Playing Four-Color Omniscience

Posted on December 21, 2018

Welcome back everyone. It is Friday and that means more brews! This past week MTG Arena introduced ranked play to its platform. Before ranked play I tended to just grind Constructed events to test out my decks. However, a ladder system is appealing, and I began playing it. The deck I piloted all the way to platinum was an Omniscience combo deck. I mentioned this deck in a previous article, but it had not been fully tuned. While the decks always change, I like the stock list of this deck.

At the moment, ranked play on MTG Arena is best of one, so you do not have Sideboard games. So, I will give you the list I played on MTG Arena for best of one and I will give you another list with a different Sideboard for best of three. The reason we even need a Sideboard at all for best of one is for Mastermind's Acquisition which helps us find our Omniscience, refuels us, and allows us to combo when we have Omniscience in play. It is a vital part of this deck.

Let's go ahead and look at the deck.

Four-Color Omniscience | Guilds Standard | Ali Aintrazi

Enchantments (6)
2 Omniscience
4 Gift of Paradise

The reason for all the singletons in the Sideboard is because of Mastermind's Acquisition. While you will never Sideboard in your battle of one game, you can still choose the "Choose a card outside the game" mode on Mastermind's Acquisition and grab any card that you have in your Sideboard. You can grab whatever card that you need in whatever situation you are in. You will eventually need to grab your combo piece (Thousand-Year Storm) so try not to waste them.

This deck is all ramp, card draw, and battlefield wipes. If you do not include Mastermind's Acquisition, you have nine ways to keep the battlefield clear. Cards like Search for Azcanta are good but they kind of slow you down when you are comboing off with Omniscience. Search is great in a grindy matchup but resolving one Overflowing Insight will refuel whatever your opponent has depleted. I have played against Dimir control and they will pick apart your hand down to almost nothing but Overflowing Insight will just refuel you completely and even Chemister's Insight is really good at refilling your hand against those decks.

The Combo

After looking at the main deck you may be asking yourself, "How does this deck win exactly?" Well... It is not as complicated as it may look. You will need to get to ten mana and hard Omniscience. Just make sure when you play Omniscience you have a follow up. You will want to try and combo off as soon as Omniscience hits the battlefield. Overflowing Insights and Chemister's Insights will allow you to churn through your deck very quickly. You can even use a Mastermind's Acquisition to grab an Overflowing Insight to get things started. Keep in mind that you can't Jump-Start Chemister's Insight with Omniscience in play, but you can play a Gilded Lotus and a land / Chromatic Lantern to Jump-Start it. So, after you start drawing all the cards you will want to grab Thousand-Year Storm from your Sideboard. You can then win by castingOverflowing Insight on your opponent and essentially milling them or you can cast another Mastermind's Acquisition and essentially grab your whole Sideboard and win in whatever fashion you desire. If your opponent could burn you out from drawing Lightning Strike or a burn spell, you will want to try and win with Inescapable Blaze. The same is true if your opponent might have Assassin's Trophy. With Assassin's Trophy you will try to just set it up so that after you play Thousand-Year Storm you can just Overflowing Insight on your opponent and they will die no matter if they blow up Thousand-Year Storm or Omniscience with Assassin's Trophy.

Your matchup against midrange decks is fantastic. Against aggressive strategies it really depends on the die roll, if you are not on the play it is rough. Counterspell Control, not Dimir control, is the hardest matchup. You will need to grind them out of countermagic, the matchup is significantly easier if they do not know what you are doing as they will counter the wrong spells.

If you wanted to take this deck to FNM, a PPTQ, or just give it a whirl online in a best of three match, this is the list I would run. The main deck is the same, the only difference is the Sideboard.

Four-Color Omniscience w/ Sideboard | Guilds Standard | Ali Aintrazi

Enchantments (6)
2 Omniscience
4 Gift of Paradise

Instead of playing Carnage Tyrant and getting it killed with Cleansing Nova I would rather just Inescapable Blaze them out of the game and finish them off with a Banefire or just more Inescapable Blazes / Fight with Fire. Blaze can also hit Niv-Mizzet or Teferi but I'd try my hardest to just kill them instead of killing their planeswalker. Lyra is great against Drakes / aggressive decks and decent against Niv-Mizzet. Profane Procession is also great against Drakes / Niv-Mizzet.

This deck isn't finished by any means, especially with Ravnica Allegiance around the corner, but it is in a good spot. If you are curious about how the deck plays out. You can watch my climb to Platinum with this deck!