Omniscience.dec

[MaximumCDawg]

People are skeptical about our new friend, but I'm still thinking Omniscience has possibilities.  The immediate comparison is to Bargain and to Dream Halls, but I suggest this card is better than both.  Bargain requires you to be at a healthy life total, and you have to be playing a deck that can reliably draw into more immediate mana sources if you want to win the turn you use it.  Dream Halls requires a deck made for it, otherwise you're just 2-for-1ing yourself.  Even worse, the effect is symmetrical.  by contrast, Omniscience is helpful no matter what you're doing at that stage of the game, is one-sided, and immediately wins if a few very easy other conditions are satisfied.

So, where to abuse Omniscience?  I don't think Show and Tell is the way to go.  Legacy wonks are jumping on that bandwagon because they think of Omniscience as another big, expensive enchantment like Hive Mind.  I think that's totally wrong.  The whole point of Omniscience is to enable you to cast win conditions; if you're using Show and Tell, why not just cast the win conditions directly?

I feel the best shell for Omniscience is a deck abusing Academy Rector.  For 4 mana, potentially, Rector fetches and plays a singleton Omniscence.  From there, you can use all the tutors card you were playing anyway as win conditions, so for example:

Rector, Cast Diabolic Intent, fetch Emrakul and Omniscience, win.
Rector, sac to Cabal Therapy to stop countermagic, fetch Omniscience, start chaining draw spells until you find a tutor get Emrakul/Doomsday/whatever and win.

The obvious question, particularly when you're looking to cheat our Emrakul or play a 4cc creature, is why not just play Oath?  Well, you could, but in my mind Omniscience does a few things differently, if not necessarily better, than Oath.

1) All parts of the combo dodge Grafdigger's Cage.

2) You don't need to get a creature to attack to win, necessarily: Sparkcaster wins via ping; Sawtooth Loon lets you go search out Vault / Key (provided you started with 3 cards in hand); Twilight Shepherd does likewise assuming you used Diabolic Intent (cast Shepard returning intent, cast intent for vault saccing shepard, return intent again off persist to go get key); Cruel Ultimatum stops an opponent with lots of gas and probably loads you up to win; hopefully you can figure out your own win with something like Conflux; Preator's Counsel, Grislebrand, and friends provide nearly unbeatable CA; etc etc

3) Instead of running 4x Oath + 2x win cons, this would run 1x Omniscience + 3-4x Academy Rector + 1 Win con.  Smaller than Dragon's Breath Oath, not as small some Grislebrand packages perhaps.  The other half of each combo is Forbidden Orchard versus Tutors, which are both independently useful.

4) No need to run green if you don't want to.  Heck, you could go straight up WB for this combo if you really wanted.

With that in mind, I'm thinking you could go two ways with this deck.  You could either build a Drain Tendrils -type shell and put this combo in there as a win condition.  Alternatively, and maybe more interesting, is the idea of putting this in a Bloodghast / Dark Times like.  The one running blue is probably better, since you can potentially chain your win cons together. 

Initially, however, I wanted to check out a list that did not use blue.  This deck is designed to be able to easily finish off Rector and then fetch either Emrakul or the missing part of the Leyline Combo, as the situation warrants. 

Combo 1 (6)
4x Academy Rector
1x Omniscience
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

Combo 2 (5)
4x Leyline of the Void
1x Helm of Obedience

Tutor Suite (7)
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Imperial Seal
4x Diabolic Intent

Disruption (16)
4x Cabal Therapy
4x Thoughtseize
4x Swords to Plowshares
4x Disenchant

Accell (4)
4 Dark Ritual

Beatz (4)
4 Bloodghast

Mana (19)
19 Lands and Moxen and stuff.

I'd love to start a discussion about this card, including what shells other people thing it belongs in.

[brokenbacon]

That's actually a really sweet list. I think Bloodghast should become 4x Dark Confidant though. Also -1 Disenchant +1 Yawg Win.

[boggyb]

Nice idea, but Oath is just better

Because:
• It's got blue cards
• It's also a two-card combo but only requires resolving one spell to win, and sometimes doesn't even require the orchard
• You have a lot of cards that are bad on their own: Bloodghast, Diabolic Intent, Disenchant isn't so good, Leyline, Helm, etc. Oath only has usually 2-3 bricks in it. And Ritual Oath kind of has zero, since it can actually cast a Grisel or S&T him into play.
• Also, what happens if you draw your omniscence? Seems like game over. That'll happen really often.

[brianpk80]

There's a lot going on.  I will have test it out.  I think Cavern of Souls should be incorporated into the land section because having an uncounterable analogue to Tinker, Oath of Druids, and Dread Return would be a big selling point.  Dark Confidant is a good card but the average converted mana cost is too high from what I can tell.   

