One of the most exciting things in Magic: The Gathering is seeing new decks emerge. When a new card, or group of cards, enables an all-new strategy, anticipation goes through the roof. That said, it can be equally exciting to see older decks acquire new tools. This is how archetypes change and evolve over time, creating the dynamic metagame we all love. This weekend, we saw a stellar example of this idea in action, as a new version of 4-Color Omnath took down an MTG Modern League.
This is a deck we’ve seen many times before, but never quite like this. Thanks to the new Warp mechanic in Edge of Eternities, the deck can leverage its key engine pieces better than before. Throw in a surprising Cascade package, and you have a very novel list indeed. Whether it’s powerful enough to bring Omnath back into the metagame proper remains to be seen. For now, however, it’s hard to deny the innovation on display here.
4-Color Omnath In MTG Modern
As mentioned above, 4-Color Omnath is no stranger to MTG Modern. This is an established deck, with a gameplan revolving around the titular Elemental and other value creatures. You get your engines down, then use them to generate value while whittling down your opponent’s resources. Recent versions have also started including Bloomburrow’s Helga, as a secondary value engine. The deck has seen limited success in recent months, however, with few Challenge or League appearances.
This is where Ritak13 comes in. They took their new version of 4-Color Omnath to a 5-0 finish in the MTGO Modern League yesterday. While their list does make use of a lot of the same core cards, it’s meaningfully different in a number of ways.
The big innovation here is the introduction of a Shardless Agent/Birthing Ritual package. Other than Ritual, Ritak13 doesn’t run any nonland cards with mana value less than three. This makes Ritual a guaranteed hit when you cast Agent. Once it’s in play, it becomes an excellent source of additional value for the deck. The turn Ritual comes down, it can potentially trade your Agent for an Omnath, a Helga, or a Witch Enchanter.
These examples are really just the tip of the iceberg, mind you. The deck’s entire curve runs from three to five mana, which means Ritual gives you access to pretty much anything in your top seven most of the time. Most of its creatures have enters effects, too, so you’ll likely make an impact right away. The Evoke Elementals, Subtlety and Solitude, are particularly good here. Not only can you cheat them out to trigger Helga, but they also make great hits off of Ritual.
On The Cutting Edge
This new package gives the deck a novel edge, which Ritak13 hones using a pair of bangers from Edge of Eternities. Both Starfield Vocalist and Quantum Riddler make appearances here, and both add a ton to the overall strategy.
First of all, the Warp abilities here play incredibly well with Helga. Since these still count as their original mana values when cast this way, you get the draw, life, and counter from Helga. Like the Evoke Elementals, these cards add cheap card draw to the deck. On top of that, they also make great Ritual fodder. Warped-in creatures exile themselves on your end step, but you can stack the triggers so that you sacrifice them to Ritual first. It’s a neat trick, and one that can get you a big tempo advantage.
As if that wasn’t enough, the actual abilities on Vocalist and Riddler are relevant here, too. Riddler is extra draw, which, as a grindy Control list, this deck wants more than most. Vocalist serves as an extra copy of Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines, one of the better standalone threats in the deck. By doubling all of your permanent-enters triggers, it becomes easy to get mana and damage out of Omnath, and cards out of Helga. You can even exile two opposing threats with Leyline Binding or Solitude.
All of this innovation comes together beautifully. The Warp creatures power your established core engines, while also serving as fuel for Ritual, your new one. The result is a deck that runs very smoothly indeed, consistently getting even its one-of creatures like Elesh Norn and Vocalist out. It’s a little slow to get started, but once this deck’s gameplan gets going, it’s extremely difficult to keep up with.
A Marked Improvement?
That’s all well and good, but how does Ritak13’s list compare to previous versions of 4-Color Omnath? The deck started out as a much more traditional Control list, running planeswalkers like Teferi, Time Raveler and Wrenn and Six alongside a limited creature suite. The Helga versions that followed played like a mixture of Control and Domain, with a Leyline of the Guildpact/Scion of Draco package included. Ritak13’s, once more, takes the deck in a totally new direction, putting even more emphasis on the creatures as Control tools in themselves.
In the current Modern meta, this seems like a good move. Two of the top three decks right now, Boros Energy and Domain Zoo, are highly aggressive. They can deploy threats fast, and go underneath Control strategies for the most part. While this new 4-Color Omnath is still slow to get going, lacking any kind of consistent board presence until turn three, it can stall using the Evoke Elementals and the new Warp cards. Once it has Ritual established, it can consistently generate the value needed to turn the tides against this pair.
Eldrazi Tron is a bit trickier. It’s a similarly slow deck to Omnath, but with the potential to go far over the top once it really gets going. Ugin, Eye of the Storm and Devourer of Destiny, specifically, can really mess you up. In this matchup Ritak13’s list compares poorly to past versions due to its increased creature count, which turns on all of its powerful removal.
On balance, this new take on 4-Color Omnath feels like the best version of the deck we’ve seen yet, at least for the current metagame.
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