All the way back in the original Limited Edition Alpha, players got treated to one of the coolest things in Magic: clones! There wasn't just one of them in this set, rather there were two in the original Clone and also in Vesuvan Doppelganger.

Now, you probably know Clone as just a generic clone effect. That's fair considering how basic the card was, even if it was so complex that for years Wizards wouldn't reprint it due to rules issues. Vesuvan Doppelganger, however, created this flavor for a place called Vesuva. Eventually this would be further fleshed out, with cards like Vesuvan Shapeshifter, Vesuvan Drifter, and Helm of the Host directly calling out to it. Evolving from this idea of Vesuva being a place of shape shifting beings able to take on any form, it's taken on an identity of its own in the world of Magic. Now with Modern Horizons 3, we get to see a whole deck themed around this concept.

The Tricky Terrain preconstructed deck is all about what if you just had access to, well, everything? Omo, Queen of Vesuva takes center stage and enables all your stuff to be exactly what it sounds like: everything. Your lands become all land types and your creatures become all creature types... in small doses, of course. Can't just have it all at once so easily, can we?

Today, I'm going to take a bit of a look at this list and see if we can find upgrades to the precon itself! First, though, let's see the list!

Tricky Terrain Precon | Commander

• Commander (1)
• 1 Omo, Queen of Vesuva

• Creatures (24)
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Apex Devastator
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Dryad of the Ilysian Grove
• 1 Elvish Rejuvenator
• 1 Floriferous Vinewall
• 1 Fog Bank
• 1 Hydra Broodmaster
• 1 Hydroid Krasis
• 1 Jyoti, Moag Ancient
• 1 Magus of the Candelabra
• 1 Poison Dart Frog
• 1 Rampaging Baloths
• 1 Rampant Frogantua
• 1 Ramunap Excavator
• 1 Sage of the Maze
• 1 Satyr Wayfinder
• 1 Scute Swarm
• 1 Skullwinder
• 1 Tatyova, Benthic Druid
• 1 Terastodon
• 1 Ulvenwald Hydra
• 1 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
• 1 Wonderscape Sage

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 1 Nissa, Steward of Elements
• 1 Vivien Reid

• Instants (8)
• 1 Arcane Denial
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Drown in Dreams
• 1 Eureka Moment
• 1 Evacuation
• 1 Growth Spiral
• 1 Pongify
• 1 Summary Dismissal

• Sorceries (10)
• 1 Aggressive Biomancy
• 1 Curse of the Swine
• 1 Finale of Revelation
• 1 Harmonize
• 1 Hour of Promise
• 1 March from Velis Vel
• 1 Replication Technique
• 1 Sylvan Scrying
• 1 Treasure Cruise
• 1 Urban Evolution

• Enchantments (4)
• 1 Copy Land
• 1 Desert Warfare
• 1 Mana Reflection
• 1 Propaganda

• Artifacts (7)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Chromatic Lantern
• 1 Expedition Map
• 1 Mirage Mirror
• 1 Oblivion Stone
• 1 Seer's Sundial
• 1 Sol Ring

• Lands (44)
• 3 Island
• 4 Forest
• 1 Basilisk Gate
• 1 Blast Zone
• 1 Cloudpost
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Dark Depths
• 1 Desert of the Indomitable
• 1 Desert of the Mindful
• 1 Dreamroot Cascade
• 1 Flooded Grove
• 1 Glimmerpost
• 1 Hashep Oasis
• 1 Hidden Cataract
• 1 Hidden Nursery
• 1 Horizon of Progress
• 1 Lair of the Hydra
• 1 Lazotep Quarry
• 1 Lumbering Falls
• 1 Lush Oasis
• 1 Overflowing Basin
• 1 Planar Nexus
• 1 Quandrix Campus
• 1 Simic Growth Chamber
• 1 Simic Guildgate
• 1 Sunken Palace
• 1 Talon Gates of Madara
• 1 Temple of Mystery
• 1 Thespian's Stage
• 1 Thornwood Falls
• 1 Trenchpost
• 1 Urza's Mine
• 1 Urza's Power Plant
• 1 Urza's Tower
• 1 Vesuva
• 1 Vineglimmer Snarl
• 1 Volatile Fault
• 1 Yavimaya Coast
• 1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

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Okay, so before we dive into these upgrades, I'm going to level with you all: I have no idea what you're supposed to do with a deck like this. The conceit of having your lands get every land type and creatures getting every creature type absolutely rocks. In practice, though, what can you really do with that? When you look at the overall card selection of the deck, it's kinda just everywhere because it can be as broad as it wants to be in terms of sheer scope. Maybe you can find some way to get benefits from having access to specific land types or creature types, but your benefits aren't exactly going to be as sweeping as you might expect.

For example, what about kindred synergies? Most of these end up being primarily focused on lords, which are just simple buffs. Many other kindred synergies look for when your cards get cast or are entering the battlefield. Think something like Leaf-Crowned Visionary or Metallic Mimic. In fact, when looking up lords in Simic colors, I found about 42 currently on Scryfall (pending Bloomburrow, of course) with less in terms of kindred-focused ones. Of those, here are the ones probably relevant for a deck like this:

• Elvish Archdruid (large mana production)
• Greatbow Doyen (unique damage dealing)
• Joraga Warcaller (build-your-own buffs)
• Lord of Atlantis and Master of the Pearl Trident (Islandwalk)
• Lord of the Unreal (mass Hexproof)
• Merfolk Sovereign (unblockable)
• Myr Galvanizer (mass untap)
• Scion of Oona (mass Shroud)
• Seshiro the Anointed (Coastal Piracy effect)
• Timber Protector (mass Indestructible)
• Vodalian Hexcatcher (countering, low relevance in Commander)

Some of these are pretty decent, particularly the ones with sweeping protection like Lord of the Unreal and Timber Protector. Many others just feel like glorified, well, Glorious Anthems for only part of your board (remember that not all your creatures will have everything counters on them). Given this, you have to be careful about what you want to utilize in this list. After all, you don't want to just go deep on a bunch of basic buff effects. That's boring! You could go real hard with it and use something like Coat of Arms, but then you help your opponents as well.

