The Ultimate Otters Guide

The Sanctum team brought a super fun deck to Worlds, and while the deck didn't put up amazing results over the weekend on a small sample size, it still got me my first Pro Tour qualification and we still think it's a very strong choice for current standard. CFT has won back-to-back challenges with it this week, lots of folks have been picking it up online, and I wanted to make sure to give people a resource they can use to pick up this beautiful, but challenging deck. Mastering this deck will make you better at Magic, and you'll have lots of fun while you're doing it!

Table of contents

• Decklist

• The Combo

• Soft Comboing

• Card-by-Card Maindeck Breakdown

• Manabase Thoughts

• Matchup Plans & Sideboarding

• Mulligans

• Gameplay deep dive

• Final Thoughts

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The Decklist

Here is the list that 7/8 of Sanctum ran at Worlds. CFT's list was just a few cards different, and functions largely the same. Please use this as a reference for the cards I talk about in the article - I'll be using card names so many times that I'm not going to link them every time.

I would not make significant changes to the deck based on the metagame immediately after Worlds, but I'm sure things will evolve, and the deck definitely has enough flexibility to be adapted and incorporate new cards (AKA I still like our list, but it's not brittle, feel free to try things out!)

https://www.moxfield.com/decks/C44yKfcvt0Gtlij66Kt29g

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The Combo

This is not the most important way the deck works, but it's probably the thing I should cover first. For those unfamiliar, here's how the infinite combo works.

Basic Combo Setup

• 1 Valley Floodcaller

• 1 Enduring Vitality (enchantment or creature mode)

• 3 other non-summoning-sick otter/rat/bird/frog creatures (only 1 needed if it's another floodcaller)

• 1 Stormchaser's Talent

• 1 This Town Ain't Big Enough in hand

• 2 Mana available, including your creatures

With this setup, the key insight is that each noncreature spell you cast generates 4 mana (tap your 4 creatures or 2 floodcallers for mana, cast the spell, untap them).

This means that you can cast TTABE with your 2 mana targeting just your stormchaser's talent (and one of your opponent's permanents if you're so inclined!) for +2 net mana (up to 4), recast talent (+3 mana, up to 7), activate talent targeting TTABE (-4 mana, down to 3), and buy back TTABE!

You're then left with exactly the same board state.... but you now have 3 mana instead of 2, you've bounced your opponent's permanent, you've made another otter with talent (though it can't attack yet), and all of your floodcaller creatures are pumped by 1!

Rinse & Repeat for infinite mana, infinitely big creatures, and bouncing all your opponent's stuff. That should be good enough to win most games!

There are plenty of other ways to achieve the same loop with slightly different starting conditions:

Alternate Combo Setup 1

• 1 Floodcaller/1 Vitality (this is always necessary)

• 1 TTABE in hand (this is always necessary for actual looping)

• 2 Stormchaser's talent

• 2 Additional non-summoning-sick Otter/Rat/Bird/Frogs

With this setup, TTABE is mana-neutral, and each noncreature you cast generates 3 mana. TTABE bounce both talents, recast talents, rebuy TTABE spends 8 mana, but generates 9. That's infinite!

Alternate Combo Setup 2

• 1 Floodcaller/1 Vitality

• 1 TTABE in hand

• 1 Stormchaser's talent

• 2 Additional non-summoning-sick Otter/Rat/Bird/Frogs

• 1 other noncreature permanent, like a Bitter Reunion or an Up the Beanstalk

This is the same as the previous setup, but you're spending 1 extra mana to cast your second noncreature spell each loop. You're not generating infinite mana, but you still get the infinite bounces and infinite creature sizing, which is still good enough!

Soft Comboing

You'll note that these combo board states, while distinctly possible to set up, are not exactly splinter twin. They require quite a few moving parts, the biggest ask being having multiple other floodcaller-enabled creatures to tap for mana.

Luckily, you usually don't need the full combo to win games with this deck. Floodcaller trigggers stack quickly. Imagine the following board state:

Soft Combo Setup

Board:

• 1 Floodcaller

• 1 Otter token with Prowess

• 1 Stormchaser's Talent

• 4 mana available (just untapped after flashing in floodcaller on end step)

Hand:

• 1 Vitality

• 1 Up the Beanstalk

• 1 TTABE

This is a pretty common board state you can end up in by turn 4. Let's say you played a talent on turn 1 which gave you your otter, you used a Bushwhack to grab a land and played another tapland on turn 2, and you used your turn 3 to flash in floodcaller on end step. Your opponent has played 2 creatures to the board in their first couple of turns as well.

Your opponent isn't exactly dead here, but they are mostly dead! You can take the following line:

• Play vitality (down to 1 mana, but up to 3 with your creatures now being able to tap)

• Play Up the Beanstalk (mana neutral by tapping your creatures, 1 floodcaller pump, 1 prowess trigger, 1 card drawn)

• Play TTABE targeting Beanstalk and Talent, or Talent and an opponent's creature, depending on whether you care more about digging towards more combo potential or dealing with your opponent's board. Trigger Beanstalk when you cast TTABE. (Let's pretend we bounced opp's creature. That's mana neutral, +1 card, +1 Floodcaller pump, +1 prowess trigger)

• Recast talent (+1 mana, +1 Floodcaller Pump, +1 Prowess trigger)

• Let's assume with the 2 extra cards we drew that one of them was another noncreature spell and the other was a land. Let's say it's not one that draws us any extra cards to dig deeper, let's say it's just a Roaring Furnace. We'll cast that (mana neutral) to deal with our opponent's other creature (the smaller one that we didn't bounce). That's +1 Floodcaller pump, +1 prowess trigger, and we're out of spells to cast.

Okay, so what have we accomplished here?

Our opponent's board has gone from 2 creatures to zero creatures; we've undone their first 3 turns of setup.

We've developed an enduring vitality and another prowess otter

Most importantly -- We have an untapped Floodcaller and Otter that are ready to attack. How big are they again?

Base power/toughness of 3, +4 floodcaller pumps (8 damage), + 4 prowess triggers (4 damage)...

15 damage.

Is that an infinite combo? Nope. Is it enough to win the game against any deck without a sweeper? Certainly.

It's also important to note that we had lots of decision points during combo where we could have gone in a different direction, and lots of live draws that make our turn even better. If our opponent doesn't have as many creatures on the board, we could instead go for TTABE on beans, dig an additional card deeper and trigger our prowess/floodcallers one more time. If at any point we find a Song of Totentanz or Bitter Reunion, we can give our new prowess otter haste and potentially combo off further or just kill them with damage. If we find Thundertrap Trainers, we can dig towards more spells & haste givers, and if we find Analyzes or Bushwhacks, they are at minimum an additional spell, or can even kill a creature / tutor up a Questing Druid to continue going off.

All this is to say that while the infinite combo is a bit tricky to set up, "finite combos" are actually quite easy if you can put Enduring Vitality & Floodcaller together, and usually enough to win the game.

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Card-by-Card Maindeck Breakdown

Before diving into specific cards, I want to frame how I want to talk about them. This is a deck that thrives on flexibility and modality. Almost every card has significant variability in how you can use them to push forward a gameplan. One of the biggest skills with this deck is figuring out how to use each of your cards in an evolving game. A starting point to the deck should be building an awareness of all the modes different cards have, so that you can identify points in the game to use each of these modes. Keep these in mind as we move into matchups, and think about which situations you might want to use each card's modes in.

What if Isamaru, Hound of Konda also drew you an Archaeomancer and a Shark Typhoon when you played it, and was sometimes a Birds of Paradise? Yeah, this card's pretty busted. Talent is your best aggressive threat, your best value engine, and a key combo piece to boot. You want to draw as many of them as possible, especially in combination with Enduring Vitality and TTABE.

Talent's modes:

• Aggro mode, especially if you draw 2 of them or a lot of floodcallers - Prowess otters can get your opponent dead quickly in this deck! Don't be afraid to attack with them if that's the gameplan that makes the most sense with your hand.

• Value mode, especially with TTABE - TTABE and Talent are best friends in this deck. Just one of each is a "slow" loop, letting you add an otter to the board and bounce your opponent's best permanent once every couple of turn cycles, or every turn cycle once you hit 7 mana.

• Defense mode, especially alongside torch the tower - Against aggro decks, a real mode of talent is just to be a really difficult speedbump for your opponent. You can chump block with your otter, sacrifice it to torch another creature, and next turn rebuy the torch and torch another creature while bargaining the talent that bought it back.

• Finisher mode, especially against UB midrange - The third level of talent isn't used very much, but I did use it multiple times in the tournament! In some more grindy midrange matchups, especially those whose threats take a long time to kill you and who don't have an easy time dealing with enchantments, a level 3 talent can become a huge problem if you can find the time to spend 6 mana.

Talent might be the most fun and flexible card in the deck, but this is the best card in the deck. It can often be hard to win games where you don't draw vitality, which is why we run 7 copies (3 Analyze the Pollen). Enduring unlocks so much of what the deck is capable of.

Enduring modes:

• Combo mode - Sometimes holding your enduring in hand until the turn you combo is the best way to ensure you can go off through removal. Enduring is the only creature (besides Questing Druid, which is really a spell) that doesn't get untapped with floodcaller, so it's not as important to have it be "hasty" on combo turns.

