In case you couldn't tell, this is a combo deck built around Omniscience and Thousand-Year Storm. With the way the deck is built, you can combo off for obscene amounts of damage with two cards: Omniscience and Mastermind's Acquisition. Of course, in order to do that, you need to get to ten mana first and find those cards. That would be where the deck starts to run into problems.
So, here's how the combo works. Start with ten mana available and both combo pieces in hand.
1.) Cast Omniscience.
2.) Cast Mastermind's Acquisition and pull Invert//Invent out of your Sideboard with the wish mode. It is very important to pull the Sideboard version first. At this point, your pseudo-storm count is 1.
3.) Cast Invert//Invent for the Invent side and search your deck for a second copy of each of Mastermind's Acquisition and Invert//Invent. Your pseudo-storm count is now 2.
4.) Cast Mastermind's Acquisition as a wish again and fetch Thousand-Year Storm from your Sideboard. Storm count = 3.
5.) Cast Thousand-Year Storm.
6.) Cast Invert//Invent as Invent again. This time, Thousand-Year Storm will trigger and give you three extra copies. You only need to find your third Mastermind's Acquisition, so feel free to fetch any four Instants and any other three Sorceries you'd like. You can still do 36 damage with this combo even if you intentionally fail to find on everything except the Mastermind's Acquisition. After resolving your four Invent triggers, your psuedo-storm count will be 4.
7.) Cast Mastermind's Acquisition as a wish one last time. Thousand-Year Storm will trigger and give you four extra copies. Worth noting are two things. First, the trigger on Mastermind's Acquisition is mandatory, so you have to use all five copies. Second, the copies made by Thousand-Year Storm will be of the exact same mode as the original cast, so all five copies will fetch from your sideboard. With these five triggers, grab Inescapable Blaze and any other four cards from your sideboard. Storm count = 5.
8.) Cast Inescapable Blaze targeting your opponent. Thousand-Year Storm will make five extra copies which you can aim at your opponent's face, for a total of 30 extra damage, ending up at 36 with the initial spell factored in. This will increase by 6 for every other Instant or Sorcery cast on this turn, so with all of the extra triggers on Invert//Invent and Mastermind's Acquisition, you can really go off for enormous damage values. This is just the fastest way to get to lethal damage in a normal scenario.
So, what are the problems with this deck?
Well, for one, you need to survive until ten mana to cast Omniscience. This is the biggest and most obvious problem. There's basically no way for this deck to beat Mono-Red and it really struggles against other aggressive decks (though, unlike Mono-Red, they are beatable). The 4 Pause for Reflection in the sideboard help against Mentor and Token decks, but you're still highly unfavored. Pelakka Wurm is literally the only chance this deck has against burn; and, even then, 7 life only gets you so far.
The second biggest concern is countermagic. This deck plays no main-board counterspells of its own, so you have to rely on an opposing control deck either not having a counterspell for Omniscience or tapping out against you. The 4 Negate in the sideboard are supposed to help with this problem, as is the Carnage Tyrant, to give you an alternate win condition that can't be dealt with so easily.
The next problem is having all of your copies of Omniscience end up in the graveyard. Getting your other combo cards milled or discarded can be fixed with Flood of Recollection, but Flood can't pick an Enchantment back up. This is why I have the 1-of Enhanced Surveillance, to reshuffle if I lose too many crucial combo pieces.
Finally, Disperse is there to get rid of Shalai, Voice of Plenty or any other card giving the opponent hexproof before firing off the truly Inescapable Blaze.
Oh, I should also mention that the Black dual lands are there to let you cast Mastermind's Acquisition without Omniscience in play to find a tech card like Negate or Enhanced Surveillance game one, or to help you find Omniscience if you have two copies of Acquisition in hand. But, these are incredibly fringe scenarios and the life loss from the shocks is arguably enough of a downside that just running basics may be better. So, you know. Feel free to cut them if you're on a budget.
