[Deck] MonoU OmniTell

[Lejay]

I played the Uw control list for a league and felt like the cards were too specialized. They could be good but unnecessary or just irrelevant. If you splash white terminus is a good sb card and in all builds counterbalance is an option (considered it before). I didn't post remarks before on the list because I had a very limited number of games with it.
Mentor is probably not worth splashing, I think Bitterblossom was better.

About the changes to my list I decided I will just forget the idea of beating grixis control reliably. A bit like vs chalice decks you do still win some post sb games without any particular strategy accomplishing and vs control game ones are a lot easier, so I think it is more efficient to use the slots to focus on combo decks (or others if needed, like massacre) and accept to have grixis as a difficult match-up. Which has been a good choice given the range of decks I faced since I decided myself about this change. Besides some of the slots may be useful vs hymn or surgical (spell pierce which has the good idea to hit jace, cb and sneak attack, and surgical that can mess up with scm or "counter" a surgical).
Spell pierce #2 could be something else (cb, LDV to bring in vs chalice decks, ...) and possibly 3rd surgical too. With 3 I am happy to side in 2 vs a lot of decks, but 3 vs the explosive graveyard decks.
I could add more cards vs thalia decks but I don't face them so often and massacre isn't great vs 5c humans. It's possible Hideous laughter comes in before.
Since I have more cards vs combo I replaced Dimir Charm with Echoing Decay even if the charm was good.
Playing with Thought Erasure instead of 4th seize since intuitively it seemed nice to lose less life and you sometimes have fow and useless discards with no time to delay the combo. The surveil is useful. Could become 2 or 0, but 1 is good so far. I have a 9th fetch which has downsides but is probably safer. I don't have a problem sideboarding out a swamp now vs control or combo because I have less black sb cards and the 9th fetch.
Among the things I tested Mission Briefing was a bit too expensive (as a wish slot but also too often when I sided it in). I briefly tried again tainted pact, it's still on my mind. One should test with it or Spoils of the Vault in mind as a wish target.
Murderous Cut has situations where it's inferior to Fatal Push but it happens less than the other way around I think.
Didn't do great vs Turbo Depths and an infect deck, I am thinking about snapback a lot again.

I'd like to find a sb card that acts as a combo piece. Decree of Pain is a good card for this matter but it will be useful vs Thalia decks and I would like the sb card to be sided in mostly for when I sb out LDV and/or Intuition. Stormtide Leviathan was a consideration in 2013 but is too fragile vs reb or Flickerwisp (and people still have stp post sb quite often). It could be the third emrakul or a griselbrand, but I would like to find something better by itself and/or solving difficult situations.

4 Omniscience
4 Cunning Wish
4 Polluted Delta
3 Scalding Tarn
6 Island
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
3 Thoughtseize
3 Force of Will
4 Show and Tell
2 Underground Sea
2 Lim-Dûl's Vault
2 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Intuition
3 Baleful Strix
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Swamp
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Thought Erasure

1 Noxious Revival
1 Firemind's Foresight
1 Eladamri's Call
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Release the Ants
1 Murderous Cut
1 Cryptic Command
1 Force of Will
1 Baleful Strix
1 Skeletal Scrying
1 Echoing Decay
2 Spell Pierce

[LarsLeif]

I'd like to find a sb card that acts as a combo piece. Decree of Pain is a good card for this matter but it will be useful vs Thalia decks and I would like the sb card to be sided in mostly for when I sb out LDV and/or Intuition. Stormtide Leviathan was a consideration in 2013 but is too fragile vs reb or Flickerwisp (and people still have stp post sb quite often). It could be the third emrakul or a griselbrand, but I would like to find something better by itself and/or solving difficult situations.

This seems like a perfect opportunity for me to enact my ongoing plan of putting Emrakul, the Promised End in all decks.

[Lammina]

Hi all!

In the UB version, the new "Unmoored Ego" don´t have space?
Naming "show and tell" in mirrors, sneak attacks, Delvers, Phyreixan Dreadnoughts, Fows....

[LarsLeif]

Hi all!

In the UB version, the new "Unmoored Ego" don´t have space?
Naming "show and tell" in mirrors, sneak attacks, Delvers, Phyreixan Dreadnoughts, Fows....

Such cards are always grossly overrated so I would not think so. Basically, it's very seldom a good idea to tap out early and go down a card just to attack your opponents library.

[8bit9mm]

Mentor is probably not worth splashing, I think Bitterblossom was better.

This made me laugh way too hard. You're telling me Bitterblossom is better than Mentor? When our deck is almost entirely spells?

You're not just splashing for Mentor. You're splashing for Swords and Disenchant as well. Efficient answers to permanents.
I've cut down to one Terminus (it probably isn't necessary at all and should probably be an Intuition, but does come in handy sometimes), but Swords, Disenchant and Mentor are more than worth the Splash for me.

I'm not trying to discount UB (which I also play), I'm just trying to take a different approach to the meta, since Strix hasn't been getting there for me.

[Lejay]

In my games the 3 mana was a huge difference that would make it come down too late. The creature type was making it too vulnerable to the creature removals people seem to keep (or Kolaghan because vs HTTs you have no choice but to tap out for it).
In controllish decks mentor can come after you control the situation while as a sb slot for this deck I want something that grants a win despite the opponent putting me quite low on ressources.
There was this one game where I could luckily land a mentor turn 3 without anything to trigger it since I already played discard to clear the way. I then topdeck the second mentor, he kills one, and I spend two more turns before another removal comes.
There is a cost to it being 3 mana, a creature, and of course white. When I say it is not worth splashing, the real sentence could have been it is not worth splashing just for it with Bitterblossom existing, at the very least it's that. And this deck counting a lot on basics vs tempo I would avoid splashing if I could. Terminus is a real card that could be worth splashing sb if suddenly I had a ton of 5c humans to beat (though you should probably just play another deck). Stp is playable but disenchant was the only card that felt really useful and I just never cast it. The windows for it to be good aren't that many. That may be because with LDV and strix I don't always need to destroy chalice at one.
Anyway as I said I have a different philosophy now and won't try to beat grixis reliably anymore.


The black splash is based on discard first. Strix is there so that tempo decks can be won often enough with a card that isn't bad in the main deck. If you never face Tempo Thresh or Ub shadow you can probably play without strix.
Control or combo g1 aren't that much of a problem, but without strix delver decks have great odds beating you as soon as game one and it goes worse post sb.


Regarding Unmoored Ego I think it has a little chance. Sneak show has a lot of ways to put creatures into play post sb + Jace so you probably want to discard+surgical creatures. Unmoored Ego would help in that plan and is ok vs storm. But it seems not good often enough or fast enough vs dredge or reanimator.

[8bit9mm]

In my games the 3 mana was a huge difference that would make it come down too late. The creature type was making it too vulnerable to the creature removals people seem to keep (or Kolaghan because vs HTTs you have no choice but to tap out for it).
In controllish decks mentor can come after you control the situation while as a sb slot for this deck I want something that grants a win despite the opponent putting me quite low on ressources.
There was this one game where I could luckily land a mentor turn 3 without anything to trigger it since I already played discard to clear the way. I then topdeck the second mentor, he kills one, and I spend two more turns before another removal comes.
There is a cost to it being 3 mana, a creature, and of course white. When I say it is not worth splashing, the real sentence could have been it is not worth splashing just for it with Bitterblossom existing, at the very least it's that. And this deck counting a lot on basics vs tempo I would avoid splashing if I could. Terminus is a real card that could be worth splashing sb if suddenly I had a ton of 5c humans to beat (though you should probably just play another deck). Stp is playable but disenchant was the only card that felt really useful and I just never cast it. The windows for it to be good aren't that many. That may be because with LDV and strix I don't always need to destroy chalice at one.
Anyway as I said I have a different philosophy now and won't try to beat grixis reliably anymore.

First and foremost, congrats on the latest 5-0 getting published.

Second, I agree with the sentiment that Mentor is not worth splashing white only for it. I'm splashing white because I wanted to be playing a mashup of Miracles and Omni. I wanted the most efficient removal in the format alongside Snapcasters. Mentor is just incidentally available to us as a very viable plan-B since I'm in white.

I played the list over the weekend in the 40 Duals for Charity event in St. Louis and it felt great against all of the fair decks (even got a round 1 win on the feature match), beating them all (except Grixis control where we drew because of time, didn't even get to go to game 3). Unfortunately, I saw more unfair match-ups than fair, which this build of the deck is actually softer to because you are completely reactive instead of being proactive with discard.

I will say that counterbalance over-performed all day and has been over-performing online as well. The issues with the deck are present when you're faced with the extremely fast combo decks of the format (BR Reanimator, Depths, etc.). You're just not as well setup to fight them as UB is, which feels bad after playing UB for the past few months.

I'll definitely continue to work on Miracle of Science. I think it's got legs and I don't think my list is optimal (yet), but, I think that at the moment, it is more of a meta-deck than anything. If you plan to play against fair decks all day, this is a great choice. If you plan to play against more combo, or a fairly diverse room, I think UB is a much better choice at the moment.

[Matsaya]

Hi,

Sorry for the dumb question, but with the latest list of Lejay's, I don't see how you can go for the instant kill (useful against an opposing show and tell). More precisely, I see how to do it using Lim-Dul's vault, but this requires to be not too low on life.

Any helps ?

Thanks.

[LarsLeif]

Hi,

Sorry for the dumb question, but with the latest list of Lejay's, I don't see how you can go for the instant kill (useful against an opposing show and tell). More precisely, I see how to do it using Lim-Dul's vault, but this requires to be not too low on life.

Any helps ?

Thanks.

You are correct that the instant speed kill requires LDV, and the full FF chain might cost you a few life points because of that. Not always though as you usually get Brainstorm, LDV and Wish with FF and then you can either brainstorm something expensive to the top or you can LDV and only look at the top 5 and hope you have an expensive card there.

I disagree however that it comes up against opposing show and tells given that if they play SnT they probably have emrakul in their deck so trying to kill with release the ants is a risky proposition. What you should probably do instead is to drop your own omni and try to win the counter war over wish, or wish for Cryptic Command and try to deal with whatever they put in (you can tap their emrakul in their extra upkeep for example).

[Matsaya]

Thanks for the insight.

[8bit9mm]

LDV is good in Omni because at it's worst, it's a top-of-deck tutor for up to 5 cards (which can be ridiculously good when paired with Brainstorm) and at it's best, it's part of a deterministic Release the Ants kill as long as your life total is greater than ((cards in library)/5).

Even then, I've had some hail-mary Ants kills come to fruition based on a little bit of luck when at very low life totals (3 or 2) with LDV.

[Ragdoll]

@Lejay - been thinking... Could Maralen of the Mornsong be useful in ub maybe


@All - what about Assassin's trophy? Should we even bother splashing for it? I have a mixed feelings about this


Edit: nevermind the Maralen, card is bad

[8bit9mm]

@All - what about Assassin's trophy? Should we even bother splashing for it? I have a mixed feelings about this

The question is:

What do we care about that we would need Ass Trophy for?
What doesn't get hit by blue bounce, Fatal Push, Massacre, Deluge, Pyroclasm, K-Return, Sudden Shock, Swords, Terminus, or Disenchant that we need to splash 2 colors (instead of 1) for?

[Ragdoll]

The question is:

What do we care about that we would need Ass Trophy for?
What doesn't get hit by blue bounce, Fatal Push, Massacre, Deluge, Pyroclasm, K-Return, Sudden Shock, Swords, Terminus, or Disenchant that we need to splash 2 colors (instead of 1) for?

I could think of stuff like lands (Karakas) or any cards that would return with s&t after bounce. But yeah, you are right. I guess I got carried away

[Lammina]

Hi,

Sorry for the dumb question, but with the latest list of Lejay's, I don't see how you can go for the instant kill (useful against an opposing show and tell). More precisely, I see how to do it using Lim-Dul's vault, but this requires to be not too low on life.

Any helps ?

Thanks.

Split decision is a good call when you are in low health and need combo. I use in my UB version (Lejay's last version) with this configuration: 1 LDV and 1 Split Decision! I love it!

[Lammina]

You are correct that the instant speed kill requires LDV, and the full FF chain might cost you a few life points because of that. Not always though as you usually get Brainstorm, LDV and Wish with FF and then you can either brainstorm something expensive to the top or you can LDV and only look at the top 5 and hope you have an expensive card there.

I disagree however that it comes up against opposing show and tells given that if they play SnT they probably have emrakul in their deck so trying to kill with release the ants is a risky proposition. What you should probably do instead is to drop your own omni and try to win the counter war over wish, or wish for Cryptic Command and try to deal with whatever they put in (you can tap their emrakul in their extra upkeep for example).

OmniTell can handle with a Emrakul in the top deck of the opponent, and win with a RtA anyway?

[LarsLeif]

OmniTell can handle with a Emrakul in the top deck of the opponent, and win with a RtA anyway?

You need to win the clash, and if both have Emrakuls on top then the clash is a tie and you don't get the card back. So what happens if you go for it is usually that you win maybe 5-10 clashes, then they will have scried an emrakul to the top (remember after each clash you both get to choose to keep your top card or put it on the bottom) and it is a tie. So if you only need to deal maybe 5 damage you can go for it but it's very random and you should definitely consider all other lines.

I don't like Split Decision btw. I don't think the life loss in the LDV-chain comes up often at all, so putting cards that are in almost all aspects inferior to LDV in the deck to hedge for that doesn't seem good enough to me.

[Curtis Dittmar]

Two years later,I'm coming back to Legacy/my favorite deck. I left off with a Mono U list (4 ETI,3Dream Halls and 1 Emrakul) witch seems to be out dated. I can understand the more card quality with the UB lists. The thing I'm wondering about is the 2 Emrakul.

1 Emrakul with Eladamri's Call was always enough for me.
I can understand why 3 is popular. Intuition and more of a natural Show>Emrakul.

But why 2? What are the lines? A page recommendation would be just as appreciated as an answer.

[wonderPreaux]

Two years later,I'm coming back to Legacy/my favorite deck. I left off with a Mono U list (4 ETI,3Dream Halls and 1 Emrakul) witch seems to be out dated. I can understand the more card quality with the UB lists. The thing I'm wondering about is the 2 Emrakul.

1 Emrakul with Eladamri's Call was always enough for me.
I can understand why 3 is popular. Intuition and more of a natural Show>Emrakul.

But why 2? What are the lines? A page recommendation would be just as appreciated as an answer.

With two, you can loop triggers with Intuition (Lejay has some combos posted a page or two ago), and also use two Wishs for runner-runner time walks (wish for call, then wish for noxious on call) to smash for 30 in situations where ants isn't usable.

[Lejay]

I would rather play three Emrakul than one. With two you escape situations where you would have your only emrakul exiled and lose important options. It also happens that you need to play a second emrakul to win, never happens that you need a third. Emrakul is not that bad as it can be show and telled and win from there, with two I avoid double emrakul hands often enough. More importantly you probably should reason in terms of total number of spells that will actually do something with omniscience and I think six (4wish 2 emrakul) is the bare minimum (you can argue we have six+intuition but it's not always true).
I posted recently saying I would like to have some additionnal combo elements for when you sideboard out LDV/Intuition (because of surgical) and thus have less ways to find wish or Emrakul.
Other than wish there isn't really a "kill" post omniscience that can be useful without the combo. I mentionned Decree of Pain that could act like that but it's true and good in Thalia match-ups where you keep LDV and intuition.

What Wonderpreaux says is true but the first consideration he mentions came after making the choice of two emrakuls and the second doesn't happen very often.