Gen Con is over, and the deck didn't do as well as I had hoped! I ended the day at 3-3, and was positioned for a 4-3 before an indoor flood abruptly canceled the last round (sorry Gen Con, I guess we waveshaped too hard)!
Ultimately, the poor performance was primarily because I anticipated a different meta. Online testing showed the Earth and Fire Courts as being problematic, and a relatively midrange-y meta. However, the paper meta at the tournament was hyper aggressive, with almost every matchup being against early-game decks in Air and Fire. In fact, the only court I saw was an Air court, which is laughably bad into this list.
I've made adjustments to represent the list as I think I should have brought it with me to the tournament, but I anticipate this meta was a symptom of players not fully being sure what the Courts would do to the paper scene, and choosing to ignore it by bringing aggressive decks instead. I doubt the list will remain in this place as the meta continues to adapt.
Drown in the Deep
Because Fun is Only For You
Drown in the Deep is a hard control deck focused on stalling out the early game through the repeated submerge effect of and alongside multiple forced movement effects to prevent your opponent's units from gaining a foothold in your territory. Once we've achieved complete control of the board, we shift our game plan to deploying our late-game threats and ending the game in one or two massive attacks.
This is a deck for people who enjoy controlling the chess match of Sorcery, using positioning and clever movement to send their opponent's forces below the waves, all while overwhelming them with the inevitability of enormous threats like and .
A Note Before We Begin...
The current list of this deck is built with the assumption you will be taking it into a blind meta where you expect to see other meta decks. Currently, it is in testing for the post-Court Gen Con meta, where exclusive dust reward promos have thrown the entire meta into utter chaos. Given how vulnerable we are to these disruptive tax effects, the list has undergone fairly significant revisions to accommodate them.
The primary concessions to the meta that the list makes are:
2 copies of in the Atlas - these cards only exist to hate out cemetery decks like Archimago
1 copy of in the collection - this is another way to hate on Archimago
1 copy of in the collection - with the prevalence of as a Death's Door finisher, it's important we have a way to live if they drop us to zero. Makeshift barricade is that way.
2 copies of in the Atlas - these are our primary answer to the Courts
1 copy of - if we can't shut down the taxing courts, we'll go over top of them with more mana.
1 copy of - with aggro returning to dominance, and courts taxing our best cards, an explosive source of mana is vital to going over the top and stabilizing the board in our favor.
2 copies of - aggro can seriously cut our life down before we're ready to answer, so we need ways to stabilize.
1 copy of - while expensive, and even more so with Courts in play, this is one of the best ways we have to mass-destroy them, outside of cards we're already running. Combined with the ability to completely reset an opponent back to square 1 while we develop our end-game, this card has earned its place in the current meta.
Deck Philosophy
Drown in the Deep is structured in pillars. These pillars represent the core elements of the deck's game plan, and cards must fit into at least one aspect of these pillars to be considered for the list. The pillars of the deck's strategy are:
Card Advantage: a nebulous concept in Sorcery. With card draw effects limited in scope, or paired with significant downsides, it's difficult to find consistent draw engines. As a result, we operate on pseudo-card advantage. Our goal is to turn each of our cards into X for 1's - meaning each card we play trades for more than 1 card our opponent plays. In this way, we will slowly rip away their resources without significantly reducing ours.
Board Control: in Sorcery, we need to fight on two axes: removal and positioning. With our removal centralized in submerge effects, we rely on robust forced-movement tools to trigger our removal effects like Mariner's Curses, or cluster enemies for mass removal spells like and .
Threats: as a control deck, Drown has very few threats compared to mid-range or aggro decks. Most of our units are role players, existing within one of the other axes. Therefore, we rely on the following primary threats to end the game: , , , , , and . Protecting these units should be top of mind when they hit table, as they are our route to victory.
Death's Door Solutions: without access to the direct damage many other elements provide in Sorcery, mono-water can sometimes struggle to kill our opponents while on Death's Door. As a result, this pillar is incredibly small, but incredibly important. Our primary Death's Door solutions lie in the activated abilities of units like and , but we keep additional methods of ending the game in our collection, to be played at the perfect moment by a . These solutions will be discussed in the section on the Collection.