And that's it. That's my monstrous invention. What are your thoughts? Any ideas to improve it? Like I said, it's not great. But, it's really fun when it works, and it's surprisingly consistent (you know, when you aren't dying on turn 5).
Also some number of Assassin's Trophy to deal with threats in a mana efficient manner.
The point of having Anticipate and Opt is that you have cards that you can dig for to deal with what opponents are doing.
Otherwise statiscally you're probably going to have an Omniscience and a Mastermind's Acquisition by the time you get up to 10 mana, so what is all this card manipulation for?
First of all, well done on developing the combo! It takes guts to stick a deck out there with a reasonably fresh idea and (as you've seen) people are going to tear it to pieces. But let's not lose heart, let's see how it can be improved instead. If you like A Thousand Year Storm, then it might be worth checking out the list and associated video that MTG Goldfish did a week or so ago: Youtube Linky
Whilst not including Green, this particular list hunts for those combo pieces whilst only needing to hit six/seven mana to go off, as opposed to ten. It being based in red also allows for shocks/lightning bolts to help clear the way against those peskie red/midrange decks who might get in your way. Perhaps there is a way to include some aspects of this list into your own? Or maybe meet somewhere in the middle?
I tried to make Storm work myself on Arena and found the aggro-heavy meta to be quite damaging. A well timed Assassin's Trophy can also ruin your day if you're not prepared for it, as does mono-white in both aggro and life-gain variances. Doesn't mean there isn't a Storm deck out there, I just wonder if it might be wanting different colours?
So, a little bit of background first. This is actually the fourth version of the deck, and much better than the first three. Version 1 only ran one Omniscience and played it in the sideboard. You can imagine how poorly that turned out. Version 2 fixed that problem, but tried to use main deck Pause for Reflection, River's Rebuke, and Sleep to buy more time against creature decks alongside Syncopate and Sinister Sabotage. Unfortunately, the cards did very little to stop burn (which, playing on Arena, has a ridiculously huge presence) and I quickly learned that Shalai, Voice of Plenty stops you from using River's Rebuke and Sleep against them, which kind of undermines the point because all of the creature decks use Shalai. The counterspells also weren't great because I learned that casting expensive sorcery-speed ramp kept me from holding up mana for the counters. Version 3 streamlined the deck a bit. It cut the control elements and added more filtering to help find more ramp and combo pieces. The idea was that against aggressive decks, I should really just be trying to race them, which means that I'm generally looking to cast Omniscience (ideally) around turn 5-7. Unfortunately, I hadn't yet discovered Invert//Invent, so the deck was playing as a 3-card combo at that time. That... didn't work. I lost several games where I had 10 mana and two pieces, but just couldn't find the third. That's when I went looking for a way to turn the deck into a 2-card combo. And that's how I got to this build. Version 4. With that in mind...
@Shiftrex: Not yet. I have two games with this build (kind of hard to get matches instead of single games in Arena). The first game was a loss against burn where they drew the nuts (turn 1 Ghitu Lavarunner, turn 2 two more Lavarunners, turn 3 three Wizard's Lightning). The second game was a win against an Izzet Drake deck. They tapped out turn 6 for Ral, Izzet Viceroy and I comboed off the next turn. Since these were such extremely polarized games, and the sample size is so small, I can't really glean much from the results.
@darrenhabib: Interesting. I thought about playing this combo as just a win condition in a more established control deck, but I thought it was unrealistic to reliably get to ten mana with those decks and, even if I could, the decks really don't need a convoluted win condition like this when Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, Niv-Mizzet, Parun, or Nicol Bolas, the Ravager can get the job done much more easily. What I hadn't thought about was staying as a ramp deck but using the black splash to play a few control spells along the way. I like the idea, but I'm not sure how feasible it is to get multiple sources of black mana with only eight sources (none of which can be fetched with the ramp spells). Maybe cut one of each of the shocks for two swamps so that I can actually tutor for black mana? Come to think of it, that's probably just a good change to be making in general so that I can actually cast Mastermind's Acquisition before Omniscience comes down. I will say two things about the card draw. First, Flood of Recollection is a actually great in this deck. I agree with a later poster that Recollect is just better and that is a change I'll be making, but I don't think I want to cut the rebuy mechanic from the deck. Second, I initially had all of this card filtering because, for all of the previous versions of the deck, it was very difficult to get all of the cards I needed to combo off. Only running 1-2 copies of Omniscience, requiring three cards to combo off... These were problems that the extra draw helped fix. So that's why there's just so much of it in there. But, I agree with you that some of it can probably go now that I've gone up to 3 Omniscience and streamlined the combo.
