Community

I have two Stormtide Leviathan s. I love everything about it, artwork, effects, concept. I want to build a deck around it. Help me out! It doesn't have to amazing, just effective within a budget. I have good number of blue cards from a 2013 deck builder kit, and the Depths of Power intro deck. I may be willing to spend a few bucks on cards I don't have if they make a big difference.

I'd prefer a mono blue deck, but I'm open to a splash of a second colour.

The other option is to put Stormtide Leviathan into my existing blue/white Spirit deck, considering most spirits are flying... but I don't really know if it will work or not.

Anyway... go build me a deck people! THANKS

Whats your actual budget? For about a buck a pop you can get High Tide . It's probably the best way you'll have in mono U for getting out an early Leviathan. I have a Sea Monster deck that plays the same way I imagine this would, and it's a lifesaver. Gets you a t5 Leviathan, or a t3 Invocation. I'd also consider adding Sky Diamond or another card I use for mono U, Apprentice Wizard . Then add in some draw and some counterspells, a few other creatures, and boom you're done! 

There is another alternative, and thats to go the Quest for Ula's Temple route. You'll need to be more creature heavy for this to work though, but a U/G deck with small mana dorks to up your creatures and other cool big guys like Simic Sky Swallower become avilable. 

I think your best bet will be U/G. Green for ramp, blue for counter magic + Leviathan. Honestly, a single Leviathan should just flat out win games, you just have to play smart (AKA, keep counter mana up). You can also go Mono U + artifacts, but artifact ramp is usually a bit more mana intensive for what you get (Rampant Growth vs. Manalith). What format is this for? Casual? Standard? that makes a big difference in card choices.
 

There are several good ways to win with Stormtide. You can try ramp, which seeks to get him out early by building up mana faster than your opponent can. Everflowing Chalice with proliferate sources is one of my favorite ways to mana ramp, but it's highly vulnerable to artifact/permanent removal. High Tide is another good way to go, and can be particarly effective with the "free" spells from the Urza block such as Cloud of Faeries , Snap , Frantic Search , or Palinchron .

Control is another way to go... run plenty of counterspells, hide behind Fog Bank s and Fog effects if you want to go , or maybe you go and run counters and removal spells. Black also opens up other avenues of ramp like Dark Ritual or Cabal Coffers .

Black also opens up a third way to get Stormtide out fast, and that's reanimation. With , you can use Buried Alive or the aforementioned Frantic Search to dump a Stormtide into your graveyard, and then bring it back cheaper than you could cast it with something like Animate Dead or a flipped Nezumi Graverobber .

In February, Gatecrash is coming out and it has the Simic guild which is green and blue. The guild leader and the guildmage are both merfolk and I am sure there will be alot of good cards for a deck such as yours. The Master of the Pearl Trident in a merfolk deck featureing your Stormtide would be awesome!