"When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie
That's Umori
When the world seems to shine like you've had too much wine
That's Umori"
That's Umori
When the world seems to shine like you've had too much wine
That's Umori"
In my 6th endeavour out with companion builds Umori, the Collector presented quite a unique task. Now creature heavy decks are something that I've leaned towards more and more over the years as I just played out storm like decks many years ago. Fighting with creatures and using them for value fits more inline with the casual scene, which I've been enjoying more and more.
I had already made a deck which I named "Kenrith's Battle Royale - The Ultimate Tournament for Monster Clashes".
It only had 7 non-creature spells, so I'm no stranger to building almost all creature decks.
At first I thought I'd just use Umori, the Collector for this particular deck and just replace the 7 non-creatures spells.
However I wanted to create something different.
I then made a Sliver tribal theme deck with Umori, the Collector as the companion. The idea was that I've been playing Kaheera, the Orphanguard along with Morophon, the Boundless as Beast tribal mainly for the mutate creatures in Ikoria and I've been really enjoying the mechanic.
I thought that a deck that has both the colorless (Umori) and colored part (Morophon) for casting spells would be a cool theme. But honestly after playing it a few times it didn't feel that good to play.
I also looked at Kethis, the Hidden Hand for the double up on cost reduction, and really started brewing. Once I had started into the fueling graveyard strategy I sort of wasn't quite inspired enough on the whole cost reduction of with Umori and Kethis.
So in the end I decided that I can't get enough of playing the mutate mechanic at the moment and I wanted Umori to help with the cost reduction there.
After already brewing with Kethis I thought that Nethroi, Apex of Death with the graveyard reanimation and mutate would be fun to brew around.
So without a doubt this companion took me the longest and several attempts to find the right home. But I'm glad I didn't settle and persevered until I got what is a lot of fun to play.
Advantages of creature heavy deck with Nethroi
But the end result is actually much better than I thought it would be. The thing is that Nethroi, Apex of Death ability is really powerful. I mean you read it and it seems like it would be good, but you don't know if its just excessive for the cost?
Where it shines is that most creature heavy decks have a hard time with board wipes. In fact often they just result in a complete blowout.
In the past I've tried to use things like Selfless Spirit and Gaddock Teeg to stave off the inevitable creature wipe that comes once you've committed most of your hand. However these are only a few cards and you are not always lucky to have access to them.
Where Nethroi, Apex of Death presence is felt is that you can bounce back immediately from your creatures dying.
Actually its so good that I ended up adding my own wrath effects for creatures, as you can get the big tempo play back by mutating Nethroi to get your creatures back.
So I have Magus of the Disk, Mageta the Lion and Realm-Cloaked Giant as creatures that can do board wipes.
Another major advantage of playing an all creature deck is that opponents often spend/hold resources on removal for the other card types. Completely avoiding them feels really good to your tempo.
If an opponent spend a card on removing another opponents artifact or enchantment, then for your personally that is a 2-for-0. That's two permanents removed for your zero cards.
To back this up there is mass artifact and enchantment removal in the form of Kalemne's Captain and Bane of Progress.
Being completely unaffected by them is a massive game swing in resources. Game winning really.
Of note Bane of Progress only has 2 power, so is an easy target for Nethroi bringing back 10 powers worth of creatures.
There is even more removal with Caustic Caterpillar, Qasali Pridemage as creatures you can sacrifice, which is good if you are wanting to get extra value out of them by using Nethroi, Necropanther or Boneyard Lurker to get them back.
Mutate
There are 13 mutate creatures in the deck, so you can get Nethroi trigger multiple times if the game lines up that way.
But that's not really the main goal of the deck, your plan is to have access to mutating some of the other value creatures.
Necropanther and Boneyard Lurker act as further ways to use your graveyard as a resource.
Great value can be had from Gemrazer, Chittering Harvester, Cavern Whisperer, Dirge Bat, Auspicious Starrix, Sawtusk Demolisher.
There are some hexproof creatures which are by far the best creatures to mutate onto, so that opponents struggle to target the subject of your mutates.
Silhana Ledgewalker, Fleecemane Lion, Sigarda, Host of Herons, Paradise Druid, Sylvan Caryatid.
This is backup with even further protection with Mother of Runes, Giver of Runes, Sylvan Safekeeper, Shalai, Voice of Plenty
Selfless Spirit guards against board wipes, and in fact a play that I will use if I can line it up is to use before I use my own Magus of the Disk or Realm-Cloaked Giant.
Ramp
There is a lot of ramp and mana in the deck so that you can cast all your creatures in a timely manner. Mutate are often midrange to higher cast in general, so Umori doesn't help with this but you want to get setup with mana first.
Graveyard as a resource
There are a couple of sacrifice creature outlets with Viscera Seer and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician. These are nice to have as sometimes to get value from Nethroi you purposefully sacrifice creatures to get additional value from them coming into play.
For example sacrificing land ramp creatures to get the additional ramp is good.
Putting cards into your graveyard is a really nice strategy if it comes to you. But where at first I thought it was a must, actually just playing out creatures and them getting naturally killed, via opponents removal and blocking, does mean that you can always look to get value from Nethroi.
So unlike a lot of graveyard as a strategy decks, although Nethroi actually represents in my opinion the most powerful commander ever for this, you actually don't need to lean on it that hard.
But if you get you can line it up, it is really great. Hermit Druid and Doom Whisperer are ways to get lots of cards into your graveyard potentially.
Note that there are 8 basics in the deck with Hermit Druid, so its not like a combo mill your entire deck type thing, its purely for value milling and getting your land drops.
There is also some dredge creatures with Golgari Thug and Stinkweed Imp. I decided against Golgari Grave-Troll because its just expensive to cast, and there isn't a lot of discard in the deck, so getting reuse out of dredging it once isn't that appealing.
At least with Golgari Thug and Stinkweed Imp you can just cast them easily and threaten to block with them.
Creatures all day long
Because it's an all creature deck there are some hate-bear type creatures that make sense with Collector Ouphe, Gaddock Teeg, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Kataki, War's Wage, Aven Mindcensor, Archon of Valor's Reach.
What Archon of Valor's Reach needs to be accessed by the game obviously. If you are up against blue opponents then "instant" is probably the best call. Often in the dark I'll name "sorcery" as that is the most powerful spells in general. The deck is pretty well equipped to deal with artifacts and enchantments, so unless opponents seem to be heavily relying on those, most of the time its "sorcery".
The deck is rounded out with creatures that can search your library for other creature cards and good draw effects to keep up the proactive game plan.
Vizier of the Menagerie hits literally every spell in the deck, and combine these with others that play lands off the top of your library and you get massive turns.
I've been playing this deck a ton and honestly its been really fun. Perfect mix for battlecruiser commander.
Umori, the Collector // Nethroi, Apex of Death
Approximate Total Cost:
Zacama