@D90Dennis14: You're absolutely right about Recollect. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. Using that instead of Flood of Recollection also means I don't have to sideboard Enhanced Surveillance anymore, so that's a doubly-helpful suggestion. Mission Briefing actually doesn't work, because Omniscience only lets you cast cards for free if they're in your hand. I learned that one the hard way (that'll teach me to not read the card carefully before playing it).
@SpaciousBox: Thanks for the support and suggestions! I didn't know about Brass's Bounty. The reason I came to Omniscience in the first place was because I was looking for a way to deal with the problem of mana limitations. Brass's Bounty is certainly another way to do that. At this point, I think I'll stick with Sultai to keep developing this build. It might be worth splashing red for Lightning Strike, though. That's something I'll have to keep in mind when revising this further (after all, it's astoundingly easy to splash in a deck with so many land tutors). I've found the aggro meta to be a huge thorn in my side, as well. The upshot of this Omniscience build is that at least the life gain decks can never gain enough to get to the point where you can't kill them.
@everyone: Based on your suggestions, this is what I'm thinking now:
I'm also thinking about cutting down on blue mana sources now that the deck is more green focused. Any thoughts on this updated build?
Edit: I should also mention that changing Flood of Recollection for Recollect makes the maximum damage potential for the deck infinite. Use 2 copies to Recollect to infinitely rebuy each other and raise the storm count as high as you need it to be.
I'd probably consider Discovery // Dispersal over Opt as the instant speed isn't really crucial and having better selection and feeding the GY for Recollect can be useful.
It also has late game applications with the 5-mana half.
First of all, well done on developing the combo! It takes guts to stick a deck out there with a reasonably fresh idea and (as you've seen) people are going to tear it to pieces.
Oh I realized that I didn't actually remark that I supported the idea, which I should have. I am in the school of never been done before combo player through and through, and love the idea of the deck.
So my suggestions were purely to try and get the deck working best as possible as it's something that I might literally build myself.
GoldPhoenix, I agree counterspells are not where you want to be at in general, but there is some number you might want to board in, as SpaciousBox points in some instant speed removal can get you if you cast Omniscience only to have it removed after your first spell (passing priority).
So I like a few Negate in the sideboard which you have. Maybe you could go a Spell Pierce instead of one of the Negates, so you can plan for casting Omniscience with a mana left over, to try and get a control player? Not sure how well this would work out however.
I'm really not sure about the Llanowar Elves. The problem is that almost every deck has some sort of creature removal Game 1. So being the only creatures in the deck, I can't imagine them staying around long enough to help you cast Omniscience.
Plus now they do fall prey to your own Ritual of Soot.
I'm not sure what other ramp is available, but a creatureless deck is certainly going to serve you better in Game 1.
Then for Game 2, bringing in the Llanowar Elves will probably surprise your opponents, who have boarded out their cheap removal. But not sure if this is a good plan side-boarding in general like this, taking up slots.
You could look to play Search for Azcanta, Treasure Map, and even Thaumatic Compass as actual land ramp.
You are looking to burst to have 10 mana available right around the time that any of these would transform.
I personally don't understand this need for Recollect. You're saying that Omniscience end up in your graveyard via mill or discard? Like these are very specific matchups. I feel it's better to run the fourth Omniscience to better play around these types of things, and guarantee you draw it. I play Experimental Frenzy and have literally played games where I didn't draw it within my first 30 cards. It can happen.
So rather than hoping to retreive it from graveyard, which is slow (ties up 3 mana, and probably in that case a whole turn).
