Sometimes, inspiration strikes in an unusual place. I was playing Zoo Tycoon 2 about a week ago. I remembered having fun with Zoo decks in Vintage years ago. Then, I thought, “There should be a zoo Commander deck!” But my inspiration was not about cheap creatures with great support, a la real-life Zoo decks. Nope! Instead, I wanted to build an actual zoo.

So, I spent a few hours looking over every creature in the game of Magic that had a creature type remotely related to real-life creatures, and then, I wrote down every creature I felt represented a real-life creature.

A stronger issue is when the card represents an actual real-life creature by name but when it is clearly not the same in card and mechanics. Take Firefly. It’s a real-life insect, but in Magic, it glows red and breathes fire. Should it count? And what about Killer Bees or King Crab as other examples? Do they count as real-life creatures?

One final distinction was made between a creature that has a name that sounds like a species name as opposed to an adjective that one could call many things in the species. Birds have some strong examples. Take Suntail Hawk. That sounds like a species, and we don’t have any in real life. I didn’t include them on my list. But Royal Falcon just sounds like the name of any falcon that is in a king’s aviary. Sometimes, it seems like a judgment call. What about Mesa Falcon, Bog Rats, or Noble Elephant?

As you can see, trying to suss out what is what can be a bit confusing. But I believe I have a list that really approximates including all real-life creatures.

Originally, I wanted to build a giant, five-colored zoo deck featuring Vampire Bats, Manta Rays, Stampeding Rhinos, Mountain Goats, and Savannah Lions. But the problem was that I had way too many of these awesome animals rocking the block. Instead, I decided to keep things green since a majority of my animals were green anyway. And I built a zoo Commander deck around my green goodies.

But that was not enough. So, I also built a sixty-card deck around my blue sea creatures and called it The Aquarium. Every card included in both decks is fully in the theme. So, who is my Commander for the zoo? Yeva, Nature's Herald will protect them!

These decks are extreme themes. Let’s take a look at each in turn!

The Zoo

"The Zoo"

• Commander (0)

• Creatures (60)
• 1 Anaconda
• 1 Ancient Silverback
• 1 Arctic Wolves
• 1 Bayou Dragonfly
• 1 Bear Cub
• 1 Boa Constrictor
• 1 Bull Elephant
• 1 Bull Hippo
• 1 Charging Rhino
• 1 Crash of Rhinos
• 1 Crashing Boars
• 1 Deadly Insect
• 1 Emerald Dragonfly
• 1 Gang of Elk
• 1 Gibbering Hyenas
• 1 Grizzly Bears
• 1 Hunting Cheetah
• 1 Hunting Moa
• 1 Jungle Lion
• 1 Karoo Meerkat
• 1 King Cheetah
• 1 Locust Swarm
• 1 Lone Wolf
• 1 Lurking Crocodile
• 1 Lynx
• 1 Marsh Boa
• 1 Marsh Viper
• 1 Mire Boa
• 1 Mongrel Pack
• 1 Nimble Mongoose
• 1 Pouncing Jaguar
• 1 Pride of Lions
• 1 Pygmy Razorback
• 1 Rabid Wolverines
• 1 River Boa
• 1 Rogue Elephant
• 1 Silverback Ape
• 1 Slashing Tiger
• 1 Southern Elephant
• 1 Springing Tiger
• 1 Stalking Tiger
• 1 Stampeding Rhino
• 1 Stampeding Serow
• 1 Stampeding Wildebeests
• 1 Tarpan
• 1 Timber Wolves
• 1 Trained Cheetah
• 1 Trained Jackal
• 1 Tree Monkey
• 1 Warthog
• 1 Whippoorwill
• 1 Wild Dogs
• 1 Wild Elephant
• 1 Wild Mammoth
• 1 Wild Mongrel
• 1 Wild Ox
• 1 Wolf Pack
• 1 Wolverine Pack
• 1 Woolly Mammoths
• 1 Zoologist

• Spells (2)
• 1 Commune with Nature
• 1 Game Preserve

• Lands (37)
• 37 Forest

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The only three non-Forests or non-zoo-themed creatures in the deck are the Zoologist, Game Preserve, and Commune with Nature. So, every card fits the theme.

I thought about pulling back the number of creatures in the deck when I have many of the same theme. For example, I have a lot of Snakes. I could pull out two Snakes and a few others. I could pull one of the dragonflies, a tiger, a cheetah, and so forth. I’d want to retain at least one of every basic type of creature, so one boa, one Anaconda, one Bear, one Boar, one Wolf, one Mammoth, one Elephant, and so forth. Otherwise, we have a really boring deck here. So, let’s do that.

Pulled – Trained Cheetah, Slashing Tiger, Southern Elephant, Rogue Elephant, Wild Mammoth, Bayou Dragonfly, Lone Wolf, Timber Wolves, Wild Dogs, Jungle Lion, Deadly Insect

That frees up eleven spots for other cards. What do I put in?