Strategy
With these pillars in mind, the deck's game plan simplifies into a three-phase process:
Gain Control
Maintain Control
Kill Them
Navigating this process is anything but simple, however, so let's break down each step.
Gain Control
Gaining control relies on establishing two key pieces: a source of card advantage and a source of removal. In an ideal scenario, we'll draw the card that is both of these pieces in one: .
Every time the Curse drowns a unit, it represents a card gained. Because it always returns to our hand, we can redeploy it every turn, constantly draining our opponent's draws by running them out of their valuable units. However, Mariner's Curse gets significantly worse if we're only drowning one thing a turn, which is where our forced movement effects come into play.
Pairing the Curse with , , , , or presents repeatable removal on our turns, allowing us to use our mana to redeploy the Curse to protect our sites on their turns. Keep in mind that they will likely throw away their least valuable unit on their turn, so we need to identify their most valuable unit each turn and plan for ways to submerge them on our turn.
When the Curse isn't available, we need to identify ways to survive without it. is the strongest of our alternate Mariner's Curses, as Coy Nixie can drag any minion our opponent plays with three or more power directly to the Thin Ice and drown them at end of turn. In a pinch, can do a decent impression, especially if we can deploy forced movement effects to trigger it on our turn. Clustering units together with our forced movement effects can turn into a multi-card removal spell, while can act like and deal with any problematic units.
Additionally, an old card has found new power in the modern meta: . While this card can prevent us from developing our own units, deploying it on turn 5 can often bring the game to a complete standstill. The opponent will likely need to throw at least 2 cards into our shark just to clear it, and that means the Shark often does a fantastic impression of Mariner's Curse. Combined with forced movement, we can send the shark where we want it, when we want it.
Maintain Control
Once initial control is established, we need to begin identifying the ways our opponent can take that control away from us, and focus on preventing such circumstances from occurring. The primary goals of this phase of the game are to reach six mana and to avoid Death's Door.
Avoiding Death's Door is obvious: while our deck has dozens of tools to stave off units, we have zero tools to prevent direct spell damage. If our opponent is relying on units to kill us, we can stall out the game for a long time on Death's Door, but if they have anything to directly hit us, the game ends immediately. Preventing this scenario is one of our top priorities. It's critical to identify which units you're comfortable losing, and preparing to sacrifice them to avoid taking damage from strikes. Navigating which units need to stick around to ensure your victory, and deploying the others to effectively preserve your lifte total, is the most skill-testing part of piloting this deck.
Getting to six mana is a less obvious goal, but quickly becomes apparent as you draw through the deck: much of our curve exists at three mana. Reaching six mana means we can cast two spells a turn, and more importantly it means we can both deploy a unit and redeploy Mariner's Curse. As a result, this phase of the game is a constant dance between taking turns to deploy additional sites in preparation and using our Avatar to prevent multiple units from untapping. is great here; you can draw a spell for turn, play Riptide to cluster several units onto the same site, and draw a site off Riptide's effect to deploy the following turn. also shines in this phase. Each copy we play represents a turn where we can use our Avatar to tap down our enemies without risk of slowing down our curve progression.
This phase is also where we are looking for means to shut our opponent out of the game, or dig for our important threats. can shut down our opponent's game plan, stifling their threshold and drowning key units and artifacts. can use its tap ability to wipe out our opponent's armies every turn, while also holding onto a threat when we reach phase three. can not only deal with problematic units, but take away important artifacts from our opponent by sending them below the water, where they are unlikely to have a means to retrieve them. Finally, and represent massive board wipes that can reset the board the turn before we're ready to bring down our biggest threats.
To help us dig for these key cards, we can leverage our Rivers to filter through our deck, to draw cards we mulliganed away early, and to setup a critical draw of an end-game threat when it's time to enter our final phase. Don't overlook the power of in this phase either. We can use it to put key cards we've already played back on the bottom of the deck, only to gain immediate access to them through our Deep-Sea Mermaids.
Kill Them
With control established and maintained, we can finally take turns off from controlling the board to develop our end-game threats. Of our end-game threats, the best combination we can hope to see is and .