• Big Game mode - Playing an enduring onto a big board before you've found your floodcaller is usually a recipe for playing a "big midrange" game. You can do the TTABE and talent thing, you can start using "Bring your kid to work day" mode on Thundertrap Trainer, you can unlock your Steaming Saunas, you can cast large Song of Totentanzes.

• Blocker Mode - Turns out a 3/3 vigilance is a very good blocker against red decks, as long as you can leave up interaction for their pump spells! It also wears a Dissection Tools quite well...

A small note - It can be really easy to miss attacks with your enduring during otherwise complicated turns, so make sure to keep an awareness of this. Enduring gets a lot of free attacks!

This one's a doozy, both for you and your opponents! The obvious text is the pump and untap, but the bonus text is extremely relevant here!

Modes of floodcaller:

• Aggro mode - sometimes you just kill them! No really -- Floodcaller and 2-3 creatures represents an absurd amount of damage with just a few spells, and lots of your spells in this deck can chain themselves into more spells. Especially in non-enduring draws, sometimes you just flash in a floodcaller on turn 3 and get aggressive.

• Combo mode - not much needs to be said here, though it's important to note that floodcaller untaps itself, so you'd rather have it in play before enduring if you can make that happen while setting up a combo.

• Tricky mode - Floodcaller sets up a lot of board states and turns that can become quite tricky for your opponent to anticipate! I had a match against UB midrange in the tournament where I was facing down lots of creatures on the opponent's side, flashed in a floodcaller on their end step, untapped, played an enduring and passed, leaving up 1 land and 1 floodcaller. Then when they attacked, I went...

• Flash in Roaring furnace, kill one of your creatures, untapping floodcaller

• Torch the tower sacrificing furnace, kill another creature, scry, untap floodcaller

• Torch another one of your creatures sacrificing my enduring, untap floodcaller

• Block your final creature with my now 5/5 floodcaller. Wipe your board, keeping my combo intact!

• Defense mode - Floodcaller can set up board states where you're able to block the prowess decks quite effectively even if you don't have interaction for their pump spells. A Pawpatch formation and an Analyze the Pollen at instant speed can give you a board that still kills a creature through monstrous rage and takes no damage (with Pawpatch acting as insurance if they try and get you in the air with Slickshot).

• Tricky combo mode - Floodcaller also lets us go off at instant speed during comboing in response to interaction. More on this later...

We finally get to my favorite card in the deck - good old TTABE! (Pronounced "Tuh-Tabe", the only correct way to refer to the card).

This card is BONKERS. We tested multiple TTABE-based decks in our Worlds prep, and we think it's one of the best cards in the standard format, if not THE best. The tempo it generates when it bounces permanents that give you board advantage is nuts, and the card advantage it generates with Up the Beanstalk is also nuts. Recurring it with Stormchaser's Talent is insane. Winrate and amount of TTABEs drawn are highly correlated in this deck.

TTABE modes:

• Tempo mode - What was the breakout card of the weekend? Unholy annex? That's a lot of mana you're spending on a token friend... Even Archfiend of the Dross is quite good to bounce.

• Combo mode - Also not much needs to be said here, I've already explained TTABE's key role in the infinite combo

• Value mode - Also referred to above, TTABE + Stormchaser's talent is a great value engine, but so is TTABE + Up the Beanstalk, or even TTABE + Bitter Reunion or Thundertrap Trainer.

• Board control mode - TTABE + Roaring furnace can put in work together keeping your opponent's board clear.

• "Big Chungus" mode - Remember you can still spend 5 mana on your TTABEs! The most common use case for this is guaranteeing lethal once you've generated a lot of mana and floodcaller triggers, but need to get multiple blockers out of the way. But don't be afraid to use it on end step to get massively ahead on tempo in the game!

• Protection mode - Developing and protecting your enduring is one of the most important play patterns with this deck, and playing enduring on turn 4 with one creature in play lets you use TTABE to protect it. Just be careful, your opponent can still kill your creature on end step and untap to kill your enduring!

I've talked a lot about the 4 cards above, they are definitely the core of the deck - But now we get to explore all the really cool ways we found to support this engine! Analyze the Pollen is a HUGE part of how this deck operates, and is utilized beautifully here.

Analyze modes:

• Combo mode - Analyze is copies 5-7 of both Floodcaller and Enduring. Use it to find the missing piece... just make sure you're keeping track of evidence collection and make sure you'll get there before you need to go off!

• Tapland mode- Analyze is not just a combo piece, it's also a full mana source in this deck. Think of it as a modal double-faced card where the primary side is a tapland. Most of the time you'll play it on the land side, definitely don't be afraid to do that (hitting land drops past turn 4 is quite important with how mana hungry this deck, and especially the card Stormchaser's Talent, is.) You will also be able to recur your analyzes with talents later in the game if you need them to combo. I cannot emphasize this enough; don't be afraid to analyze early to hit your land drops!

• How to Keep an Izzet Mage Busy mode - Sometimes you just need an extra spell to either generate enough mana to get into your infinite combo, or add enough damage to kill them. One of the benefits of using spells as lands in this deck is that we more often can use them as pump spells/rituals!

• Instant speed trickery - Don't forget that you can use analyze at instant speed when you have a floodcaller in play! This most often comes up when blocking against red decks, but you can also do things like wait for things to die during your opponent's turn so that you have enough evidence to collect. You can even collect evidence with an Enduring Vitality before it returns to the battlefield!

I won't go as in depth on the modes of Bushwhack because it's basically Analyze the Pollen, but a fight spell split card instead of a tutor. Same principles apply: don't be afraid to use it as a land, remember you can cast it at instant speed with floodcallers. Some matchups Bushwhacks will be better and you'll want to use your early analyzes as lands (prowess, UB midrange), and some matchups Analyze will be better and you'll want to use early Bushwhacks as lands (Domain, GB Mid)

I'm surprised it's taken me this long to get to this card, because it's one of the best cards in the deck and a core part of your engine. Developing early with Trainers and Talents is the best way to set up for your combo.

Thundertrap modes:

• Early Development - Getting out a floodcaller-relevant creature and digging towards your TTABEs and analyzes is definitely the best way to use trainer. The body might not be impressive, but a couple otters sitting in play means your opponent is inches away from being dead at any point.

• Value - Thundertrap/TTABE is a great way to dig deep through your deck and find your key pieces

• Bring your Kid to Work Day - You know what's better than one Thundertrap? Two Thundertraps! Casting this card for offspring with an enduring in play (which is often what enables the offspring) usually sets up a lethal combo the following turn. Don't be afraid to do it even if you're falling somewhat far behind on board - The cards it digs towards will either let you combo or let you regain that tempo quite quickly!

• Defense - Don't be afraid to block with Thundertrap to bait out pump spells, or chump block with it if you need more time to set up! But of course be careful that you're preserving some amount of board presence in order to combo if you topdeck the missing piece (this deck is hard!)

Torch is the best removal spell in standard, and is fully maximized in this deck. Its modes are relatively discrete, but there are quite a few of them:

• Removal mode: Torch is obviously a very well-positioned removal spell right now, and the primary use case for it is still killing creatures in this deck. It's great at picking off Heartfire Heroes, Deep Cavern Bats, and Glissas, and can even team up with itself to kill larger creatures.

• Shore Up mode - Torch is absolutely NOT dead in matchups like Domain! Even when you can't kill any of their creatures with it, Torch can be completely crucial for saving your enduring from a Sunfall. You don't even need a creature to target -- Target the enduring itself and bargain it away!

• Rite of Flame mode - Just like Analyze, sometimes you just need an additional spell to generate more floodcaller pumps or more mana to keep comboing!

This is probably the weirdest card in the deck, and that's saying something! Song is the card we discovered that turned it from a weird brew into a serious competitor for our worlds deck choice. It unlocks so much in the deck.

Song modes:

• "Double my mana next turn" - Often casting a medium-sized song on an early turn can set you up to combo quite quickly. My personal favorite is turn 3 song for 2, AKA the world's best Explosive Vegetation

• "Surprise! I can combo this turn" - If you have enduring/floodcaller in play, a big song can often be the missing piece for going off. Song + TTABE in hand + enduring/floodcaller/talent in play is generally lethal.

• "Surprise! I can combo this turn" pt 2 - The haste-granting ability on Song can be quite crucial, often so crucual that you cast it for zero mana to unlock your combo. This most often happens when you are casting Floodcaller on the turn you want to go off -- casting a Song for zero will untap the rest of your creatures and give floodcaller itself haste, which often lets you cross the critical "# of floodcaller creatures" threshold and enter your combo.

• "Surprise! You're dead" - Not only can you cast an end-of-turn Song with a floodcaller in play, you can even cast a big song and then pump all your rats with a single spell, which is usually enough to kill them!

• "I expect you to be dead shortly" - Sometimes casting a medium-big song without any of your combo pieces is just enough to develop a wide board and kill them over a few turns. The card was a banger in limited for a reason!

Beans is maybe the card with the fewest modes in the deck, but it's just an insane card advantage engine with TTABE and a solid cantrip spell otherwise. Remember it can do the following...

