Strategy

TKTK: need to playtest now that I retooled this to just be frogs as hell. Probably still basically plays like a control list? Might be midrangier? I really don't know. Still super removal heavy.

This deck is a control list that intends to kill the opponent with frog tokens. Plan A is to make a ton of frogs, give them the ability to do damage with [[Panpipes of Pnom]] or [[Lord of Unland]] or something and chip away at the opponent while we drown all their scariest threats. Plan B is to deploy some big nasties of our own and outpace the opponent while they're locked down to topdecks and we've got established card velocity. We end the game by stabilizing and establishing inevitability. We want to grind out a long game.

Strengths

TKTK needs playtesting to know for sure.

Most good decks right now are midrange lists. They tend to be fast midrange lists, but they focus more on card quality than raw speed or building card advantage. We excel at removing strong cards to clear the way for our own.
This list leans way into forced movement. It is a challenge for our opponent to keep threats in a position where they can attack from an advantage, and it is easy for us to do the same.

Weaknesses

TKTK needs playtesting to know for sure.

A fast enough deck gets us on the back foot before we can stabilize.
Our own big expensive threats also die to removal, so there is a danger of getting blown out if we aren't mindful of what resources our opponent has.
Control decks can be difficult to pilot in unfamiliar metagame environments; it's hard to know what threats are serious enough to need immediate answering without knowing which worse threats might be coming.
Other mono-water lists likely also run many submerge minions, so lots of our drowning-based removal won't kill a minion and we're therefore forced to rely on forced movement into a [[Bottomless Pit]] or something.
Be wary of the [[Lugbog Cat]].

Card Packages

Removal

Kill Spells

[[Atlantean Fate]] punishes high-value sites and removes up to four squares of minions at once.
[[The Great Drowning of Men]] is very well named and can actually destroy sites!
[[Brobdingnag Bullfrog]] is a frog AND swallows something.
[[Giant Shark]] in the water turns [[Riptide]] into a door finisher! :)
[[Call of the Sea]] can drown five squares worth of minions. Potentially huge swing.
[[The Flood]]'s "submerge everything" is extremely powerful and you get to choose WHICH minion of each type survives. Except [[Maiden, Mother, Crone]] which always dies so keep an eye out for that. Permanently flooding the realm makes [[Anui Undine]] have twenty power.
[[Wrath of the Sea]] is yet another "submerge (almost) everything" effect.
[[Thin Ice]] is one of the better sites to force movement onto.

Theft

[[Pied Piper of Hameln]] messes with all those [[Necromancers]] running around, steals other frog tokens, and makes some other just-for-value minions really hard to use.
[[Mesmerism]] is game-endingly good if you target the right thing and gaining permanent control for four mana is buck wild.

Forced Movement

[[Unland Angler]] does [[Coy Nixie]] stuff but only affects adjacent minions and only while it's submerged BUT it affects all adjacent enemy minions to move. Park it under a [[Thin Ice]] and laugh all the way to the bank.
[[Gloam Toads]] are frog-esque and force movement and slap things for 6 damage AND can scoot your own minion forward for an extra step if you're cheeky like that.
[[Riptide]] can move an Avatar, can move one of our threats into a flooded enemy site for an advantageous attack, doesn't target a unit, and replaces itself.
[[Innsmouth Dock]] is mostly useful for scooting our own units forward but moving an adjacent enemy onto it can put them in range to be attacked by one of our threats.
[[Maelström]] being optional is nice, and moving every minion can be pretty sweet.
[[River Rapids]] is kind of like a slightly worse [[Wuthering Heights]] which is to say that it's still super good.
[[Undertow]] only moves a unit on entering the realm and only within the body of water but that's still really useful.

Deadly Sites

[[Bottomless Pit]] makes [[River Rapids]] extremely deadly. Sit your [[Waveshaper]] on it and you don't have to worry about most minions attacking you. If you can play it to a rubble that has an [[Unland Angler]] or something on it you can have a great time.
[[Troll Bridge]] is either card advantage or a strike for three when an enemy steps onto it. Hey, you know what makes enemies step onto things? Half our deck!

Card Advantage

Actually Drawing

[[Pnakotic Manuscript]] makes [[Plague of Frogs]] read "spend one mana to draw seven spells."
[[Salmon of Knowledge]] means frogs can go fishing and 3 mana to draw 3 70% of the time is pretty good.
[[Geyser]] is really just a cantrip but giving airborne and flooding a site AND drawing a card is huge. You can scoot a guy onto [[Bottomless Pit]] safely with this.
[[Return to Nature]] is an extremely powerful recursion engine. It replaces itself, lets you reuse [[Toolboxes]], lets you reuse [[Return to Nature]], and can hose decks that care about keeping stuff in cemeteries.
[[Overflow]] draws a site and lets you play an extra one. This deck runs 6, 7, and 8 drops so ramping into those is prudent.

