Koma, Cosmos SerpentKoma, Cosmos Serpent | Art by Jesper Ejsing

The ocean is a big, scary place. It's mostly uncharted, vaster than any individual can comprehend, and hostile to human life on multiple levels. Not to mention how deep, dark, and mysterious it can get.

Or what lurks beneath the surface.

Luckily, all of those creatures you hear stories about aren't real. The Kraken's a sailor's tale. Sea Serpents aren't real. Octopuses... No, those are real as far as I can tell.

But Magic doesn't really care about reality, so it lets you go absolutely bonkers with the sheer nonsense that encompasses what horrors humans fear from the deep.

What Is Playing "Out Of Type?"

Magic has existed in its current form for well over a decade. It's existed as a collection of rules and cards for much longer. The community has grown tighter in its strategies, tactics, and deckbuilding as the focus of the game is crystalized. This all can lead to some pretty similar-feeling decks.

Playing "Out Of Type" is the rejection of these well-trodden paths of gameplay in favor of experimentation. Sure, what you come up with might not be "competitively viable," but the goal is to push the bounds of what's expected in a game as well as your own comforts in playstyle.

You don't reject the notion of winning, you choose a harder difficulty.

What Sea Creatures Do Well

Before diving into what sea creatures do well, which is a healthy depth of various abilities and competencies, it's important to understand what a sea creature is. After all, Merfolk are one of the quintessential blue creature types and natives of the sea. Then Fish as a taxonomical classification are already made up, but there's dozens of them accessible in play.

For this article, "sea creatures" is focusing on a series of creature types that are closely related both flavorfully and mechanically: Krakens, Leviathans, Octopuses, and Serpents.

Some cards that interface with sea creatures also mention Merfolk. Most don't. The antiquated Cephalid creature type got absorbed into the Octopus creature type, and many Fish also have another creature type.

As you'd expect from "things in the ocean," there's a lot of overlap. Including what they can do mechanically.

Value

To put it plainly, most sea creatures have good value! Some are a bit too pricey to justify just their stats, but many compensate for that via their abilities.

It can be as simple as Acquisition OctopusAcquisition Octopus letting you draw a card upon dealing combat damage to a player. Or it can be more complicated, self-milling and preventing combat damage like Cephalid IllusionistCephalid Illusionist.

And others allow you to bounce your cards. Or force you to, such as Floodtide SerpentFloodtide Serpent.

Sneaking

Mostly from the various Cephalids that are now considered Octopuses, sea creatures have a fair amount of skullduggery they can engage in.

This ranges from forcing opponents to discard cards, copying creatures, or having effects that proc upon damaging the enemy. Or simply bypassing defenders with something like Cephalid InkmageCephalid Inkmage.

Control

As to be expected from a group of creature types that are blue-anchored, sea creatures love control. Plus, it fits thematically, what with grasping tentacles holding you down and preventing escape.

The control of sea creatures is fairly slow to start, what with how expensive most of them are. But by the mid-game once you've established your landbase? Creatures like Grappling KrakenGrappling Kraken are granting not only free tapping but also stun counters. Then you can Summon: LeviathanSummon: Leviathan in order to bounce every creature but your own.

They're rarely are targeted, though, and these bounce effects will often hit every non-sea creature. That's why these four creature types are what this article is discussing, even though Merfolk have some incredible synergies with them.

Board Presence

My initial thought was to say "token generation," but then I realized that wouldn't be quite accurate. Certainly, with the right cards you can create an army of tokens with something like The Watcher in the WaterThe Watcher in the Water, but not to the extent of something like Mondrak, Glory DominusMondrak, Glory Dominus. Not to mention, most sea creatures can't do that.

What they can do is be a massive wall your opponents have to scale to deal with you. Often, this deals with just having large stats. Sometimes this deals with token generation, but broadly speaking, sea creatures rarely are subtle.

As a result, you'll be able to defend yourself quite effectively against most threats. Token-spam might slip through the cracks, but your larger set pieces likely have some degree of protection against removal. Also, with sheer numerical value, the toughness of your sea creatures will mean direct damage often isn't the answer.

Sacrificing Lands

Now, I won't name names, LeviathanLeviathan, but SOME sea creatures are very good at... Not being good.

Primarily older cards that then got absorbed into the Leviathan or sometimes Kraken creature types, there are many sea creatures that are simply not worth playing. Sacrificing your lands to play a massive creature is bad enough, but to do so every time it attacks? Or for it to only untap by sacrificing a land?

This by no means renders all or even most sea creatures unplayable. Serpents and Octopuses aren't even affected. But it's inseparable from the sea creature identity, for better or for worse.

But What if You Stayed Dry?

By that, of course, I mean that you play a nonblue sea creature deck. It sounds crazy, but it's actually quite possible!

Yes, the anchor-color of sea creatures is blue. I'd be quite concerned if it wasn't, given their environment. Though quite a few of them are also black-aligned, particularly the Krakens.

But there's certainly more to sea creatures than just the dark and the depths.

Green

While there aren't many sea creatures that are mono-green, there are some! And... they destroy lands. Thanks, Famished WorldsireFamished Worldsire, I thought we were past this.

But quite a few are Simic! Koma, World-EaterKoma, World-Eater alone represents green sea creatures incredibly. A massive creature that spawns tokens and has its own built-in protections? Then you have a synergy with something like Xolatoyac, the Smiling FloodXolatoyac, the Smiling Flood and the +1/+1 counters spam that green is so fond of.

You have multiple playstyles you can focus on while utilizing multiple different green sea creatures.

White

White sea creatures show up significantly less frequently, with their main support being in Octopus Cephalids. Their main benefit is that they often are tri-color , allowing for diluting yourself away from blue even more further.

These creatures are rarely the most powerful, though they have useful supporting effects, which is perfect for subverting the battleship mentality most sea creatures possess!

Pair it with something like Marvo, Deep OperativeMarvo, Deep Operative and you have the ability to having a sea creature deck that rarely gets your hands dirty. Or wet, in this case.

Red

I wasn't expecting there to be any red sea creatures! I was fully prepared to make this article revolve around white and green alternative playstyles, leaving red out to dry.

Serpents being what they are, it makes sense that it's the creature type to branch out furthest, but having two different red sea creatures was something I wouldn't have expected. Lightning SerpentLightning Serpent isn't even that bad a card, even if it's not sustainable! Then a third that's a Leviathan?

I wouldn't make a deck dedicated to just these creatures, but you could!

Sea Creatures Do (Almost) Everything

From board presence to big swingers to utility support effects, sea creatures can do it all. With a firm Dimir leaning even if they're mostly anchored blue, they have removal and protections and counterspells galore.

You can bounce away a horde of Goblins, counterspell a PacifismPacifism, and reliably tank whatever ping damage they throw at you, so outside of being slow in tempo, which is even subverted with the multiple low-cost Octopuses and even the pre-curve, land-destroying Leviathans, sea creatures really only have one problem.

They're really easy targets.

It sounds counterintuitive, but the larger your creatures are, the more likely they are to be removed. You might be able to grant An Offer You Can't RefuseAn Offer You Can't Refuse in response to a MurderMurder, but can you then NegateNegate a Path to ExilePath to Exile?

Your larger sea creatures burn through your mana, sometimes your lands, making protecting them harder. The more intense their effects, the more desirable they are to remove for all other players. And suddenly, no more sea creatures.

Some have protections, but not all of them, and at the end of the day, they all rely on being present on the board to defeat your opponents conventionally.

Unless you're the Nemesis of ReasonNemesis of Reason, then you're just trying to mill them out.