Both of these threats represent units that exist in multiple pillars - Board Control and Threats. Vatn Draconis can submerge everything at its location, often killing multiple units the turn he enters play if we've clustered them correctly. Diluvian Kraken can surface every other turn to wipe out a 3x3 grid of units, while also damaging our opponent's avatar if we've positioned it correctly.
However, when paired together, these units get much more potent. We can surface the Kraken to strike all units nearby, and then surface Vatn Draconis to attack the surface of an opponent's site. Then, at end of turn, we can submerge everything at Vatn Draconis's site, including our own Kraken, allowing us to do it again.
Vatn Draconis is also important because it protects our units from removal effects like , , and . Unless our opponent has a submerged spell caster, they can't target or affect any of our submerged units.
Once we've dropped them to Death's Door, we deploy any of our methods to deal the final blow to their Avatar: , 's tap ability, or . Make sure you're careful with how you deploy these effects before you're ready to kill your opponent - the last thing you want is to be staring down defeat because you prematurely used the only tool you had to end the game.
The Collection
The Collection mechanic is the single biggest improvement Drown in the Deep received from Gothic. The ability to guarantee specific cards, or draw out certain answers when we need them, has fundamentally altered this deck's power level. We access the collection via , and diversify our selection of cards to ensure Toolbox is strong at all points in the game.
Drown's collection can be grouped into three categories: Extra Copies, Key Answers, and Death's Door Solutions.
Extra Copies
With the removal of , is the only card left in the collection that fits in this category, though not for the same reasons as the previous cards. With the rise of ramp decks that rely on and similar effects, the ability to get ahead of them by playing multiple copies of Overflow in a single game is one of the greatest strengths of this deck, and one of the easiest ways to run away with a game of Sorcery. As a result, the first Toolbox we draw is almost always used to cast an Overflow.
Key Answers
Historically, Drown struggled against two things: Site Destruction and Submerge units. Not every deck runs these mechanics, so finding slots for answers to them was always difficult. Thanks to the collection, we can shove these cards out of the main deck so we only draw them when we need them.
can help us disable a submerge unit so we can immediately drown them, while also letting us answer problematic minions like an . can help us answer artifacts that our opponent has rightfully kept away from the reach of our submerge effects, while can let us kill a problematic threat when we draw a Toolbox instead of another answer. can answer and other fire auras, something we historically were unable to do, while also killing of cards like before they become a problem.
is perhaps the most powerful card in the collection. Deploying it at the right time can prevent death's door, completely shut down token strategies, and keep us alive even if our life total is zero. It solves and protects us from major swings by letting us just absorb them. This is an incredibly powerful tool to let us stabilize and stall the game while we establish our own victory condition.
represents a flex slot in the collection. I find the power of being able to unexpectedly surface a card like to hit for major damage is worth the collection slot, alongside the ability to unexpectedly maneuver cards previously thought to be safe from my reach. However, if you find a better card in this slot, feel free to swap it out.
is our Archimago tax. The card is actually good in our mainboard - + Return to Nature is a wicked combo to get back key cards. However, the meta just isnt' in a place where we can spend five mana to get back one or two important cards, so it is relegated to the collection to answer Archi. If Archimago increases in meta share, or the meta slows down again, copies of this card would likely return to the mainboard.
Death's Door Solutions
We rarely, if ever, want to draw ways to kill our opponent when they aren't already on Death's Door. Cards like and are terrible cards if we draw them at the wrong time, but can end games out of nowhere if we draw them exactly when we need them. As a result, they exist in the Collection to help us kill our opponent at exactly the right moment.
Mulligans
In the early game, we need to find any source of card advantage we can muster. We almost always mulligan away big threats, with the intent of pulling them from the bottom of the deck at key points with Deep-Sea Mermaids or . For sites, Thin Ice, Troll Bridge, and are hyper critical to this deck, so we want to dig hard for them.
Why Waveshaper?
You may be wondering why is the avatar of choice for this deck. Ultimately, she does double duty. Her first role is to extend our body of water when we don't have a flooding effect handy. Her second role is to lock down units, buying us turns as our opponent's threats are prevented from tapping out. Once we reach our critical threshold of mana, Waveshaper can lock down our opponent's ground forces, potentially indefinitely if we have placed our forced movement effects correctly.