Sort Of Drawing

[[Toolbox]] is so good that I don't like the effect it has on the game as a whole or on deckbuilding specifically. But I mostly built this deck to try to win games so here it is. Run more [[Legion of Gall]]. Print more [[Bureau of Occult Control]] effects. Make [[Toolbox]] bad. I know it solves problems inherent to a best-of-one game but it's just too versatile.

Yes I Know Card Selection Isn't Card Advantage But It's Still Good

[[Kelp Cavern]] can get you something back immediately from [[Return to Nature]] so that's cute.

Threats

What If Frogs Could Kill You

[[Panpipes of Pnom]] makes frogs do 2 damage!
[[Torch and Pitchfork]] makes frogs more bigger!
[[Lord of Unland]] makes frogs do 1 damage!

Fear the Waters

[[Anui Undine]] turns flooding into murder. I'll be honest, she's not particularly good but I like her and we can usually flood deep enough into enemy territory that she's a significant source of damage.
[[Great Old One]] floods everything but 8 mana for 16 power is terrifying. The whole point of the game plan is to go long, so 8 mana is resolutely achievable.
[[Floodplain]] only floods something on our turn, and only something adjacent, but that's not irrelevant and means a [[Bottomless Pit]] or [[Great Wall]] can still provide water affinity.
[[Island Leviathan]] is great if we can get to eight water affinity. We want to play a long game, so that's pretty doable.
[[Watery Grave]] gives us free value for drowning guys, and jeez do we want to be drowning guys.

Where Do The Frogs Even Come From Though

[[Plague of Frogs]] is SEVEN bodies, wherever we want, for one mana.
[[Gift of the Frog]] is two mana to draw a card, which is a solid rate, and it comes with a frog.
[[Pollimorph]] is two mana to banish a nearby threat and stop needing to worry about it.
[[Four Fat Frogs]] makes four blockers and has adorable art.
[[Croaking Swamp]] is a site that makes a blocker.
[[Tadpole Pool]] makes THREE blockers!

The Other Stuff

It's Just Super Good And I Have One Okay

[[Aquamarine Core]] is free real estate.
[[Mirror Realm]] is just a second copy of whatever the best site in the realm is.
[[Great Wall]] prevents movement by our opponent without restricting us

The Collection

[[Blizzard]] prevents units and sites from being attacked. Buys you a turn almost every time!
[[Gift of the Frog]] means a [[Toolbox]] can get a frog.
[[Led Astray]] is forced movement that clears a whole site at once.
[[Return to Nature]] just in case we don't draw a regular one and something needs to go on the bottom of the spellbook.
[[Riptide]] draws a card and moves something, which is good enough to [[Toolbox]].
[[Sleep]] turns off a threat and presents an interesting problem for the opponent to solve.
[[Ice Lance]] makes it so that a [[Toolbox]] can be a door finisher.
[[Overflow]] draws a card and plays an extra site. Drawing a card is almost good enough for a slot in the collection in the first place.
[[Trial by Water]] is an extra removal spell.
[[Torch and Pitchfork]] is a way to make frog tokens do damage.

Mulligans

The critical thing to have in an opening hand is a way to slow down a faster attacker. A solid defensive site to play forward with a way to force movement onto it like a [[Coy Nixie]] with a [[Thin Ice]] is the dream. Big scary threats are actually kind of scarce in the deck, so it's worth holding onto one if you don't have card draw early, but not ideal. Remember that [[Kelp Cavern]] can get it back from the bottom later, or [[Deep-Sea Mermaids]] either from a real draw or from a [[Toolbox]] can get it straight to hand, so a mulligan putting an expensive threat on the bottom doesn't mean you won't see it again. Ultimately you want some combination of a way to kill something, a way to draw cards, and forced movement in pretty much that order of priority.

Changes

Revision 2026-04-26: made the deck worse on purpose to focus more on frog stuff.
Revision 2026-04-22: updated primer to more usable format.

Updates Under Consideration

[[Brocéliande]] gives beasts stealth and frogs are beasts.
[[Pond]] makes beasts cheaper and lets you cheat threshold. Cheating threshold doesn't really matter but a turn 2 [[Salmon of Knowledge]] would be sick as hell.
[[Blizzard]] is good enough for the collection and might be good enough to mainboard.
[[Into the Abyss]] is a very strong removal spell but it only works on one target.
[[Sacred Stag]] is a very strong beast.
[[Lugbog Cat]] is a very strong beast and with how much flooding we do could be easily deployed somewhere nasty.

Frogs!

@Anathema