Bo1 Alchemy Four-Color Omnath Deck Guide: The Terror of Arena is Back

Hello everyone! Alchemy is in full swing and myself and many others have been furiously trying decks to explore the new metagame. I know I mentioned it in the previous article, but I’ve been absolutely loving Alchemy so far as there’s just a wide range of things that seem good.

However, one of the underappreciated aspects of Alchemy is that it can allow you to play with cards that aren’t strong enough for normal play by buffing them, or for a sole exception, making a card legal again by nerfing it. What card am I referring to? Omnath, Locus of Creation.

If you’ve never had the displeasure of playing against this in Standard or Historic, you’re quite fortunate. Omnath wasn’t legal in either for particularly long (give or take a month), but it absolutely dominated everything during its tenure. It replaced itself, it gained a bunch of life, it ramped, it was a brick wall, and sometimes you just randomly donked the opponent and their walkers for 4 damage.

Omnath just did an obscene amount of things at 4 mana, and with both Fabled Passage and Evolving Wilds to help trigger Landfall, this absolute menace was broken in half and imprisoned for it’s sins. Omnath has laid dormant for quite awhile, but with Alchemy’s release, Wizards decided to try Omnath out again, albeit with some changes.

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Alchemy Rebalanced Card Review and Decklists – December 9, 2021

One mana more and losing the draw a card trigger is an unbelievably brutal nerf for a card to go through. Now you’ll need much more mana to start going off with this and you could just lose it with the trigger on the stack. I like nerfing Omnath to make it legal again, but this seems egregious. Nevertheless, it was such a polarizing card I had to brew with it as maybe the nerf isn’t as harsh as it looked. Without knowing any of the other Alchemy spoilers, here’s what I came up with.

This was pretty difficult to do as I didn’t have too many lists to base off of, but enough of the pieces were similar I figured I could have something close to decent. Anyway, Alchemy comes through, I try out a few decks that seem obviously good and I hear Omnath calling my name, just begging me to give it one more chance.

Curiosity overcame me and I needed to know where Omnath stood. I was expecting a card that was nearly too weak for Alchemy and more of the gimmick than anything. After a bunch of games, I reached my conclusion. Is this Omnath much worse than the original design? Absolutely, this is terrible in comparison… and still feels busted.

Omnath is such a powerful design by nature that even with this level of nerfs, it still felt incredible! It’s an absolute house against aggressive decks and it’s really easy to set up explosive turns still, just like it used to. Funny enough, it being 5 mana has also been relevant multiple times where my opponents couldn’t hit it with Skyclave Apparition!

I knew I had to tune to get the deck to a closer strong 60, and I think I reached it.

Generally at this point I would start talking about the curve, but I’m actually going to touch on the mana base quickly. In my first version I absolutely massacred the mana base. There was way too many Red sources and not enough Blue and White. I played around with the sources and even found we could get away with just playing 25 real lands, but considering we have 6 MDFCs and 4 ramp spells, that should be more than enough. Admittedly, I would still be willing to experiment with the mana as it feels near impossible to have the perfect configuration, but this is definitely much closer.

Nevertheless, we start our curve at 2 mana for this build. Lotus Cobra was in the initial build of Omnath and it’s still just as broken here. This ramps, this fixes, and this works with all the land drops we’re putting down. The second dork is Tangled Florahedron which doesn’t color fix, but has the versatility of turning into a land which is very valuable in a deck with 12 landfall cards. Finally, we have the lone Murasa Rootgrazer holding down the fort. Rootgrazer has been a solid, yet innocuous addition as it could help ramp early and then provide more Landfall triggers late. In theory I would like to play more, but I don’t want to dig into the top end or lands more if I can help it, but you may be able to shave a Spikefield for an additional copy if you really like it.

Next up we have our lone 3 drop, Path to the Festival. Now I know most players are gushing over Settle the Wilds, I like the card a lot too, but I think Path is still better. First, although it does tend to be marginal, single green over double green can matter. Second and much more importantly, Path has Flashback where Settle doesn’t. I’ve found that even in the late game, drawing Path isn’t that bad as it can enable super swingy turns with Omnath or Felidar Retreat out. Settle the Wilds could hypothetically find a 4 or 5 drop, and it’s really strong when it does that, but when you already have land 5 then it’s so much worse than Path. If you prefer Settle you can go for it, but I think Path is the correct option.

