(Updated for Historic)

This deck revolves mainly around two cards:

; .

     - The main objective is to stall the opponent until you can make a decisive blow with your army and/or with your flyers. A well placed Revival // Revenge preceding the final blow can give you the game very often.

- Dreadhorde Invasion can be quickly accelerated by Naban's shenanigans, but it can become costly quickly if you have two or even three on the board. It can be compensated with Elite Guardmage and Revival // Revenge.
     - Gleaming Overseer gives your army hexproof. This is awesome especially if you make a token copy of it, because you end up with a Gleaming Overseer with hexproof. Another very crucial point is that it gives your army "Menace". Your main goal is then to put holes in your enemy's defense forcing him to make painful sacrifices or simply womp massive "Lifelink" damage in is face. Your army needs to have a power of six if you want it to have "Lifelink". Once it does, life is rarely a problem if you properly controlled the battlefield.

     - Eternal Skylord gives flying to your army. It is generally a killing blow when you summon it (especially if Naban, Dean of Iteration is on the board because it "Amass 2" two times!


- Naban, Dean of Iteration doubles every "ETB" effects...
     - Control with Merfolk Trickster ; Deputy of Detention ; Exclusion Mage
         - Exclusion Mage and Merfolk Trickster allow you the save precious time, but like mentioned above they allow you to remove key blockers for your army to hit the enemy.

         - Deputy of Detention is extremely powerful paired with Naban, Dean of Iteration. They will be magnets; your enemy will throw everything at them. That's fine, because most of the time it means Naban, Dean of Iteration will survive as your army keeps growing safely until it reaches the magic 6 +1/+1 counters. It can be instantly put on the battlefield from the graveyard with Revival // Revenge and since Naban survives most of the time, life and card advantage is generally not an issue.

    - Life gain and draw with Cloudkin Seer ; Elite Guardmage
        - Elite Guardmage paired with Naban, Dean of Iteration gives you six hit points and two cards!

     - Accelerate amass and more importantly protect your army with Gleaming Overseer.

Thassa, Deep-Dwelling is extremely useful, but I believe one is more than enough. She is good, but you need to have a good setup established on the board for her to shine and not just be a dead card. Most of the deck is blue so she very often becomes an "Invincible" creature, but her main purpose is of course her ability to cause blink on a creature. Her tap ability gives you more opportunities to punch holes in your enemy's defense.

Wizard's Retort main purpose is to prevent board wipes. There are only three in the deck, they must be held for critical counters unless you know it's safe to burn them.

Riptide Laboratory is wonderful. It allows you to bounce back a wizard if it is about to die. If you cannot counter a board wipe you can at least save one creature (and more importantly if it is a Deputy of Detention the creatures exiled face the same fate as the ones on the board). It also allows you to assign wizard to block and then bounce it back to cancel an attack. Of course, if you have the mana and the time, you can simply bounce a wizard back in your hand at the end of the opponent's turn and cast it again the next turn for more ETB sweetness. Do not underestimate this card!

Quasiduplicate is very often a god send since pretty much everything on the board triggers effect when entering on the battlefield. As metionned above, when Gleaming Overseer is copied, it gives you an extra layer of hexproof protection since it is a "zombie token".

Bloodchief's Thirst is multi purpose, but if you believe your opponent is running huge creatures with "protection from multicolor" or many Planeswalkers, you should hold on to them.