Normally when I start brewing with a commander I have quite a direct plan on how to approach the deck.
Omnath, Locus of Creation presented me with not quite so much clarity as there are quite a few different directions you can take it, and honestly they are all good in their own manner.
I'll make this first part of the introduction about directions you can go with Omnath, Locus of Creation rather than about this deck. This will perhaps help you in your own endeavors with deck building and also give you an idea of how I came up with the deck I landed on.
First of all Omnath, Locus of Creation ability to get the second trigger of landfall to add is actually pretty easy. A single fetchland played and then sacrificed to search for another land will trigger it.
So honestly without really building the deck to accommodate all that much you can get that additional mana almost certainly each of your own turns.
If you think in terms of playing Omnath say Turn 4 and then on Turn 5 playing a fetchland, you'll have 5 lands (let's say) and then an additional giving you 9 mana all up. In this manner you can look to either play big spells or just play out multiple spells in a turn fairly guaranteed.
If I was looking to build/play him in a more cEDH environment I wouldn't build much around him per se, but simply use the additional mana to be more efficient with turns and perhaps get out from under stax more. However that is pretty boring when it comes to deck building and for you to read about.
Alright so it's easy to get the on each of your own turns, but it is limited to only once. How do you potentially get more value from Omnath?
Well you could look to also use his abilities in opponents turns. Getting at least 2 landfall triggers in opponents turns is much trickier however without being able to naturally play lands. Not impossible however.
Flicker/Blink
Making Omnath a new instance on the battlefield via flicker or return to hand to recast would be a way you can look to do this as well...and that is the direction that I decided to take this deck.
There are 12 "flicker" effects and they specifically "Exile target, then return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control.".
I've avoided any of these effects that "return at the beginning of the end step" as you'll miss out on trying to get additional value off Omnath as far as landfall triggers.
By flickering Omnath you'll get his ETB draw trigger, so you are guaranteed to replace the flicker card you cast.
Note that we have Feather, the Redeemed in the deck to get all these flicker cards returned at end of turn.
Now we have a means to look to string together getting multiple cycles of triggers off Omnath in a turn, but we do need to make sure that we can put additional lands into play to make use of new instances of Omnath effective. Surprise, the deck has plenty of ways to do this.
Land ramp
Dreamscape Artist and Knight of the Reliquary can guarantee another 2 x landfall triggers. Knight of the Reliquary can just get a fetchland.
Springbloom Druid, Harrow, Skyshroud Claim, Crop Rotation bring 2 lands into play. Crop Rotation could just get a fetchland for this.
There are also plenty of other one off land ramp spells in Coiling Oracle, Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Nature's Lore, Growth Spiral.
These can be combined to produce multiple landfall triggers in a turn.
Risen Reef can be more special in that when you flicker Omnath you'll get another trigger, which can help to create more triggers.
Omnath, Locus of Rage produces Elementals which means that you can string together potentially more triggers by putting more lands into play off the top of your library.
There are also cards that allow you to play additional lands during your turn with; Exploration, Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, Oracle of Mul Daya, Song of Creation.
Landfall
With so many ways to trigger landfall multiple times in a turn surely the deck should have all the good landfall triggered cards right?
Well I'm expecting 9/10 Omnath, Locus of Creation to be good stuff land decks. I am playing some for sure, but it is not as many as probably others.
Here are the "landfall" cards that I am playing; Lotus Cobra, Trove Warden, Omnath, Locus of the Roil, Tatyova, Benthic Druid, Admonition Angel, Emeria Shepherd, Omnath, Locus of Rage, Valakut Exploration.
Admonition Angel can be used to actually exile Omnath, Locus of Creation with a landfall trigger as well as any other creatures you want to get further ETB out of.
So an example would be say you cast Harrow and then use 2 Admonition Angel triggers to exile both Omnath and Coiling Oracle. Now you can use a flicker effect to blink the Admonition Angel and both Omnath and Coiling Oracle come into play.
This way you can get a bit more value out of your flicker cards or in a pinch just use it to remove opponents permanents that are problematic.
Emeria Shepherd and Trove Warden can be used to get great value.
A combo that you can look for is to use Sakura-Tribe Elder along with Dryad of the Ilysian Grove to keep triggering Emeria Shepherd as all your lands are considered Plains. You can literally search for all the basics in the deck.
Trove Warden can exile land cards from your graveyard, which works nicely with when it dies it'll create landfall triggers.
Other landfall potential for deck builds
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There is no shortage of token creature makers with;
Avenger of Zendikar, Rampaging Baloths, Seed the Land, Sporemound, Zendikar's Roil, Scute Swarm, Phylath, World Sculptor.
