Omnath, Locus of Creation Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on April 22, 2024

Omnath, Locus of Creation | Illustration by Chris Rahn

The newest version of Omnath was released with Zendikar Rising in late 2020 in the form of Omnath, Locus of Creation. I really enjoy this card and have played against it many times at my LGS’s Monday Night Commander. I think it’s time I give it a go!

Today I’ve prepared a nice landfall-based list with an entire primer around it for you. I’ll go over my choices for various cards, a little info about the commander, and some general tips for piloting the list.

Let’s get started!

The Deck

Path to Exile | Illustration by Todd Lockwood

The Omnath, Locus of Creation decklist I’m bringing you today is a land-based casual Commander deck. The entire strategy revolves around triggering a lot of different landfall mechanics to maximize value and pull ahead of your opponents.

This is also a 4-color deck so the mana base is as complex as it is powerful. Green and red both offer an incredible array of mana ramp and ways to play multiple lands a turn, even from your graveyard. You’ll use these powers in conjunction with blue’s interaction and reactive playstyle and white’s protection-based spells and efficient removal.

Land-based strategies are particularly strong thanks to their resilience and a lack of prevalent removal that seriously hinders them. Priority isn’t passed when you play a land. It doesn’t use the stack and leaves no room for interaction between you and your opponent. This means your opponents can’t use conventional cards like Counterspell to stop a land from entering the battlefield and triggering a landfall keyword. Instead they’re restricted to very specific (and much lesser played) counterspells like Tale's End and Stifle.

As a side note, I use the term “casual” not to mean that this deck is low power or not strong, but that it’s not quite cEDH level. It doesn’t run efficient tutors or incredibly fast mana and has no infinite combos. While this deck is very strong it can’t hold its own too well against tuned cEDH decks, so it’s deemed “casual.”

The Commander

While this deck doesn’t heavily rely on its commander to win, Omnath, Locus of Creation isn’t to be underestimated. You’ll very often be able to hit all three triggers in a single turn, which not only means you have incredible mana advantages but also creates a huge disparity in life totals between you and your opponents. Yes, you read that right: your third land drop deals four damage to each opponent and planeswalker, which means you can very easily put your opponents on a clock from this triggered damage without even considering what combat damage you can threaten.

Omnath, Locus of Creation does, however, cost , which is a very complex mana cost that you’re not always guaranteed to hit on turn 4 or earlier. But this list has a very complex (and expensive) mana base that should be able to do this most of the time. You run very few basic lands and you don’t need to worry about it too much as long as you’re not too forgiving in what hands you choose to keep or mulligan.

Early Creatures

When it comes to the early games, specifically the first two or three turns, your entire objective consists of getting the mana to play your commander. You do this with a few mana dorks like Birds of Paradise, Budoka Gardener, and Lotus Cobra. These either provide all colors you’re able to use or will be useful later on to play more lands.

Following some kind of creature-based acceleration, creatures with landfall or that allow for extra lands per turn are welcome with open arms. Azusa, Lost but Seeking feels great to have and makes nearly every draw a good one. Not to mention it helps you generate more mana through your commander.

Augur of Autumn and Courser of Kruphix are both excellent and help in a number of ways. They provide some card advantage and info about your upcoming draws, which help you better plan ahead.

You also want to play some creatures with landfall in their oracle text. Part of what makes this deck so absurdly powerful is the fact that you can play a land, which can’t be stopped, and extract so much value that any single Stifle completely fails to disrupt you in a meaningful way. Look for cards like Scute Swarm and Tireless Tracker. These are very powerful lightning rods that offer a ton of value if they go unchecked.

Land Synergies

This deck, and Omnath, Locus of Creation as a commander, entirely revolves around landfall triggers and turning a simple land drop into an absolute bomb spell that does way too much for you for one card. You want to play a lot of the best landfall cards that let you do things like draw cards, deal damage, distribute +1/+1 counters, and more whenever you play one or more lands per turn.