However, there are opportunities to replace Waveshaper with another Avatar, especially depending on your meta. If you're up against a lot of spell-based aggro or control decks, you may find better success with the additional movement opportunities of . If your meta runs a lot of water decks, you may not need the flooding to extend your body of water, and might find more success with or to fix card advantage. Finally, if you're up against a lot of decks with effects, you may consider with as your iconic dragon, which allows your avatar to spend 3 mana to drown everything on your site.
Matchup Advice
Pending further testing! All the matchups I used to give advice on are irrelevant now. I'll update this section when I've got sufficient reps against decks I expect you will see at big events.
Making the List Your Own
Note: this section is slightly outdated. The general advice still applies, but the specific assumptions and trends haven't been updated for the most recent version of the list. I'll update it when the list lands again in a concrete place!
In a shocking turn of events, I'm not the only one who wants to play Control Waveshaper anymore! With the deck as strongly positioned as it is, and the unique play style it offers, more people have begun picking up the list to pilot. As such, I wanted to include a brief section on how to change this list to suit your local meta.
First, I want to clarify something important: there are very few cards in this list that are "must" includes. The beauty of mono water Waveshaper post-Gothic is that it has a plethora of threats and options available to it, something that couldn't be said in previous metas. While there are certainly cards that are better suited to the moment, this is changing constantly, and the exact cards in this version of the list are shaped by what I believe the meta will present to me. As an example, more than 50% of this list changed post-Gothic.
That then, is where I begin this section: by examining the assumptions and trends that led this list to this exact set of cards. At the time of writing, my testing and the overall trends in the Gothic meta have led me to identify the following core challenges the deck has to prepare to face:
The primary decks doing well in the meta are hyper aggressive.
Water is not as abundant as it once was, and we need ways to push our body of water into enemy territory
The meta is still fast enough that we can't rely on efficient removal and blocking to stay off Death's Door alone; life gain still matters against many decks
The deck's worst matchups, Mono-Fire Aggro and Archimago, are still present in the meta.
Decks that rely on Auras like Enchantress are fringe enough that we don't need to worry much about them.
It goes without saying that if the above assumptions are not true about your local meta, you likely need to adjust this list accordingly, and plan to bring out different threats, answers, or even early game strategies. A control deck's gameplan is always dictated by the meta in which it exists, and Drown in the Deep is no different.
Those assumptions lead me to the following four conclusions, each corresponding to the assumptions I listed above.
Hyper aggressive decks are a problem for us, but Gothic gave us plenty of tools to deal with them. While we have to be careful about how far we extend our sites to avoid presenting too many vulnerable places for attack, we can rely on early game units and life gain to stabilize.
With Water falling behind in the meta, and land sites making a return to the forefront of the meta, we have to return to a few of our old tricks. Namely, cards like and return to importance to break board states and let our water-based units enter enemy territory safely. Similarly, is often an important finisher to help our game plan.
and similar stall tactics are still a must play. With the prevalence of in collections, and the switch to a 60-card spellbook, we can't rely on pre-Gothic strategies like and to stay alive on Death's Door. The only route to victory is to stay off Death's Door as long as possible.
While our game plan against both of our worst matchups improved significantly through the plethora of new forced movement and card advantage engines Gothic provided, we still struggle into both Mono-Fire Aggro and Archimago. Sometimes, Mono-Fire Aggro builds a strong enough board fast enough that we never get to stabilize, and Archimago has a faster, more consistent endgame plan for victory than we do. This means we can't afford to sacrifice our methods of clawing back life and advantage, but we also can't give up our graveyard hate, especially
If Enchantress was dominating the meta, we would need to splash Air to make room for . However, Auras remain a fringe strategy, and we can answer most artifacts simply by submerging them, so we maintain the mono-water plan, accepting that we may have some games where we have to fight from behind if the opponent plays a card like .
I provide this context for the simple answer to the question of how to make the deck your own: begin by identifying the trends that define your local meta, or the meta of a major tournament you plan to attend. From there, you can establish the things your deck needs to exist in that meta, and the tools required to dominate it. Once you have an idea of what tools you need to bring, you get to the true answer of any deck-building process: lots and lots of testing.