Emeria Angel, Retreat to Emeria, Felidar Retreat.
You can look for existing ideas in Omnath, Locus of Rage helmed decks that make use of tokens in general for additional gains like Perilous Forays for example.
Getting access to the white token generators will certainly be welcome by some to build around.
Others involve card advantages of various kinds.
Moraug, Fury of Akoum, Roil Elemental, Evolution Sage, Nissa, Vital Force.
You can even look for untappers to make use of creating more mana or other tap abilities if combined with other enablers.
Retreat to Coralhelm, Tideforce Elemental, Stone-Seeder Hierophant.
So lots of ways to build around land themed decks and there is no right or wrong way to tackle these things. As I've pointed out creating 9 mana on Turn 5 is pretty consistent, so playing out a Omnath, Locus of Rage is by no means that hard.
Avenger of Zendikar, Rampaging Baloths, Seed the Land, Sporemound, Zendikar's Roil, Scute Swarm, Phylath, World Sculptor.
Emeria Angel, Retreat to Emeria, Felidar Retreat.
You can look for existing ideas in Omnath, Locus of Rage helmed decks that make use of tokens in general for additional gains like Perilous Forays for example.
Getting access to the white token generators will certainly be welcome by some to build around.
Others involve card advantages of various kinds.
Moraug, Fury of Akoum, Roil Elemental, Evolution Sage, Nissa, Vital Force.
You can even look for untappers to make use of creating more mana or other tap abilities if combined with other enablers.
Retreat to Coralhelm, Tideforce Elemental, Stone-Seeder Hierophant.
So lots of ways to build around land themed decks and there is no right or wrong way to tackle these things. As I've pointed out creating 9 mana on Turn 5 is pretty consistent, so playing out a Omnath, Locus of Rage is by no means that hard.
Ashaya, Soul of the Wild makes your creatures into Forests so they can be tapped for mana, as well as they'll actually trigger landfall when they come into play. Certainly a great way to keep getting Omnath triggers.
Chulane, Teller of Tales is another way to keep putting lands into play off casting your creatures.
Drawing cards
Ultimately this is a storm deck and is looking to string together big turns. Getting the additional multiple times in a turn gives you a means to keep casting spells, but you still need to be drawing cards in order to have things to do.
Sure with the flicker cards you can get a draw off Omnath, but you'll run out of cards fairly quickly.
We have plenty of ways to draw cards in the deck and I've already mentioned some with Omnath, Locus of the Roil, Tatyova, Benthic Druid, Valakut Exploration with landfall.
Further to this we have a number of amazing enchantments.
Song of Creation and Whirlwind of Thought are excellent with casting cards to get more cards. I've wanted a deck that has both included and they are perfect here. Sure Song of Creation makes you discard your hand, but the way the deck works is that you get to play out so many cards that you just overwhelm your opponents, and the deck doesn't look to cast cards in opponents turns at all really.
Teferi's Ageless Insight will double up on draw, including drawing at least 2 off flicker effects with Omnath.
Abundance is actually a great card in this deck as really once you are setup you don't really want to be drawing lands at all.
The reason is that you have a lot of cards that specifically search for lands and so you'd prefer to have them in your library rather than draw them.
At a certain stage you will just keep naming "nonland" and this is just going to mean action cards all-day-long.
Also this gets around restrictions like Narset, Parter of Veils or Notion Thief and avoiding giving opponents cards with Consecrated Sphinx.
There are staples in Mystic Remora, Sylvan Library, Rhystic Study as well.
Graveyard as a resource
I mentioned with Abundance that you really don't want to be drawing lands once you are setup and so playing lands from your graveyard really helps with not specifically needing to draw lands.
Also fetchlands are so critical to enabling the deck, that playing these out over others really is key.
We already have mentioned the powerhouse in Ancient Greenwarden that can do this. Further to this we have Ramunap Excavator.
If you can imagine having additional land into play cards in Exploration, Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, Oracle of Mul Daya that are going to allow you to sequence playing out a fetch each time you use a flicker on Omnath to guarantee the landfall triggers for the mana.
There is also Past in Flames and Underworld Breach in the deck.
With around 23 instants and sorcery in the deck the Past in Flames doesn't seem like intuitive include at first maybe.
But with the way we flicker Omnath and play land ramp cards we can look to string together very potent sequences.
You can get additional lands into play with instant and sorcery Crop Rotation, Nature's Lore, Growth Spiral, Harrow, Skyshroud Claim.