These bonuses, while small on their own, quickly start to add up and cause serious concern in your opponent’s game. Here are some of the top landfall creatures included in the list that you can look forward to playing. If you’re opting to use this as a guide instead of a hardline law, I highly recommend including these.

Scute Swarm is a multiplying creature that gets totally out of hand once you hit six lands. Your Swarm will start multiplying like bacteria and you’ll have lethal damage swinging in an effectively unblockable form before you know it.

Tireless Tracker gives you a Clue whenever a land enters the battlefield, which helps you continue to dig through your deck for more lands and late-game finishers.

Maja, Bretagard Protector creates a 1/1 human warrior whenever you play a land with the added benefit of giving all other creatures you control +1/+1. This is an exceptional mechanic that lets you quickly overrun your opponents and more effectively divvy up damage each combat step.

Emeria Angel provides a benefit similar to Scute Swarm, except instead of copying itself it gives flying creatures. This goes hand in hand with Maja, Bretagard Protector.

Ancient Greenwarden doesn’t have a unique landfall trigger but copies each other ability triggered by a land entering the battlefield. This is where things really get crazy, and you’ll feel like you’re almost cheating when it all comes together like this.

Last but absolutely not least, Avenger of Zendikar swarms your board with 0/1 plants waiting to strike. Then you can play your three or four lands for the turn and have a huge board of creatures ready to swing for lethal.

Interaction

Every deck needs interaction. It gets you out of binds, helps disrupt your opponent’s plans, and it’s what gives you that perfect card for a certain situation. While this list goes pretty heavy on lands and creatures there’s still a need for some level of interaction, and that comes in the form of removal.

It wouldn’t be a deck with blue and white if it didn’t include Path to Exile, Swords to Plowshares, and Cyclonic Rift. These are some of the best spells in all of Magic so of course they’re included.

There’s also some decent artifact and enchantment removal in the forms of Broken Bond and Decimate. I still think that artifact and enchantment removal is a heavily underplayed form of interaction in Commander in general and you might as well take advantage of it since you’re playing green.

Many of your creatures don’t directly interact with your opponents but instead give you some kind of advantage and present a threat for your opponent to expend resources eliminating. But there are a few good ones worth mentioning when it comes to actually interacting with the people you’re playing Magic with. Soratami Mirror-Mage from original Kamigawa lets you put your extra lands to use to bounce creatures. It also gives you more lands to play and trigger more landfall triggers, which means this card effectively has no downside.

Roil Elemental steals creatures with ease, even multiple per turn.

Enchantments

There are nine total enchantments in this list. This isn’t crazy amount but still fairly high for a non-enchantment-based strategy. These cards are each incredibly powerful and have great synergies with the rest of your deck, and I think that enchantments are underestimated in casual Commander.

Burgeoning is a classic and staple in this list. It lets you play even more lands and is never subject to a mana disadvantage of any kind. It also lets you play lands untapped on your opponents turn which can help with playing cheap removal spells on recent targets.

Exploration is another staple that lets you tick up the number of lands you can play per turn. There isn’t much use to having more than two or three of these types of effects in play on a given turn, but you play so many so that you can consistently hit that number in each game.

Trade Routes lets you bounce lands for which can help maximize the number of lands you play per turn. Even if you don’t have any in your hand.

Retreat to Coralhelm is another passive landfall effect that lets you scry or tap creatures. This is great for pushing combat damage through to finish off enemies and still presents great value if there are not targets to tap.

Rhystic Study is a classic that doesn’t require much explanation. It’s good, draws you cards, and is tricky to remove.

Abundance is another card advantage enchantment that effectively lets you turn each extra draw into another land drop. Great for hitting consistent lands on turn 5 and 6 and even better when you need more gas to actually use your mana.

Felidar Retreat is a simple creature-making enchantment that provides the alternate choice to buff your entire board and give each creature vigilance for a turn. Another great finisher that helps push more combat damage.

The Mending of Dominaria is a saga that provides both creature and lands from your deck through the graveyard. This rarely misses since you have so many of both.