"To keep things 100, anything I state is an opinion and not intended to be a fact. Any and all suggestions I give are a 100% opinion. If you need further clarification take the conversation to a PM. I am not in the business of assuming things. I'm only interested in 1 business and that business serves 2 things, Cold L's and Hot Dub's."
I've developed m my own version of this earlier today, glad to see others are working on it.
I have a different combo, on my phone now but can update after work tomorrow.
I'm using Jodah + ramp as two ways to get in Omni. I play the green enchantment that gains 3 life and taps for 2 in addition to lantern and the kicker ramp spell.
It's important your recursion returns to hand so you can cast it with omni. Mission briefing doesn't work for that reason.
With omni and either a maindeck Mastermind or invent you win on the spot.
Master -> invent -> master/invent -> mirari get back invent -> invent -> x/flood -> master -> sb Nexus of fate -> then next turn get back master -> sb mirari -> invent -> x/Nexus -> next turn master -> sb double cast, inferno, win
Sorry for the incoherence. I've done ok in arena. I play bounce, omenspeaker, and Clarion to help stay alive. I'll post a list after work tomorrow. Definitely could make improvements.
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Legacy: TES (and sometimes ANT), Miracles
There is certainly advantages to playing Gilded Lotus. Firstly no other card in Standard gives you more mana for a single card.
But also it also provides mana straight away, so this element can play a factor.
The "advantages" of playing the search for lands into play instead is that it thins your deck of lands, meaning drawing potentially spells.
The problem however is that GoldPhoenix deck only runs 24 lands, and this actually doesn't guarantee consistent land drops every turn.
Todd was playing 27 lands, and still was losing games via missing land drops. You need to be playing 26 lands for this type of deck in my opinion. There is some argument that the Anticipate and Opt smooth this out. But I feel the mistake is when you're spending you card filtering on getting lands, rather than spells that help you to get to your game plan, like removal.
What I am getting at is that the searching for land cards, do come with the added risk of having less lands to make your land drops.
There is certainly advantages to playing Gilded Lotus. Firstly no other card in Standard gives you more mana for a single card.
But also it also provides mana straight away, so this element can play a factor.
The "advantages" of playing the search for lands into play instead is that it thins your deck of lands, meaning drawing potentially spells.
The problem however is that GoldPhoenix deck only runs 24 lands, and this actually doesn't guarantee consistent land drops every turn.
Todd was playing 27 lands, and still was losing games via missing land drops. You need to be playing 26 lands for this type of deck in my opinion. There is some argument that the Anticipate and Opt smooth this out. But I feel the mistake is when you're spending you card filtering on getting lands, rather than spells that help you to get to your game plan, like removal.
What I am getting at is that the searching for land cards, do come with the added risk of having less lands to make your land drops.
These all help to make mana but most of these cost too much or die to removal.
starting hand selection goes a long ways in these decks.
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Green seems to be the way to go in terms of ramp (as it generally is), but red/black are the colours for survival. Whilst ramp is good, the prevalence of mono-red aggro in the meta is going to need to be taken care of at a main-board level. I think the risk of running a set-up too orientated towards ramp is that you just lose on the spot to both red and white (as well as probably blue, which has a surprisingly good temp deck doing the rounds).
I watched NumottheNummy's version of the Storm deck, this time using Izzet colours for a more control based sideboard plan. Perhaps things that could be included? I especially liked Pirate's Pillage, a card I had not seen play previously. Here is the deck list:
^^
That is a really cool idea, I especially like that the deck packs actualt interaction and doesn't auto-lose to any creature deck like the OP's deck.
Some easy upgrades imho (besides the mana) would be:
# Golden Demise -->> Ritual of Soot, it's just a far stronger sweeper.
# 4x Syncopate -->> 3x Thought Erasure + 1x Sinister Sabotage, you already have an expensive counter in Spell Swindle and the discard is better in the early game than a taxing counterspell imho. Essence Scatter or Murder (or Walk the Plank) might be worth considering over Cast Down if you run into too many legendary creatures.
