Omnath, Locus of Creation is the fourth iteration of this elemental creature, this time it’s capable of wielding blue, red, green, and white mana. Part of the upcoming Zendikar Rising set, Omnath is a lands-focused legendary creature that boasts several helpful abilities depending on how many lands you play each turn. This makes him a superb value engine, that can help us squeeze every last drop out of our cards. While Omnath, Locus of Rage and Omnath, Locus of the Roil are both solid commanders, Locus of Creation simply boasts too much utility to pass up.
Because of this, we decided to focus our commander deck on not just lands, but the sheer amount of advantage we can gain from them. This will help us recover quickly if we’re hit with a board wipe or quickly sprint ahead of other decks at the table. When designing this deck, I decided to make it powerful enough to win games, without being overwhelmingly oppressive or fast. It’s still a competitive list, but one that wouldn’t be classified in the cEDH (Competitive EDH) format. Always make sure to adjust decks based on your own playgroup’s power level and style. My deck is designed to act as a foundation to help you build and customize your own variation of Omnath, Locus of Creation.
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Omnath, Locus of Creation Primer
The Commander
We are using Omnath, Locus of Creation simply because it offers so much damn value. Four just four mana, this creature draws us a card when it enters and can give us mana, life, or damage our opponents. Omnath also boasts a decent 4/4 body. but it’s rare you’ll ever attack with him. Instead, it’s better to view Omnath as an enchantment that helps fuel and get us closer to our winning strategy. It’s pretty rare that we will attack with Omnath, unless we are fairly sure that it will survive. This commander is also relatively cheap if you have a strong mana base, so we won’t have to worry about always protecting it. You have more than enough lands and ramp to keep bringing the big fellow out.
Ramp
One of the core pillars of the deck, we have a total of eleven ramp sources that will either get us an extra land into play or allow us to play more than one land a turn. Staples such as Sol Ring, Cultivate, Farseek, Kodama’s Reach are all included to give us a nice early game boost. Exploration and Mina and Denn, Wildborn are also great for the opening turns since they’re cheap and let us drop additional lands. Lotus Cobra works wonders with our fetchlands, while Azusa, Lost but Seeking can take over the entire game if left unchecked. You’ll notice we left a few key cards like Burgeoning and Harrow out of the deck. This is because we want to drop as many lands as possible on our turn, not our opponents. The goal is to get as many activations out of Omnath as we can, so cards that allow us to play additional lands are critical.
Draw/Advantage
Of course, all that mana won’t mean a damn thing if we don’t have cards in our hand. To supplement this, we are running a wide variety of draw spells that can give us an advantage throughout the game. Rhystic Study and Sylvan Library are obvious inclusions, however, we’re also running Mystic Remora. With the amount of mana we will have, that cumulative upkeep cost won’t be as detrimental to our turn. Thrasios, Triton Hero is an incredible mana sink in the late game, and Trade Routes is a great utility card that combos nicely with our additional lands cards.
Unsurprisingly Tatyova, Benthic Druid is an all-star, capable of burying our enemies in sheer card advantage along with giving us some minor lifegain. Finally, Horn of Greed is the ace up our sleeve, as it allows us to potentially draw a comical amount of cards per turn. Plus, most people won’t remove it right away since it affects the entire table. This lets us have some political leeway to keep any hate away from our board. Finally, we are rocking Eladamri’s Call, Worldly Tutor, and Enlightened Tutor as our tutors.
Removal
This is the most customizable package in the deck, as white, red, blue, and green all offer some simply incredible removal spells. For mass removal, we’re running Blasphemous Act and Cyclonic Rift, but you can make an argument for cards such as Austere Command or Wrath of God. Fierce Guardianship and Counterspell are our hard counters, while Path to Exile, Krosan Grip, Beast Within, Force of Vigor, and Vandalblast act as our target removal package. Zacama, Primal Calamity and Living Twister can also do some heavy lifting so long as we have the resources to spend on them. Again, I suggest taking a good look at this portion of the deck to consider what you’ll need. Removal is certainly our weakest area, so feel free to tweak it if needed.
Protection/Recursion
Our deck is pretty resilient, which can quickly deter people from wasting a lot of removal on us. Both Teferi’s Protection and Heroic Intervention can save our entire board from a wrath or mass removal spell. Sylvan Safekeeper is another all-star since it can give any creature shroud at the cost of a land. This may sound like a steep price, but thanks to Crucible of Worlds, Ramunap Excavator, and Ancient Greenwarden you can easily get that card back. Eternal Witness is just a green staple we’d be silly not to use and Splendid Reclamation can be utterly backbreaking if used correctly.
We’re also running a few cards to cheaply bounce lands back to our hand so we can deploy them again to trigger Omnath. Trade Routes, Oboro Breezecaller, Mina and Denn, Wildborn, and Living Twister all open up new opportunities to keep replaying the same land repeatedly. These are some of the most important cards, so I recommend playing them once you know the coast is clear or if you have a way to defend them.
Win Cons
There are two routes our deck is going for when it comes to victory. The first is just by using Omnath’s ability to keep damaging our opponents until their life totals are depleted. This is a less likely method, but Valakut Exploration can help add some extra damage. However, our mains strategy is to produce an overwhelming amount of tokens and then pump them up to bash through our foe’s defenses. While I wouldn’t say this is a token deck, we are using a lot of cards that make creatures via the landfall ability. Again, this is to feed into the value engine that Omnath provides, allowing us to gain additional effects when we play lands.
Our token generators include Avenger of Zendikar, Emeria Angel, Omnath, Locus of Rage, Rampaging Baloths, Scute Swarm, Titania, Protector of Argoth, Felidar Retreat, and Zendikar’s Roil. All of these create tokens when lands either enter or leave the battlefield, giving us a steady stream or attackers and blockers. Sometimes sheer numbers aren’t enough so we’re using staples like Craterhoof Behemoth, Triumph of the Hordes, and Overwhelming Stampede to close out games. We can also surprise our opponents with a Scapeshift/Field of the Dead combo to instantly deploy a wall of zombies.
Lands
Finally, our mana base is a little different than most land-matters decks, as we aren’t running an insane amount of utility lands. This is because we need to make sure we can cast all our spells, so having access to all four colors is far more important. What you are able to use will entirely depend on your budget, so I recommend watching Tolarian Community College’s video on building a mana base for Commander. As for utility lands, we are rocking Field of the Dead, Oboro, Palace in the Clouds, Strip Mine, Thespian’s Stage, and Glacial Chasm. Just like removal, this portion is the most customizable, so if you feel that your draw is lacking consider Mikokoro, Center of the Sea. Just remember, our deck is primarily green, so you’ll want to have more lands that produce this color than anything else.
