It’s post Spotlight Series: Planetary Rotation, and the Standard metagame seems to have grown from one deck to two. Mono-Red is back in vogue, taking down Izzet Cauldron decks everywhere. Whether Cauldron will adapt or not is something we don’t know of yet, but for now, there are two deck choices you could justifiably bring to try your best at winning a Standard tournament. Of course, not everyone is going to play those, and Planetary Rotation offers a few more decks to choose from.
The most interesting deck from the weekend revived a hated combo archetype from pre-Edge of Eternities. Omniscience is back, and while the deck looks somewhat competitive, it did perform much worse than Red and Cauldron this weekend. This made me believe that the deck would be shelved, but it seems that Simic Omniscience isn’t quite done yet. Thanks to an overlooked rare from Murders at Karlov Manor, this deck is continuing to put up results.
Simic Omniscience
Simic Omniscience works similarly to the Azorius archetype of old: cheat Omniscience into play and win the game. Of course, Abuelo’s Awakening is now banned, forcing players to look for new ways to get the enchantment into play. Kona, Rescue Beastie seems to be the best way to do this. Once Omniscience is in play, use Marang River Regent loops to draw your deck, bounce everything, and win the game. You can even use Bloomvine Regent to gain infinite life. A top-eight finish in Magic’s most recent Standard Challenge proves that Simic Omniscience isn’t down for the count yet.
Thanks to the new Edge of Eternities Planet Lands, you can tap Kona on the same turn it enters play. This allows players to use Kona’s Survival ability on the turn they play it without risking their creature in combat. This adds another card to the combo, but it does mean Omniscience is alive and well, and doesn’t get beaten by graveyard hate anymore.
Sadly, compared to Abuelo’s Awakening, there’s one big flaw. Creature removal, which is extremely prevalent in Standard thanks to the presence of Vivi Cauldron and Mono-Red, can kill your Kona before you cheat Omniscience into play. With some innovative deckbuilding, this problem has been solved with a Standard legal card that most players likely forgot about.
MTG Lost in the Maze
Lost in the Maze gets to play an important double-duty role in Simic Omniscience. If you have a lot of mana and need to buy some time, Lost in the Maze can stop your opponent’s attacks for a few turns. While this is a nice effect to have, Simic Omniscience is mostly interested in that second ability.
Granting tapped creatures Hexproof means that most removal effects will no longer kill Kona, Rescue Beastie. If Kona resolves, the owner will gain priority to tap Kona with a Station effect before the opponent has an opportunity to respond with removal. This ensures that, provided you tap Kona as soon as possible, the Beastie will gain Hexproof before your opponent can remove it.
Combine this with Cavern of Souls, and it becomes very difficult to stop the Omniscience combo once it’s all assembled. That said, there’s a ton of moving pieces here, as you essentially need Kona, a Planet Land, Lost in the Maze, Cavern of Souls, and Omniscience to pull this unstoppable combo off. More often than not, you won’t have everything, and that will sometimes be good enough.
Similar to old variants of Omniscience, the rest of the deck is just card draw and interaction. Card advantage, being able to both win the game and find your pieces, really helps to make this deck work. Almost all of your cards work pre- and post-combo, which is what made the previous version of Omniscience combo so potent.
A Really Bizarre Sideboard
As far as the main deck goes, the rest of Simic Omniscience is pretty close to what we remember from the archetype’s previous iterations. Unauthorized Exit notably takes the place of the rotated out Ephara’s Dispersal as a way to get problematic threats off the board and filter your cards. The main deck is otherwise rather familiar, taking advantage of card advantage spells like Stock Up and Consult the Star Charts.
The sideboard, on the other hand, is a totally different story. Simic Omniscience employs a bunch of strange threats that haven’t seen much competitive play at all. Siding into a toughness matters package, Fecund Greenshell allows the deck to turn into a midrange deck. As long as the tortoise is strongly supported, you’ll generate a lot of card advantage. Dreamdew Entrancer joins Greenshell as a strange four-drop that can both slow down an opponent’s threat and draw you cards. This card synergizes particularly well with Kona, Rescue Beastie. While Lost in the Maze protects Kona during the turn you cast it, if Kona ends up untapping again, your opponent will have an opportunity to kill it in your upkeep, since Station effects are sorcery speed. Dreamdew Entrancer can keep your Kona tapped and draw you extra cards.
Caelorna, Coral Tyrant also sees play here, potentially as a way to slow down aggressive red decks. Combine that with some counterspells, a full playset of Heritage Reclamation, and some soft removal, and you have Simic Omniscience.
A Defined Tier Two Deck
While Simic Omniscience has a lot going for it, the deck is certainly behind the top tier. For this deck to win, you usually need to assemble the combo successfully. Unlike Vivi Cauldron, which also has a game-ending combo, winning without getting Omniscience into play is a difficult task. Needing all the cards in hand gives you a bit less leeway with discard effects, since you can no longer just drop your Omniscience in your graveyard.
The rise of Mono-Red might not have helped this deck out, either. Against Vivi Cauldron, since you’re just trying to buy time, you only need to bounce large threats and stop the Vivi combo from assembling. Against Red, every single threat can potentially deal a large amount of damage. This will challenge how quickly you can assemble your combo. If Red does end up going shields down, it may become a lot easier to cheat Omniscience into play.
Bizarrely, this might not even be the most competitive Kona deck out there. Selesnya Kona, utilizing The Seriema as a swiss-army knife for your combo plan, placed much better at Planetary Rotation than Simic Omniscience did, but, unlike Simic, Selesnya was a true outlier, with only one decent placing.
All of that said, the continued fringe success of this archetype suggests that there’s something here. Whether Simic Omniscience takes a larger position in Standard’s meta is to be determined, but, for now, if you want to play a combo deck without breaking the bank in Standard, Simic Omniscience can scratch that itch.
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