I hope this insight helps you customize the deck to be your own. The last thing I'll include in this section is a breakdown of how I rate each card in the deck, grouping them into the categories of Core Strategy, Best-in-Slot, and Flex Spots.
Core Strategy - The Cards That Define the Feel of the Deck
Forced Movement - , , , , , , , , ,
Card Advantage - , , , , , , , , , ,
Removal - , , ,
Threats - , , , ,
Best In Slot - Cards That Aren’t Directly Synergistic and Don’t Define the Feel, but Are Incredible in the Meta
- Broken beyond belief. Life gain, removal, Death's Door Solutions, this ring does it all. Combine it with the fact we can cast a single Mariner's Curse multiple times in a turn later in the game, and it gets even better.
- This card lets us move answers we normally don't get to run out of the main deck where they would be abysmal draws, and let us draw some of our best cards more often.
- one of the strongest ways to deal with enemy Submerge units, while also offering efficient, repeated removal of anything our opponent plays. Attacking disabled units is strong, and Hyperparasite does that all day!
- What if we could have an early game unit, that drew us three cards, and required an immediate answer or the opponent probably loses? Wait, we can? That's right, the captain is that good! Sure, he might eat an answer immediately, but that's one less answer they have for our real threats.
- life gain, life drain, and card draw all in a single package. If left unanswered, MMC will run away with the game, drawing us into a fresh hand while stabilizing us and buying a few turns.
- sometimes, the best card you can play is your opponent's top card. The likelihood that you spend 5 mana to develop 2 bodies and go up a card is incredibly high. At her worst, she filters away spells our opponent might have wanted to see, increasing the likelihood they draw minions, which we're better equipped to handle anyways.
- a broken ability stapled to a six power body is a threat we love to see. He might not have submerge, but combined with our forced movement effects, we can easily move him into position to kill key threats our opponent plays. Plus, he can kill them while they're on Death's Door.
- what if your forced movement effects ALSO fought the things they moved? That's the Green Knight for you! Drop it in a problematic spot and watch as their armies run themselves through on his sword.
- this card literally gains us 30-40 life. The first Font of Life is usually a 3 mana spell that reads "target opponent skips their previous turn." The second usually reads "target opponent concedes because you're an awful person."
- Ramp is important in a deck that needs to hit eight mana, and ramping while also letting us draw a site, reducing the number of turns we have to spend our draw step on picking up a site, is awesome.
- DD solution, Artifact Removal, and more all rolled into one. Great card, and I'd run three if I could ever figure out what to cut.
- Secretly an extra way to kill Submerge threats, this can also be a rapid turnaround of life by stealing one of their units and turning it into a blocker for us.
- Disabling units means this site usually blanks our opponent's entire turn. The more turns they skip, the more turns we have to take control of the game.
- we have so many broken sites that being able to play an extra copy of our best one is always welcome.
- the card that singlehandedly saves our Archimago matchup. By the time they answer this, we're usually ready to kill them anyways.
Flex Spots - Cards That Testing Has Shown Are the Best at Their Cost and Role, but Might Not Be the Best for Your Meta
- Capable of destroying courts, setting our opponent back 3 or 4 turns, and dealing with problematic sites, all while giving us opportunities to expand our body of water makes Great Drowning of Men a house of a card... assuming you live long enough for it to matter. An incredibly potent card, but it always sits on the bubble of getting cut given that sometimes, you've already lost the game before it hits the table.
Change Log and Current Testing
2.8 - Post Gen Con List
The changes below are what I should have brought with me to Gen Con, instead of the list I did bring.
-1
The push towards aggro means the cores just kill us more often than they help us cross a particular mana threshold.
-1
With aggro so heavily present, board wipes lose some of their relevance, as we have to remove minions frequently in the early game. While Wrath of the Sea is powerful, it comes down too late in an aggro meta.
+1
Aggro means we need more early game units, and Guile Sirens does a great job at trading into small minions while also representing some free forced movement if left unanswered.
+1
In an incredibly aggro meta, our removal needs to arrive earlier on the curve. Stormy Seas is that exact card.
