Omniscience Draft Guide – Core Set 2021

Omniscience Draft returns to MTG Arena as a brief weekend event for players to take a break from the regular formats. In this edition, we draft cards from Core Set 2021, and cast them without paying their mana costs. In this guide, we will show you how to draft this set and explore the best cards and combos!

Event Details

Omniscience Draft Rules

This is a bot draft, and the format is Core Set 2021. As per usual, you get to choose one card at a time from rotating packs and build a 40-card deck with the chosen cards.

Each player starts the game with the Omniscience Emblem, that reads, “You may cast spells from your hand without paying their mana costs. 0: Add WUBRG. Activate this ability only once each turn.”

Effectively, all cards in your hand cost 0, and the Emblem’s activated ability can be used to pay for things like activated abilities, additional costs (such as Kicker), and so on. Double click on it on the battlefield (left side of the screen) to use it. This means you can activate it during your turn and your opponents turn.

Cards with X in their mana cost is also 0 by default, and you cannot pay for it with the Emblem either. The mana cost for cards that are played outside the hand (i.e. top of library, graveyard, from exile) must be paid using the Emblem.

You start with 3 cards in your hand. The same London Mulligan rule applies, which means you will rarely want to Mulligan as each card is precious (explained further below).

Every pick counts – you will be playing with 40 out of the 42 cards you have drafted, since you don’t need Basic Lands (unless you absolutely need one for a bomb card).

Omniscience Draft Pick Order

With all the unique rules of the format, the usual pick order will be completely different. While it is unlikely that the bot behavior for drafting is changing for this event, our priorities for drafting will be different from them. In essence, the you want to prioritize card draw, great creatures and bombs, card selection and tutoring effects. Always look for card advantage where possible.

You may also find the need to find a good balance between rare drafting and drafting the best cards for this format, which many of them are commons and uncommons.

We’ve revised our previous priority list from the last guide for Core Set 2021:

1. The Omniscience Draft Bombs: Cards that can win the game on its own or very close. Creatures that have great enter the battlefield effects like Terror of the Peaks, or something like Peer into the Abyss that can draw your entire deck and spit them out on the same turn.
2. Card Draw and Selection: You want to get to your best cards as soon as possible and snowball over your opponents by casting more spells than them. Finding Read the Tides and Rain of Revelation will be key to your draft. You may find the former wheel as it’s not a high priority pick in normal drafting.
3. Planeswalkers: Ugin and the five Planeswalkers are pretty decent if they can let you snowball and the opponents give you a bit of time. Usually, you may get one or two activations off which are not too impactful most of the time. Teferi and Chandra stands out here, since they can let you go through your deck a little bit.
4. Creatures: Your deck will look to have impactful, big creatures. Though that is not always possible, you will still need them regardless as your win condition.
5. Cantrips: Cards like Opt and Crash Through let you find your best card more quickly and effectively reduce your deck size.
6. Removal spells and counterspells: Trading cards one card for one card with your opponent, and does not offer any significant tempo advantage in Omniscience Draft but can target your opponent’s most powerful ones at a pinch. Counterspells are usually better since they can counter spells that may give your opponent more than two cards or creatures with enter the battlefield effects. Choose wisely!
7. Discard spells: Discard spells like Duress or Mind Rot can be good at the right time, especially if you are on the play and in your opening hand. Usually after the first couple of turns, your opponent will be topdecking most of the time so these kind of cards will be dead. One or two of these type of cards may still make the cut.

As a bonus, here is a preliminary guide from reddit user MGrenouille that includes a table of the high priority pick order cards that you want to be looking for. As always, if you find any cool interactions or combos, let us know in the comments below!