Mustelids

I launched this site in July 2021 with the intention to post about my Magic TCG adventures with my two sons. There was no in-store play in Canada at the time as we were still dealing with Covid but the boys and I continued to play at home. I have a memory like a sieve and this was my way to start (however late) to document our Magic journey, mostly so that I could at any time I wanted, scroll down memory lane. There was no intention for this site to be more than that. Yet, somehow, traffic slowly grew. And more recently, not so slowly!

It suddenly jumped early this year with January seeing the highest traffic to date – A nearly 50% jump over the previous best month back in December 2022. I thought that it was a blip but traffic every month since then has either met or topped that 2022 peak. May in particular marked another major jump, exceeding January’s traffic by more than 50%. The growth has been such that 2025 traffic has already exceeded my former best ever entire year and we are not even half way through the year! Wow!

Much of the traffic driving this growth is coming from the Magic TCG: Set Names and Symbols page. I originally put it together to help me remember all the sets but it’s clear that others are finding it useful as well. I will continue to maintain it and backfill the older information to make it even more useful.

Another popular page has been the one about my building a mustelids deck. Who knew? The page bout all the sets makes sense but this one surprised me. I wrote it while Bloomburrow was still in the preview phase. I saw back then that many of these could go into a promising Izzet Prowess deck. I followed it up with one for an Izzet Otter Typal deck for Arena S01 but that one is not getting as much attention. To be fair, the deck needs more than otters!

It is still pretty cool to see that Izzet Prowess is currently one of the decks dominating Standard despite lack of focus on otters. Maybe an otter deck might work better in a different format. Maybe I should try to build a mustelid Brawl deck!

Not catching on with the world is my ongoing journey to create the ultimate Standard B01 Orzhov Cleric deck. Looks like I may be the only one trying to accomplish this feat! But the spotlight may be about to shine on this deck with Final Fantasy about to come out and featuring what might be the best Cleric card in a long time. Look for my usual post about the clerics in the upcoming set for more information – it’s coming soon.

All this to say hi to everyone dropping in and thank you for making this little site a stop on your Internet journey.

When Bloomburrow previews began, I got excited about building some kind of mustelid typal deck. To save you a click back to the original article, mustelids are a family of small carnivorous mammals. It includes weasels, otters, badgers. minks and the fearsome wolverines.

I realized that I have not shared any mustelid decks since then. I’ll remedy that today.

A quick search reveals that there are 22 mustelid cards in Standard. Not much has changed since my last article with these being mostly otters with a sprinkle of badgers and weasels. The entire colour wheel is represented but most cards fall in Blue and Red. So no big surprise, I built on my original idea, an Izzet Otter Prowess deck. It’s gone through a few iterations and this is what the current deck looks like:

Deck

3 Seize the Secrets (OTJ) 64
3 Bria, Riptide Rogue (BLB) 379
1 Tempest Angler (BLB) 235
4 Stormcatch Mentor (BLB) 234
2 Ral, Crackling Wit (BLB) 230
4 Coruscation Mage (BLB) 131
3 Stormchaser’s Talent (BLB) 75
2 Pearl of Wisdom (BLB) 64
3 Valley Floodcaller (BLB) 79
3 Shore Up (DMU) 64
3 Stasis Field (MOM) 79
2 Into the Flood Maw (BLB) 52
2 Long River’s Pull (BLB) 58
2 Demonic Ruckus (OTJ) 120
10 Island (THB) 251
1 Lilypad Village (BLB) 255
6 Mountain (THB) 253
1 Restless Spire (WOE) 260
2 Spirebluff Canal (OTJ) 270
3 Swiftwater Cliffs (NEO) 277

Sideboard

2 Kitsa, Otterball Elite (BLB) 54
2 Stormsplitter (BLB) 154
3 Meeting of Minds (MOM) 66
2 Freeze in Place (WOE) 50

Now, the big question: How does it play? Let’s start by saying that this is far from a Tier 1 or Tier 2 deck. As it stands today, it has only won 35% of the time with an 18-33 record. The deck can be quite explosive but can also be frustrating when you either don’t get your creatures onto the battlefield or they don’t last long enough for Prowess to kick in.

There are a couple of potential improvements:

Make the deck more aggressive by dropping the Stasis Fields in favour of Monstrous Age
Drop Bria, Riptide Rogue in favour of a couple of creatures (Elusive Otter perhaps) and a couple of spells
Cut a land more and add an additional spell

As for next steps, I’m going to play with the recommendations above and add this deck to my deck portfolio here on the site where I can easily update it as I make changes.

If you’re playing an Izzet Otter deck, drop me a note below and let me know what has worked for you.

Family Magic

A Canadian family playing Magic: The Gathering and other games (and not all are TCGs)

Wow and thank you!

Building an Izzet Otter Typal deck for Arena S01