2.7 - The Gen Con List
With the courts in play, and the meta shifting accordingly, it's time again for Drown to adjust. Here are the final changes:
Cuts:
-2
An excellent card, but the meta has shifted to a faster pace post-Courts, so we can't afford to slow down and develop this card.
-1
While this could remain at 3, I feel the meta demands additional answers to go-wide decks. As a result, I've cut one unit to drop back to 30 in exchange for keeping in an extra board wipe, .
-1
This one hurts! A long-time main stay of the deck, the Courts mean this card is effectively blank in many scenarios. As a result, I've cut it.
-1
With aggro returning to the forefront of the meta, I rarely can afford to keep units around to swap into strategic places. Great card still, but one copy left to make room for needed cards elsewhere.
-2
Still an excellent card, but its much easier to answer than other threats. With aggro on the rise, I frequently need my sites to answer units already in my body of water, and can't afford to wait to develop a large threat that's so fragile.
-1
This one also hurts! However, with the Courts taxing unit production, and plenty of site removal that can kill off the frogs the moment they're summoned, its simply not viable in most draws.
Additions:
+1
Welcome back, old friend. With the return of to the list, nothing quite closes the door on games like dropping a Great Drowning as early as turn 3. This card also plays a multi-faceted role, serving as an expensive, but reliable, answer to the Courts and a board wipe that can expand our own body of water.
+1
The best way for us to keep casting our expensive cards affected by the courts is simply to have more mana. A permanent mana source we can hold on to is exactly what's required in that scenario. Arguably, this should be but I don't have one, so feel free to swap that in here if you own a copy.
+1
With aggro returning, and the courts taxing our expensive uniques, we need the ability to be explosive, and Four Waters is the best way to do that. Dropped as early as turn two, it can hit some of our enormous 7 mana spells on turn 3, many of which warp the game in our favor.
+2
I've said it a lot this update, but, with aggro returning, we need the ability to stabilize, and Font of Life is the best way to do just that. In the early turns, 3 mana for 3 life is a totally fine play if we have nothing better to do. But on turn 7 and later, this can potentially reset us to double digits, which is often back-breaking for aggro.
+2
With many units frequently entering our body of water much earlier than they did in earlier metas, the ability to forcibly move them into a or similar effect for 0 mana is critical. This could go up to 3 copies, but I tend to value rivers very highly, so I opted to only add 2.
+1
I had to cut a few rivers for in a previous update, and determined I still want more of these effects. Upping the total rivers to 7 as a result.
2.6 - Hung Jury
With the reveal of the courts, it's time for the Atlas to change slightly.
+2
Our best answer to a court is to remove it from the table. With Overflow as our main source of ramp, it's unlikely the opponent will get to play too many sites, and deploying Heirloom Lost via our avatar means we don't have to risk losing momentum as we aim to reach the upper end of our curve. Do NOT deploy these on anything other than a court unless it is absolutely critical.
-2
Just cut any two rivers for Heirloom Lost. I cut my least favorite art, Summer.
2.5 - Bulletless Drown
With the meta increasing in pace, its time for to go. Here's the updates I made:
Cuts:
-2
-All exceptional cards from the collection (Swap, Stormy Seas, Snowball, Font of Life, Mariner's Curse)
Additions:
+1
This is the best card in the deck. Not running a play set is a terrible call, so I went up one to replace one of the silver bullets
+1
Of the other cut cards from the collection, Swap has proven to be the most powerful of the effects. The ability to flexibly serve as a threat removal, blocker protection, ward breaker, death's door solution, and more makes this card insane and worth running a play set of.
+, , , , in the collection
For reasoning on specific cards in the collection, see the updated collection section, where I explain my choices.
2.4 - Road to Gen Con
As the meta continues to shift, and other Waveshapers find innovations I hadn't considered, it's time for the list to adapt once again. I'm going to break these changes into cuts and additions this time, as the swapped cards aren't quite as one-to-one this time around.
Cuts:
-2
With the rise of ramp decks and the continued prevalence of midrange, it is rare that Lacuna Entity gets any value at all, and often represents a worse draw than almost any other minion in the deck.
-1
While still an absolute Power House of a unit, the list doesn't often want to draw a unit that reads "beat up target player" in the mid game. Reducing her count reduces the likelihood we draw her before we're ready to enter the end game.