Waking the Trolls is yet another saga enchantment that destroys lands and gives them to you. It also has a very potent third trigger that gives you a number of 4/4 tokens equal to the difference in lands between you and an opponent.

The Mana Base

Acceleration

You run fewer mana rocks than the average EDH deck since you’re a land-based deck. You have Sol Ring and Arcane Signet as the only typical rocks in this list.

But you do get to play Crucible of Worlds. This goes great with fetch lands and even better with extra land-per-turn effects, letting you tutor out multiple lands per turn from your deck.

Birds of Paradise, Budoka Gardener, and Lotus Cobra essentially complete the early-game acceleration. They’re included because they either provide any color of mana or work well with playing lands, which is what you’re all about here.

Utility Lands

There’s only one utility land in this build, and it’s the new land from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, Boseiju, Who Endures. I’d normally count this card as a spell when putting together a list, but you can just count it as a 37th land and be on your way since you’re a land-heavy deck. This is pretty much always going to be used to destroy some kind of artifact or enchantment, but it also has some value as a way to kill nonbasic lands.

Cabal Coffers and similar threatening lands can often go unchecked in games of Commander, so it’s good to come prepared.

Combos and Interactions

There are no infinite combos in this deck. If you had the ability to play Fastbond you’d suddenly have multiple infinite combos on your hands with the likes of Trade Routes, but that card is unfortunately banned.

So don’t worry about accidentally popping off and killing an entire table (though that sounds nice to me). There aren’t any combos to worry about.

Rule 0 Violations Check

Many households and local game stores have Rule 0 terms that specify what cards or types of cards can’t be played in casual Commander. These usually target things that empower ultra-fast win conditions or make decks too consistent, like tutors and fast mana. This deck doesn’t run any of that and you can be confident that you won’t run into any rule-breaker cards playing this exact list.

If you want or need to describe the power level of this deck in a single sentence, you can say something like:

My deck has no infinite combos, tutors, or hyper-efficient counterspells. It typically wins by turn 8 or 9.

Budget Options

This deck currently has a fairly heavy price tag of around $750, which is quite a bit if you need to buy the entire list. That’s where budget options come in. While there isn’t much room for cuts there is one section in particular that’s responsible for a significant portion of the price tag.

The fetch lands and Crucible of Worlds carry the heaviest part of the deck’s price tag. Despite their incredible strength and what they do for the deck, they’re ultimately a great target if you can’t buy the entire deck otherwise.

The shock lands are the next-biggest hitter, but I’d advise against cutting these. They really help with fixing your mana which is of the utmost importance in a 4-color deck.

Other Builds

Outside of landfall and other land-based strategies, Omnath, Locus of Creation doesn’t see much play. There are some fringe strategies like Pod or blink, but they don’t use Omnath or any of its potential and are mostly using it for the colors.

There are some elemental tribal decks that manage to get off the ground and really use Omnath’s first triggered ability to make all the creatures in the deck card-neutral. After all, it’s practically mandatory that elemental tribal decks be under the banner of big daddy Omnath himself. Most of them are fairly similar to this list when it comes to the core structure, you’re just taking out some of the land-heavy cards like Emeria Angel or Moraug, Fury of Akoum to make room for more elemental-specific replacements.

But don’t go too heavy on removing landfall-empowering cards. You still want to make use of your commander’s abilities and a lot of the other elementals also have land-related triggers. Keep creatures like Azusa, Lost but Seeking and Courser of Kruphix that are generally strong and don’t have any downside.

Commanding Conclusion

Boseiju, Who Endures | Illustration by Chris Ostrowski

That wraps up the list and guide for Omnath, Locus of Creation! I really love Omnath as a reoccurring character in Magic and I’m glad to have seen a 4-color version that excludes black. I think Locus of Creation is the most powerful (and my favorite) Omnath out there and I really enjoyed putting this deck together for you today.

What do you think of Omnath both as a character and a commander? Do you like his newest iteration? Let me know down in the comments or over on the official Draftsim Discord.

Until next time, stay safe and stay healthy!