"The Menagerie"

• Commander (0)

• Creatures (49)
• 1 Anaconda
• 1 Ancient Silverback
• 1 Arctic Wolves
• 1 Bear Cub
• 1 Boa Constrictor
• 1 Bull Elephant
• 1 Bull Hippo
• 1 Charging Rhino
• 1 Crash of Rhinos
• 1 Crashing Boars
• 1 Emerald Dragonfly
• 1 Gang of Elk
• 1 Gibbering Hyenas
• 1 Grizzly Bears
• 1 Hunting Cheetah
• 1 Hunting Moa
• 1 Karoo Meerkat
• 1 King Cheetah
• 1 Locust Swarm
• 1 Lurking Crocodile
• 1 Lynx
• 1 Marsh Boa
• 1 Marsh Viper
• 1 Mire Boa
• 1 Mongrel Pack
• 1 Nimble Mongoose
• 1 Pouncing Jaguar
• 1 Pride of Lions
• 1 Pygmy Razorback
• 1 Rabid Wolverines
• 1 River Boa
• 1 Silverback Ape
• 1 Springing Tiger
• 1 Stalking Tiger
• 1 Stampeding Rhino
• 1 Stampeding Serow
• 1 Stampeding Wildebeests
• 1 Tarpan
• 1 Trained Jackal
• 1 Tree Monkey
• 1 Warthog
• 1 Whippoorwill
• 1 Wild Elephant
• 1 Wild Mongrel
• 1 Wild Ox
• 1 Wolf Pack
• 1 Wolverine Pack
• 1 Woolly Mammoths
• 1 Zoologist

• Spells (13)
• 1 Lure of Prey
• 1 Blessings of Nature
• 1 Call of the Herd
• 1 Commune with Nature
• 1 Howl of the Night Pack
• 1 Natural Order
• 1 Nature's Resurgence
• 1 Overwhelming Stampede
• 1 Stream of Life
• 1 Waiting in the Weeds
• 1 Cycle of Life
• 1 Foster
• 1 Game Preserve

• Lands (37)
• 37 Forest

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I added some fun cards in that burst of eleven. This may be the first deck I have ever put Stream of Life into, but it fits. This is more about what works thematically than in terms of the power of the card. Still, I managed a few potent cards. Nature's Resurgence serves as nice card-draw later in the game. Call of the Herd makes nice Elephants now, and both Waiting in the Weeds and Howl of the Night Pack make large numbers of tokens in flavor.

I did not want to have thirteen Overrun variants because I felt most were not in flavor, but to my mind, Overwhelming Stampede fits. You often see animals with a lot of space running around in a stampedesque manner in zoos. Lure of Prey suits the deck, as does Cycle of Life. Natural Order is powerful and fits that theme as well.

That leaves one card: Foster. People at a zoo foster the animals, so I liked it. I didn’t want as much, “Green, rawr!” flavor as the color usually has, and this fit. Cards I considered included Sylvan Paradise and Ana Sanctuary.

The Aquarium

Those decks are fun, so let’s turn my eye toward The Aquarium. My initial Commander for this deck was Chisei, Heart of Oceans, but I didn’t have anywhere near enough real-life sea creatures. I dismissed adding creatures that were not real-life ones (such as Giant Octopus) in order to fill out the theme. I also felt that blue, nonsea, real-life creatures did not fit either, so guys such as Sea Eagle and Thieving Magpie failed to chart. That left me eighteen creatures for my deck (and one of those could not have made the cut in a Commander deck anyway due to color issues—say “hello” to Mr. Electric Eel).

So, I tossed in one of each card and then added a few cards here and there to finish out our beautiful aquarium.

"The Aquarium"

• Creatures (22)
• 1 Chambered Nautilus
• 1 Clinging Anemones
• 1 Coral Eel
• 1 Electric Eel
• 1 Giant Shark
• 1 Glowing Anemone
• 1 Great Whale
• 1 Gulf Squid
• 1 Hammerhead Shark
• 1 Horseshoe Crab
• 1 Manta Ray
• 1 Narwhal
• 1 Sand Squid
• 1 School of Piranha
• 1 Spiny Starfish
• 1 Walking Sponge
• 2 Killer Whale
• 4 Man-o'-War

• Spells (12)
• 2 Submerge
• 2 Fathom Trawl
• 2 Inundate
• 2 Part Water
• 2 Coral Reef
• 2 Tangle Kelp

• Lands (26)
• 24 Island
• 2 Coral Atoll

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All right, here is The Aquarium! After the eighteen creatures, I looked to find cards on-theme. I didn’t want cards that had too many under-the-sea themes, such as Tidal Wave. This was about an aquarium, so if it didn’t fit there (such as Coral Reef and Coral Atoll), it didn’t make the cut.

Many of the aquarium-themed cards suck. One that does not is Inundate, which is quite powerful since it bounces everything except for your own stuff. Well, there might be some other blue creatures here and there, but you can’t win them all. These folks probably control Islands. Islandwalk them with Part Water. Now you have a hoser for each person.

Coral Reef is amazingly awful. Giving a creature a +0/+1 counter for mana and tapping a creature is pretty sucktastic. Fear me now! At least I kept out winners such as Tidal Influence.

Submerge is not bad in multiplayer. It’s almost always a free instant to surprise an annoying creature. Of course, the best way to handle any annoying creature is to Tangle Kelp it. Tangle Kelp is just one of the truly ubiquitous removal Auras in multiplayer, charting right below the powerhouse of Roots. When this 1-mana Aura arrives to the battlefield, you tap down the creature. And then it can’t attack if it attacked last turn. That means your nasty Blightsteel Colossus or Omnath, Locus of Mana can only attack every other turn. That’s a great injection of power!

The last card here is the adequate Fathom Trawl. It can pretend to be great card advantage. In other news, I deemed the Clinging Anemones to be real ones despite their size because Wikipedia says anemones can grow to six feet in height, and that seems to be roughly how tall these are. I also looked up sponges and saw that some do move, so I deemed Walking Sponge to be a description and not a species name.

I hope that you enjoyed our trek through the wild side in our zoo, menagerie, and aquarium. They are open for business!

See you next week,

Abe Sargent

P.S. Here is a list of those real-life animals that I did not include, separated by color:

"Extra Animals"

• G/U (0)

• Red (0)

• White (0)

• B/R (0)

• Black (0)

• Blue (0)

• Green (0)

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