying means you're never going to miss land plays, and you're always going to get an extra chance to hit into a permanent loaded with Devotion.
Overall, this is a blue deck that wants to attack, and is fortified by Thassa's abilities to find threats and protection, and enable them to connect effectively. This is slightly different from a pure control strategy, because it's either hyper-aggressive, or hyper-control, in the sense that you get to decide what damage goes through, and your opponents can only hope they have enough answers to handle it.
THE TECH
Our plan is more like the latter, with a couple of key differences. The main being Higure is a devotion enabler, accessing a small but useful set of highly-trained martial artists to help spread out Thassa's requirement and, to quote Allstate Insurance, "better protect us from mayhem."
Additionally, Higure is also what I call a "Commander Doppelganger." My experience has been that decks with Commander-dependencies need backup plans. While Thassa is one resilient little card, it never hurts to have something that shares characteristics with your Commander in case you're in a pickle. Higure has worked out nicely here.
The design phase yielded the obvious result that the longer Thassa was on, the easier it was to put damage and pressure on the table.
Even though Thassa can impose herself on an opponent's life total, the combination of casting permanents for devotion can sometimes mean that you have no mana left to get her damage through.
Enter Aether Adept. Like Mist Raven, which I'm also playing, these two creatures are low-cost solutions that can not only protect my life total, they also buy me turns from getting attacked, and allow me to race my opponent effectively.
While it may not be so under-the-radar, what's surprising is how necessary its actual rules text has been for this deck. I knew it was powerful, and I've had a copy of this for a long time, but I've never been excited about it because it was just a card in other decks.
Here, MotF has some serious work to do, and it's nice to see that. To supplement redundancy, I'm also playing Future Sight.
Pot of Greed is what I play to represent Divination.Any time that we can insert Yu-Gi-Oh jokes into our game, we do it. I started playing Divination so I could make this joke, and then was given an actual copy of Pot of Greed.
Overall, I think it enhances the game when you can do fun stuff like this, even if it is "sub-optimal."
Functionally, what I found was that the scry mechanic still needs to be supplemented with card draw. With most of the deck focused on getting cards through combat damage, via Thassa's Emissary, Coastal Piracy, and Joe Bident (of Thassa), something like Divination helps to fill the spaces in between investments nicely.
Bonds of Quicksilver and Claustrophobia are two other cards that I found supplement this package nicely. Again, these aren't the cards people are going to want to play in a more optimal setting, but Mystic Restraints and Bonds of Quicksilver both provide Instant speed tempo and a little bit of unpredictability.
While their hefty mana cost means you're probably not going to cast them until you have a little untapped mana left over, it's a good lesson in patience anyway. The bigger threats are going to be the creatures you want to enchant anyway. So just be blue, and be patient.
So when I was scrolling through my binder looking for cards to play, I couldn't take it out of the sleeve fast enough. This is a card that wants to be hanging out in decks with a bunch of permanents- the bonus being, that I have a chance to manipulate what I draw.
Most of the people I've played against particularly enjoy seeing this card too. It's just got that kind of effect. All the flavor, pretty cool art, and effective rules text.
Again, this is another card that I find takes on new meaning in a deck with Thassa. Because the Destroy text and the token are two separate instructions, Pongify can become a card I target Thassa with to produce an extra creature as long as I have the devotion.
This is a handy little trick against aggro deck as well as a nice way to get a creature that could help me draw an extra card off of Bident of Thassa.
Well, that was a lot, and there's still more! Here's the list:
Take To The Sea!
As always, I'm interested in your thoughts, ideas, and whatever you have rattling around. Share it if you got it.
Pass.
-UL