-2
Turns out, the meta still isn't fast enough to require drawing a card that is blank the vast majority of the games. We are long past the days of Steam Druid, and that means Font of Life returns to being a collection only card
-1 (collection)
While a strong card, I have never cast this unit in any game I've played, and I've played a lot of games since the collection was added. Removed to make room for more relevant answers.
-1 (collection)
This is still a great card, and in a different meta, would likely have its place in the collection over number three. As it stands, I think Swap is better positioned, so Grievous gets the axe.
-1 mainboard
While a powerful card, we don't always want to see this as a top deck, and there are powerful cards we'd rather see from our deck. One Swap is cut from the mainboard as a result
-2 mainboard
This one is strongly in the camp of changes I am testing. In theory, cutting this card to the collection should let us slim down the deck to be only cards relevant to our game plan. However, these cards are vital to our match against Archimago. I am absolutely giving up some amount of win percentage against Archi to replace it with more proactive cards in the deck.
However, Archi is already a bad matchup for this deck, so the question I am testing is: does losing Return to Nature lose us enough percentage points that it doesn't make up for the amount of percentage we gain by slotting some generically better cards?
Additions:
+3
As mentioned earlier in the primer, Giant Shark is basically copies 4-6. While it can hose us if we draw the wrong parts of our deck, the effect is strong enough that it can often lock the board state for turns at a time. I apologize to all the times I said you were bad, Giant Shark!
+1
Turns out, ramp decks based off Landmass are a thing now! Finally, folks are catching on! To combat this, we increase our ability to ramp, too. Can't get locked out of mana if we lock them out first!
+1
Remember what I said about ramp decks? Yeah, we need to be aggressively ramping to compete with them. A third toolbox means we have six chances to deploy an Overflow on turn 3
+1
While dangerously easy to remove, Baldassare is still one of the strongest units in the game if left unchecked. The card advantage he offers is unparalleled!
+2
This change is paired with the Return to Nature change mentioned above. Meat Hook is the proactive card I am testing in place of Return to Nature. The card does a few key things for us.
First, it turns any unit into a , letting us drag units through powerful effects like . Additional forced movement is always a good thing, and this is incredibly long-range forced movement that is repeatable.
Second, it kills our opponent, both if they're on Death's Door, and by comboing with to one shot them from any life total!
2.3 - Minor Tweaks
More testing of cards and ideas from the gaggle of other Waveshapers has led to a few more tweaks, mostly to lock in the consistency of the deck's game plan. Below are the changes:
-2 . +1 , +1
With the lack of decks and the continued prevalence of opposing , Guile Sirens and Anui Undine remain top tier picks in the current meta. Of the other units, Gloam Toads consistently underperformed, and opened the deck to submerge-based removal more often. As a result, I swapped them out in favor of the returning champions.
-1 , +1
The naysayers were right! The Flood stinks! In the current meta, with water so prevalent, its actually a lot more rare that we need to flood the entire realm. While the pre-Gothic meta was begging for another style effect, this meta just isn't the same. The Flood is gone in favor of Swap, an obscenely powerful card that is great at all points in the game.
-1 in the Collection, +1 in the Collection
While Abyssal Assault is an absolute powerhouse, the density of monsters has dropped too low in this list for it to be a consistent finisher. As a result, I've swapped it for a more consistent way to kill somebody on Death's Door.
2.2 - We're Not a Cult, I Swear
The Waveshaper community grows! After lots of discussion with players as passionate about Water as I am, the list has undergone a few minor tweaks, and a new section was added to the primer about updating the list to make it your own. Below is a summary of the card changes:
-1 , -1 , +1 , +1
These uniques are too strong to overlook, and have made their way into the list accordingly. While not directly synergistic with the list, they present insane card advantage the moment they hit the table, and push us even further ahead if they live for even a turn.
-1 collection copy of , +1 collection copy of
While I was worried about Drought, the rise of mono-Water has led to a more dangerous tech piece: . As a result, I've included an extra way to turn off a unit that can't be drowned, whether they be unable to move or simply have submerge.
