MTG Salvation

This deck is totally inspired by the hilariously drawn Reality Scramble. It definitely looks like an Unglued card and I'd love to hear the story behind this card art.

Anyways, the idea of this deck is to cheat in Omniscience via Reality Scrambleing Keranos, God of Storms while Keranos is an enchantment to flip it into play. Then, having put Omniscience into play for cheap you cast Enter the Infinite and draw your deck. The win condition is to cast Nexus of Fate or Beacon of Tomorrows for the rest of the game and kill people with Keranos' trigger (Beacon of Tomorrows will be the only card left in your library and therefore trigger Keranos' 3 damage trigger repeatedly).

Throw in some Stax and Hate-pieces and you've got the bones of a great control deck that can attack your meta in an unusual and fun way. I've added in a Paradox Engine package, because I'm very partial to the Engine in any type of U/x deck. If for some reason the main Reality Scramble combo line is disrupted, you still have the Engine lines to go off of. The Engine also has additional utility in that you can sometimes create a massive amount of mana with your mana rocks to create enough mana to hardcast Omniscience or Enter the Infinite.

After testing a couple games with this deck, it's not as fun nor as consistent as I thought it would be. The deck is actually a 2 card combo deck, meaning that you need both Reality Scramble and some way to find Enter the Infinite. This has proven to be much more difficult in practice than anticipated. Maybe it was just bad luck, but there were two games where I had Omniscience out and nothing to do with it. Talk about an awkward feeling...

Another combo I used to run is; Kaho, Minamo Historian getting Mystical Tutor, Spellshift and any other card. The idea is that you Mystical Tutor before your turn for Enter the Infinite. Then in your upkeep you need an instant card that is probably cheap, like a Brainstorm. Then you use Spellshift to counter your spell and Enter the Infinite will be cast off the top.

Gamble as another tutor, as you can retrace if it happens to be the card that goes to graveyard.

Show and Tell as a way of cheating Omniscience if you've drawn it.

Probably play a few more power cards, to fuel the Omniscience, as you say nothing to use it with; Aminatou's Augury, Dig Through Time, Overflowing Insight.

I agree, these types of decks have a limited shelf life. Once you've done the exact same combo a few times, you don't really accomplish that much more with the deck. I had Kaho, Minamo Historian as my commander, and pulled off the combo a number of times, but after awhile it's like, OK I know I can do it. Honestly it's more of an exercise initially of if you "can do it" during an actual game. Once you've done it, then the appeal of replaying the deck will become less and less fairly quickly.

[EDIT]
Long Term Plans as another tutor.

I like Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur as another power card as you can retrace Reality Scramble on Keranos a second time, but as a creature.
I checked with the rules forum and you can put your commander back into the command zone and it'll still resolve the effect, so you can recast Keranos, God of Storms and with Omniscience that'll be 5 devotion already, so you're bound to have the extra 2 devotion to make Keranos a creature. This way if you remove Gilded Drake from the deck, Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, Spellseeker or Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain should give you fuel.

Jhoira makes casting arificats for free more likely to combo off, but too be honest I'd remove her as well, as she isn't that great in the deck anyway.
Spellseeker can get Mystical Tutor to setup the Enter the Infinite on the next turn (or if you have draw that turn).
Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur is of course a beating with Omniscience in play.

You should not be playing Grafdigger's Cage because of retrace, and this will mean you can Reality Scramble for creatures as well.

Also you can look to play creature lands so that you can following up Reality Scramble with this plan in the face of not have Keranos; Mutavault, Inkmoth Nexus, Blinkmoth Nexus, Mishra's Factory, etc.

Actually I've realized that Reality Scramble works off card type so even though Keranos, God of Storms is only an enchantment at the time you'd cast it the first time, it's still going to check for both creature and enchantment types as you flip cards off the top of your library.

So you're going to need to remove any creatures as well if you want to guarantee that you hit Omniscience only.

I would personally put Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur in as a second target. For the reason that you can do a follow up play of retrace either way, plus you don't want to be dead to just drawing Omniscience and have no targets in library for the Reality Scramble.

Actually, Reality Scramble checks the targeted card's last type while on the battlefield when the Scramble is cast. The way I understand that rule is that Keranos isn't a creature as long as you have a low enough devotion and will therefore flip into the only enchantment in the deck: Omniscience. This is the official link.

This allows you some flexibility in the main decklist for a creature suite, as long as there aren't too many (since they would really be the only other way to generate any type of devotion for the deck).

Good point about the Grafdigger's Cage. It will be cut since it conflicts with the primary combo of the deck.

Either way, I'm probably going to retire this list since it's, as you noted, kind of a one-trick pony. I'd rather play my Dralnu Storm deck since it executes the same combo every game but the path to get to execution is so delightfully varied. It really is like solving a puzzle whereas this Keranos deck is more akin to a boring rerun.

Quote from benjameenbear »

Actually, Reality Scramble checks the targeted card's last type while on the battlefield when the Scramble is cast. The way I understand that rule is that Keranos isn't a creature as long as you have a low enough devotion and will therefore flip into the only enchantment in the deck: Omniscience. This is the official link.

Cool, makes sense.

Either way, I'm probably going to retire this list since it's, as you noted, kind of a one-trick pony. I'd rather play my Dralnu Storm deck since it executes the same combo every game but the path to get to execution is so delightfully varied. It really is like solving a puzzle whereas this Keranos deck is more akin to a boring rerun.

Actually I'd never even looked at Reality Scramble, so it has given me a few ideas.

You can have a small planeswalker loop with Teferi, Temporal Archmage, Will Kenrith, Rowan Kenrith.
So for example say you do the Omniscience plan and you have any of these planeswalkers in hand, doesn't matter which one.

You cast for example Rowan Kenrith off Omniscience, searching for Will Kenrith, and then cast him with Omniscience. You can Will Kenrith [-2] to draw 2 cards and make sorcery cost 2 less. So now Reality Scramble only costs RR. Basically as long as you draw a land off Will Kenrith [-2] or already have lands in hand, you can keep looping.
Cast Reality Scramble putting Will Kenrith on the bottom and this will put Teferi, Temporal Archmage into play. Then you can untap 4 lands which will pay for casting two further Reality Scramble. So as long as you still have land for the retrace, the following next two times you can Teferi, Temporal Archmage [+1] to try and make sure you keep hitting lands. You'll keep alternating between Will Kenrith and Teferi, Temporal Archmage. That's 8 cards deep into your library, so bound to find at least one land.
It's not infinite, as it depends on drawing lands, but you do have a real chance of just keep on looping and drawing a bunch of cards, and with Omniscience in play, you're probably going to draw into some more power card.

This is actually my wheel house, so I will put a deck together. I will do the combo maybe like 4 or 5 times and then retire the deck as well. But I do like to do these things at least once

Sounds like a fun way to recycle Planeswalkers. Adding Green would be ideal so that you can add Nissa, Vital Force to the loop and keep picking up lands to discard to the Scramble's retrace ability. And I do notice that you don't have any Temur decks in your roster...