Previous deck: 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Odric, Blood-Cursed // Next deck: 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Halana and Alena, Partners
Not every Vampire in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic the Gathering's world of Innistrad is out for power. Far away from the political machinations of the Stensia Vampires, the Stromkirks have set up their dominion in the coastal town of Drunau, where they use their powerful Glamour magic to (mostly) live among humans in relative. Th꧒ose lucky enough to be noticed by the Stromkirk can even hope to become livestock, trading their blood for a life of luxury and protection from the horrors that lurk outside.
The Stromkirk's progenitor, Runo, has slightly different motivations. An ancient Vampire from long before the days of the archangel Avacyn, Runo worships the old gods of sea and storm. Living and worshipping alongside many of Nephalia's other cults, like those of Gitrog, Grolnok, and Toxril, Runo has decided it his time to make his move. It's time for him to summon the most powerful Kraken ever known to Innistrad: the destructive Lord of the Deep himself, Krothuss.
Today, we're harnessing the powers of the deep with .
Runo Stromkirk is a 1/4 Vampire Cleric with flying that costs one generic, one blue, and one black mana. When he enters the battlefield, you can put a creature card from your graveyard on top of your library. Then, at the start of your4 upkeep, you can look at the top card of your library, and you may reveal it. If you do, and the creature has mana value six or greater, you can then transform Runo Stromkirk into his other side, Krothuss, Lord of the Deep.
Krothuss, Lord of the Deep is a 3/5 Kraken Horror with flying. Whenever he attacks, you create a tapped and attacking copy of another creature you control. If that creature is a Kraken, Leviathan, Octopus, or Serpent, you make two of those tokens ins♑tead. With that in mind, this deck has a Kraken, Leviathan, Octopus and Serpent theme, using their high mana cost for a number of effects.
Ramp
Dimir (blue and black) struggles wit💞h ramp, which can be a big problem when our deck is full of creatures with high mana costs.
For land ramp, there are a few colourless options, like Myriad Landscape and Burnished Hart. We're also going to use Dreamscape Artist, which can pay two generic, one blue, discard a card, and sacrifice a lang to search for two basic lands and put them onto the battlefield. It's a lot of hoops to jump through, but having something that doubles as land ramp and a discard outlet is very nice.
A couple of specific lands are going to help a lot too, most notably Cabal Coffers to make a lot of black mana, and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx to use our high mana value (and resulting high devotion). Use cards like Crypt Ghast, Bubbling Muck, and High Tide to double the mana you produce as welꦗl, just to push our limited resources that bit further.
Artifact ramp is arguably a bigger part of this deck, between cards like Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Talisman of Dominance, Doubling Cube, Dimir Signet to make mana directly, and Sapphire Medallion, Jet Medallion, and Kefnet's Monument to reduce the cost of certain spells cast.
Draw
We're playing in the two most 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:self-centred colours possible, so there are lot🅠s of fan🦹tastic ways to draw cards.
It's a Commander staple, but Sensei's Divining Top gets a whole new purpose in this deck when combined with Runo. Paying one mana to reorder the top three cards of your library, and then tapping it to draw a card is amazing with a Commander that cares about what the top card of your library is. Brainstorm does something similar, giving you the chance to set the top two cards of your library to whatever🍌 you need.
It's one of the cheapest creatures in the entire deck, and Sea-Dasher Octopus is also going to do 🃏a l🔯ot of work. This deck relies on combat to win, and so having something that can mutate underneath a heavy hitter and draw you a card on combat damage, before getting copied with Krothuss to have even more of them doing the same, can be a game-changer.
More generic black draw tools are also good inclusions here. Stuff like Greed and Phyrexian Arena for direct draw, and Vampiric Tutor and Demonic Tutor for tutoring (pulling a cಌard directly out of the deck) are the way to go.
Don't sleep on Interpret the Signs, an uncommon from🎐 Commander Legends that is incredible in this deck. It costs six mana, but you scry the top three cards of your library, then reveal the top card and draw cards equal to its mana cost. With how many six, seven, eight or more mana cost creatures there are in this deck, you could be drawing a ridiculous number to make that six mana well worth the investment.
Krakens, Leviathans, Octopus, and Serpents
While all four are individual creature types, they all represent the same thing: high-cost blue creatures that have de🥂vastating effects and often have some form of evasion to make them truly terrifying.