• Get sacrificed to a Torch the Tower

• Generate green mana with Tarnation vista

• Be cast at instant speed to pump your team with floodcaller

Bitter Reunion is sort of a crappy beans / crappy song hybrid card. It's one of the more clunky cards in the deck, because often you have a hand where there's no clear card to discard, but it's still a crucial part of smoothing clunky draws, haste enablers 3-4, a red permanent for Tarnation Vista, and another bounceable card engine with TTABE. I would strongly advise not cutting it from the maindeck, even though we often cut it postboard!

Bitter modes:

• Hand smoothing - This is the most common mode. If you don't have anything else to do on turn 2, Bitter is a great way to sculpt a strong hand out of an awkward one.

• TTABE value game - Worse than beanstalk here, but still important to always have a permanent to bounce that lets TTABE cost 2, and still worth a full card once recast.

• Fueling Analyze - Remember you can sacrifice Bitter Reunion for no value just to make sure you can collect evidence on your Analyze later! Bitter can also discard cards like Furnace/Sauna to ensure easy evidence collection in matchups where the removal spell isn't crucial.

• The world's worst How to Keep an Izzet Mage Busy - Sometimes you just need to cast a spell, even if you don't have anything to discard. This often feels bad, but sometimes it wins you the game, so no complaining!

• Haste granter while comboing - Playing an early bitter gives you a free "song for zero" that you can cast at any point later in the game. This often speeds up your combo by a half to a full turn - make sure to remember you have access to it!

Woah, this card is explicltly modal! Weirdly though, it's one of the less flexible cards in the deck. But still...

Furnace/Sauna modes:

• Early removal - Duh.

• Grindy value - Unlocking Sauna is rare, but you definitely do it in the grindier matchups. Casting Sauna from your hand can even trigger beans!

• Being a permanent - Furnace is another thing to bounce with TTABE, another thing to bargain to torch, and a red permanent to generate mana with Tarnation Vista. Sacrificing it to Torch specifically is a great way to fuel Analyze.

Here's a modal card with a lot of flexibility. Playing with Druid in this deck is quite tricky, but here are some ways to do it:

Questing Druid / Seek the Beast modes:

• Early game value/hitting land drops - Seek the Beast is a good default play if you have nothing better to do on turn 2. Sometimes you'll even pass up on playing a different card so that you can make sure you hit your land drop on turn 3.

• Tutorable spell during combo turns - The main reason we play this card as a 1-of is to be a tutorable spell for Analyze the Pollen so that we can dig deeper on turns where we just need a few more spells to fully combo. Sometimes you want to grab a Thundertrap trainer anyways if you want to dig deeper towards a specific spell or create another body to tap for mana alongside a haste giver, but sometimes you have exactly 2 mana left over and just want to kill them!

• Building a large blocker - Don't sleep on playing an early Druid if you have mana available! It can grow quite quickly in this deck and be a really strong blocker against red.

Another explicitly modal card that is nonetheless utilized pretty straightforwardly in this deck! We played an extra Pawpatch in the maindeck just because it's excellent in this format and rarely dead, especially in a deck that can often cast it as a free cantrip. It bumped Up the Beanstalk #3 to the sideboard, and I was personally quite happy with it throughout the tournament. I could see playing 2, though I don't know what you'd cut and it's definitely not necessary

Pawpatch modes:

• Destroy target creature with flying.

• Destroy target Enchantment.

• Draw a card. Create a Food Token.

I joke, I joke, but seriously this is mostly how we use Pawpatch. The secret modes are:

• Protect your Enduring from a removal spell

• Create a permanent for TTABE or Torch to use

The sideboard cards are significantly less modal than the maindeck cards. They tend to be specific role-players to do powerful, linear things in matchups we cared about, but I'll still cover them here:

This is our finisher of choice vs. aggro. It's great with enduring, great with floodcaller, and findable with Thundertrap. Casting it usually forces the game into a hinge point -- either they can kill you with a big pump spell turn, or you get to untap and destroy them.

Remember that you can sacrificed the manifested creature to tools to equip to a creature that can attack this turn like an Enduring!

Remember that you can flash in Tools with Floodcaller!

This is our SB silver bullet for the UW Oculus deck - It's a card they can deal with, but slows them down tremendously. Sometimes you'll bring it in for other random graveyard decks, but it's here to fight the card Helping Hand.

Sometimes you just need permission! Especially against Sunfall decks. Domain is the main matchup where we bring this in, as well as [Misc. Control].

These cards are "the same card" in our sideboard, and I could see playing anywhere between 0-2 of each. We went for the 1/1 split based on vibes/style points/being unsure of which was right. The ability to kill an artifact definitely matters sometimes (Ghost Vaccum, Urabrask's Forge, Gleeful Demolition), but hitting planeswalkers is also sometimes relevant and filtering your draws can always matter in this deck.

We bring these in in matchups where we want more 1-for-1 removal!

For convoke, and sometimes other aggro decks depending on context!

Into the Flood Maw's modes:

• Counter target Monstrous Rage (or, sneaky play that's often correct: bounce the monster role to take away trample if you're playing around Snakeskin Veil)

• Time walk target UW Oculus player

• Counter target Gleeful Demolition

We really like flood maw in the sideboard here -- The 2nd copy was our final cut.

This was a last-minute addition to the sideboard because we expected GB Demons decks to be popular, and casting & recurring this with talent is a great way to win a game. They spend so much mana on their threats that stealing them is usually game over, or at least buys you enough time to do it again!

This is a card a lot of people have speculated about in the SB: Is it an extra threat for controlling matchups? A midrange haymaker? A blocker against red?

It's mostly just that third thing, and specifically only against Innkeeper's Red. We figured out that using Enduring as a blocker in this matchup is usually a really strong gameplan, so this is acting as Enduring #5 postboard. A little better as a blocker, a lot worse as a mana engine, but that's fine, we just need a certain density of stabilizing turn 3 plays.

It's also great with Bushwhack, Pyroclasm, and Dissection tools ;)

We originally started with 3 Beans in the main and 3 Pawpatch in the board, but ended up liking the 2/1 1/2 split when we tried it. You almost always want to draw 1 pawpatch and usually don't want to draw 2 beans, so splitting them up for game 1 makes sense. Postboard we get a lot of flexibility - Some matchups you want all 3 of both, some matchups you barely want any of either.

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Manabase Thoughts

All these modal spells make the deck quite decision intense, and you don't get a break with the manabase. This deck's mana is pretty strong, but can be very taxing in terms of decisions. We've already covered it to some extent with Analyze/Bushwhack being spell/land split cards, but the deck also plays Fabled Passage as more "tri-lands" that require you to commit to a specific color early on.

Generally, you are trying to accomplish the following with your early mana development:

• Hitting at least your first 4 land drops

• Early green for analyzes/bushwhacks

• Early blue for Stormchaser's Talent & TTABE

• Early red for Torch the Tower

• Double green for Enduring Vitality

• Double blue for TTABE+Talent turns

You also have to make sure to preserve your Analyzes/Bushwhacks to be spells later if it's possible (but it often isn't, and that's fine - treat them as full lands with spell modes, not the inverse).

That's a lot! Luckily, the early mana you prioritize can depend on the spells in your hand and the matchup. If you're facing down aggro, grab that mountain for your torch the tower. If you're facing midrange, make sure to get that second blue source so you can play Talent & bounce it for value on turn 3. If you've got an Enduring Vitality in hand, make sure to prioritize double green, which will unlock every other source as long as you can protect Enduring.

Unfortunately, it's sort of impossible for me to give better heuristics than that. Your mana development and your actual strategic gameplan are tightly knitted together in this deck, so plan accordingly.

I guess I should at least say a few words about Tarnation Vista...

This is a spicy one-of that we're pretty sure is correct, but we're also pretty sure is best left at 1 copy. A tapland is a real cost, but this is pretty close to the 4th Fabled Passage, and we run...

• 4 monocolored Red permanents (Bitter Reunion / Roaring Furnace if the Sauna half is locked, which it normally is!)

• 7 Monocolored Green permanents (Enduring, Beans, QDruid)

• 12 Monocolored Blue Permanents (Floodcaller, Talent, Thundertrap)

• 2 Monocolored Black permanets (Song of Toentanz!)

If you ever get 3 of these categories out at the same time, you have a land that virtually taps for 2 mana, which is a HUGE advantage and can often let you combo on turns you otherwise wouldn't be able to. Be careful about the filtering, it can make for tricky sequencing (especially if you're bouncing any of your own permanents with TTABE or planning to draw cards in between actions), but this card is well worth the effort.

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Matchup Plans & Sideboarding

This is a deck that can and does take WILDLY different approaches matchup by matchup and game by game. It's crucially important to understand your role and what you're trying to value and accomplish in every matchup, but also important to be able to adapt to specific contexts and play a different role if the situation requires it. As such, I'm going to describe the gameplans we came up with for each matchup, but keep in mind that these are plans that can be mixed and matched for different situations as well. Don't be afraid to innovate on the fly!

Innkeeper's Red

This is the matchup we were most concerned about coming into the tournament, and what ended up bing the most popular deck. The biggest thing to note is that this is a VERY DIFFERENT deck from the Leyline red versions. In fact, with your good hands, you are almost as fast at comboing them as they are at killing you! Recognizing this and learning to develop your board instead of frantically killing their early threats is absolutely crucial.

