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The Watcher in the Water
Legendary Creature — Kraken
The Watcher in the Water enters tapped with nine stun counters on it. (If a permanent with a stun counter would become untapped, remove one from it instead.) Whenever you draw a card during an opponent's turn, create a 1/1 blue Tentacle creature token. Whenever a Tentacle you control dies, untap up to one target Kraken and put a stun counter on up to one target nonland permanent.
9 / 9
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“Tentacle factory that stun-locks opponents while growing into a 9/9 threat.”
Control
Intermediate
Commander damage, Tokens swarm, Control
Tokens, Draw, Control
Strategy
The Watcher in the Water is a defensive powerhouse that rewards you for drawing cards during your opponents' turns while slowly untapping itself through tentacle sacrifice loops. Your game plan revolves around generating a steady stream of 1/1 tentacle tokens whenever you draw during opponent turns—through cards like Alms Collector, Teferi's Ageless Insight, or simple draw effects—then sacrificing those tokens to untap the Watcher and stun-lock your opponents' best threats. Once the Watcher fully untaps, you're sitting on a 9/9 creature that can tap for value or swing for massive commander damage.
The deck wins through a combination of commander damage and gradual control. By keeping opponents' key creatures or artifacts tapped and stunned, you buy time while your tentacle army grows. You can pivot to combat once the board is sufficiently locked down, or lean into blue's control elements to protect your strategy. The beauty is flexibility: some games you're a tempo deck trading resources, others you're a combo machine untapping and stunning relentlessly.
Strategy generated by Tapped Decks AI. Not affiliated with Wizards of the Coast.
Key Synergies
Budget Build
Skip pricey cantrips like Teferi's Ageless Insight and use budget draw like Consecrated Sphinx, Coastal Piracy, or even Bident of Thassa to trigger tentacle production cheaply.
Signature Cards
Inclusion = % of The Watcher in the Water decks running this card. +lift = percentage-point boost over the format average.
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Art Variants
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