Murders at Karlov Manor has four new Commander Precons. This time around, they each focus on a particular mechanic. Deep Clue Sea is a Bant deck that is all about leveraging your clue tokens for serious value. In this article, I’ll review the new cards that appear in the deck and suggest some budget upgrades.
INVESTIGATING THE NEW COMMANDERS
This deck features two new legendary creatures who synergize with Clue tokens. The face commander is Morska, Undersea Sleuth. This Vedalken Fish Detective makes sure you have a steady stream of clue tokens by giving you one every upkeep. She also grows rapidly, gaining two +1/+1 counters any time you draw your second card in your turn. She makes sure you can never have too many cards in hand by shutting off your maximum hand size.
Sophia, Dogged Detective brings a 2/2 dog token along for the ride, and any time a dog does combat damage to a player you get a Food token and a Clue. Any time you sacrifice an artifact, you put a +1/+1 counter on each Dog you control. Perhaps the most important thing about Sophia is that her Dog Detective companion looks exactly like Scooby-Doo. He even likes Scooby snacks!
While both of these are quite powerful, I think it’s obvious that Morska is well suited to being the deck’s Commander. While Sophia likes Clues, she is far better as the general of a Dog-typal deck than a deck interested in Clues more broadly. In the end, Morska is better at making Clues and better at taking advantage of them.
DETECTING THE VALUE OF THE NEW CARDS
In addition to the two new legendary creatures, Deep Clue Sea also contains 10 Murders at Karlov Manor Commander-exclusive cards. They certainly didn’t skimp when it comes to making sure your Clues would be extra powerful. Let’s take a look at the highlights.
Detective of the Month definitely deserves her award. Any time you draw your second card she cranks out a 2/2 Detective and once you Ascend, your opponent is really going to have a problem, because all of your Detectives become unblockable. Most of the creatures in this deck are detectives, including your Commander!
Ascending in this deck isn’t going to be very hard between all the Clues you can make, and Detective of the Month helps you go wide too.
With On the Trail in play, every time you crack the first clue during your turn, it turns into Explore. That can really allow you to get a lot of mana into play quickly. In addition to letting you cast more powerful spells more quickly, you can sink all that mana into your Clues.
Innocuous Researcher has two powerful effects. It’s attack trigger draws everyone a card, but it breaks that symmetry all on its own, because you get to investigate for every nonland card that gets drawn.
Honestly, if the Researcher stopped there, it would be worth including in this deck. But it also has some of the most powerful words in the game in its text box, “untap all lands you control.” They did make sure to balance this so it isn’t completely busted.
You can’t actually cast spells until your next turn if you choose to do it. But you’ll still have mana available for activated abilities and because this deck can make so many Clue tokens, you’re likely to have something to spend it on.
Merchant of Truth investigates a ton and gives you a powerful payoff for having all those Clues. She gives you one any time a nontoken creature you control dies. Importantly, this isn’t limited to once per turn as such triggers often are these days.
Granting Exalted to all of your clues is quite powerful, as any time you send in a lone attacker they are likely to get a huge buff. Merchant of Truth just so happens to be a great recipient of Exalted since she has Flying. Basically, she can do it all for you.
Tangletrove Kelp is expensive, but it offsets that downside by doing something the turn you play it in most cases. As soon as you go to combat, all your other Clues become 6/6s. Turning your unassuming pile of Clue tokens into a Plant army is going to end a lot of games.
$50 UPGRADES
The goal of Deep Clue Sea is to take advantage of the card advantage Clues give you, while also getting extra synergy out of controlling them. While the precon has lots of great ways to do that, there are a few relatively inexpensive upgrades that will make the deck even better.
Let’s start with three Murders at Karlov Manor detectives who are good at investigating.
Kellan, Inquisitive Prodigy can Investigate with his Adventure and he’s great when he’s in play too. His ability to destroy an artifact when he attacks is really good in Commander as virtually all decks run powerful Artifacts. And, if your opponent doesn’t have an Artifact you can destroy, he can destroy one of yours and draw a card. In this deck, that’ll usually mean getting to draw a card off of a Clue without spending any mana.
Wojek Investigator investigates every upkeep for each opponent who has more cards in hand than you. If you’re playing 4-player Commander, it could certainly end up giving you more than one Clue a turn.
Ezrim, Agency Chief gives you two clues and then he has a great ability that lets you sacrifice them to gain one of three keyword abilities. While all three of those keywords are great, hexproof is the most exciting one. If you make sure to have a mana up and a Clue in play, he’s pretty close to invulnerable.
Next, let’s take a look at a couple of books that give you a huge payoff for having lots of Clues in play. Tamiyo’s Journal generates a Clue every upkeep, and it lets you sacrifice three Clues to tutor up anything. In a singleton format like Commander, that effect can really shine.
Five Hundred Year Diary has the Clue sub-type itself, and it can generate insane amounts of mana in a deck that gets lots of Clues without really trying.
Briarbridge Patrol isn’t the greatest when it comes to making Clue tokens, since you only get them when it damages creatures, and it’s Hill Giant body isn’t exactly good at going into combat. But the Patrol has a very impressive Clue payoff – it lets put a creature from your hand directly into play at the end of your turn, provided you have sacrificed three Clues in a turn.
That type of effect is only worth it when you have cards in your hand of course, but because you cracked Clues to get there, you’re likely to have something to put it into play for free. The Patrol is also great with Tamiyo’s Journal. Use the Journal to search up your Koma, and then put it into play for free at the end of your turn.
Lastly, there’s Urza, Lord High Artificer. He can make a huge Construct in this deck, and turn all of your Clues into mana. He also comes with a great ability for sinking all that extra mana into.
You can find my updated deck list here.
I cut the following cards to make room for these upgrades:
- Whirler Rogue
- Magnifying Glass
- Ransom Note
- Hornet Queen
- Serene Sleuth
- Finale of Revelation
- Graf Mole
FURTHER UPGRADES
If you’re looking to improve Deep Clue Sea even more and you’re working with a little more cash, there are some other cards that you should consider.
There’s the Master Sleuth himself, who not only provides you with a clue, but he can turn every single one of them into Sphinx’s Revelation.
The Ravnica: Clue Edition version of Lonis investigates for every +1/+1 counter that gets placed on him and any time you sacrifice a clue you can put a +1/+1 counter on another creature you control. He’s easy to put counters on thanks to Evolve, so he’ll be spitting out clues, buffing himself, and the whole board quiet easily in this deck.
Doubling Season is a powerful card in many Green decks, but Morska is one of the best Doubling Season commanders we’ve ever seen. Doubling Season will double the clues she produces while also doubling the counters she gains from sacrificing those tokens.
Mondrak, Glory Dominus will also allow you to make more clues. It’s also very easy to make him indestructible in this deck, as you’re likely to have plenty of spare clues lying around.
END STEP
Deep Clue Sea is another excellent Commander Precon. It’s powerful right out of the box, but you can make a few changes to make it even better. What do you think of my suggestions? Let me know on X.
Jacob has been playing Magic for the better part of 24 years, and he especially loves playing Magic’s Limited formats. He also holds a PhD in history from the University of Oklahoma. In 2015, he started his YouTube channel, “Nizzahon Magic,” where he combines his interests with many videos covering Magic’s competitive history. When he’s not playing Magic or making Magic content, he can be found teaching college-level history courses or caring for a menagerie of pets with his wife.