Try to develop your board/combo while they are doing things early that aren’t threatening lethal. Manifold Mouse & Slickshot Showoff are the cards you care the most about, because they amplify all of their other cards. Emberheart Challenger & Innkeepers talent are your other big concerns.

You can often try to "ignore" their swiftspears and heartfire heroes. Monstrous rage is the best card in the matchup by far because it breaks through your blockers and the permanent trample makes it hard to chump in the lategame. You often need to make the decision to be dead to the second (or first) rage and just hope they don't have it.

Your fair game/floodcaller game is almost as good as theirs, remember that and don’t be afraid to just race them or try to out-board state them with floodcaller if the situation calls for it!! Often try to block heartfire hero without killing it - This is where monstrous rage can be devastating, but the hero is otherwise quite easy to deal with.

Out:

• 1 Valley Floodcaller (because they have shocks, it's still a great card most of the time, you just don't want to draw 2 and be forced to cast them to develop your board without mana up)

• 2 Up the Beanstalk (slow)

• 2 Bitter Reunion (slow)

• 2 Song of Totentnz (doesn't block)

In:

• 1 Into the Flood Maw (counters pump spells, kills manifold kids, resets heartfires)

• 2 Abrade/Volcanic fallout

• 2 Dissection Tools

• 1 Pyroclasm (not as good as you'd think because of their pump and talents, but still good enough to blow them out sometimes)

• 1 Screaming Nemesis (great blocker, good with pyroclasm, Bushwhack, and Dissection Tools)

Leyline Red

This is a super different matchup from the Innkeeper's versions because they are much more of a combo deck that can kill you on turn 2-3. Lots of the cards are the same, but you have to play very differently. You're only allowed to keep the absolute best hands that don't have interaction (including TTABE + a permanent to bounce) -- something like talent into Thundertrap into Enduring without any interaction is a keep, but anything less than that and it starts to get quite sketchy.

Games can be dynamic depending on their hand, so you need to suss out whether they have a pump spell heavy draw or a creature heavy one. Sometimes they have a draw that can pressure with creatures (especially non-leyline draws) but the main plan especially against leyline draws is to hold up interaction and blank their pump spells until you can develop a big enough board to block profitably (doesn’t have to be a huge board, their creatures are small).

Look out for shocks, but if they don’t have them Floodcaller is very easy to deploy and actually one of your best cards. You should sometimes decide to lose to the nut draw in order to have a good deploying turn. If you can set up Enduring + other blockers with 1-2 layers of interaction, you'll likely win, even if you're at a very low life total when you do so!

Out:

• 2 Up the Beanstalk

• 2 Bitter Reunion

• 1 Song of Totentanz

In:

• 1 Into the Flood Maw (at its best here)

• 2 Abrade/Volcanic

• 2 Dissection Tools

Notably, we are NOT bringing in the Screaming Nemesis or the Pyroclasm here, and we are keeping in a Floodcaller and a Song. This is a nod to this being a matchup where once you've stabilized, it's often quicker to just combo kill them than try and win on board state. Dissection tools is still great at cleaning up, but since they have almost zero disruption for your combo, it's often the easiest way to just turn the corner and make sure they're dead.

UB Midrange/Tempo

This is quite a good matchup, and while we can definitely lose, structurally we are very well set up to deal with what the UB deck is doing. The main thing is not getting batted/curiositied out of the game, so Torch the Tower is our best card (talent recurring it also good). Try to have hands where you can either dig for removal or have multiple so they can’t strand you without it. Bats/sirens on their own aren’t enough pressure so you can let them live for a few turns while you develop as long as they aren’t getting cards off of them.

The interaction you care about is mainly anoint/phantom interference, as well as cut down/gftt on floodcaller. Comboing against them is bad in general, because they can usually kill your floodcallers, so instead try and play a value game where you're removing their stuff and generating value while you do it while racing them with ground creatures. Furnace/Sauna shines here!

Phantom interference is one of their best cards, but you're able to play around it because they often aren't pressuring you so much that you'll be punished for taking a slightly slower line, especially if they don't have a Faerie Mastermind to flash in instead of casting it.

Bargaining your enduring (look out for ertai or tidebinder) is really good to guarantee you have it in a long game, because they can't deal with it as an enchantment. This is the one matchup where talent level 3 is very relevant for similar reasons - They can't deal with an enchantment, and it's hard for them to kill you quickly if you're dealing with the bigger creatures.

It can be easy to get tempoed out if you take a line that is slightly too value-y. Your creatures can race quite well, because UB can’t deal with a large ground board easily, so if you develop them early, it makes UB choose between adding creatures of their own, and dealing with your board before it gets out of hand.

Look out for tidebinders especially with fabled passage.

Bushwhack also shines here as more ways to kill bats and masterminds!

Out:

• 1 Floodcaller

• 1 Pawpatch Formation (still good, but not as good as other cards)

• 2 Song of Totentanz (we're not trying hard to combo)

In:

• 2 Abrade/Volcanic Spite (removal is at its best here)

• 1 Up the Beanstalk (we want to grind)

• 1 Pyroclasm (great way to deal with a large board of fliers)

You could also consider cutting a bitter reunion and keeping in a Pawpatch formation on the draw if you value killing bats and masterminds highly.

UW Oculus

Despite its name, the card we fear most in this matchup is Haughty Djinn. The reason why is...

THIS MATCHUP IS ABOUT TEMPO!!!!!!

They are going to “do the thing” eventually and it’s pretty hard for you to stop it, but you can delay it. You’re going to do your thing eventually and it’s pretty hard for them to stop you, but they can delay you. Make sure to make them choose between stopping you and developing their own plan, don’t let them slow you down WHILE digging for their stuff (AKA, playing around Phantom Interference is usually NOT a good move, because they can simply cast another spell on your end step and keep digging toward their threats).

The first threat they stick doesn’t have to get IMMEDIATELY answered if you can better develop your own plan. It will take 2-3 turns to kill you, although the tempo that Djinn gives them means it still might be better to bounce that one over developing if it seems like they’ll get a lot of mana out of it next turn (they usually will).

Getting your Enduring or Floodcaller Soul Partitioned can be quite devastating (5 mana is a lot and the matchup is about tempo), so make sure to leave up Torch the Tower to protect enduring if you can (though we're cutting most copies postboard because it doesn't really kill anything).

Sometimes if they only have one threat, you can play a controlling game where you cast ~1 TTABE a turn, but these games are rare.

Try to keep hands that develop quickly (this usually looks like creatures to cast early + enduring).

Out:

• 2 Furnace/Sauna

• 3 Torch the Tower

• 1 Song of Totentanz

In:

• 2 Pawpatch Formation

• 1 Into the Flood Maw (tempo!!!)

• 1 Up the Beanstalk

• 2 Ghost Vaccum (the best card against them, not close)

Bringing in Beans is more about having cards we want to cut than it being an actively good card here, but postboard we can play a bit more of a grindy game with Pawpatches & Ghost Vaccums, so it comes in. I could see keeping both Songs in if you want to go for fast combos more aggressively. We're keeping in 1 torch against heavy Soul Partition versions, but it's cuttable.

GB Midrange

For the purposes of this piece, I'm assuming this is standard GB midrange with a demons package, not Seth Manfield's ramp version or the demon-less versions that sometimes show up in MTGO challenge results. We think this is also a very good matchup, similar to the UB midrange one, though with some important differences in gameplay.

The fundamental thing going on here is that they want to force into a small game, and we want to break out into a big game. Our cards are cheaper and generate more value, so we just have to make sure we are able to use them and don't get wrecked by a big threat without an answer in hand.

Unstoppable Slasher is terrible against torch/ttabe but it does kill quickly. Glissa is better than slasher, and having this many things that torch gets means be careful about putting it away or using it on a Dreadknight unless you think you can win fast enough to ignore the 3-drops. Ignoring mosswood dreadknights specifically is usually a good idea, that clock isn’t fast enough and you generally don’t want to let them reduce your board + keep digging for interaction.

Pay attention to how many anoints they have, and play accordingly with your Endurings.

The demons are easy to tempo with TTABE, but make sure you are saving/finding it for that because they do kill quite quickly.

Bronco matters more than dreadknight and might be worth torching if you have a window and feel like you can deal with slasher/glissa. They don’t usually have THAT much interaction, so try to force them to have the pressure + backup pressure + interaction hands and they usually won’t have all 3. If they don’t have pressure though, it gets even better for you! Don’t rush into a combo that will get disrupted by removal, you can play a value game quite safely as long as they don’t have a meaningful threat in play and you have a plan to answer one if it comes down. They can’t really go over the top if you're able to deal with their demons.

Level 3 of talent can sometimes come up here, but they have a lot more ways to deal with enchantments than UB does, so be careful!

Out:

• 2 Floodcaller (we're not trying to combo)

• 2 song (we're not trying to combo)

in:

• 2 Pawpatch (answers demons - can be Abrades if you're facing a version that's lighter on demons/heavier on 2&3-drop threats)

• 1 Up the Beanstalk (grindy)

• 1 Blue Sun's Twilight (This is the matchup that card is for! Stealing any of their threats and recurring it with Talent is usually game over.)

Doomsday

Of course, I have to cover the Worlds-winning deck here, as I'm sure people will be adopting it. We think this is a pretty good matchup, though we lost to some strong pilots at Worlds. It's basically a hybrid of the UB tempo decks and the GB demons decks with a combo finish, which makes the deck itself somewhat inconsistent and clunky, but also quite hard to play against because you never know what gameplan they're setting up.

I'd try and approach this similar to the other black midrange matchups, (AKA, playing a grindy game and answering their threats with efficient, value-generating interaction) but just try to keep in mind when they're getting close to casting demon and make sure you're set up to punish it by comboing. It kills you, but it also commits most of their mana for 2 whole turn cycles, which is usually enough to set up a floodcaller kill or even a full combo if you've been careful not to throw away too many resources early.

Out:

• 3 Torch the Tower (kills some threats, but not enough)

In:

• 2 Negate

• 1 Up the Beanstalk

Domain

This is another good matchup, though definitely one where you have to play a little carefully and unintuitively. The primary concern is not playing too hard into sunfall while making sure you’re setting yourself up well enough to combo before they pressure you too much with Atraxa, Overlord, Herd Migration, or Zur. These threats are mostly slow, so this is definitely a "combo from hand" matchup. The idea is to develop enough to board that they're forced to sunfall or let you combo from hand in a single turn, then if they have the sunfall, do it again while gaining some value with TTABE/Talent and force them to have another.

The Zur version is tougher to interact with and has a faster clock, so it's much scarier for Otters than non-Zur versions.

Early game you want to pressure their life total as much as possible, then start to hold back when sunfall comes online. Watch out for the sunfall turn and try to hold up either ttabe or torch if you’re developing an enduring, or hold up floodcaller to play on end step otherwise.

Look out for turns where you can level up talent to get a future protection spell instead of further deploying. Don’t be afraid to play into temporary lockdown, especially if you have a haster. That card earns its' "temporary" name in this matchup when you have TTABE or Pawpatch.

If you can kill beanstalk with pawpatch early, do it. It's their best card and makes sure they always have gas, so removing it can often strand them without the answers or threats they need to actually beat you. You get more opportunities to do this postboard but it's well worth doing preboard.

Out:

• 2 Furnace/Sauna

• 3 Torch the Tower

In:

• 2 Pawpatch Formation

• 2 Negate

• 1 Up the Beanstalk

Convoke

We want to approach this kind of similarly to the other aggro matchups - blockers are good and disruption is good if it can prevent their key turns (demolition on an artifact, case of the gateway killing one of your guys, etc). But as long as you avoid the nut draws your goal should be to beat them on board state, not comboing unless the opportunity presents itself. Try to be proactive instead of not doing anything and leaving up interaction to avoid their nut draws (sometimes you just die to those and that's fine).

Build a board of blockers and then use interaction to keep them off of their big turns. Playing around case if you can is a big way to make sure you can win on board state. An exception to this is if it seems like they’re setting up for a big recruiter turn you might need to try and combo them first. But do the math and figure out if it actually kills you or if you can interact, survive, and attrition them out. This can be kind of a combo matchup if they're going for big recruiter turns, but just because they can’t really disrupt you super effectively.

Out:

• 1 Up the Beanstalk (slow)

• 2 Bitter Reunion (slow)

• 1 Pawpatch formation (one of the only matchups where it doesn't really do anything)

In:

• 1 Into the Flood Maw (can disrupt combat math and soft-counter a Gleeful Demolition)

• 2 Abrade/Volcanic (Abrade is better here because it counters Gleeful, but both are fine)

• 1 Pyroclasm (duh)

Caretaker's Talent

I left the best matchup for last, because this one is almost free!

They’re not fast enough at pressuring you and not interactive enough to really stop you from comboing (maybe exception for lists with 8 exile removal). A lot of their threats are tap-out.

Just don’t get got by a sunfall/lay down arms – Doing this properly might involve taking damage for many turns while you continue to set up, but they don’t have burst damage or board presence, so play it safe if you think you can and you should still get there.

If you are under pressure, you can worry a little less about sunfall but obviously make sure you still have stuff left over to keep going. This is a good combo from hand matchup, though slightly less so against the blue versions that will have access to permission.

Out:

• 2 Furnace/Sauna

• 3 Torch the Tower

In:

• 2 Pawpatch Formation

• 2 Negate

• 1 Up the Beanstalk

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Mulligans

Okay, it's finally time to get into some concrete gameplay advice. Mulliganing with this deck is sometimes simple -- It's definitely a "counting" deck that wants to develop a critical mass of material, so often you just want to keep as many "lands+spells" hands as possible -- but sometimes much more complicated. It's also a deck that has wildly different roles and gameplans depending on the matchup, so you definitely have to mulligan quite differently if you're in an open decklists context, which I was at Worlds, or in postboard games. This is why I wanted to do the Mulligans section after the matchup gameplans section - Often, you need to know which cards/play patterns to prioritize before you decide to keep.

For the purposes of this guide, I'm going to assume we know the matchups we're facing, but I'll probably note whether particularly close hands are blind keeps.

It's hard to give general heuristics, but I'll do my best to give a couple:

General Heuristics for Mulliganing with Otters

• 2-4 Lands + 3-5 Spells hands are usually a keep unless the hand is particularly awkward or matchup-weak. Analyze and Bushwhack are lands for this math, unless you don't have an untapped green source, in which case, do you really have enough lands to keep?

• Enduring Vitality and Stormchaser's Talent are your best opening hand cards, followed by Thundertrap Trainer and TTABE. These cards unlock your mana and value engines, letting you dig through your deck while setting up blockers and interacting with your opponent.

• Keep an eye out for the cards that heavily vary in utility between matchups. Torch the Tower can be a crucial part of opening hands for aggro and midrange matchups, but almost dead in others. Similarly, Up the Beanstalk can be a crucial way to set up a value game against midrange or domain, but make a hand unforgivably slow against aggro.

The most important matchups for mulliganing are the ones where you can't just keep lands & spells hands, which are mostly the aggro decks.

OTD against Innkeeper's Red

This hand is normally one of our better ones, but against a red deck on the draw, there's a very good chance we just die before we're able to do anything meaningful on the board. Innkeeper's red makes it a little easier to keep this than Leyline red, but it's still extremely close. I would probably keep this and hope to draw a floodcaller + talent and/or multiple pieces of interaction early to hopefully be able to close the game quickly if we don't die by turn 4, but against leyline red, I think you have to mulligan this OTD (it's probably a keep OTP).

OTD against Innkeeper's Red

This hand is a lot better, even though it doesn't have as much ability to develop towards our combo. We have a floodcaller to set up decent blocks (assuming we draw any more creatures at all), and plenty of interaction to make sure we survive. With this hand, I'm definitely Analyzing for a land (probably a forest for Enduring) on turn 1, rather than leaving up Torch. Remember, we care about their 2-mana threats a lot more than their 1-mana ones, so we want to capitalize on the opportunity to "play our tapland" without leaving up removal.

OTP against Innkeeper's Red

This looks like a 4-land, 3-spell hand, but it's really a 6-land, 1-spell hand, and even though it has interaction, we can't keep this against an aggro deck.

OTD against Leyline Red

This would be a keep against most decks, but there's just too big a chance we die on turn 2 (if they have the nut draw and go for it) or turn 3 (if we Seek the Beast into an awkward card like Floodcaller that we have to play). I think we even have to mull it on the play against leyline, though it's probably a keep OTP against Innkeeper's red.

OTD against Leyline Red

Sneep!!! This hand would be a mulligan against most decks, but we've got exactly what we need here to survive the early turns and dig towards board presence. It's sort of obvious given that this is a double torch hand, but I'd be keeping this even if one of the torches were a Bitter Reunion, Up the Beanstalk, Floodcaller, or really almost any other spell.

OTP against Leyline Red

This is an example of a hand that you do have permission to keep even against an explosive aggro deck like leyline red, at least if you're on the play. We might lose to a quick combo, but if we don't, we're setting up some really nice blockers and mana, and any 1-2 spells we draw just let the hand completely go off.

---

Okay, enough with the aggro matchups, other decks exist Ryan!

I focused on the aggro matchups because this is where mulligan decisions are the tightest, but there are definitely interesting decisions to be made elsewhere. Let's see a few of those...

OTD against UW Oculus

This is a pretty solid hand that wouldn't be keepable OTD in an aggro matchup - even though it's a little slow, you have early otters to play and a floodcaller to pressure, as well as TTABE + Beans to gain some tempo with value. I'm keeping this against Oculus, though I know it loses to some of their better draws. On the play it would be a lot better, but I don't think you can ship this in a non-aggro matchup. If the beans turns into Pawpatch Formation, or the second Thundertrap turns into an Enduring, this is a sneep against UW. As is, it's a medium keep.

OTP against Domain

This is a pretty easy keep, despite being a little finnicky in terms of developing your land drops - Domain is a matchup where you have lots of space to develop, so you can spend your early turns analyzing, Thundertrapping to try and dig for another land searcher or cycler, and playing Seek the Beast t3 to try and hit a land drop if you didn't find one already. Then you can play a nice instant-speed game with floodcaller + TTABEs, especially if you draw a talent at any point.

