Upgrading Commander Precon - Deep Clue Sea (Morska, Undersea Sleuth)

For any Clue token enthusiast, Murders at Karlov Manor was a really great gift. Several cards that interact with this token were featured both in this set itself and one of the new Commander precon decks, Deep Sea Clue, a deck that focuses on that type of token and a few others. It also brings Morska, Undersea Sleuth as the commander!

This is a Bant deck that includes Morska, Undersea Sleuth and Sophia, Dogged Detective as possible commander options.

Sophia is great and fun as a commander, but, to focus more on the Investigate mechanic, we chose to use Morska, who is a little bit faster, in our Commander zone. However, to please all Mystery Machine fans, Sophia and Tiny, her loyal dog, will get a list of their own, dedicated to their Dog token mechanics, at the end of this article.

Morska is quite versatile and very synergistic. She Investigates, disables hand limit in a deck that draws numerous cards rather frequently, and gets +1/+1 counters whenever you draw your second card each turn.

This is a very self-sufficient kit for just 3 mana, and it is precisely because of this that we picked her as our commander for Deep Clue Sea.

Cards We Removed

As usual, we had to get rid of a few cards to add the cards that will improve this list and make it more consistent. We left it with 35 lands - we only removed a Forest and an Island from our mana base.

We also replaced Sungrass Prairie for Rogue's Passage to make Morska Unblockable and kill an opponent with commander damage if possible.

Besides the aforementioned Sophia, Dogged Detective, other creatures like Nadir Kraken, Hornet Queen, and Aerial Extortionist also didn't give us as much value as they seemed to offer, so we removed them too. Confirm Suspicions is a very heavy removal, even though it creates three Clue tokens. Selvala, Explorer Returned and Hydroid Krasis, despite their interesting effects, also didn't make the cut.

Clues and Tokens

This precon really impressed me, particularly. It includes all signets and talismans (Arcane Signet, Azorius Signet, Simic Signet, Selesnya Signet, Talisman of Curiosity, Talisman of Progress, and Talisman of Unity) as accelerators, and also brings cards that have a lot of synergy with the rest of the deck, like Academy Manufactor and Adrix and Nev, Twincasters.

A few other highlights in this deck are Koma, Cosmos Serpent, Alandra, Sky Dreamer, Farewell, and some alternative win conditions like Mechanized Production.

So, to make this list, which already has some incredible cards, even better, we brought more support for the Clue mechanic and the token mechanic in general.

Forensic Gadgeteer lets us activate Clue tokens with just one generic mana, which will save us a lot of mana when we draw cards. We also brought 18 artifacts to create more Clue tokens with Forensic Gadgeteer, which is a great addition to this deck.

Lavinia, Foil to Conspiracy came straight from Ravnica: Clue Edition - She has an interesting ability that creates Clues each time you cast your second spell, and also gives you 2 colorless mana on your opponents' turns. With Forensic Gadgeteer, you might draw 2 cards on your opponent's turn with this card, and, if you have Morska in play, you'll add two +1/+1 counters on her.

These additions will bring you a lot of synergy and significantly improve this precon deck.

Tangletrove Kelp works as a possible win condition if you have a reasonable number of Clue tokens on your battlefield. We also added a few cards that are similar and may potentially end the game exactly like Tangletrove Kelp. Cyberdrive Awakener and Rise and Shine almost do the same thing. The key difference between them is that Cyberdrive Awakener turns your artifacts into 4/4 creatures until the end of your turn, and Rise and Shine keeps your artifacts as creatures with 4 +1/+1 counters.

This is a little dangerous, considering you might get into situations in which your damage isn't enough, and then your opponent plays a global removal and destroys all your artifacts. But these are situations that may happen in any match. As such, it is important to be careful when you use Rise and Shine, because you might risk it all.

Tamiyo's Journal will let us tutor any card, and also Investigate at the beginning of our upkeep. This means we'll be able to look for the cards we need. We may either look for the finishers we mentioned before, or global removals - Farewell, Organic Extinction and Fumigate were the options already included in the original list.

Cards that might give us a solid advantage, like Finale of Revelation and Shimmer Dragon, are great choices as well. We'll look for anything we need - after all, that is the role of a tutor in MTG.

Finally, we have Officious Interrogation. This card might potentially get us very ahead of our opponent because of the finishers we mentioned before that turn Clue tokens into creatures. Even Academy Manufactor and Adrix and Nev, Twincasters, or both, will create many tokens with this card.

Junk Winder also works really well with Officious Interrogation, considering it will let you tap all your opponent's blockers and their other non-land permanents that are relevant. You can take advantage of the huge number of tokens you'll create with the cards we'll show next.

Even though the original list has all 2-cost rocks available in Commander, it is interesting to add some ramp because this deck has dual-type lands, like Canopy Vista, Irrigated Farmland, Scattered Groves and Prairie Stream.

Farseek, Three Visits, and Nature's Lore will get you these non-basic lands so you can accelerate the game early on.

As we said before, we added some support for the huge number of tokens we'll create. Jaheira, Friend of the Forest was a crucial card for this build because it lets you create mana with all your Clue, Food, Treasure tokens and even the tokens created by Koma, Cosmos Serpent. You can then use this mana to draw even more cards, buff your commander's power, or even finish opponents with Psychosis Crawler. If Teferi's Ageless Insight is in play, you'll deal even more damage.

Something that particularly bothered me about this list was the fact that it didn't have many target removals. It only has Swords to Plowshares as a removal and Confirm Suspicions as a counter.

Considering we removed Confirm Suspicions, we decided to add more target removal to fix this issue: Beast Within, Generous Gift, and Path to Exile will remove occasional problematic permanents your opponents might play on the board.

Finally, we had to add Five Hundred Year Diary. Because we'll create many Clue tokens, Five Hundred Year Diary can create a good amount of mana for us, and you can even sacrifice it to draw a card, as it is a Clue. It will let you create almost as much mana as Jaheira.

This is our upgraded Deep Clue Sea deck list! We only changed around 15% of the list, but we added more ramp, consistency, answers, and synergy with Clue tokens, so you can get 100% out of the artifact tokens this deck creates.

Alternative List with Sophia, Dogged Detective

Sophia seems very fun, so we decided to bring you a list entirely dedicated to her, Tiny, and several other Dogs. We added a few cards to this list that interact with +1/+1 counters, like Herald of Secret Streams and Abzan Battle Priest, which are not Dogs, but make sense in the deck.

I was really impressed with this precon because of how powerful the cards in the base list were. I never expected to see Farewell and Koma, Cosmos Serpent on a list like this, for instance. Other than those, there are various other cards in this list that have a lot of potential and might be quite fun - we only added a few more to make it more consistent and boost what it can do.

Did you like this list? Do you prefer Sophia as your commander? How do you like the token mechanic? Tell us your thoughts in the comment section below!

See you next time!