I'd also want some number of Discovery // Dispersal in the deck, maybe by trimming down a land or two and a spell.
The main problem I can see with the deck is not having enough ramp to consistently cast Omniscience with only 5x treasure-makers.
I'd also consider a stronger ramp option in Gilded Lotus over Treasure Map which takes longer to get going.
Anoher card to consider can be Thaumatic Compass which can be very good in a control deck and find lands while holding up removal/countermagic and flip into a land that can stop attacks (and add mana).
The win-cons seem a bit complicated and require too many moving pieces to my liking and I wonder if something else can be used.
A decent 1x-tutor target for Mastermind's Acquisition from the SB can be Overflowing Insight which can work well with Omniscience.
What is good about it is that it can also be used to mill the opponent if you loop it with Salvager of Secrets.
hmmmm there is the 5 color lich mastery combo deck that uses chance for glory. I wonder if its even reasonable to use omniscience.
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6 Forest
6 Island
4 Hinterland Harbor
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Watery Grave
Combo Pieces (9)
3 Omniscience
4 Mastermind's Acquisition
2 Invert//Invent
4 Anticipate
4 Opt
3 Chemister's Insight
4 Flood of Recollection
Ramp (12)
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Grow from the Ashes
4 Circuitous Route
1 Thousand-Year Storm
1 Inescapable Blaze
1 Invert//Invent
4 Pause for Reflection
4 Negate
1 Enhanced Surveillance
1 Disperse
1 Carnage Tyrant
1 Pelakka Wurm
In case you couldn't tell, this is a combo deck built around Omniscience and Thousand-Year Storm. With the way the deck is built, you can combo off for obscene amounts of damage with two cards: Omniscience and Mastermind's Acquisition. Of course, in order to do that, you need to get to ten mana first and find those cards. That would be where the deck starts to run into problems.
So, here's how the combo works. Start with ten mana available and both combo pieces in hand.
1.) Cast Omniscience.
2.) Cast Mastermind's Acquisition and pull Invert//Invent out of your Sideboard with the wish mode. It is very important to pull the Sideboard version first. At this point, your pseudo-storm count is 1.
3.) Cast Invert//Invent for the Invent side and search your deck for a second copy of each of Mastermind's Acquisition and Invert//Invent. Your pseudo-storm count is now 2.
4.) Cast Mastermind's Acquisition as a wish again and fetch Thousand-Year Storm from your Sideboard. Storm count = 3.
5.) Cast Thousand-Year Storm.
6.) Cast Invert//Invent as Invent again. This time, Thousand-Year Storm will trigger and give you three extra copies. You only need to find your third Mastermind's Acquisition, so feel free to fetch any four Instants and any other three Sorceries you'd like. You can still do 36 damage with this combo even if you intentionally fail to find on everything except the Mastermind's Acquisition. After resolving your four Invent triggers, your psuedo-storm count will be 4.
7.) Cast Mastermind's Acquisition as a wish one last time. Thousand-Year Storm will trigger and give you four extra copies. Worth noting are two things. First, the trigger on Mastermind's Acquisition is mandatory, so you have to use all five copies. Second, the copies made by Thousand-Year Storm will be of the exact same mode as the original cast, so all five copies will fetch from your sideboard. With these five triggers, grab Inescapable Blaze and any other four cards from your sideboard. Storm count = 5.
8.) Cast Inescapable Blaze targeting your opponent. Thousand-Year Storm will make five extra copies which you can aim at your opponent's face, for a total of 30 extra damage, ending up at 36 with the initial spell factored in. This will increase by 6 for every other Instant or Sorcery cast on this turn, so with all of the extra triggers on Invert//Invent and Mastermind's Acquisition, you can really go off for enormous damage values. This is just the fastest way to get to lethal damage in a normal scenario.
So, what are the problems with this deck?