These cards are on my radar to test more, but may not make the cut:
- an incredibly powerful forced movement tool, its only drawback is the inability to properly deal with the things it forcibly moves. While it can combo with other cards in our arsenal, the fact it doesn't replace itself and requires an extra card to do more than stop a few attacks means it feels awful to draw in any game where we're ahead or at board state parity.
The 3rd Copy of - many decks inspired by this one are on 3 copies of Swap, and rightly so; the card is busted. However, I've rarely had games where I want to draw more than one Swap, but would've loved to draw more board wipes. As a result, I've elected to keep it out in favor of...
- the card currently keeping this list on 2 Swaps, is in an interesting spot. If the meta remains more heavily weighted towards non-water decks, then a second way to flood the entire realm is required. However, as more of the meta shifts to water, it becomes harder to justify this card.
The 2nd Copy of - while currently in the list, the fact that the Toads lack submerge means there's a chance one might get cut in favor of number 3. However, their high power makes them more difficult to remove than the Sirens for some decks, and makes them an ideal unit to position for an out of the collection.
- A potential way to protect key sites while also being a 4 power beater is good, but its lack of synergy with our core strategy makes this tough to justify. However, warding key sites might be very important if certain decks (like Archi) gain a significant portion in the meta, so it's on my list to test.
2.1 - Post-SorceryCon 2026
This list has now been rigorously tested through a gauntlet of 26 constructed games across SorceryCon. Between Side Events, the Main event, and testing games with other attendees, I learned a lot, and came away with one conclusion:
This list is nuts. In those 26 games, I lost only 8, putting me at a 69% win rate (nice). In the main event, I was 5-1 day 1, ending the day in 8th place. While I lost my two rounds on Day 2 to incredible players and mediocre draws, I made both games incredibly close, and take pride in knowing that I was one draw away from taking control of both of those games. Plus, both of those players made it to top 8.
Gone are the days where Waveshaper and mono-water control are the underdog, fighting against the hyper-aggressive meta that pre-Gothic Druid ushered in. With so many decks on slower game plans that rely on playing one or two big threats and protecting them, Mariner's Curse has never been better, and that means this deck has never been better.
However, I didn't quite get the list correct. I was 90% of the way there, but testing proved out a few key things.
While Abyssal Assault is awesome, it's hard to keep the lower end of my monsters alive long enough to take advantage of it int he mainboard. As a result, I've cut back on the monster sub-theme and left the Abyssal Assault only in the collection as a finisher.
Guile Sirens is incredible. Turns out, copies 4-6 of Coy Nixie helps this deck immensely. Plus, they break wards for free every turn, which won me several games.
With how slow the meta is, more board wipes is a good thing. returns to the list as a result.
is still busted, especially with so much water in the meta. I thought I could cut down to just one in the collection, but there isn't a single game I played where drawing extra copies of Font would have been bad.
This is likely where the list will remain over the coming months, barring any significant shake-ups to the meta or any changes proven out by additional practice games.
2.0 - Post-Gothic Build and Testing Plans
You're reading 2.0 right now! Gothic is a massive shake-up to both this deck and the meta at large. The plethora of new forced movement effects, the powerful new units and monster synergies, and the backup copy of Mariner's Curse that is Thin Ice has fundamentally changed the power-level of this deck in ways I did not expect. Additionally, the meta has slowed down significantly, with less of an emphasis of value-based aggro and more of an emphasis on midrange. These changes are both great news for this deck, allowing us to trim previously necessary cards like and in favor of more cards that synergize with our core strategy.
In terms of testing, I'm still evaluating the exact number of each spell in the deck. Namely, I have my eyes on , and . I'm very high on Font of Life and Overflow, but I'm unsure how necessary they are in the slower meta. Jumping ahead on curve seems very powerful, hence why I'm on the full playset of Overflow, and gaining back lots of life can really move the game in our favor, but they may not be necessary depending on how well positioned we are in the meta. Similarly, is one of the strongest forced movement effects I've ever seen, but with so many excellent forced movement effects in our minion selection, I'm not sure its necessary.
Likely, I will be altering the count of spells and specific effects as I work to identify exactly which of the pillars of the deck need to be increased or decreased in the current landscape.
