Omnath

The new Omnath has garnered the most attention for Commander of the Battle For Zendikar legends. This is unsurprising. The original Omnath is a favorite among mono-green players and the new version is objectively quite strong. Its an expensive card, but expensive cards that reward you for playing large amounts of ramp are some of the best Commanders. Omnath v2.0 is fantastic at creating an obscene amount of threat quickly. Play him with a land drop still up and it can be 15 power instantly. He also has built in wrath protection with his death trigger. The Bolt trigger doesn't care how the elementals die either, giving you proactive Aristocrats style options for the deck as well. There isn't quite enough room for a deck to maximize both triggers.  Having enough land after getting to 7 mana implies at least 40 land in the deck. So for this week, I did something I've never done before and made two lists, one for lands and one for elementals. They share a significant number of cards that I can talk about together, then I'll go into their differences.

The basis of both deck's is to get Omnath into play. However, they have different timings for when Omnath needs to be in play. For the Landfall version, its imperative to get Omnath into play as fast as possible. The deck is built to maximize his landfall trigger and needs to have him in play to function. Because of this, the Landfall deck runs more land. Importantly, it runs more basic lands as a hedge to ensure it can still be fetching lands after you get to seven mana. While the Elemental version runs 38 land, it doesn't mind waiting a bit longer to put Omnath onto the battlefield. The Elemental version is attempting to take advantage of his second trigger and get tons of free lightning bolts. If you play Omnath and have no elementals in play already, that plan isn't as solid. The Elemental version shifted costs down a bit and doesn't race for seven mana quite as hard. It's still a ramp deck, but not as much of one.

Landfall  - http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/25-10-15-omnath/

Elementals - http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/30-10-15-omnath-elementals/


These cards form the core of both decks.

The Mana:

The Payoffs:

Support:

This is the core of both decks. It gives a picture of ramping into huge threats and drawing tons of cards. Making tokens is a core part of both decks. Doubling Season effects give you so much additional value from Omnath that you can't help but be excited to draw them. This is a deck that plans to win through regular old damage, and thus needs to be able to deal 120+ damage of the course of the game. For any deck that wants to end the game with attacking, Craterhoof is your best pal. Craterhoof's cohorts, Avenger of Zendikar and Regal Force, are both elementals that work well with the deck's plan.  Titania is of particular note since she also produces 5 power elemental tokens and works well with fetchlands.

Now that we've seen the similarities, where do the two decks diverge?

The Landfall version:

The Landfall version goes all in on the trigger including running Thieves' Auction. While the printed text on it doesn't indicate this, the oracle wording of Thieve's Auction exiles all  This version is similar in nature to Borborygmos Enraged lists, though it has a much greater focus on the board than on lands to hand. Cards like Storm Cauldron and Scryb Ranger give you the ability to continually proc Omnath, even if you run out of lands in your deck. That's obviously unlikely, but the possibility exists. I have omitted Horn of Greed largely because this deck needs to play out over many turns. I'm leaning on rampant growth effects for most of the Landfall shenanigans instead of Exploration type ramp. Horn is one of the best ways to keep Exploration active, but Horn is much less useful if you aren't pushing extra land plays, and can give your opponents more cards than you. If you are Exploring, then you usually get 2 cards per turn off the Horn, so you are behind by a card against three opponents. That's acceptable. Being behind by 2 cards a turn over 4-5 turns is not acceptable. I also omitted off color fetchlands from the mana base purely for cost reasons. Fetchlands are obviously bonkers with Omnath and if you have some extra cash I would spring for them.

The Elemental version:

The Elemental version focuses on sacrifice outlets and on-death triggers. Of particular note is Hostility, which makes Elemental tokens. There are relatively few ways to take advantage of Hostility's ability in the deck, and that aspect might want to be explored further in later iterations. Hostility + Vigor make an excellent pairing. Even if you don't have Vigor, the Earthquake effects can act as additional sacrifice outlets. Also, another bit of errata, Firecat Blitz makes Elemental Cat tokens. You have to manually eat them, but its a significant amount of bang for your buck.

Though the decks are only 20 cards apart, they're going to play very differently. The Landfall deck is going to play like most default EDH decks, ramp into large threats. The Elemental deck is going to play like Ghave or Prossh. Lots of little value dudes that you eat to generate even more value till you snowball your advantage.


I might finish up the BFZ legends next week with Ulamog, or I might go straight into the Commander 2015 legends. It depends on how complete their spoiler is.

Cheers!