For raw beating potential, Serpent of Yawning Depths, Deepchannel Mentor and Spawning Kraken are scarily good. The first two make your Octopus, Kraken, Serpent, or Leviathan creatures unblockable (and anything else as long as it's blue), while Spawning Kraken creates more 9/9s to hit with whenever it deals combat damage.
Moving blockers out of the way is important, and for that, we have the excellent Brinelin the Moon Kraken, who bounces a permanent to its owner's hand whenever you cast a spell with mana value six or greater), Junk Winder to tap down an opponent's creature whenever a token enters the battlefield under your control, and Icebreaker Kraken to stop any tapped creatures from untapping next turn (Icebreaker is the sole reason why this deck uses snow lands, by the way). A killer in this is Innistrad: Crimson Vow's 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hullbreaker Horror, who can either soft-counter a spell or return a non-land permanent to its controller's hand whenever you cast any spell.
With all the expensive creatures, we need more ways to get them out into play than just paying mana and casting them as a boring person would. While it does shut down the synergy with Brinelin, cards like Belbe's Portal and Aetherplasm can be used to play our biggest creatures for much cheaper costs than normal. Omniscience is an enchantment that is very unlikely to resolve, let alone stay on the battlefield long enough to make use of, but it's worth running for the few times you pull it off.
Reflections of Littjara is a useful enchantment you should be running in any Blue tribal deck anyway, just to double up on your creatures. The downside here is that Runo and Krothuss care about four different creatures types, and you have to name one. Kraken is probably the best choice to make when casting Reflections of Littjara, as it's the most prevalent creature type, with Serpent, Leviathan, and Octopus following in that order.
Another way to cheat mana costs is to pull the creature from your graveyard. This is why Dreamscape Artist or Incarnation Technique are handy, as we can dump expensive things like a Spawning Kraken or Thryx, the Sudden Storm, and then grab it out of the graveyard with a Return from Extinction, Stitch Together, Extract from Darkness, or Dead Return. If you fancy adjusting this deck at all, this could be a theme you lean more into by adding some of black and blue's self-mill tools like Codex Shredder, King Narfi's Betrayal, Emry Lurker of the Loch, and Court of Cunning to more efficiently put cards into your graveyard.
Time To Win
Curiously for a Dimir deck, the only way this Runo build can win is by taking a load of sea creatures and bashing your opponents in the face. Fortunately, there's more than enough muscle on your creatures to take out the whole game in a single turn, though, and so it's mostly a game of building up your board state, controlling your opponents through counterspells, and biding your time until you can sweep.
Build up your board through cards like Spawning Kraken, Spark Double, Nadir Kraken, Inkwell Leviathan, and Icebreaker Kraken. The more c🔯opies of these you can make throuܫgh Krothuss and Reflections of Littjara, the better.
After that, winning is the simple matter of dropping a Slinn Voda the Rising Deep, Whelming Wave, Serpent of Yawning Depths, or Deepchannel Mentor. Slinn Voda and Whelming Wave are board wipes that bounce everything but the four creatures types we're using back to their owners' hands, while Deepchannel Mentor and Serpent of Yawning Depths make them unblockable to any unfortunate leftovers who remained after the wipe.
The best thing about this is that it's relatively easy to set up and try again if someone manages to save themselves. There are no combos to be countered or key pieces to be knocked out, just build up your sea horrors and crash into them over and over again until they die.
Powering Down the Deck
For the second week in a row, this is a deck that's already pretty wholesome. Combat is the preferred win condition of lower-power decks, and with no infinite combos to luck into, you're relying on playing the old-fashioned way of throwing bodies until the game's over.
If you do need to slow down the deck, the most sensible thing would be to tone down the control elements. Take out Brinelin and Hullbreaker Horror to give your opponents to build up a board state, and swap the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:efficient counterspells like Mana Drain and Force of Will for stuff like Disrupting Shoal or Foil instead.
Of course, removing efficient tutors like Demonic and Vampiric Tutors is always a good way of slowing down a deck. Relying on card draw makes this a bit trickier, even if we're getting lots of efficient card draw engines set up.
Alternatively, slowing down the ramp gives your opponents more time to build their defences until your big creatures come into play. Take out the cost-cheating cards like Aetherplasm and Belbe's Portal, and then maybe consider shaving off stuff like Cabal Coffers, Crypt Ghast, and Bubbling Muck until your deck is at the speed that you're aiming for.
--
For the full deꦑck build for this guide, check out tꦛhe .
