pie chart

Roil of Elementals [[Omnath M20 Primer]]

Commander / EDH Counters Lands Primer RGWU RUG (Temur) Tribal

BlueBat93

Edit Live Edit
Edit
Upvote 0
0
Deckcycle Feature Queue
Feature Queue
Playtest v1
Similar Deck Space Card Recommendations

Creature (33)

Land (37)

Instant (5)

Artifact (4)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Omnath, Locus of the Roil

Sorcery (7)

Enchantment (7)

Planeswalker (6)

Maybeboard

Creature (10)

Sorcery (3)

Planeswalker (2)

Enchantment (2)

Instant (1)

Artifact (1)

Welcome to Omnath, Locus of the Roil



”The Roil may be unpredictable, but it is not uncontrollable”


As the Roil stirs and changes the plane of Zendikar constantly, its uncontrollable, primal energy an-imates the plane, turning the elements into powerful and violent elemental incarnations of itself. Now finally the Roil has found its locus and you, planeswalker, you are here to control it.

Arguably, Omnath is what is closest to an incarnation of Zendikar itself. Growing from a Locus of its mana into a Locus of Zendikar’s pain and wrath and now into the embodiment of the Roil. Not only has he gained to ability to harness more and more kinds of many, but he has also become an em-bodiment of Zendikar’s inner workings, and thereby has become an optimal choice to lead its Ele-mentals into battle. His broadened color identity gives us access to powerful new spells, effects and synergy. Omnath, Locus of the Roil is optimal at the helm of your Elemental army!
This list is mainly tribal-focused, meaning that also flavor plays a part in here. This is not supposed to be a super duper I-want-to-lose-all-my-friends type of deck. It should be powerful, but in reason and without you having to sell your house and family to afford it. That does not mean it cannot go off and achieve some crazy board states and explosive turns. That said, I am very happy to receive feedback, suggestions and upgrade ideas for the deck. Over time I plan to add a section down here, in which we will explore different strategies and build paths to take this commander, also expen-sive and broken ones.
This list comes with a few custom categories. They are here to display the different function of the individual cards. Be warned though, as cards can may have more than one function, they will ap-pear in multiple categories and the list might get a little confusing. If you are interested in the actual decklist or a more concise overview, I recommend you switch to the classic display. Below we will explore the different categories, strategies and notable cards. Lastly, as time and suggestions go by, we will explore different strategies and build paths more in depth. Links to a budget and a pres-tige version of the deck may follow. See you below!

Leading the Roil into Battle


Our plan in general is to ramp a little early on, summon a few Elementals and then calling our Com-mander to our aid. From then on, our plan is to flood the board with lands and elementals, then pump and awaken them or flicker Omnath for the final blowout.

Our ways to victory:

  • Beatdown
  • Burn
  • Combo

Beatdown Show

Burn Show

Combo Show


That’s our battle plan so far. Now we will get into more detail on the stages of the game and our specific strategy.

At the beginning of the game our focus is to get a draw engine, a few lands and a small squadron of Elementals online. We don’t want to draw too much attention yet, as we are setting up our sudden expansion and explosive finish. Contrary to most EDH decks, we don’t always want to put our commander as soon as possible. By being patient and deploying a small force before stirring up The Roil we make sure to get some value out of him entering the battlefield. Cards to prioritize at this stage are Risen Reef, Fertilid, Rhythm of the Wild, Temur Ascendancy, Smokebraider, Brighthearth Banneret and Flamekin Harbinger.
After having set up our draw engine and a nice little squadron of 4-5 Elementals, we want to finally release the Kraken! Entering the battlefield Omnath, Locus of the Roil might remove either some kind of threat or weaken the life total of your opponents. Having summoned The Roil the next thing we want to do is expand and protect our position while gathering resources for a sudden blowout and crippling our opponents. Our goals are to strengthen and grow our elemental army, keep ramping, draw cards and find our explosives. Cards to look for now, are: Sylvan Awakening, Conjurer's Closet, Deadeye Navigator, Vigor, Liege of the Tangle, Roil Elemental.
Now that we have build our army, multiplied our resources and gathered our puzzle pieces, it is time to put them into action. Our board can get quite big, with a lot of creatures and lands. There are two ways for us to win. Either by combat or due to The Roil’s rage. Overwhelming our opponents in combat can be achieved in two ways. Firstly, our angry swarm of Elementals can do a lot of damage, especially since we have several ways to grow our army with tokens. Our lords Creeping Trailblazer, Incandescent Soulstoke, Master of Waves, Thicket Crasher and Chandra, Novice Pyromancer will pump our army into absurdity. Grave Sifter will help us recover from a board wipe. If, in any case, we fail to take out our opponents with our creatures or our army falls victim to said board wipe without us having the ability to recover, we have a backup plan.

We will find it relatively easy to accumulate between 15 and 20 lands during the course of the game. Next to providing us with valuable mana, we have also a way to weaponize them. Entry Sylvan Awakening and Liege of the Tangle. Has the table just resolved a board wipe? Now that is the perfect time for us to strike. Call Zendikar to aid and turn all those lovely is-lands, mountains and forests into a stampede of angry Elemental creatures. Embodiment of Fury and Embodiment of Insight will buff them further. card:Wanderin Fumarole, Lumbering Falls and Raging Ravine or dormant creatures in their own right. Splendid Reclamation and Crucible of Worlds will help us to either recover of gath-er further recruits for our awakened assault. Our planeswalkers may support the Awakening as well.

If combat proves unviable to achieve victory, our opponents are still not safe from our elemental rage. Omnath, Locus of the Roil and Omnath, Locus of Rage will aid us in that. Sometimes there is value in sacrifice. Sometimes death is for a greater cause. Sometimes it will be avenged. Omnath, Locus of Rage is a great way to get value out of your Elemental army if it is unable to beat down on your enemies. Use Blasphemous Act or Magmatic Force to extinguish your own army and trigger Omnath’s rage. This way we can generate absurd amounts of damage and burn down what is left of our enemies.

Another way to inflict quickly and repetitively tremendous amounts of damage is, to have Omnath, Locus of the Roil exit and reenter the battlefield continuously. Ghostly Flicker and Conjurer's Closet are great ways to have our commander reenter the battle-field. All-Star of this strategy though, has to be Deadeye Navigator. Our vast amounts of mana will keep this chain going almost infinitely. Especially, Mana Echoes will keep this combo going for a long time. If there are few Elementals on the field, we can also enact our Awak-ening Protocol, turning our lands into Elementals as well. That way we will boost our damage quite a bit. Depending on our board state, we may be able to close out the game in just three iterations of this combo.
For our battle plan to go smoothly, we must use our tutors well. We have 4 tutors at our disposal: Flamekin Harbinger, Fabricate, Finale of Devastation and Worldly Tutor. Three of them fetch us creatures, one artifacts.

Flamekin Harbinger is an Elemental tutor on will get us anyone of our roiling incarnations to the top of our library. How we want to use it, depends on what’s happening on the board and the stage of the game. In the early game Risen Reef usually is the best target, as it will get our draw and ramp engine going. Later on her use will be highly situational, but prime targets are al-ways Roil Elemental, card:Gravesifter, Soul of the Harvest, card:Omnath, Lo-cus of Rage, and Vigor. Finale of Devastation and Worldly Tutor are both great tools to get our Deadeye Navigator, so we can start the combo with our commander. Otherwise they should be put to use just as Flamekin Harbinger. Fabricate is in here to get us our important artifacts, namely Conjurer's Closet or at times Crucible of Worlds. It can be either used to prepare the ETB abuse of our commander or to recover after a major blowout of our awakened lands.

We should keep in mind, that early game preparation might be the most vital phase of the game. Our absolute priority should be to get our draw engine going because that is, what will keep us go-ing and enacting our battle plan. Therefore, in absence of such engine, the focus in tutoring should always lie on setting it up. Risen Reef is an absolute all-star in this regard and should be considered as one of the high priority targets to get our deck going. Other than that, we should use our tutors as the situation demands it. Our high capacity of drawing great amounts of cards will make us go off.



Rationale on our Recruits


Now that we have examined the way of leading the new Omnath into battle, we should look into why certain cards are here and what they do for us. We will go by category.

Of course, most creatures in here are Elementals and their creature type has been a deciding factor for their inclusion. Still, none of them is here only for the sake of being an Elemental, but because they are useful in some other way as well. That’s why we won’t discuss them in this section, but rather below when we talk about other purposes.
Animar, Soul of Elements, Brighthearth Banneret, card:Inandescent Soulstoke – Next to being a relevant creature type. these three are great tools of cost reduction and help us to put out the rest of our army earlier.

Chandra's Embercat, Embodiment of Spring, Fertilid, Leafkin Druid, Risen Reef, Smokebraider – Here are or mana dorks and creature based ramp. Each of them either produces some kind of (tribal) mana themselves or pulls lands out of our li-brary.

Farseek, Kodama's Reach: Our ramp spells. Great for ensuring we are hitting our land drops and fixing our colors.

Blighted Woodland, Myriad Landscape, Wooded Foothills, Scalding Tarn, Misty Rainforest: Land-based fixing and ramp. Both making sure we get the colors we need as well as dropping extra lands.

card:Chandra, Young Pyromancer, Koth of the Hammer, Nissa, Vastwood Seer  , Nissa, Who Shakes the World, Nissa, Worldwaker: Planeswalkers boosting our red and green mana either by increasing productivity of our lands, searching for them or adding mana di-rectly to our pool.

Sol Ring: Staple. Enables explosive turns at the beginning.

Chromatic Lantern: One of the best color fixing tools out there. Amazing artifact.

Growing Rites of Itlimoc  : Gaea’s Cradle for the poor. In creature-based decks this en-chantment provides some amazing ramp.

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx: An amazing tool of ramp in decks that have color-intensive mana costs. As most of our Elementals have multiple mana symbols in their cost, we can reach high devo-tions relatively easy.

Mana Echoes: Sick ramp in tribal decks. With every Elemental on the field it provides you with more and more generic mana. Best thing, tokens will trigger it as well. Insane ramp.

Mulldrifter: Next to being an Elemental, this guy gets us two cards as he enters. Evoking him might be even more viable than casting him. Later on, we can pull him out of our graveyard to get some more extra cards or just leave him there, given that he is one of the weaker Elementals in our army anyway.

Risen Reef: This guy is an absolute all-star in this deck. Next to his amazing ramp power, he also puts everything that’s not a land into your hand. All you need is an Elemental entering the bat-tlefield, which for us is an easy condition to meet. With him on the battlefield, every other Ele-mental – even tokens – are either free ramp or an extra card in our hand.

Soul of the Harvest: Even if this it cares only about nontoken creatures, I have found it to be a very powerful draw engine in this deck. Given that we have only 2 non-elemental creatures, this one nets us a lot of cards.

Elemental Bond, Temur Ascendancy: Card draw upon entering the battlefield. There are quite a few Elementals and token creators in here, that will trigger these enchantments.

Growing Rites of Itlimoc  : Will dig for a creature card and put it into our hand. Given that we have such a heavy creature focus in here, likely we will find something.

Path of Ancestry: A great land for any tribal deck. Will let us fix our top card any time we cast an Elemental.

Chandra, Flamecaller: A wheel-type effect on a planeswalker. With Chandra we can get rid of dead cards and dig a little deeper into our library. Best thing, it doesn’t even cost us loyalty.

Nissa, Vital Force: One of the most easily obtainable emblems in the game and in addition to that, Nissa gives us one that will provide us with a powerful draw engine immune to any kind of removal.

Nissa, Vastwood Seer  : Once flipped this Nissa will basically turn into a copy of Risen Reef.

Forgotten Ancient: One of the most amazing counter production and redistribution ma-chines this game has to offer. This guy will act as a huge amplifier in this deck.

Karn's Bastion: An amazing land that will help us adding counters to everything on our board.

Vigor: This crazy Elemental will turn the creatures and any other damage dealt to our Ele-mental army into counter production machines for us. With him on the field we can profit of either our own or enemy board wipes, such as Blasphemous Act.

Bane of Progress: Turns all artifacts and enchantments into free counters. One of the most busted counter producers in this list.

Nissa, Who Shakes the World: Puts counters on our lands. With the amount of ramp we have in this deck, sacrificing a land or two to redistribute some counters onto our creatures seems a fair sacrifice.

Animar, Soul of Elements, Fertilid, Overgrowth Elemental: These guys in some way or another will accumulate counters by themselves, so that we can redistribute them.

Embodiment of Fury, Embodiment of Insight: Both of these trigger upon a land entering the battlefield and buff our land creatures.

Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar: Getting huge with a lot of lands in play. Considering his Trample and our ramp capacities this guy can easily and quickly get into the territory of lethal damage. Very strong Elemental to have in here.

Omnath, Locus of Rage, Roil Elemental, Titania, Protector of Argoth, Zendikar's Roil: Some crazy landfall triggers here. Our build will get large with tokens and stolen creatures very quickly, if anyone of these guys is on the field.

Creeping Trailblazer, Incandescent Soulstoke, Master of Waves, Maelstrom Wanderer, Thicket Crasher: Here are our Elemental lords, granting our army a stronger punch and some hefty defense.

Rhythm of the Wild, Temur Ascendancy: Our buffing enchantments, making our board hasty and keeping our opponents from interfering with our plans.

Embodiment of Fury, Embodiment of Insight: The lords of our land creatures. Es-pecially giving them vigilance is very strong and will enable us to still use them as mana sources.

Deadeye Navigator: An absolutely broken spirit that will go off with any kind of ETB. He is one of our combo cards (even though the combo won’t be infinite) and a good target for out tu-tors. Bouncing Omnath, Locus of the Roil with him will lead to some absurd amounts of damage.

Conjurer's Closet: A less broken flicker card. Still very strong. This is a slower version of our Deadeye Navigator + Omnath, Locus of the Roil combo and therefore unfortunately also a more reactive one. Still it’s a good card to have in here.

Ghostly Flicker: A non-permanent flicker option. Even if it is just a one-time-effect, this is more versatile than our other options as it gives us the possibility to bounce several and perma-nents of different type. This means we can get some sick Landfall chain going as well or save our board from a board wipe.

Chandra, Acolyte of Flame, Chandra, Flamecaller: Our Chandras creating us a ton of Elemental tokens. Unfortunately, they will be gone at the end of our turn. Still it is a great way to get some extra points of damage in when we need to.

Master of Waves: This guy can create us a ton of tokens based on what we have on the field already. As we have a bunch of Elementals with relevant mana symbols in our deck, we should hit 3-5 tokens on a regular basis.

Omnath, Locus of Rage, Titania, Protector of Argoth, Zendikar's Roil: Our landfall duo. Anyone of them basically turns our lands into a production machine of free Elemental tokens. Combined with out ability to ramp and drop several lands a turn, this can get out of hand relatively quickly.

Tilonalli's Summoner: With some lands out, this shaman will be a token producing machine. While it is true that during the early game they will usually die at the end of our turn, later on she will create an army all by herself.

Omnath, Locus of Rage: Our punisher for when they harm our elemental army. His burn can get out of hand quickly as he in himself (next to other sources obviously) will create us many many tokens next to our army. Board wipes can be devastating for our opponents with this angry jellybean on the field. Certainly, one of the strongest inclusions in this list.

Magmatic Force: A repeatable Lightning Bolt which next to shooting inconvenient creatures or planeswalkers, can hit our opponents. Although not as flashy and immediate as our Omnaths, he can certainly wear our opponents down.

Koth of the Hammer: This guy will turn all of our mountains into painlands directed to our opponents. It might be difficult to get to his ultimate, but if you do, you can make our lands do they job for you.

Chandra, Novice Pyromancer, Wrenn and Six: Although barely noteworthy, these two are able to deal some points of extra damage. It is not a lot, but who knows. Maybe it will help you in some situation.

Bane of Progress, Ingot Chewer: Our artifact removal. While Ingot Chewer can be used as a cheap targeted removal spell, Bane of Progress will wipe the board clean of all artifacts and enchantments, also our own.

Blasphemous Act, Chandra, Flamecaller, Magmatic Force: Damage-based creature removal. While Blasphemous Act and Chandra, Flamecaller can get rid of almost anything, Magmatic Force provides us with a repeatable Lightning Bolt to shoot inconvenient small creatures.

Beast Within: One of the most versatile removal spells available in green. I would say it is almost a staple. This card will help us to get rid of any nuisance if other removal is not available or we miss just the right kind of it.

Vigor: An amazing Elemental that will protect our army from any kind of damage and pump them even in the process. He’s a great disincentive for our opponents to attack us. Great card!

Nissa, Who Shakes the World, Sylvan Awakening: Land protection! Both of them will make our (awoken) lands indestructible and save us from remaining without mana. Great cards in this deck, that make the awoken Zendikar very hard to deal with.

Rhythm of the Wild: Next to boosting our creatures it makes them also uncounterable. Our opponents will be kept from interfering with the summoning of our Elemental Army or setting up our Deadeye Navigator-combos. Does a lot of work in creature-centered decks.

Ghostly Flicker: Our fast way out when things get difficult. This instant is amazing at evading board wipes or any other kind of removal.

Crucible of Worlds, Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar, Splendid Reclamation, Titania, Protector of Argoth: Lands recursion. As we run the risk to get blown out of lands when we awaken them, these cards will help us recover from said blowout.

Grave Sifter: Basically an Elemental version of Patriarch's Bidding. This guy will help us recover from sweeper effects or might get back a few of our Elementals for the final blow. Use with caution, though, as it will enable your opponents to bring back some of their creatures as well.

Greenwarden of Murasa, Nissa, Vital Force: These two will get us any (permanent) card from our graveyard back to our hand. Just versatile recursion with some further use.

Wrenn and Six: Next to recurring lands from your graveyard – which is already enough of a reason to run these two in our deck – they do also grant us the possibility of reusing our instants and sorceries! So, the give us more flickering, more animating, more removing and wiping, more ramp and tutoring! An amazing planeswalker. All we have to do is, make sure that we get to that sweet sweet ultimate.

Flamekin Harbinger, Worldly Tutor: Creature tutors that will put as anything we desire to the top of our library. Flamekin Harbinger may be abused with flicker effects, in case we are looking for something specific.

Finale of Devastation: A great and very versatile tutor in this deck. Not only does it get us any creature out of our deck or graveyard, but it will put it also directly on the battlefield. Also, for us it will be relatively easy to get to 10 mana, so we might use Finale of Devastation also as an overrun effect.

Fabricate: Our artifact tutor for the deck. This card is basically in here for getting us Conjurer's Closet. Depending on the situation, Crucible of Worlds might also be a viable target.



Suggestions

Updates Add

Spoiler Timeline
Card Odds v1 Draw hand
Add to folder Copy
Download / Export / Embed Code

Comments

Attention! Complete Comment Tutorial! This annoying message will go away once you do!

Hi! Please consider becoming a supporter of TappedOut for $3/mo. Thanks!

Important! Formatting tips — Comment Tutorial — markdown syntax

Please login to comment

98% Casual

Competitive

Revision 3 See all

(4 years ago)

+1 Wrenn and Six main
Date added 4 years
Last updated 3 years
Key combos
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

16 - 0 Mythic Rares

38 - 0 Rares

20 - 0 Uncommons

12 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.94
Tokens Ashaya, the Awoken World, Beast 3/3 G, City's Blessing, Elemental 1/0 U, Elemental 1/1 R, Elemental 2/2 G, Elemental 3/1 R, Elemental 4/4 G, Elemental 5/3 G, Elemental 5/5 RG, Emblem Nissa, Vital Force, Emblem Wrenn and Six
Folders My Decks, Possible deck ideas, Primer, Commander Inspiration
Votes
Ignored suggestions
Shared with
Views