OTD against Domain

This is a keep against a lot of decks (any aggro, UG midrange, GB midrange, ranges from begrudging to psyched), but a mulligan against Domain where a lot of these spells are dead and you can't do any early board development.

OTP against GB Mid

This is a hand that showcases the power of Bitter Reunion! (Ignore the second Hedge Maze, that was in an earlier version of the deck). This is a pretty easy keep play or draw against anyone who isn't aggro, and would be a keep OTP against aggro if Bitter were instead a talent or a Thundertrap.

OTP against UB Mid

This is a hand I'd consider keeping OTP in a lot of matchups, but it's pretty weak to UB mid specifically because of their Bats and early threats that draw cards with Enduring/Gix. They can pretty easily bat away your TTABE and just start clocking you and drawing cards in the air. I think you have to mulligan this and hope for a hand with more early development (Thundertrap/Talent) or removal (Torch/Furnace).

---

Gameplay Deep Dive

Now we get to the real meat of things. Gameplay with this deck is HARD. Understanding the combo and the variety of modes on each of your cards is the starting point, and understanding matchups should give you a good sense of how to try and shape games to your liking, but there's no substitute for actually getting in there and dissecting specific lines and specific turns.

I can't cover everything here, but I'm going to try and select some representative samples of the types of nuanced, complex decisions that come up with this deck and how to navigate them. I'm going to do this by showing you some complicated games that I struggled heavily in when I was first learning the deck. These were some of the crucial games that helped me figure out what I was doing wrong and get to a higher level with Otters (after careful gameplay review by myself & my teammates, an invaluable resource!)

Buckle in -- This section requires careful attention. We're trying to do some "deep learning" here. This section is meant for folks to click on the linked 17lands gamelog and follow along in a separate window.

Game 1: OTD vs. Leyline Red (postboard)

https://www.17lands.com/user/game_replay/20241023/b2d98b1fe0da46f996070c1b55b4bcb9/0

I'm picking this game because it gives a good sense of the breadth of decisions that matter in a typical aggro matchup with this deck. The aggro decks in this format are some of the hardest and most skill-intensive to play against we've seen in a long time. This game is postboard with a card we were trying out in testing (Pugnacious Hammerskull), but the principles still apply to game 1s and postboard games with Screaming Nemesis, our new SB blocker of choice.

Starting off, I think this hand is unfortunately a mulligan, despite having two of out best 3-drop blockers - Not doing anything at all until turn 3 on the draw is just setting ourselves up to be too far behind by the time we try and stabilize. On the play, this hand might even be worse because we have fewer chances to draw a blue source and cast our Thundertrap Trainer. It's at least somewhat close because we have a lot of blue sources (counting Analyzes and Bushwhacks) that are live draws on turn 1 or 2 and make this actually a pretty actively good hand, but even then, we're still missing interaction unless we can find it with Thundertrap.

We kept this hand in-game, and happened to draw a botanical sanctum in time for casting Thundertrap on turn 2, so it ends up being a good illustration of the type of hand that you should keep in this deck without interaction (a 1-drop or 2-drop into an Enduring with a plan to interact from there on).

Turns 1-2 are pretty scripted, and this is our hand to start turn 3 (after we play out a Copperline Gorge). What's the play?

We could...

• Play out Hammerskull as a brick wall of a blocker

• Play out Enduring and leave up torch

• Play out Enduring and torch the Emberheart Challenger

• Play out Enduring and develop a talent to the board

It's not immediately obvious which of these lines is right. Getting out our best blocker and starting to turtle up behind it is really tempting, but so is explosively developing our board, and so is developing a pretty good blocker and leaving up interaction.

I'm honestly not 100% confident in my own line here, and this will largely be the case in most of the situations we talk about today. This deck is just that difficult. It's difficult in a "soft" way, where many decisions are truly ambiguous and left to a judgment call of the player in the game, dependent on reads, vibes, and instincts.

Here's what my play would be, looking back at this game now. I would develop Enduring and play out talent.

This leaves us pretty open on their turn to a big flurry of pump spells. I certainly wouldn't make this play against the leyline red decks, with access to flings. However, this is a matchup where it's very important to realize when you're NOT dead to most reasonable hands your opponent could have.

Let's say out of the 6 cards our opponent has access to next turn, 3 of them are pump spells, and one is a Monstrous Rage. Let's say the other two are Might of the Meek. This is a pretty "realistically bad" scenario for us. Their deck doesn't play that many pump spells, but it's distinctly possible they could be saving 2 for us and find an extra one off the draws from Mights or the Emberheart Challenger's ability. It's important to be scared of what you can realistically beat; I don't think we could beat a 4 pump spell hand on this board, even by leaving up Torch the Tower. Leaving up Torch against a 3-pump-spell hand would be pretty bad for us, too.

What about the play I'm proposing? 2 Might of the Meek + 1 Rage = 9 power from prowess, 5 power from pumps, and 3 total base power on their creatures, which is 17 damage. Our Enduring can block 3 of that (assuming we're accepting losing it in order not to die to triple pump, which is an interesting play question in and of itself), and we'd fall to 1. Assuming there's no followup, we'd untap with access to 6 mana, including a thundertrap and a prowess otter in play, and the rest of our hand.

Importantly, we'd have also (hopefully) have run our opponent out of pump spells. We can then play a Thundertrap trainer, pass, flash in floodcaller, torch one of their creatures, and block with an untapped, pumped team. We could even get a further pump if we happen to draw a noncreature spell for the turn. This line would even let us not be dead to cards like Heartfire Hero and Slickshot Showoff because of the torch. If the opponent isn't careful, we might eat their entire board and untap with enough to combo off and kill them on the crackback. They also would be making this decision by attacking into a board of just a 1/1 and a 1/2 with their 3-4 creatures when we're at 1 life.

Sounds pretty good, if scary, since they have at least 2, probably 4 shocks in their deck as well. But I think we're okay losing to "pump, pump, pump, shock". This line would of course also lose to things like "2 rage + 1 Might". It's impossible to do the math on every possible combination of cards, I'm just trying to show what kind of draw we could realistically survive, and why it's important to push the limits of that in these matchups, so that you can ensure you beat the widest range of negative outcomes while not losing to worse hands.

Okay, what if they only have 1-2 pump spells and more creatures?

In this case, developing hard is still the right play in my opinion. If we don't have to block with the enduring (say they don't go for it and just develop a few creatures or a talent to the board), we now untap with 7 mana, which is enough for Hammerskull + Floodcaller + Torch, a pretty unbeatable wall, since we can force pump spells with strong blocks.

Leaving up torch is specifically good against 1 pump spell if they go for it -- but that's extremely unlikely. Even then, we could just take the damage from the pump and be happy we developed next turn.

Okay, so we don't want to leave up torch. I hope the arguments about what we could do with 6-7 mana this turn convinced you away from just playing out the Hammerskull, even though that's the most immediately tempting play.

What about Enduring, torch the Emberheart?

This is another quite viable line. It significantly lowers the danger of their multi-pump turns. The only issue is it doesn't leave us with great blocks into a single pump, and uses the torch now instead of later, leaving us with no interaction to fend off big turns.

Still, it prolongs the game while managing their board and developing ours, setting up potentially stronger future turns, especially if we draw more interaction, which we have a lot of, so I'm reasonably satisfied with it as our actual play.

You see how much depth there can be in a 5-turn game? Magic is so freaking hard.

We kill the challenger and pass, opt not to block, and opponent goes for double pump (rage+might) just to push some damage and grow their QDruid. We fall to 6 and untap with 6 mana, and draw another torch for our turn (lucky!):

What's the line??? These decisions aren't getting any easier...

As I see it, our main options (after attacking for 3 with Enduring, don't forget! I doubt they will block and free damage is important in the matchup since we want to close the door quickly) are:

• Play Thundertrap, leaving up Floodcaller + Talent + Torch on their turn

• Play Hammerskull and Thundertrap, leaving up Torch

• Pass, leaving up Floodcaller + Talent + Torch + [Representing more]

• If we find a card like Bushwhack with Thundertrap, we could also use that this turn by playing the floodcaller and talent during our turn - That would untap our non-summoning-sick trainer and leave us mana for torch on their turn, still getting a floodcaller pump.

We lead on Thundertrap and do end up finding a Bushwhack, which lets us take this last line.

However... Floodcaller lets us cast Bushwhack at instant speed!! This is a mistake!!!

Even if you make the argument that we'd want to play the fight spell before they untap with access to shocks, we'd still be leaving up an additional spell to cast at instant speed and save our fighting creature.

This deck is so tricky. You're sequencing spells that find other spells, spells that give you extra mana and pumps, but only if you play floodcaller first, and sometimes your spells are instants and sometimes they're sorceries. Forgetting this ends up costing us pretty dearly.

Still, the line we end up taking (Thundertrap, Floodcaller, Talent, fight all on our turn) ends up with a pretty good board state. We're leaving up 4 creatures and a torch to pump the team:

This still feels like a good position, but it's a lot more precarious than just playing thundertrap and leaving up floodcaller + talent + torch + fight, which would result in 3 pumps on our team and multiple ways to kill either a flyer or a heartfire hero... plus the flexibility to save spells if we want to go for a big attack next turn. We could even leave Enduring back to block!

