Let's have a look at him in a little more detail.
At 3+2R+2G he is expensive. Remember that every time he returns to the Command Zone his casting cost increases by 2. His CMC will rapidly increase from 7 to 9 to 11 etc.
But this isn't insurmountable given the way this deck will evolve, but more of that a little later on.
Aside from being Legendary and Mythical the most important aspect of Omnath is that he is an Elemental.
When ever I consider a Commander I research the tribal aspects of that commander. Not strictly to make a tribal deck but because there are often cards that interact in beneficial ways with particular creature types.
The second of Omnath's abilities is useful but not as pivotal as the first. Although it has its uses. Finally we can see he is a 5/5. A big body that's capable of dealing damage but he has no evasion or combat abilities.
I think the second ability could be used in 1 vs 1 situation, I can imagine building a deck around cards like Ball Lightning to beat down my opponent causing 6 trample then an extra 3 when he hits the grave yard.
So it's Omnath's first ability that grabs the headlines and gets all the attention when building this Commander deck.
While I don't usually discuss lands in these articles, I'm more than happy to leave those decisions to the person building the deck, Omanth has Landfall and therefore lands are a focus of the deck.
Myriad Landscape and Blighted Woodland are the star performers as the both let you hunt down not one but 2 basic lands and put them into play. Myriad Landscape has the downside that it comes into play tapped but there's a way around this that I'll get to in a moment. The Woodland especially can give you three Landfall triggers or three 5/5 Elementals - that's not bad for 4 mana.
Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds are functionally identical in a deck of singletons that's actually quite useful. Again they let you search for a basic land effectively giving you two Landfall triggers for that turn.
There's also Mountain Valley but unlike the trio above the Valley comes into play tapped.
That's where Amulet of Vigor comes into play, it also helps with Myriad Landscape and the lands it brings into play.
The Amulet is also the enabler of a prominent combo in the deck:
In case it's not obvious you tap one and sacrifice and elemental, this triggers Omanth's second ability and he deals 3 points of damage to an opponent, you then raid your library for a basic land and put into play tapped which generates a Landfall trigger which creates another elemental.
And that would be the end of it but the Amulet means the land doesn't come into play tapped and so you can tap it and repeat the process.
I should point out that this does not count as Commander damage but still 14 lands later and one of your opponents would be dead.
If you're playing green and putting creature tokens into play. Then there are three cards that you really can not ignore.
Doubling Season, Primal Vigor and Parallel Lives will all double the Elemental creature tokens that you put into play which can never be a bad thing. Primal Vigor should be played with caution as it does enable your opponents as well.
When generating all these creatures if you are not in a position to take advantage of this then you have to have a plan to attack with them.
A 5/5 Elemental is a reasonably big body but it can easily be blocked by a 1/1 Saproling. What we need are Overrun type effects.
Overrun is a great oneshot sorcery that gives your creatures +3/+3 and trample. Attacking with 5/5 Trampling Elementals sounds a lot more effective. But in a multi-headed game of Commander a one shot Sorcery might get rid of one pesky opponent but what about the rest?
We could play Craterhoof Behemoth and Overwhelming Stampede both of which are functionally better than Overrun. However, again they are both just one shot cards.
Pathbreaker Ibex is Overwhelming Stampede on a body that is reusable. Thunderfoot Baloth is not quite as strong as Overrrun but it is a permanent effect provided you control your commander. Baru, Fist of Krosa at first seems worse than the other two but if you play several Forests in one turn, which should be possible with this deck, then he can make your creatures very large indeed.
A special mention also goes to this guy, Garruk Wildspeaker, the first Planeswalker to be discussed in this article. He only has 3 loayalty counters to start with so if you want to make use of his -4 ability you have to spend a few turns untapping two target lands. This as we have already discovered could be a very handy ability.
I've talked about lands that put extra lands onto the battlefield, the following three cards allow you to play extra lands above and beyond the standard one-per-turn the game allows.
Exploration is the most simple of the three. With both the Oracle and Azusa offering better but differing options.
The Oracle of Mul Daya brings to mind another card that has similar abilities; Courser of Kruphix.
It's okay having the ability to play more lands but you need to draw more to be able to play more.
The most curious of these selections I'm hoping you'll agree is the Slate of Ancestry. One of my primary reasons for playing this is the significant number of creatures I'm hoping to have in play and also this little card:
One of the other cards that was added to my list early on is Titania, Protector of Argoth.
You should instantly be able to see why, she's got the best ability of Omnath and can get a land back from your graveyard oh and she's an Elemental as well.
While I'm not a fan of using card that search your library for one or two lands there are three cards that take this to a different level.
I've included Scapeshift because Crucible of Worlds means you can just get the sacrificed lands back.
I've already looked at one Planeswalker but there's one other I'd add to this deck, well there's two but it's the same character....Nissa.
As you can see in all three iterations she has some nifty abilities that have excellent synergy with the deck we are formulating.
It would have been remiss of me to build a deck based on Landfall and not consider the select of cards that carry this keyword. There weren't that many options that I felt had synergy with this deck, However, there were 2 stand out candidates.
Both these complement cards like Warmstorm surge and help to make your lands a lot more deadly.
There are a couple of other cards I would seek to add to the deck.
Stone-Seeder Hierophant was a late discovery on my part but I'm pretty sure it works in the perilous forays combo instead of the Amulet of Vigor.
Frontier Guide is just a useful tool for getting more lands into play.
Obviously this is just the way I would build the deck. If you do the same don't forget to add a suite of utility spells.
Playing Red and Green you have access to plenty of artifact and enchantment destruction.
These are two of my favourite red anti-artifact cards.
I also like the idea of playing these four. They all seem to work well with the way I have constructed the deck.
The benefit of playing Green is that we also get to destroy permanent or noncreature permanents
There are plenty of other cards for consideration but hopefully this will give you some food for thought. One last comment remember to play plenty of basic lands.
Hopefully this will be the first article of a revitalised blog and the next post will be just in time for Christmas.
Phil
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