Tiny Leaders Deck Time – Kumena

I doubt they really take the format into account, but this does smell a little bit like Tiny Leaders to me…

We should definitely start with [scryfall]Deeproot Waters[/scryfall] and maybe [scryfall]Lullmage Mentor[/scryfall]. I’d try the latter one out at first, but I’m not quite sure it would work in an aggressive format such as this, but if you can drag the game for long enough, the inevitability will take over the game.

Otherwise, I would like to keep these on the cheaper side, so that I can get the three merfolk on the battlefield as quickly as possible. Also, the rule you should follow in a format like this is that if you can find a spell that should cost two, but costs one, is much better than finding a spell that costs two, but should cost three. This might not actually be true in many cases, but if you have a constant flow of cards, it is especially true.

Of course, this also makes our lords better, so let’s play all the ones we can.

That’s quite a few three-drops (well, three actually), so let’s take a look at all the one-drops we could use. There’s 24 one mana Merfolk all in all (including [scryfall]Aquitect’s Will[/scryfall]), but no matter how tempted I am, we are not going to play all of them. These are our options:

Okay, some of these are less than optimal and I definitely wouldn’t play them in most cases, but we’ll see. On the two-drop fron, we have the following:

That would be 30 creatures, which is a little bit too many, if we want to play some spells. I would think we would like at least some of these:

We won’t play all of them, though. Maybe our deck could look something like this:

[deck]
[leader]
Kumana, Tyrant of Orazca
[/leader]
[spells]
Disrupt
Flusterstorm
Spreading Seas
Merrow Commerce
Deeproot Waters
[/spells]
[creatures]
Cosi’s Trickster
Cursecatcher
Dakra Mystic
Enclave Cryptologist
Kumena’s Speaker
Reef Shaman
Tideshaper Mystic
Triton Shorestalker
Deeproot Warrior
Gaea’s Skyfolk
Harbinger of the Tides
Kiora’s Follower
Merfolk Branchwalker
Merfolk Looter
River Sneak
Shaper Apprentice
Silvergill Adept
Lord of Atlantis
Coralhelm Commander
Master of the Pearl Trident
Metallic Mimic
Phantasmal Image
Merfolk Sovereign
Merrow Reejerey
Kopala, Warden of Waves
[/creatures]
[lands]
Breeding Pool
Flooded Grove
Temple of Mystery
Botanical Sanctum
Hinterland Harbor
Yavimaya Coast
Command Tower
Mana Confluence
City of Brass
Ancient Ziggurat
Cavern of Souls
Unclaimed Territory
2 Forest
5 Island
[/lands]
[/deck]

I’m not quite happy with the amount of lands in this deck, but there we are. I think 19 might be enough, but I would be happier with 20, so that I can play them more consistently throughout the game.

I took out the Banneret, because there’s just so many Merfolk with no colorless in the manacost. This might be wrong. I also took out [scryfall]Lullmage Mentor[/scryfall] to be a little more on the aggressive side, although there aren’t really enough lords here to do that.

I’m not quite happy with the creature curve either. Just eight one-drops doesn’t feel like enough. The two’s seem to rule, as usual in a Merfolk deck.

I’m not sure about the amount of disruption. [scryfall]Dispel[/scryfall] and/or [scryfall]Swan Song[/scryfall] would feel like a nice addition, as would any bounce against decks relying on comboing out through pump, but this is where we are. We need a critical mass of Merfolk to run well, so we can always hope to draw enough cards to find the counter spells when we need them.

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