So what other creature type synergies can we take advantage of if not going the lord approach? Well, one thing that I think is worth pointing out is how limiting the color identity of Simic is. It limits the utility of breaking out into a wider range of creature types. For example we can't take advantage of some of the interesting things goblins or zombies might get up to.

Here's a small sampling of viable creature types that you might be able to pull stuff from:

• Dinosaur
• Druid
• Elemental
• Elf
• Faerie
• Human
• Hydra
• Merfolk
• Ninja
• Ooze
• Pirate
• Rogue
• Sliver
• Snake
• Spirit
• Treefolk
• Wizard

This is only a small helping of ones that stood out when I was scrolling through EDHREC trying to cover relevant creatures, as otherwise the scope would be far too deep for me to explore on my own. I'd basically be pouring over every single card that works within a Blue and Green color identity to look for creature type synergies. That's several thousand cards! So instead, I'm going to try pinpointing a small handful of noteworthy cards that might be worth looking at for cool synergies.

One of the more obvious creature types for this is elves. Rather than, say, tap a couple creatures for one notable effect as most types will, elves tend to go for one single activation for a massive effect. For example, the aforementioned Elvish Archdruid - alongside Priest of Titania and Wirewood Channeler - generates absurd amounts of mana. In a similar vein, Immaculate Magistrate and Timberwatch Elf both provide massive power boosts, with one being permanent and the other temporary. Wellwisher also grants monstrous life buffs, making it harder for aggressive strategies to take you out. Many of these benefit from opponents' elves as well, which you can take advantage of well.

Other cards have more specific uses. Some are simple, like how Galerider Sliver and Manaweft Sliver can give you wide effects. Others like Deeproot Pilgrimage enable you to get extra creature tokens out of tapping creatures you might not normally do this with. Lullmage Mentor, Patron Wizard, and Skystrike Officer allow you to tap lots of different creatures to fuel this too, while simultaneously granting some powerful effects. A couple particularly notable kindred cards I do want to shout out, though, are Leaf-Crowned Elder and Gilt-Leaf Archdruid. The Archdruid is often difficult to pull off with how few druids there are, but for a deck like this it's trivial to pull off for such a powerful effect. Conversely, Leaf-Crowned Elder is meant to only really work with Treefolk, but when it's actually all creature types, it allows you to churn through your deck quickly.

With creatures fairly well covered, let's move onto the lands. As far as those go, there's even less to cover. Having access to all land types is awesome, but for the most part it's not going to do a ton. Chances are you're not doing too much with Cave synergies, nor are you utilizing tons of Urzatron or Cloudposts either. Yes, you obviously run those because it's just easy to run them, but also they're already here so it's not like there's a ton to upgrade as far as the lands go. In this case, it's far more the usual look for a better quality pool of lands to advance your game in a more meaningful way.

While the lands themselves don't really matter, it's possible there are non-land cards caring about those land types that do. Take Domain, for example. Typically in a two color deck, Domain is worthless. I actually ran into this issue trying to find ways to make Zar Ojanen, Scion of Efrava work as a commander. In practice, there just wasn't enough ways to turn your lands into all basic land types to matter. Here, though, that's rather frivolous. Just casting Omo once in your typical game will grant you full Domain with ease. So then, what cards can we take advantage of that use that mechanic?

Collective Restraint is a pretty easy one. It makes it really difficult for opponents to break through your defenses most of the time since they'll need to pay five mana for every creature they want to send your way. Cards like Jodah's Codex, Sphinx of Clear Skies, and Nael, Avizoa Aeronaut give you tremendous amounts of card advantage you might not be able to normally access in a typical Simic list. Tromp the Domains also works spectacularly as a means of closing out games, enabling you to crush your opponents with a truly monstrous Overrun effect.

Some cards care less about going wide with card types and instead care about only having one type. Hare, this mostly applies to cards that look for how many Islands and Forests you have in play since you likely won't be able to use ones that care about the number of Plains, Swamps, and Mountains you have. Flow of Knowledge and Flow of Ideas both give you tons of cards in your hand, while Engulf the Shore and Floodgate can provide unique board wipe options. Heck, if you want to steal a creature, Vedalken Shackles will work better here than most decks that aren't just Mono-Blue. Green has admittedly fewer options, with only Beacon of Creation, Howl of the Nightpack, and Staff of Titania really standing out in this regard. Still, more options to upgrade with is always welcome.

Admittedly, the options here feel so wonky but only because I'm trying to find ways to carve out a niche. That's a problem with a deck like this: it's too broad. There's too many ways you can approach it and that makes it hard to synergize effectively. Compare that to the previously covered Eldrazi and Jund decks. There was a clear theme with all of that. So then how do you narrow down the theme of "everything?"

My simple recommendation is to just build the deck however you want. I merely suggested a handful of interesting angles you can take to tweak the deck to your liking, but the reality is that I've rarely seen a deck more wide open than this. You can rework it however you want and there's no real "right" answer or approach. Build it how you'd like and it'll sure to be a good time at your next Commander night. I recommend trying to ease up on the general "Simic Value Engine go brrrrr" angle that tends to plague decks in this color pair if you can. Your playgroup will thank you.

Paige Smith

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