Spoiler season is here again, and with it my "Spoils of Victory" are back. So let's dive right into the two spoilers I brand "most important" to our format so far:
| The most exciting card of the spoilers is Omnath, simply because we get yet another possible card to play as a commander! He seems ok as an alternative for Horde of Notions as a elementals general, even though you obviously loose out on cards like Mulldrifter and Shriekmaw. To be honest with you, the more I look at him though, the more he reminds me of an upgraded Version of Titania. I mean, ok, he costs two mana more, but he also gives you access to another color while the tokens are a little bit better, you don't have to play ways to get rid of lands which means you can just play ramp and fatties aswell and as a bonus you get to burn things when your tokens and/or Omnath die. Seems like a pretty good deal if you ask me! So don't be surprised if all those Titania players suddenly go upgrade their decks with red spells and more ramp instead of the wierd "Sacrifice a land..." cards. | Hedron Archive on the other hand might not look so splashy but will certainly have a very big impact on the format. Cards like Ur-Golem's Eye or Mind Stone aren't exactly uncommon and having access the inbred on steroids of the two will certainly make many players very very,... very happy! Especially mono-white&-red decks will be pretty glad to get another good source of card draw. Not to speak of all the artifact based decks that will recur the Archive over and over... *cough* Daretti *cough*. And to be honest, I can even see more decks playing it than just the ones that played mana rocks before, just because the card is too good to be true... Earlygame? No problem, I have this awesome ramp card that will let me skip straight to 6 or 7 mana. Lategame? Meh, I'm running out of gas here. If only I had something to do with all my mana.... wait let me just cash in my Archive and see what I can come up with. |
As with all the more generic cards, "building around" Hedron Archive isn't really a thing, especially since it fits into so many existing decks as I already mentioned. That's why I will focus on the possibilites of Omnath 2.0.
Being completely honest, the deck I have in mind is basically a hybrid of existing decks with a touch of something new. There's a) my Broborygmos Enraged deck (List over in "My EDH") which sports a commander with similar casting cost while also revolving around lands and b) the already mentioned Titania shells. Those two combined - with a little Elemental theme thrown into the mix to make further use of Omnath's second ability - are what should be a fun and versatile deck. So let's have a look:
The Elementals that care about lands
Now this is probably the most interessting category of cards to play since it will make use of both parts...
I especially love Fertilid here. He's just good in every portion of the game. Early on he ramps you pretty well into Omnath while later he could be 4GGG (2G to play plus two 1G activations) for two 5/5 tokens plus a Lightning Bolt. Seven mana for 10 power plus 3 points of burn I will take every day of the week. Titania of course is still good in the 99 making a very good second source of tokens. The thought of Omnath in play and then playing Titania returning a fetchland... Value! Value everywhere!
Since the deck will sport a fair number of ramp, just because Omnath will turn the normally odd Rampant Growths on turn 8 into 1G 5/5s, some other elemental cards would like to have a spot in the deck...
All those cards fit so well into the deck it's unbelievable. Zendikar's Roil give you yet another possibility to create tokens out of ramp and Omnath will make sure that removing any one of them hurts. And if the remove Omnath you can just recast him as mana shouldn't be an issue. Avenger has always been an All-Star in green ramp heavy decks and this deck is no exception. And the Guildmage that seems so innocent with is converted manacost of 2 will make sure all those tokens and other creatures will get some damage through while also providing a good manasink for lategame scenarios where you might be able to pull out some unexpected wins with him providing 12+ power out of nowhere.
The Landfall/Ramp part
Having a commander that requires a lot of mana while also wanting to trigger landfall makes things very easy. Both basically require the same category of cards:
And while in normal ramp strategies these cards get bad after a while, Omnath always transforms them into creatures and very big ones at that. Essentially the dream is to successfully resolve a Boundless Realms with Omnath in play but I guess I'd take an Explosive Vegetation aswell... let's be "humble".
So why not use all those ramp cards and play some additional landfall cards just to make things a bit more synergetic.
Sundial for some carddraw, the Expedition to be ready for your first set of tokens as soon as you cast Omnath and another Commander All-Star in Rampaging Baloths to create even more tokens. Now with all this pressure you'll manage to create there're only two things left to do before the decks runs like a well oiled machine...
The finishing touches
We have tons of mana, lots of ways to build a sizeable board and a minimum of dead draws. So far, so excellent!
Now everything that's left to do is to add generic stuff that help finish the game, reload or give the deck more consistency... namely:
Tutors:
and...
Finishing spells:
You might've noticed that the deck plays out mainly green. That's very true but playing only few red lands shouldn't be an issue due to the amount of fixing your ramp suite will provide. And having the option to "splash" for some red cards, be it for power or simple utility (e.g.:green has no good removal!), is just awesome. Just don't forget to search for some mountains and you should be fine. Other than that you can and should play more lands than normal (40+) so you can consistently hit every land drop - this will help to keep some ramp spells for after you played Omnath - because drawing lands isn't really that bad in any stage of the game anyway thanks to your commander.
Let's see how the rest of the season pans out, maybe we even get more stuff to play with in this deck. And if not (which is very unlikely if you ask me) it's not that big of an issue since we already have a huge arsenal of cards to choose from.
With this I'm off for today! I wish you an enjoyable spoiler season - getting such a good commander so early in the season definitely got my hopes up - and hope you'll come back for some more content on this blog...
See y'all 'round!
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