First I want to shout out everyone who helped make the deck possible.

@Ianm for coming up with the concept

@vitaminyon for testing the deck on TTS constantly

@b_2_3_n and @ZenatheShadow for keeping me on Waveshaper after all this time

This deck wouldn't exist without you guys coming up with ideas, testing them, and talking about them with me.

The deck is a mud midrange deck, balancing between good relatively early pressure, and a slower defensive grind. The idea was to have a deck hardened vs the new Court sites, that was proactively good into the unknown meta of Gen Con. Lets go over some of the cards.

Autumn Unicorn, Lugbog Cat, Order of the Sacred Oak, Sacred Stag all have really good stats for their cost. They're able to provide solid offensive pressure vs slower decks, or "bigger" defensive bodies vs faster aggressive decks. They're sort of the raw backbone of the deck. There isn't too much to say about these minions other then that. Order of the Sacred Oak stops your opponent from blowing up you sites which is a bonus.

I'm sure everyone knows how good Pudge Butcher is. He demands respect from your opponent, able to drag them into the water and where you can initiate the beat down without overextending. He has a couple cool advantages in water decks though. Riptide, Coy Nixie, Undertow, Rift Valley, and River Rapids are all able to move the otherwise immobile minion into better position or slide an enemy in front of the projectile.

Giant Shark is very good. With all the forced movement in the deck, and the Waveshaper's ability to extend the body of water, its easy to get shark coverage over the whole board. This can stop aggression in its tracks or suddenly bring an opponent to Deaths Door. Coy Nixie, Undertow, Riptide, River Rapids, and Pudge Butcher can all force your opponents Avatar to move into the water and be attacked by the Shark. In the case of Pudge Butcher, the opponent will be bitten for each site they move through on their way to the Butcher. Playing minions into the Sharks body of water will result in them immediately getting attacked. This is great at stopping your opponent from playing minions to contest the realm, but can prevent you from playing minions of your own if you aren't careful.

Assimilator Snail is an underrated card in my opinion. Suddenly transforming into a 4th copy of Giant Shark or Pudge Butcher, becoming a Coy Nixie when you need one, changing all the math out of nowhere with Ruler of Thul, turning into Lilith for a funny flip, or just being the best minion in your opponents cemetery. It also banishes the dead minion so that's upside.

I was pretty medium on Archangel Raphael going into the event, but after the event I love this card. The Airborne, Ward, and 4 power makes him very obnoxious to interact with. Airborne especially is not something water really has access to and the mobility for both offense and defense feels really good. The Genesis is mostly a fun bonus used to Ward you, but it can be a clean way to finish an opponent who's too close and on Deaths Door.

I've brought up Coy Nixie in some of the other card sections. She's a minion who's power shines in the context of other stuff. Moving units for Shark attacks. Moving units in front of Pudge Butcher. Stacking minions in one spot for your Avatar to lockdown or to be Stormy Seas'd. Pulling stuff into Thin Ice or Troll Bridge. Tapping units that were going to block. Overextending your opponents units to be attacked. Breaking Wards for free. I'm sure I'm missing plays, the list of stuff this stupid card does is very long.

Why play Shellycoat when Shield Maidens makes all nearby allies Shellycoat. This lets your minions battle your opponents without trading, and forces your opponent to over commit damage to remove yours. Getting incremental advantage like this is critical since the Waveshaper has no built in card advantage.

I feel like people ask me about The Green Knight a lot. Yes, The Green Knight is fantastic. The ability enables so much more then you might expect on first read. In Waveshaper he piles adjacent minions into one space for you to use your ability on, or stack everyone onto a Thin Ice to be drowned. Its also a forced move for Giant Shark. It can move enemies into weird positions making them unable to block future attacks. The strike on death hits nearby enemies, everyone forgets this ability. Because of his 3/7 stat line and the strike on death, he's able to kill 4 adjacent 3 power enemies. The strike can also clean up larger minions that survived initially fighting him, or hit the enemy Avatar.

Overflow is an awesome card. Getting to 5-6 mana so you can start using your Avatar ability without thinking is very important and Overflow lets that happen early. Playing Overflow on turn 3 is a clean play you should aim for. You'll want to be careful though. There is nothing worse then hitting a land site off the Overflow. I recommend having a water site in your hand before you cast the spell, just to be safe and keep your options open. Kettletop Leprechaun can enable this without having to draw a site for turn too.

I guess now that I'm talking about sites, Ersatz Platz is a cool site. A pocket Babbling Brook, or Undertow is very clutch. It can also grab Fertile Earth to cleanly hit the Earth threshold. At Gen Con I also ran Mudslide and Quagmire in the collection, but I plan on cutting those for more Toolbox spells. The cases for those cards was just too narrow and I'd rather have other things. Ersatz Platz also has a fun interaction with mana. Sites generate mana at the start of your turn and when they enter play, which means Ersatz Platz makes mana at the start of your turn and the site you replace it with will also make its mana. Just know that it works that way.

I want to talk about a few cards that I played at Gen Con that I was less impressed with. Acid Rain was in the deck to help with Courts, but the deck was built around Exceptionals so I was not punished by Courts in a serious way. Because of that Acid Rain always felt kind of lame. Its literally a good card, but its probably coming out for something else. Abaddon Succubus is another card I've been low on lately. She's great at cleaning up aggro boards and giving you some life back, but she only pulls adjacent minions. I've really been feeling not being able to hit nearby or Avatars. She doesn't have Submerge either so she can't safely pull stuff onto Thin Ice. Being Elite means you get hit by Courts too. Mariner's Curse is awesome but playing 1 felt weird. I'm either going to cut the 1, or go up to 3.

Ok that's enough rambling. If anyone got this far, and still has any thoughts or questions, feel free to comment. I also hang out in the Sorcerers Summit Discord, specifically the Waveshaper Cove channel. We talk about Waveshaper entirely too much, and its where the deck was brewed.