Well, for one, you need to survive until ten mana to cast Omniscience. This is the biggest and most obvious problem. There's basically no way for this deck to beat Mono-Red and it really struggles against other aggressive decks (though, unlike Mono-Red, they are beatable). The 4 Pause for Reflection in the sideboard help against Mentor and Token decks, but you're still highly unfavored. Pelakka Wurm is literally the only chance this deck has against burn; and, even then, 7 life only gets you so far.
The second biggest concern is countermagic. This deck plays no main-board counterspells of its own, so you have to rely on an opposing control deck either not having a counterspell for Omniscience or tapping out against you. The 4 Negate in the sideboard are supposed to help with this problem, as is the Carnage Tyrant, to give you an alternate win condition that can't be dealt with so easily.
The next problem is having all of your copies of Omniscience end up in the graveyard. Getting your other combo cards milled or discarded can be fixed with Flood of Recollection, but Flood can't pick an Enchantment back up. This is why I have the 1-of Enhanced Surveillance, to reshuffle if I lose too many crucial combo pieces.
Finally, Disperse is there to get rid of Shalai, Voice of Plenty or any other card giving the opponent hexproof before firing off the truly Inescapable Blaze.
Oh, I should also mention that the Black dual lands are there to let you cast Mastermind's Acquisition without Omniscience in play to find a tech card like Negate or Enhanced Surveillance game one, or to help you find Omniscience if you have two copies of Acquisition in hand. But, these are incredibly fringe scenarios and the life loss from the shocks is arguably enough of a downside that just running basics may be better. So, you know. Feel free to cut them if you're on a budget.
And that's it. That's my monstrous invention. What are your thoughts? Any ideas to improve it? Like I said, it's not great. But, it's really fun when it works, and it's surprisingly consistent (you know, when you aren't dying on turn 5).
Maybe try and control the board with some sweepers leading up to your combo.
Rather than Flood of Recollection and some of the draw, you need to main board (hedge) against aggressive decks.
Ritual of Soot comes to mind.
You can also play some number of Duress and/or Thought Erasure against control.
Also some number of Assassin's Trophy to deal with threats in a mana efficient manner.
The point of having Anticipate and Opt is that you have cards that you can dig for to deal with what opponents are doing.
Otherwise statiscally you're probably going to have an Omniscience and a Mastermind's Acquisition by the time you get up to 10 mana, so what is all this card manipulation for?
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
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-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
Also, Flood of Recollection is a horrible card and would be better as Recollect or Mission Briefing.
Whilst not including Green, this particular list hunts for those combo pieces whilst only needing to hit six/seven mana to go off, as opposed to ten. It being based in red also allows for shocks/lightning bolts to help clear the way against those peskie red/midrange decks who might get in your way. Perhaps there is a way to include some aspects of this list into your own? Or maybe meet somewhere in the middle?
I tried to make Storm work myself on Arena and found the aggro-heavy meta to be quite damaging. A well timed Assassin's Trophy can also ruin your day if you're not prepared for it, as does mono-white in both aggro and life-gain variances. Doesn't mean there isn't a Storm deck out there, I just wonder if it might be wanting different colours?
@Shiftrex: Not yet. I have two games with this build (kind of hard to get matches instead of single games in Arena). The first game was a loss against burn where they drew the nuts (turn 1 Ghitu Lavarunner, turn 2 two more Lavarunners, turn 3 three Wizard's Lightning). The second game was a win against an Izzet Drake deck. They tapped out turn 6 for Ral, Izzet Viceroy and I comboed off the next turn. Since these were such extremely polarized games, and the sample size is so small, I can't really glean much from the results.
