Hello and welcome to Commander Bites!

Today we are going to be taking a look at Namor the Sub-Mariner!

Namor is a three mana */4 with flying, whose power is equal to the number of Merfolk you control and whenever you cast a noncreature spell with one or blue mana symbols in its mana cost, create that many blue Merfolk creature tokens.

Game Plan

Namor is a Commander that both plays into the mono-blue devotion theme in a fairly unique way while also playing into a go wide strategy that Merfolk happen to be pretty solid at.

Making a mono-blue typal deck with a focus on Merfolk is not that difficult and has a decent number of cards that can support one or the other in a way that works really well together.

Support

While we do work well with being a Merfolk typal deck, we also need some support in making our noncreature spells cheaper in order to have Namor make more Merfolk tokens.

Geist of Saint Thalia works wonders in this regard because for two mana she can make noncreature spells we cast cost one mana less to cast. Since a lot of blue instants happen to be pip intensive with usually one generic mana, that can be an upside on mana costs especially with spells like Rewind, which counters target spell and let’s us untap four lands and has two blue mana symbols.

A way that allows us to benefit casting our noncreature spells while also being a Merfolk is Hydro-Channeler which can tap to add a blue mana to cast only instants and sorceries or one and tap to filter the mana to one of any color that can only be used for instants and sorceries.

Eluge, the Shoreless Sea also works well because they allow the first instant or sorcery we cast each turn cost a blue mana or one generic mana less to cast for each land we control with a flood counter on it and when it enters or attacks we put a flood counter on a land to make that land an Island in addition to its other types as long as it has a flood counter on it.

Onto the actual Merfolks we want, there are a bevy of lords for Merfolk like Master of Pearl Trident and Lord of Atlantis which gives other Merfolk we control +1/+1 and islandwalk, Vodalian Hexcatcher to give other Merfolk we control +1/+1 and we can sacrifice a Merfolk to counter target noncreature spell unless its controller pays 1 mana, Mist Dancer which gives other Merfolk we control +1/+0 and flying.

Lullmage Mentor is also a great card for us that happens to work with our strategy because whenever a spell or ability we control counters a spell, we may put a 1/1 Merfolk creature token and we can tap seven untapped Merfolk we control to counter target spell.

What’s more we have cards that synergize well with the Merfolk in Summon: Leviathan, which bounces each creature that isn’t a Kraken, Leviathan, Merfolk, Octopus, or Serpent to it’s owner’s hand for its first chapter and for the next two chapters we have it so that whenever a creature of one of those types attacks we draw a card.

With us being a mono-blue deck that cares about the number of blue mana symbols in our spells, then we can utilize cards like Archmage’s Charm to counter a spell, draw two cards, or gain control of a nonland permanent with mana value one or less, Cryptic Command to choose two between counter target spell, bounce a permanent, tap all creatures our opponents control, and/or draw a card, or even Fated Infatuation to make a token copy of a creature we control and scry 2.

I would also personally recommend playing Future Sight, which does make us play with the top card of our library revealed and also allows us to play the top card of our library, which allows us more cards that can be harder to interact with and has three blue mana symbols we can use.

Setbacks

The hardest thing that this deck does have to deal with is primarily with our board being interacted with.

We have plenty of access to counter spells to play into the midrange game for a good bit, but if we don’t have those interaction pieces then we can succumb to a board wipe.

What’s more, a majority of our field presence is tokens that have low power and low toughness, which means that even a small dedication to a -X/-X spell can clear our board at any moment if we do not have the interaction for it.

This deck has the capacity to be fairly proactive, but at the cost of potential resources with regards to Merfolk if we don’t happen to have our Merfolk lords in play to give our tokens a boost. If a lord gets removed from a -X/-X spell, then the boost that the tokens were given does go away, meaning our board has the potential of getting decimated.

We may also struggle a bit with making sure we have enough mana to do what we want. We have conditional mana dorks which does help, but if they are destroyed before we can tap them for mana, then that really doesn’t help us.

The deck being a combination of proactive and reactive can be a struggle if we have a need a proactive card and we have a reactive card or vice versa, and that comes with making sure we build our deck correctly, which can be dependent on what sort of strategy we want to lean more towards.

Bracket Rating: High 3, Low 4

I do think that Namor provides a versatile deck experience that can handle itself in the higher brackets decently well.

There is plenty of variety for Namor as a strategy that actually incentivizes you to play mana intensive spells in order to have more Merfolk tokens so that can open up deck building a good bit.

Where the deck may struggle with keeping their board in play, for the most part the deck can handle itself pretty well if made correctly. Even in a casual typal deck where the goal is to have a massive go wide board of Merfolk can be well facilitated by Namor.

Thank you for reading, see you all tomorrow!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual