Omniscience Draft – Midweek Magic Event Guide

Hey everyone! It’s that time again. That’s right we’ve reached the middle of another week so I’m here with another Midweek Magic article. Normally I only pop up here to give you a pile of decklists for the constructed events, but I thought you could all use some pointers with Omniscience Phantom Draft. Of course, we have to go through the event info first, but then we’ll get right to it.

Event Details

Welcome to Midweek Magic! Each week, try out a different way to play MTG Arena!

Sit down with seven bots and pick one card at a time from rotating packs of mixed up cards from sets available in MTG Arena. Then, build a 40-card deck to take on other drafters—but all of your spells can be cast for no mana!

Find out more details about this and upcoming Midweek Magic events HERE.

• Duration: April 2nd, 2024 @ 2:00 PM PST to April 5th, 2024 @ 2:00 PM PST
• Format: Omniscience Phantom Draft
• Entry Fee: Free
• Ends After: You can play as much as you like for the duration of the event.
• Match Structure: Best-of-one matches (BO1)

Event Rewards

Tips and Tricks

The biggest change in Omniscience draft is that you can play all your spells without paying their mana costs. That means that you don’t play any lands in your deck so you are going to have to play almost every card you draft. That means every pick matters even the last couple out of a pack.

On that note, don’t pick or play lands.

You also can add WUBRG once per turn to play activation costs. The big point of that one is that you’ll never be able to use anything that has a double pip in the activation cost. That does make blood tokens a good way to cycle through your not so stellar cards.

That ability means that you can technically play x spells, but not any that have a double pip. They are also are limited to x=4 in most cases.

You only start with three cards in hand so it’s really important that you have some way to start going off early. You don’t want to just play a couple creatures and say go. While mulliganing may seem painful when you start with so few cards, it can be worth it to get a viable hand.

You have to massively change your evaluation of bombs.  A three-mana value bomb is going to be significantly less powerful in this format compared to some far too expensive for normal draft commander card.

Card draw is the king of the format. Since everything is free, turning one card into multiples is amazing. It is really the engine that the entire format runs on.

Even cantrips get in on the fun, it’s just another way to dig deeper into your deck to the spells that really matter.

Counterspells can also be premium (especially if it is something like Sublime Epiphany or Dismiss that does more than just counter a spell) because sometimes you don’t get to play first. You can’t play too many though because then you never do anything either.

Discard tends to vary in value because it can be amazing on the play, but not so much when your opponent has already gone off. It’s insane if it’s something like Bad Deal that also draws cards while wrecking their hand. Mind Rot type effects can make the cut, but just hope you win the die roll.

You want most of your creatures to have ETB effects especially ways to generate extra value.

Later in the packs when you have to choose random creatures, go for the big chonkers over cards you would normally think of as better limited cards. You would much rather have an 8/8 than a 2/2 flyer that doesn’t do anything else.

One for one removal/interaction is a fairly low priority. If you decide you want removal, go for the ones that have something thrown in instead of just efficient ones.

Damage based removal is basically unplayable. It won’t kill anything they play that didn’t already gain a ton of value.

Look for ways to cause loops, Scholar of the Ages and similar type effects are easy ways to do this.

Cards that give all your creatures haste such as First Day of Class give you the opportunity to kill your opponent before they even get a chance to go.

The most obvious thing is, of course, to get lucky on your opens. Just play something like Lavinia, Azorius Renegade to collect your free concession.

Wrap Up

Thanks for reading! I’ll be back tomorrow to kick off my coverage for Outlaws of Thunder Junction limited. Until then, stay classy people!