@darrenhabib: Interesting. I thought about playing this combo as just a win condition in a more established control deck, but I thought it was unrealistic to reliably get to ten mana with those decks and, even if I could, the decks really don't need a convoluted win condition like this when Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, Niv-Mizzet, Parun, or Nicol Bolas, the Ravager can get the job done much more easily. What I hadn't thought about was staying as a ramp deck but using the black splash to play a few control spells along the way. I like the idea, but I'm not sure how feasible it is to get multiple sources of black mana with only eight sources (none of which can be fetched with the ramp spells). Maybe cut one of each of the shocks for two swamps so that I can actually tutor for black mana? Come to think of it, that's probably just a good change to be making in general so that I can actually cast Mastermind's Acquisition before Omniscience comes down. I will say two things about the card draw. First, Flood of Recollection is a actually great in this deck. I agree with a later poster that Recollect is just better and that is a change I'll be making, but I don't think I want to cut the rebuy mechanic from the deck. Second, I initially had all of this card filtering because, for all of the previous versions of the deck, it was very difficult to get all of the cards I needed to combo off. Only running 1-2 copies of Omniscience, requiring three cards to combo off... These were problems that the extra draw helped fix. So that's why there's just so much of it in there. But, I agree with you that some of it can probably go now that I've gone up to 3 Omniscience and streamlined the combo.
@D90Dennis14: You're absolutely right about Recollect. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. Using that instead of Flood of Recollection also means I don't have to sideboard Enhanced Surveillance anymore, so that's a doubly-helpful suggestion. Mission Briefing actually doesn't work, because Omniscience only lets you cast cards for free if they're in your hand. I learned that one the hard way (that'll teach me to not read the card carefully before playing it).
@SpaciousBox: Thanks for the support and suggestions! I didn't know about Brass's Bounty. The reason I came to Omniscience in the first place was because I was looking for a way to deal with the problem of mana limitations. Brass's Bounty is certainly another way to do that. At this point, I think I'll stick with Sultai to keep developing this build. It might be worth splashing red for Lightning Strike, though. That's something I'll have to keep in mind when revising this further (after all, it's astoundingly easy to splash in a deck with so many land tutors). I've found the aggro meta to be a huge thorn in my side, as well. The upshot of this Omniscience build is that at least the life gain decks can never gain enough to get to the point where you can't kill them.
@everyone: Based on your suggestions, this is what I'm thinking now:
6 Forest
6 Island
2 Swamp
4 Hinterland Harbor
3 Overgrown Tomb
3 Watery Grave
Combo Pieces (9)
3 Omniscience
4 Mastermind's Acquisition
2 Invert//Invent
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Grow from the Ashes
2 Circuitous Route
Control Spells (5)
2 Ritual of Soot
3 Assassin's Trophy
Card Selection (12)
4 Recollect
4 Anticipate
4 Opt
1 Thousand-Year Storm
1 Invert//Invent
1 Inescapable Blaze
1 Disperse
2 Ritual of Soot
1 Assassin's Trophy
4 Negate
4 Duress
I'm also thinking about cutting down on blue mana sources now that the deck is more green focused. Any thoughts on this updated build?
Edit: I should also mention that changing Flood of Recollection for Recollect makes the maximum damage potential for the deck infinite. Use 2 copies to Recollect to infinitely rebuy each other and raise the storm count as high as you need it to be.
It also has late game applications with the 5-mana half.
Also, replace Disperse with Blink of an Eye (or Expel from Orazca).
So my suggestions were purely to try and get the deck working best as possible as it's something that I might literally build myself.
GoldPhoenix, I agree counterspells are not where you want to be at in general, but there is some number you might want to board in, as SpaciousBox points in some instant speed removal can get you if you cast Omniscience only to have it removed after your first spell (passing priority).
So I like a few Negate in the sideboard which you have. Maybe you could go a Spell Pierce instead of one of the Negates, so you can plan for casting Omniscience with a mana left over, to try and get a control player? Not sure how well this would work out however.
I'm really not sure about the Llanowar Elves. The problem is that almost every deck has some sort of creature removal Game 1. So being the only creatures in the deck, I can't imagine them staying around long enough to help you cast Omniscience.
Plus now they do fall prey to your own Ritual of Soot.
I'm not sure what other ramp is available, but a creatureless deck is certainly going to serve you better in Game 1.
Then for Game 2, bringing in the Llanowar Elves will probably surprise your opponents, who have boarded out their cheap removal. But not sure if this is a good plan side-boarding in general like this, taking up slots.
