The official Explorers of the Deep preconstructed deck from The Lost Caverns of Ixalan is widely considered one of the most cohesive, explosive, and powerful Simic (Green-Blue) kindred products ever printed. Led by the indomitable frontline scout, Hakbal of the Surging Soul, this deck turns a traditional tribal strategy into a rapid-fire tempo engine centered heavily around the Explore mechanic and +1/+1 counters.
Hakbal operates as both the engine and the gas for your underwater army:
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The Scout Ahead: At the beginning of your combat phase, each Merfolk creature you control explores. This allows you to either filter lands directly into your hand to thin your deck, or stack +1/+1 counters on your battlefield while sculpting your upcoming draws.
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The Floodgates: Whenever Hakbal attacks, you can put a land card from your hand straight onto the battlefield.
In this PreconForge Guide, we will break down the official out-of-the-box card list, eliminate the slower, clunkier elements that disrupt your low-mana creature curve, and highlight the absolute best additions to transform your school of Merfolk into an unblockable tidal wave.
The Strategy: Maximizing Top-Deck Manipulation and Land Value
Out of the box, the deck features phenomenal high-tier enchantments and synergy pieces like Hardened Scales, Branching Evolution, and Kindred Discovery. However, because it is a preconstructed deck, it includes several high-mana spells and slow-moving reactive pieces that hold back your true competitive potential.
To fully unlock Hakbal’s power, your primary strategy should focus on cheap Merfolk saturation and aggressive top-deck manipulation. Because Hakbal triggers an explore action for every single Merfolk on your board at the start of combat, expanding your board state early with low-mana bodies guarantees mass filtration. Furthermore, because exploring fills your hand with extra lands, we need ways to weaponize those cards or maximize top-deck interaction.
Top 5 Cards to Cut from the Official Precon
To lower your mana profile and optimize your tribal velocity, extract these five lower-performing cards from the default Wizards decklist:
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Commander’s Sphere: A generic 3-mana artifact mana rock. In a dedicated Simic deck running green, paying 3 mana for a mana rock is incredibly slow, especially when your commander naturally cheats lands onto the battlefield on attack.
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Curse of the Swine: A mass removal spell that replaces opponents‘ threats with 2/2 Boar tokens. Operating at sorcery speed, it takes up valuable mana that should instead be spent building an overwhelming board presence of your own.
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Deeproot Historian: A 4-mana Merfolk that grants Retrace to your creature spells. While it gives you a way to utilize extra lands from your hand, paying 4 mana for an ability that requires you to recast dead creatures instead of simply winning the game via combat is too slow.
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Ravenform: A sorcery-speed blue removal spell that exiles a creature or artifact and leaves a 1/1 bird. Simic has access to faster, instant-speed interactions that do not require you to drop your active tempo during your main phase.
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Temple of Mystery (and Temple of the False God): Temple of Mystery natively enters the battlefield tapped, killing your early momentum. Meanwhile, Temple of the False God is a dead card in your opening hand until you have four other lands, which can severely stall a fast-paced tempo deck.
Budget Upgrades (Under $3 per card)
These affordable additions inject your deck with low-mana tribal evasiveness, high-velocity card draw, and unmatched utility.
The Aggressive One-Drops
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Triton Shorestalker (and Mist-Cloaked Herald): Pure simplicity. These are 1-mana Merfolk that are completely unblockable. Dropping these on turn one ensures that when Hakbal hits the board, you immediately explore with an unblockable threat that can safely chip away at opponents‘ life totals.
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River Sneak: Another cheap, unblockable 2-mana Merfolk that gets an automatic +1/+1 buff until the end of the turn whenever another Merfolk enters the battlefield under your control.
Exploiting the Card Flow
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Chasm Skulker: While not a Merfolk, it scales massively with +1/+1 counters every time you draw a card. Given the massive amount of card draw generated by cards already in the precon like Seafloor Oracle and Kindred Discovery, this creature grows out of control instantly.
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Tishana’s Tidebinder: A highly disruptive Merfolk with Flash that counters an activated or triggered ability upon entering the battlefield, stripping the source permanent of all its abilities.
Premium Upgrades (The Abyssal Overlords)
If you are ready to invest extra resources at the forge to unlock competitive, high-powered combat engines and undeniable tribal lords, look out for these premier assets:
The Missing Royalty
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Lord of Atlantis: The single biggest omission from the default preconstructed list. This classic 2-mana lord gives all your other Merfolk a +1/+1 buff and Islandwalk. Combined with cards that transform your opponents‘ lands into Islands, it makes your entire board completely unblockable across the table.
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Vodalian Hexcatcher: A premier modern Merfolk lord with Flash that gives your school +1/+1. More importantly, it turns your entire army into a defensive line of counterspells, allowing you to sacrifice a Merfolk at any time to counter a target instant or sorcery unless its controller pays 1 mana.
Elite Top-Deck Control
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Oracle of Mul Daya: Since Hakbal causes your entire board to reveal the top card of your library via Explore, playing with the top card of your library revealed allows you to plan your plays flawlessly. It also allows you to play an extra land on your turn, draining your hand of excess resources.
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Danny Pink: A phenomenal premium addition for counter-heavy decks. Under his watch, whenever a counter is put on a creature you control for the first time each turn (such as through Hakbal’s mass explore phase), you draw a card. This keeps your hand fully loaded with answers.
PreconForge Verdict: Is it worth it?
The official Explorers of the Deep preconstructed deck is a masterclass in tribal design, delivering top-tier components like Herald of Secret Streams and Hardened Scales right inside the box. However, by fine-tuning the list explicitly around Hakbal of the Surging Soul, purging the slow sorcery-speed removal, and introducing low-mana unblockable threats alongside Lord of Atlantis, you transform a casual precon into an unstoppable, high-velocity ocean wave.
Stoke the fires of the forge, flood the battlefield with your aquatic vanguard, and let us know in the comments below how many lands you managed to cheat into play in a single turn!
Are you keeping your Explorers of the Deep deck strictly focused on traditional +1/+1 counter stacking, or are you introducing aggressive Islandwalk tools to bypass your opponents‘ defenses entirely? Let’s keep the strategy conversation moving forward!
