4 Quicksilver Fountain
4 Benthic Behemoth
4 Reef Shaman
4 Rootwater Commando
4 Sand Squid
4 Segovian Leviathan
3 Flood
3 Deluge
4 Ensnare
26 Island |
 Benthic
Fountain.
Description of deck by its author (quoted):
This deck can be summed pretty quickly.
Sixteen creatures are dedicated to Islandwalking. Eight cards are
dedicated to giving your opponent Islands. Ten cards are dedicated to
keeping your opponent(s) from killing you before you can obtain
Islandwalk victory.
The Reef Shaman is cleverly one of the best cards in
your deck. You want this guy on the first turn in every game. As an 0/2,
he can block 1/1 creatures that might otherwise attack in the early game,
which helps your defense. That's not really why you want him, though.
On the second turn, during your opponent's upkeep, you
can change their land to any other basic land. You can use Reef Shaman,
and later a Quicksilver Fountain to keep a person off one of their colors
of mana. Against any non-Blue player, the Fountain will slowly cut them
off from their mana. Reef Shamen are ideal here.
Most opponents will choose to Fountain lands of all
colors instead of just cutting themselves off of a color. A White/Green
deck, for instance, will start by turning one of their Forests into an
Island, then maybe a Plains, then maybe another Plains, then maybe another
Forest, and so forth. You can use Reef Shaman to finish cutting off a
color.
Plus, Reef Shamen can keep people at Island saturation
longer. Suppose you have out a Fountain and two Shamen. During your
opponent's upkeep, they put a counter, leaving them with two non-Islands.
Then your Shamen island up the other two in their upkeep. During the net
upkeep, another land becomes an island off the Fountain, and you island up
the remaining land with a Shaman. The next turn the Fountain turns the
remaining land into an Island. You get three consecutive turns of full
Island-age with the Shamen helping out.
Now, suppose that your opponent is already playing Blue,
or even mono-Blue. A Quicksilver Fountain and an adjunct like, say, a
Tidal Warrior instead of a Reef Shaman would be completely useless.
There's nothing we can do about the Fountain — it is useless. However, we
can at least play Reef Shamen instead of Tidal Warriors. Now, during the
early games, we can give them Swamps or something instead of Islands.
There's a lot of tapping going on in this deck, like
Flood, Deluge, Ensnare and even Sand Squids if necessary. We want to stall
opponents long enough to get our team through for the win. This deck
stalls in two ways. The tempo loss to Reef Shamen and Quicksilver
Fountains mentioned above is one way. All of these tapping effects are the
other way.
After the discussion about tempo, the remaining sixteen
creatures may seem a bit boring. Three just Islandwalk while the Sand
Squid Islandwalks and taps, serving double duty there. These are pretty
boring overall.
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