Now out of the early game, we move into the 4 drops of the deck. Felidar Retreat was another piece of (most) of the old Omnath builds and it feels just as powerful now. Since we have so many ways to hit our land drops, it’s very easy to flood the board with 2/2s and then suddenly have a huge fighting force threatening to grow larger. Yasharn, Implacable Earth was another nice one as it’s simply a 4/4 that can find us more lands and can be randomly insane against sacrifice decks.

The new addition to the deck is Moonveil Regent, which normally wouldn’t make sense in a deck with such a high curve, until you consider it’s triggered ability. When you cast a spell, you can discard your hand to draw a card for each color of the spell. What that means is that you can curve Moonveil Regent into Omnath and draw FOUR cards off of the trigger. Furthermore if the Moonveil dies with an Omnath on board, you can send 4 damage wherever you want. Since it’s such a nice synergy with Omnath, I think it’s worth the inclusion.

Moving up the curve again, we have our two fives. Obviously we are playing Omnath, and like the decks of old, the list is built with it completely in mind. That said, one of the best possible cards to pair with Omnath right now is Wrenn and Seven. Wrenn And Seven is disgusting in this deck as all of the abilities work super well with the deck. The plus can find more lands, the 0 can provide a huge burst of landfall triggers, the minus will create a huge threat, and the ultimate will win the game. You can not find a card that synergizes better than this.

I’ll be the first to admit the curve is pretty high, an average of 3.7 in fact! Why play such a high curve? For the final card of the list, Storm the Festival. Not including this in my first list was a pretty large oversight, one I corrected after one game of testing. Storm is extremely powerful in general considering we have so many good hits, but when just getting two lands can be good as well, you know you have a winner.

Overall, this deck has been great for me as it cuts through a lot of the other midrange and slow decks while still having game against aggressive decks, Omnath is insane against them after all!

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NOTABLE EXCLUSIONS / POTENTIAL INCLUSIONS

Portable Hole / Circle of Containment

Removal spells that can be hit off of Storm the Festival should definitely be considered. Right now I don’t think the deck wants them, but if you’re facing a ton of aggro and feel you need help, I would play some Circles.

Professor of Symbology

Not having any Learn cards in the deck feels bad, especially when Environmental Sciences and Mascot Exhibition would be so good, but I have no idea what to cut to make room. I would be 100% down to play it in this deck if there’s a configuration that can support it.

Brutal Cathar

In a similar vein to Circle and Portable Hole, Brutal Cathar is an easily castable removal spell you can hit off of Storm. I would be wary to play this as it can make your opponent’s removal better, but we already have a lot of juicy targets so maybe its fine.

Divide by Zero

This deck almost certainly doesn’t run enough Blue to play this nor could it afford to keep it open most of the time, but it’s so good it should be mentioned anyway.

Abrade

The initial list played Abrade for some removal, but Circle would definitely be better.

Magda, Brazen Outlaw

Not a bad deal considering it’s 2 mana that can help color fix, but having to attack to do so and losing the Treasure afterwards is not great.

Shatterskull Smashing

This could be better than Spikefield Hazard as it can be powerful in the late game, but it would be very hard to cast this in the mid game.

Ilysian Caryatid

I don’t hate this as it is a color fixer, but not helping towards Landfall is far from ideal. Maybe better than Murasa Rootgrazer.

Prosperous Innkeeper

Better than Magda, Brazen Outlaw, but still not great.

Roiling Regrowth

An interesting option as this could provide double landfall triggers, but I think Path to the Festival is better.

Wrenn and Seven, but probably now too weak compared to the 4 drops (thank goodness!)

Storm the Festival deck, but it is an interesting option.

Wrenn and Seven immediately, but consider plus-ing instead as hitting your lands is so important and you can avoid Wrenn from getting attacked down.

• If you have a few lands and no other two drop, I tend to cast Tangled Florahedron as you have a bunch of 4s to ramp into.

• Remember that you can tap a basic, bounce it with Murasa Rootgrazer, then replay it as a pseudo ramp effect if you ran out of lands to play.

• It’s generally better to miss out on a Landfall trigger than it is to lose out on a card with Moonveil Regent‘s trigger.

• Be careful what lands you get off of Path to the Festival and Evolving Wilds as you don’t want to run out of basics for something like Yasharn, Implacable Earth.

• I try to go really wide with Felidar Retreat triggers before I start buffing the board.

• Don’t count out getting lands off of Storm the Festival over mediocre spells, hitting your land drops is insane with this deck!

Thank you for reading!