Once you get Omnath you can then cast a flicker instant card from your graveyard.
Of course it all depends on the casting costs of your flicker and land ramp cards, but you will get varying levels of just having enough mana to pay for these or you might net mana by the end of it.
Let's look at an example of how you can line up a good turn
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Let's say you have Crop Rotation, Harrow, Essence Flux, Flicker of Fate in your graveyard at the time you cast Past in Flames.
- Play a fetchland and sacrifice to get .
- Cast Past in Flames for with that mana.
Let's say you have 5 lands in play to use to cast spells. - Cast Essence Flux for on Omnath.
- Cast Crop Rotation for getting a fetchland and sacrifice to get .
- Cast Flicker of Fate for
- Cast Harrow for to get .
Further flicker synergy
Emiel the Blessed is another way you can flicker Omnath (or any ETB creature) to get a new instance of it. So in theory you can use part of the for this effect and then look for more landfall triggers to get value.
Legion's Initiative is an enchantment and you can use it defensively during opponents turns to save your creature from a board sweeper. But you can also use it in your own main phase to get the flicker effect for combos.
Most of the flicker cards are instants however, which actually means you have a lot of ways to potential protect your creatures from targeted removal.
There are also some that can do multiple targets with Displace and Ghostly Flicker.
These can be used to target other ETB creatures like Dockside Extortionist, Skyclave Apparition, Imperial Recruiter, Recruiter of the Guard, Knight of Autumn, Coiling Oracle, Risen Reef, Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, Springbloom Druid for additional value.
Even though Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath sacrifices if not escaped, because your flicker effects are at instant speed you can look to get value by flickering while the sacrifice is still on the stack.
Ghostly Flicker can actually target a land to help with landfall, and you can even use it to target 2 lands if wanting to guarantee the Omnath mana trigger. The net result is that you can use it to basically gain 3 mana as well as triggering other landfall abilities.
Dualcaster Mage can go infinite with any of the flicker instant cards with copies it makes targeting itself, however only Acrobatic Maneuver, Displace, Ghostly Flicker will gain you advantages off this. You can just target Omnath as the other creature with Displace, Ghostly Flicker to draw as much of the deck as you want, and Ghostly Flicker can also give you infinite mana.
Gaining life
I haven't mentioned gaining life at all, and boy-oh-boy can Omnath gain you a lot. Honestly potential one of the biggest life gainers from the command zone.
The life-gain in this deck is purely for keeping you alive to exact your master plans. Your opponents have to get in a lot of damage by the end of a game.
I did look at game winning cards like Test of Endurance and Aetherflux Reservoir as win conditions, but better in more of a pillow-fort style of build imo.
I was close to including Dawn of Hope as it can draw you a card each time you gain life off Omnath first landfall trigger by spending . But I personally don't want to be spending mana on draw, I feel like margins are too tight for this.
Speaker of the Heavens almost made the final cut as well, but I don't want to focus on protecting my life total that much.
Dealing 4 damage with Omnath
This is all nice theory-crafting Mr Habib, but will you actually get to do everything including dealing 4 damage to opponents and planeswalkers each time you flicker Omnath?
Well the damage portion of Omnath is certainly less of a focus than getting the additional mana.
The "problem" you will have is wanting to use landfall triggers to get multiple instances of the mana trigger and thus you'll want to flicker Omnath before you put another land into play that would have triggered the damage ability.
But once you are well setup, you can look at the damage portion as a partial win condition. In theory you have to do this around 10 times to deal 40 damage.
Certainly if you are up against a Superfriends deck or even just a few planeswalkers Omnath just destroys them. In these instances you'd definitely make sure you get the 3rd trigger, but you only need to do this once or twice to wreck them.
Other fun stuff
Realistically with around 10 ways to get additional colored mana on Turn 2, you have a good chance of casting Omnath on Turn 3. That means that you'll have a good chance of having access to 8 or 9 mana on Turn 4.
Zacama, Primal Calamity is a nod to the fact that you will consistently have 9 mana on Turns 4 or 5, untapping those lands and just cast more card that turn or use the removal on it.
The deck does contain version 2, 3 and 4 of Omnath. I couldn't really justify the OG Omnath, Locus of Mana as it doesn't fit the theme all that well.
But it is nice that Omnath, Locus of the Roil and Omnath, Locus of Rage fit the deck so well for a flavor win. This is also my first Omnath deck. I've played friends version of Omnath, Locus of Mana and Omnath, Locus of Rage but never brewed around any of the versions until now.
Omnath, Locus of Creation - Creating the Perfect Storm
Approximate Total Cost:
Zacama
