Ominous Seas and a Draw-Based Deck

One of the things that is funny about Blue as a color in Magic is that, while it's the least creature-friendly color, it also loves big creatures. I think the basis of this is that Blue has tended to be the most control-oriented color, and control decks ultimately want a big win condition - a massive sea monster makes for a good option there.

When I first started playing, the biggest creature in Magic was Leviathan, the 10/10 Trample monstrosity that forced you to basically sacrifice all your islands to actually use it - but I guess the idea was that you only needed two turns or so to actually do so. The thing cost 9 mana (5UUUU,) came into play tapped, and only untapped if you sacrificed two islands, then could only attack if you sacrificed two more.

So you really wanted to make sure you had total control of the board and with islands to spare if you wanted to actually hit with it.

Two and a half (and change) decades later, a 10/10, while still certainly big, isn't really anything to write home about. But I've built a deck that seeks to emulate the idea of just bringing the wrath of the sea to one's enemies.

First off, the key win condition here is Ominous Seas, an Ikoria enchantment that costs 1U, and can cycle for 2 mana (though unless you're in the home stretch, I'd say it's better to just play it in this deck.) Each time you draw a card, you put a foreshadowing counter on the enchantment. You can then remove ten of these to create an 8/8 blue kraken token.

I have four of these in the deck, and then much of the rest of the deck is built around drawing cards as quickly as possible, plus a little counterspell and control to slow down the opponent and keep my assets protected.

There are two Teferi, Master of Time in there, which is a pretty great utility planeswalker. On top of that are two copies of Teferi's Ageless Insight, which lets you draw an extra card any time you draw that isn't just your draw step (which also makes Looting effects like Teferi's +1 more attractive, as you're still getting more cards in hand.) A couple of Cloudkin Seers give you a card and a little flying body, and some Dungeon Geists are great for locking down scary creatures. I think I have a couple Frogifies as well. Keep Safe is also in there to both protect valuable assets as well as give me an extra card draw.

Then it's card-draw, card-draw, card-draw, with Opts, Radical Ideas, Chemister's Insights, Winged Words (which the Geists and Seers help with) plus some Contentious Plans to keep Teferi operating (and making it easier to use his -3 phasing ability) as well as effectively giving any Ominous Seas 2 counters (or 3 if Ageless Insight is up.)

The goal of the deck is to pump out 8/8 krakens quickly enough that the opponent can't keep up, and you wind up just pummeling them with sea monsters.

And there's something I find kind of amusing about that. It's an extremely blue deck for the most part - just generating card advantage and cycling through the deck while locking everything down, but in the end it's just about these gigantic dumb octopodi smashing the opponent into the next century.