Commander Deck Tech - Eluge, the Shoreless Sea

Bloomburrow brought us amazing, diverse legendary creatures, which, of course, all Commander players liked. We also got a cycle of 5 monocolored Elemental legendary creatures, so, today, we'll work with the sea: Eluge, the Shoreless Sea is the star of this list, which focuses on clones and big spells!

Eluge, the Shoreless Sea discounts the cost of instant spells and sorceries, not only by one generic mana like most cards with this mechanic, but by one blue mana. This means we'll be able to cast big spells or "X-cost" spells for little, or even no mana at all.

With this in mind, we'll build a list that focuses on non-legendary clones to discount the cost of X-cost spells even more and cast them without paying any mana. Our incredible rewards will be extra turns and expensive spells.

This list includes many win conditions. You can put many Eluges in play with a lot of power and toughness, deal lethal commander damage with the original Eluge, create several tokens, or just kill your opponents with non-combat damage. You'll also have extra turns that will help you set up these strategies. Without further ado, let's go!

Acceleration

Like any great modern Commander deck, this list plays a few mana rocks: Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Thought Vessel (as we'll also draw many cards), Mind Stone, and Throne of Eldraine, which we added because this is a mono color deck and because, as a bonus, it'll draw us two cards for just two mana.

It also plays Sapphire Medallion to discount costs in general. Extraplanar Lens, alongside our Snow-Covered Islands, will create twice as many mana for us, and is a fail-safe if we can't keep our commander on the board at all times.

Finally, we added High Tide to set up better turns early to mid game and to be able to cast heavier spells more quickly.

Non-Legendary Clones

As the years went on, MTG gave us cards that became common in Commander nowadays: non-legendary clones. This created countless options for us, Commander players, and that is also true for this list. For instance, if we can put multiple Eluges in play, we can discount the cost of our instants and sorceries even more. With 3 Eluges in play, and 8 lands with Flood counters, you'll discount their cost by 24 mana in total.

So, we'll use one of the first non-legendary clones to be released in the history of the game: Sakashima the Impostor. Its ability, which lets you return it to your hand, means we'll get even more Flood counters when it enters the battlefield. We also added its current version, Sakashima of a Thousand Faces, particularly because it goes around the rule for legendaries.

These rules don't apply to Spark Double and Auton Soldier as well. I'll highlight Auton Soldier out of these two mainly because it gives Myriad to our fish. For this reason alone, you may say it is the strongest clone in the deck, so I highly recommend you save a few answers when you play it so an enemy removal does not surprise you.

Irenicus's Vile Duplication gives us a flying fish copy, and thus gives us the perfect target to copy later on. After all, flying 6/6, or 7/7 fish are way more threatening than regular ones.

Quantum Misalignment virtually gives us two clones for just 5 mana if its Rebound resolves until it is our turn again and if Eluge is still a valid target. And, because Eluge discounts the cost of instants and sorceries, a Rite of Replication may give us five Eluges and be quite destructive for our opponents.

Helm of the Host was absolutely crucial; this artifact pioneered the art of creating non-legendary clones. And, finally, we play two modal spells that include great effects besides just cloning: Three Steps Ahead and Sublime Epiphany. Both of them can serve as cloning, counter, and card draw engines - as well as all three at the same time, if you prefer.

Card Draw

Of course, like any monoblue deck, we'll need to draw lots and lots of cards.

Since we use 31 instants in this build, we added Wavebreak Hippocamp, as well as Archmage Emeritus. After all, we'll have 40 chances to draw cards with Archmage Emeritus.

We included Rhystic Study because it is great, as well as popular; it'll draw us lots of cards depending on our opponents. Playing it early on can give us a huge advantage.

Then, we decided to take advantage of the fact Eluge will turn our non-basic lands into Islands, and added powerful card draw, like Flow of Ideas and Flow of Knowledge. They'll draw us cards according to how many Islands we have in play, so they'll draw us many cards all at once. With them, we'll find our answers and more non-legendary clones to keep progressing our game plan.

As we mentioned before, we play a few "x-cost" spells: Pull From Tomorrow, Stroke of Genius, Blue Sun's Zenith, Finale of Revelation, and Drown in Dreams, which can be a finisher. It will make your opponent mill almost their entire deck.

Laboratory Maniac, Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, and Thassa's Oracle can be finishers in this build because we'll discount the cost of our cards quite a lot and they, in turn, will draw us our entire deck. However, we didn't add them to this build in particular.

Finally, Frantic Search can become a "positive spell" in this list: if you cast it for free with Eluge, its effect will let you untap 3 lands. Sea Gate Restoration can be one of our lands or just a great card draw. It also lets us have as many cards as we want in our hand.

Answers and Utility

Monoblue decks need counters, period. We need to prevent our opponents from disrupting our strategy or playing spells that are problematic to our game plan, either immediately or long-term. Consider the threats in play wisely before using any counters, and you'll eventually learn what needs to be countered and what doesn't.

On the cheaper side (2 mana or less), we use An Offer You Can't Refuse, Negate, Arcane Denial, and Counterspell. These counters are classic and popular in Commander, and do their jobs really well. On the upper end, we play Rewind and many other versatile counters: Archmage's Charm, Mystic Confluence, and Cryptic Command (which will also draw us cards besides its other effects), and Disallow, which will deal with activated or triggered abilities for us.

This might be a monoblue deck, but we also play a few spot removals. After all, counters are not everything monoblue plays! We use Pongify, Reality Shift, and Rapid Hybridization to deal with creatures, and Resculpt to deal with creatures or artifacts. These removals are cheap, and their drawbacks aren't that relevant if you consider all the threats seeing play in Commander.

We also play a few arguably broad removals. Curse of the Swine, for instance, can exile most if not all enemy creatures.

For safety, we added Aetherize and Aetherspouts, as they'll be perfect against more aggressive decks that easily build their boards. Cyclonic Rift, when well-played, can be a finisher, particularly if there are 3 or more Eluges in play.

We added a few blinks both to put more Flood counters on our lands with Eluge's ETB mechanic and to protect our commander from possible spot removals. Namely, we added Essence Flux, Ghostly Flicker, Blur, and the blink star, Displacer Kitten. Because of how many non-creature spells we play, we'll be able to put Flood counters on our lands easily when we blink Eluge with Displacer Kitten.

The Flood of Mars gives us the same Flood counters as Eluge, so, it also helps us discount costs, and can "ruin" enemy creatures as well. In this case, you'll need to be careful, as you can end up putting a Flood counter on your commander and turning it into The Flood of Mars.

Hydroelectric Specimen is another way to redirect spot removals on unwanted targets, and is a land if you need it to be because it is a MDFC. Speaking of MDFCs, we also play Sink Into Stupor as removals, so that makes 3 MDFCs in our list.

In addition, we can set up some interesting plays with Archaeomancer, like with Sublime Epiphany. We can create a copy of it with Sublime Epiphany (or use its other modes) and then return it to our hand with our copy of Archaeomancer. Furthermore, we can also return Archaeomancer to our hand with Hullbreaker Horror when we cast any spell.

Considering how many instants and sorceries we play, Hullbreaker Horror will be quite destructive because it can answer basically all enemy spells, or return many problematic permanents to their hand. Copying Hullbreaker Horror with clones and copying spells is also great!

Finally, we have Narset's Reversal, which we can use on enemy spells or on any expensive spells we cast, and Dig Through Time, to look for answers among the seven cards on the top of our deck. It'll give us the resources we need to keep playing.

Extra Turns and Finishers

As we said before, we could play many win conditions that interact with an empty deck because of how many spells we can draw at once. However, first let's discuss the win conditions included in our list, like Psychosis Crawler. It is a great strategy if you prefer to work with clones, particularly because you'll draw many cards constantly.

Talrand, Sky Summoner is also a great creature to clone. In this case, you'll create an army of 2/2 Drake tokens with flying, as this list includes 31 instants and 9 sorceries in all. Shark Typhoon, in turn, can easily be a finisher in this strategy because we'll play many "x-cost" spells with a big "x", and thus create many Shark tokens with flying.

Finally, Nexus of Fate, Time Stretch, and Expropriate will give us extra turns. If we play Time Stretch and Expropriate with Narset's Reversal, it will often end the game on the spot because it is incredibly problematic for your opponents. Particularly if there are many Eluges or Drake/Shark tokens in play. Depending on the game state, you'll hardly lose after you get 4 or more extra turns to play.

In this budget version, we decided to keep the non-legendary clones, and added a few other win conditions, like Laboratory Maniac, and Triskaidekaphile. We also removed our snow-covered lands because this version doesn't include Extraplanar Lens.

Nonetheless, we've kept many of the cards we mentioned in the other version and cut only the most expensive cards. There are more viable options in this build if you're working with a limited budget, and it is still a great control deck if that's what you're looking for.

I'd like to dedicate this article to my dear friend Alan Siqueira, who gave me the idea of putting Eluge and non-legendary clones together in the first place. With this base, there are many strategies you could play, as well as many types of different, fun spells. The sky is the limit with this deck!

Did you like this list? Would you build it in another way? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!