[MaximumCDawg]

There's a lot going on.  I will have test it out.  I think Cavern of Souls should be incorporated into the land section because having an uncounterable analogue to Tinker, Oath of Druids, and Dread Return would be a big selling point.  Dark Confidant is a good card but the average converted mana cost is too high from what I can tell.  

Cavern of Souls is a very interesting point; Rector is a human and so it works well with other Human Wizard card types.

This also points out my current dilemma - what shell can use this combo most effectively?  As BoggyB points out, this Dark Times shell has alot of dead space.  But the actual Omniscience part of the deck is only 6 cards, which is on par with some types of Oath.  The tricky bit is incorporating ways to kill Rector - lots of tutors are fine in whatever deck anyway.

So, maybe it goes in Esper Wizards.  Maybe Gush.  Maybe Dark Times.  You could even drop black entirely and go WG and rely on Eladrami's Call.  I dunno, that's what Im wrestling with.  

Is it "worse than Oath?" Well, maybe, in the sense that Oath is "worse than Shops."  I don't think the two decks are trying to do the same thing.  If you want to win without tutoring up a creature, you can do that.  Tutor up Conflux, for example, grabbing Tezzeret, the Seeker and Demonic Tutor, and then go assemble Key-Vault from there.  Heck, go assemble Mike and Trike if you want.  Oath can't do that.  Another bonus?  When you land a Rector, people are very loath to start swinging into you for fear of triggering your win.  It's a great stall; once he lands, you have to stop your opponent from winning or casting Swords to Plowshares, basically.  IF Rector is uncounterable on top of it ...

[Archae]

One other nod this has over an Oath package is that you cast Emrakul, so you get to time walk. The variance of DB and af Jace on the board are problematic for GG Oath (if one is running Emrakul).

Why the 4-of Disenchant? I would run Mental Misstep in this list, if only to combat opposing Missteps and other 1-CC countermagic that ruins your day.

[MaximumCDawg]

One other nod this has over an Oath package is that you cast Emrakul, so you get to time walk. The variance of DB and af Jace on the board are problematic for GG Oath (if one is running Emrakul).

Why the 4-of Disenchant? I would run Mental Misstep in this list, if only to combat opposing Missteps and other 1-CC countermagic that ruins your day.

Not that I disagree, but I think either Demon or Grislebrand Oath are the standards now.  That's what you measure against in comparing a different deck.

[Elric]

Combo 1 (6)
4x Academy Rector
1x Omniscience
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

What do you do if you draw Omniscience?

[MaximumCDawg]

Combo 1 (6)
4x Academy Rector
1x Omniscience
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

What do you do if you draw Omniscience?

Hang your head and cry?

I mean, this is a similar problem that some Oath builds have.  You can't solve it by discarding to reshuffle it, like with Blightsteel or Emrakul, that's true.  Maybe borrow some old tech in the form of Lat-Nam's Legacy or something?

[aforce808]

I have to agree with some of the previous posts.  This seems like it wants to do the same things as Oath, but it's not as diverse, the protection is much worse, and I'm not sure why you wouldn't want to run Grisselbrand.  It's just better than Emrakul imo.  Granted, I haven't played with or against your deck.  These are just my first impressions.  I have to admit, I'm a little bit infatuated with the Ritual Oath deck posted in here at the moment. 

Doug

[mmcgeach]

I dunno, I don't think you want to rule this out immediately as being "worse than oath."  It's different.  Looks like your big plusses are:

1) Cavern of Souls making rector uncounterable.
2) Immune to Grafdigger's Cage and other oath-hate.

If you want to focus on Cavern of Souls probably go esper with wizards...  that gives you draw spells and brainstorm + jace to deal with drawing the omniscience.  Also Bob + Snap + Jace is a good back-up plan.  But maybe then you become too much like other blue/black control lists?

You probably want some way to sac a dude at instant speed like... phyrexian tower.

If you wanted to remain more white-centered, you could go with a land tax / scroll rack combo to put back your omniscience.  The scroll rack / land tax engine has traditionally been just a little too slow for vintage, but it might work here.  This brings up an interesting idea: How does Land Tax / Scroll Rack / Bob work?  I bet it's awesome.

[TheShop]

I would run this blue/black heavy with lots of protection and run gris and emrakul with a singleton copy of flash.  Less deck slots dedicated to win conditions, more permission.  Typical combo control, and the only reason I would consider something like this is the prestated dodging of normal combo hinderances.

[Samoht]

Why are we not running Show and Tell in this either?