Opponent plays a Heartfire, pumps it with village, and attacks with everything. This looks like a decent attack without a pump spell, but at least not obvious (we'd chump heartfire, double block the 2/3 and go 1/2 on 1/2 assuming we both don't have anything). I'd say it's pretty likely that our opponent has a pump spell and recognizes this as the last turn they can use it to push through damage.

What's our play?

The biggest thing to be scared of is obviously Monstrous Rage on Heartfire Hero, plus something like Snakeskin Veil to save it from torch. To survive this, we'd need to block with enough toughness to survive, but not enough power to kill it. That to me looks like 2 Thundertrap Trainers, leaving us with a Floodcaller and prowess otter to block the swiftspears. They'd get double pumped in this scenario and our creatures would only get single pumped, so we'd end up taking at least 1 trample damage, plus 1 from the heartfire, fall to 4, and lose our whole board if we don't want to die, then staring down a 4-power Heartfire Hero.

I don't think we can realistically beat rage + veil even if it were face-up, so let's get rid of that possibility.

How about rage + might? The important insight is that this wouldn't save their Heartfire Hero, but it would save a Swiftspear, so we'd want to make blocks that incentivize targeting the hero. Are these possible to make?

Rage would make the larger Swiftspear into a 6/5, so to block that effectively without being forced into casting torch, we'd have to block with all of our creatures. If we did block with something like floodcaller + trainer and then torched in response to rage, we'd end up with an 8/6 swiftspear with 3 damage on it, 6 toughness of blockers. That leaves us with a 2/3 Thundertrap and 3/3 Prowess otter to block the other swiftspear (now 3/4), and letting through the heartfire, taking 3 + 2 trample, going to 1 (dealing with both swiftspears... but leaving the heartfire hero still alive and lethal).

The problem in a lot of these scenarios is the Heartfire Hero surviving. It's impossible to go into every permutation of blocks + set of pump spells + set of choices on where to put the pump spells, but most of them look pretty bad for us if we don't get to remove the first pumped creature with torch - especially if that creature isn't heartfire.

The inherent decision advantage that goes to the attacker / pump spell caster in Magic is punishing us pretty heavily here...

What if we're thinking about this wrong? What if we don't actually have to make our blocking choices first -- What if instead we made sure we didn't have to worry about the Heartfire, then decided where to block?

The key insight here is realizing we probably can't beat the card Snakeskin Veil, at least if it's backed up by other spells. If we put them off of Veil, casting torch (with bargain of course, to play around Monstrous Rage -- which do you bargain, talent or enduring? Left as an exercise to the reader) lets us make sure the heartfire is off the board before moving to blocks, and putting as much power and toughness in front of just 2 creatures as possible.

If they have the Snakeskin, they will likely cast that on Heartfire and move to blocks, which is a tricky math problem in and of itself, but to shortcut, we'd be forced into single-blocking heartfire with 2/3 Thundertrap, double-blocking the larger swiftspear with 2/3 and 3/3, and single-blocking the smaller swiftspear with 3/3 floodcaller - This way, any creature they put the pump spell on wouldn't be lethal, but we'd still be losing most of our board and falling to a low life total (the same outcome as waiting to torch if they have veil + rage and we make the right blocks without seeing it first - in this case, torching first is stronger because it lets us know what blocks to make with slightly more information).

But again, we don't think we can beat veil. If we move to blocks and assume they don't have veil, we're sort of still priced into torching the hero anyways, because we can't realistically beat double non-veil pump if the hero lives.

All things considered (not actually, algorithmically churning through all the possibliities here would be insane), my instincts, backed by a reasonable amount of analysis here, say the correct action is to torch the heartfire hero, bargaining the enduring, then move to blocks assuming that goes off without a hitch, and double block both swiftspears (leaving 6 power in front of the larger one and 4 in front of the smaller one, 6 toughness in front of both).

Probably pretty easy to make these kinds of decisions in 30 seconds on a tanking turn during a tournament, right?

Anyways, the actual play we made was to block like this and die to rage + veil:

These kinds of turns absolutely will come up against these pump-heavy red decks and they're very important to practice and figure out heuristics for, but remember -- Before any of this difficult combat math, if we had instead waited to floodcaller + cast spells during their turn, the math would have been completely different and much more favorable for us!!

This game I think is the perfect illustration of how easy it is to make compounding bad decisions with this deck, bad decisions that are extremely hard to identify unless you're going back and carefully analyzing every possible option available to you. This is the type of decision you can only train your intuition on through very slow intentional gamelog reviews, which is one thing I think are crucial for learning this deck, which is why I'm trying to provide them here (no coincidence I think this deck will make you a far better Magic player!)

Jason actually noted after I published the article that the correct play on the final turn is to torch the Heartfire without bargain in response to the village activation. If you can see this line ahead of time, this prevents you from needing to bargain your enduring!

Game 2: OTP against Domain

https://www.17lands.com/user/game_replay/20241010/e4310ef918df4b67b7350dc8962b0cc1/0

Our opening hand is very strong for this matchup and an easy keep (would be an easy keep in most).

The early turns are pretty simple, we have to skip out on Thundertrap in order to cast Enduring on turn 3, which we elect to do because we draw another one as a backup.

Opponent plays a green overlord and passes back. We untap with access to 5 mana:

The most important part of the Domain matchup is making sure your alarm bells are going off here. This is the Sunfall turn!! We need to make sure we don't get completely wrecked by Sunfall. We have torches and a backup Enduring, so we should have plenty of tools to avoid it - The question is how do we try and develop? We could...

• Play out Thundertrap

• Play out second Enduring

• Play a Song for 3

• Do nothing but attack for 4

The general rule of thumb we agreed on in testing was "annoy them enough to actually cast the sunfall, but no more". This generally means threatening combo from hand if they don't address your board or leave up instant speed interaction. In my opinion, the best way to do this is to play the Thundertrap. 2 Otters on board leaves the distinct possibility of going off with an end-of-turn floodcaller into combo, or at least untap, draw floodcaller, do a large finite combo turn. They have to respect a board of enduring-otter-otter, but this is probably the minimum board they have to be scared of. If we just attack for 4 and pass, I doubt they try and sunfall, and if we play Song or Enduring, we're committing more than necessary (a thundertrap that should replace itself as a card in our hand).

We found a TTABE with Thundertrap, and, still early on in playing with the deck, I got excited and forgot a crucial interaction -- Rat tokens lose haste after the Song turn!

D'oh. This line leaves us WIDE open to Sunfall. It's a game-losing line in a lot of situations against Domain... but luckily they didn't have it.

Instead, we get very lucky - They just play another green overlord on suspend and pass, and we untap and draw a floodcaller, rewarding us for our aggressive development.

That's combo baby!!!

We sort of rushed into this, and it turns out they have a Leyline binding, which they use on Floodcaller. Womp womp, combo broken up. We have no choice but to let that happen, but we're still in a dominant position, since we know they don't have Sunfall.

We get to recast Thundertrap and Talent, finding another TTABE in the process, and attack for 9. Next turn we get to bounce them again, find a pawpatch, kill the leyline and use floodcaller triggers for lethal through a Get Lost (we could have also just bounced the leyline to accomplish the same thing - they can recast it, but we still get a window to torch our own floodcaller twice).

Wait a second... DID we have "no choice but to let that happen?"

Thank God for Etienne!

The line they found doesn't get us back into our infinite combo, but it doesn't end up mattering:

6 game actions (and a lot of resolved spells/triggers) from this board state, our opponent should be dead.

To play this deck effectively, you have to pivot from going through your infinite combo to finding this line as soon as you see the interaction (or better, try and plan how you'll win through interaction before you start the combo, and consider playing it a little slower if you can't).

Wow puts it well. This deck is quite something.

Game 3: OTD against Domain

https://www.17lands.com/user/game_replay/20241010/444529f10adf4788b0d605081a2e2f0b/0

This is actually game 3 of the same match, and I think it does a great job of illustrating a type of decision that comes up often in the deck that we haven't covered so far.

We're unfortunately starting out on 5 cards, but fortunately we're on an earlier version of the deck that had some "card advantage" cards in the sideboard (Plan the Heist, Farsight Ritual) to help with card advantage in the grindier matchups where you often want to combo from hand. As far as 5s go, this one is quite good!

Our first real decision comes with what to discard to Bitter Reunion. We value all of these cards quite highly. I decided that Pawpatch was the most replaceable (enduring is the best card in the deck, Farsight is our path to un-mulliganing, we have other answers to enchantments we can draw), but here's what my teammates said when they all got together to review this match and give me detailed notes (without me even present or requesting it!! Sanctum truly has the best people).

It turns out they wanted to keep a TTABE over the Farsight Ritual in the opening hand anyways! This is a very insightful choice, because it reveals that we think we still have some amount of inevitability over Domain in a long game, even on a mull to 5. TTABE is a core part of the deck's value engines, and if we can set those up, it's just a matter of mana utilization, not access to cards. I think my teammates are right on the mulligan, and it's more debatable on the discard. I was pretty tunnel visioned into Farsight, but for decently good reasons at this point - I felt like the hand needed more card flow to set up a winning position, and Pawpatch was a more replaceable effect, so I discarded Pawpatch (I could even see an argument for discarding land and assuming you'll draw more including a blue source, but that's pretty sketchy if your enduring gets removed).

Opponent plays Goverlord, and passes back (Sunfall Alert!!!!!)

Our options here are to develop Vitality, develop Floodcaller, or just play a hedge maze and pass, hoping to Farsight Ritual next turn and avoid committing to the board for now. I think all of these lines are imperfect and lose to some signfiicant things, but I went with the rule of thumb - commit just enough for them to Sunfall, so I cast Enduring. The idea here is that if they didn't sunfall right away, I can punish that pretty well by leaving up farsight + bargain to play around it and continue digging, and if they did, I could still draw an untapped land for farsight or spend my 3 mana getting my floodcaller out, which isn't threatening enough on its own, but is a 3 mana I'd otherwise have to spend later and accelerates my clock by quite a bit.

Team wants to play very cautiously and avoid committing our enduring entirely. I think this is definitely a reasonable line, given that there's no Atraxa or Herd Migration coming down to pressure us next turn, but we are still kind of committing our next 2 turns of mana to this farsight ritual, which does give them a pretty large window to start pressuring us. I think this line being preferred by the team reflects confidence that this is a matchup we can win long games in, even through Atraxas & other shenanigans. There is similar reasoning behind getting rid of the Farsight in the opening hand, and it's probably the reason why we ended up cutting it from the sideboard entirely.

Note: This ability to win super long games is probably less true about the Zur version of Domain, which is a lot scarier for us because of its much faster clock and difficulty to interact with unless we can deal with the card Zur specifically. If you know you're playing against Zur, I'd definitely recommend taking a more aggressive line.

Anyways, our Enduring gets sunfalled, but we do draw the Island to not be punished too hard and still leave up Farsight ritual.

Opponent casts an Archangel of Wrath to pressure us a little bit (but just a little), we find a Talent and a TTABE with farsight, and untap with 5 mana after playing an untapped land.

What's the play?

Well, we can really wait till our opponent's turn to do anything here, as long as we plan on developing floodcaller. We could take the conservative line of talent + ttabe, but that's really just treading water, and we're under enough pressure now (overlord is coming off suspend next turn) that I want to start developing a board that's at least somewhat threatening and maybe force a sunfall that would clean up two of opp's creatures as well as ours. If they have removal, so be it - it's going to nab the floodcaller eventually, and at least we use our mana in the meantime. This also lets us leave up Analyze the pollen with creature tutor mode depending on what our opponent does during their turn (we have Pawpatch, Farsight, and Bitter in yard).

What do teammates think?

This is one of the nuances of playing with Analyze the Pollen in this deck. Sometimes it's better to wait, even if you have the opportunity to cast the analyze, just to gain more information before you make your choice. This is especially one of those situations because we have another way to use our "1 mana" by developing a tapland. I think the line they found is definitely better. There's usually no rush to Analyze over doing other things unless you know specifically what you want to grab so you can play it that turn.

With the line we took, they play a suspended overlord on their turn and leave up mana for some kind of interaction, which turns out to be Get Out on our Floodcaller.

We've kind of committed to casting the Analyze by not using the mana elsewhere, so what are we getting here?

The two main options (though it might not be obvious to someone new to the deck, don't we want to replace our floocaller or find a questing druid to dig 2 cards deeper?) are Thundertrap Trainer and Enduring Vitality.

• Thundertrap is better than Questing because it digs deeper to the spells we care about here (roughly, a second TTABE and Talent to recur TTABE)

• Enduring is better than Floodcaller because it's an equally crucial combo piece but a better fair piece, since we're not pressuring their life total and are somewhat crunched on mana

As for which of these two pieces to grab, it's another very nuanced and difficult decision. I'll leave you guys with my and Etienne's discussion of it:

Playing this deck is a lot about trying to figure out the balance between sculpting a winning combo hand and making sure you have enough gas to keep digging towards it, and ensuring you're developing your board enough to A) not be dead and B) have enough already developed to board to actually deploy combo in time, while C) playing around interaction, if you think you can afford it. That's a LOT to balance.

The main split here is whether to value digging for more "engine-y" spells that let us prolong the game and/or dig further towards our combo, or to try and find one of our most important combo pieces and unlock some additional mana, but be mostly dependent on draw steps to find us the rest.

Like I said, I think I like my line of getting thundertrap here, but it's really close and I'm definitely not 100% sure.

Our first play of the turn is sort of scripted, because we want to know what we hit off Thundertrap, so I'll skip ahead and show that we played it and found Song.

What do we do here?

There are fundamentally two options:

• Cast Song, and hope to draw something like enduring next turn that will let us TTABE + Buyback and play a big game

• Cast TTABE (plus some other minor map/surveil things) and continue slowing them down enough to buy us a couple more turns

Overall I think the second line is definitely the better one - It's not clear this would even be the best turn to cast Song if we draw Enduring (we've got enough mana now that Song could be cast on an infinite combo turn), and we'd be taking a lot of damage if we don't TTABE this turn. Talent letting us buy it back next turn gives us multiple draw steps towards ability to combo or at least continue to delay them further. As long as just the Angel is attacking us, we've actually got quite a lot of time here.

Once we decide on this line, there are still decisions to be made. Do we map or surveil first? Map seems slightly better. Playing quickly (this was a ladder match), I surveiled and forgot I had the maps. Oops, more win % out the window!

On top with surveil, we see an Analyze the Pollen. This will be a tutor since we're casting TTABE this turn, so it's definitely a top, since we'll probably have to find both enduring and floodcaller to win this game.

We TTABE the Goverlord and our Thundertrap to dig further (make another tactical mistake by letting overlord attack first), and they play an Atraxa, finding more threats but luckily no more interaction. We draw Analyze for our turn. Again we are kind of priced into playing Thundertrap first, which finds a TTABE.

What is line that develops furthest towards our combo while bouncing the Atraxa to keep us alive this turn?

The answer is: Analyze for Vitality, and hold up TTABE. We'd love to hold the Analyze in case we drew Vitality and wanted to grab Floodcaller, but we just don't have that luxury at this point, we have to develop our board. We won't have enough to play out Vitality, Floodcaller, and Song in the same turn and still have the mana to combo off with Talent getting back TTABE.

This is the line my teammates found:

Instead I took a slightly worse line, still with the goal of digging towards more combo pieces - I bounced Thundertrap and Atraxa and recast Thundertrap, hoping to find... idk, another TTABE? I can't really find Floodcaller off of Thundertrap here, since a second Analyze won't be able to be a tutor.

Thundertrap finds Bitter Reunion, our opponent untaps and casts Woverlord to pressure us the most through a bought back TTABE, and we draw a Fabled Passage.

I tank for a while trying to figure out how we could survive while maybe setting up combo if we topdeck floodcaller, and decide the best line is to find Vitality, Song for 5, giving my Vitality Haste, which gives me 6 mana to buy back TTABE and cast it on a flyer... leaving me dead to the overlord on the ground since I had to completely tap out.

A better line would have been to hold off on the Song, since with it we can still combo off with a vitality next turn, but we can now block with Vitality on the ground, survive by falling to 2, and hopefully they A) Don't find any interaction with Atraxa and B) We topdeck exactly Floodcaller.

It's... technically possible? Better than the 0% line I took, anyways. Enduring got leylined so it didn't matter, but still, just goes to show how many opportunities there are for tight play with this deck (and therefore, opportunities for mistakes).

---

Final Thoughts

Hopefully I've convinced you at this point that this Otters deck is quite powerful, quite beautiful, and quite hard to play. One of our biggest takeaways from Worlds was that the deck might have actually been the best deck in the room (still very debatable, it runs into consistency issues that are similar to many other standard decks, but weren't really showcased in these games) -- but it also may have just been too punishing to small play mistakes and too taxing in terms of decision fatigue for us to try and pilot expertly against the best players in the worlds for 14 rounds.

The deck rocks, and I hope lots more people get the chance to play it, come to terms with how hard Magic is, get comfortable making mistakes (I certainly made PLENTY, like you just saw!), and improve while they're at it!!

If you've come all the way with me and reached the end of this piece, thank you. I appreciate your time and attention being paid to my thoughts about this beautiful game tremendously.

I'm still figuring out what kind of role Magic can play in my life right now after Worlds. I'm qualified for PT1 and will definitely be playing it and trying to succeed on the PT next year, but playing "professional" Magic still isn't really a profession in the sense that it can sustain you without additional sources of income.

I will probably end up trying to find some kind of part-time job to continue being able to support myself for however long I'm able to play in PTs, which will likely mean I'm not able to write as much next year (though I will definitely still write some no matter what).

If folks would collectively like to convince me out of the need to find part-time work to supplement Magic playing & writing, I guess y'all know generally what would have to happen and how you can contribute to it (subscribing, sharing with others)!

I don't expect this to become a viable option for me - I am not someone who wants to do the promotion and SEO/marketing work to promote their writing or be constantly pushing things out just to satisfy demand, I just want to make good stuff at my own pace, and I understand that that means I can't expect this to turn into an actual source of income - but I would be immensely grateful if the unexpected happened. Who knows, this community is pretty cool and I think my writing is pretty good.

I'll be back probably next week with a more personal recounting of my journey to Worlds. See you then!