You could look to play Search for Azcanta, Treasure Map, and even Thaumatic Compass as actual land ramp.
You are looking to burst to have 10 mana available right around the time that any of these would transform.
Maybe you could go back up to the 4 x Circuitous Route and play a couple of Thunderherd Migration or Chromatic Lantern, as ramp elements. They are more expensive, but waaaay more likely to be there for your Omniscience play.
I personally don't understand this need for Recollect. You're saying that Omniscience end up in your graveyard via mill or discard? Like these are very specific matchups. I feel it's better to run the fourth Omniscience to better play around these types of things, and guarantee you draw it. I play Experimental Frenzy and have literally played games where I didn't draw it within my first 30 cards. It can happen.
So rather than hoping to retreive it from graveyard, which is slow (ties up 3 mana, and probably in that case a whole turn).
Personally I would do this:
Add
2 x Search for Azcanta
1 x Treasure Map
2 x Circuitous Route
1 x Omniscience
Remove
4 x Llanowar Elves
2 x Recollect
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
or he could try an alternative method by going after Apex of Power or Omnispell Adept
-Stay Frosty
I have a different combo, on my phone now but can update after work tomorrow.
I'm using Jodah + ramp as two ways to get in Omni. I play the green enchantment that gains 3 life and taps for 2 in addition to lantern and the kicker ramp spell.
It's important your recursion returns to hand so you can cast it with omni. Mission briefing doesn't work for that reason.
With omni and either a maindeck Mastermind or invent you win on the spot.
Master -> invent -> master/invent -> mirari get back invent -> invent -> x/flood -> master -> sb Nexus of fate -> then next turn get back master -> sb mirari -> invent -> x/Nexus -> next turn master -> sb double cast, inferno, win
Sorry for the incoherence. I've done ok in arena. I play bounce, omenspeaker, and Clarion to help stay alive. I'll post a list after work tomorrow. Definitely could make improvements.
Legacy: TES (and sometimes ANT), Miracles
Pauper: Kuldotha Jeskai, Murasa Tron
There is certainly advantages to playing Gilded Lotus. Firstly no other card in Standard gives you more mana for a single card.
But also it also provides mana straight away, so this element can play a factor.
Playing the Gift of Paradise does come with life gain.
The "advantages" of playing the search for lands into play instead is that it thins your deck of lands, meaning drawing potentially spells.
The problem however is that GoldPhoenix deck only runs 24 lands, and this actually doesn't guarantee consistent land drops every turn.
Todd was playing 27 lands, and still was losing games via missing land drops. You need to be playing 26 lands for this type of deck in my opinion. There is some argument that the Anticipate and Opt smooth this out. But I feel the mistake is when you're spending you card filtering on getting lands, rather than spells that help you to get to your game plan, like removal.
What I am getting at is that the searching for land cards, do come with the added risk of having less lands to make your land drops.
I think this is what my version would look like;
6 Forest
6 Island
2 Swamp
4 Hinterland Harbor
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Watery Grave
Combo Pieces (10)
4 Omniscience
4 Mastermind's Acquisition
2 Invert//Invent
3 Gift of Paradise
3 Grow from the Ashes
2 Circuitous Route
2 Gilded Lotus
Control Spells (6)
3 Ritual of Soot
3 Assassin's Trophy
Card Selection (8)
2 Search for Azcanta
1 Treasure Map
2 Anticipate
3 Opt
1 Thousand-Year Storm
1 Invert//Invent
1 Inescapable Blaze
1 Disperse
1 Ritual of Soot
1 Assassin's Trophy
4 Negate
4 Duress
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
Well I only saw his matches on SCG.
Well there are other cards that can help with searching for lands in the early game
Flower // Flourish
Adventurous Impulse
I wanted to mention District Guide but it dies to removal and Llanowar elf dies as well.
Druid of the Cowl
Elfhame Druid
Drover of the Mighty
Llanowar Envoy
Atzocan Seer
Elvish Rejuvenator
These all help to make mana but most of these cost too much or die to removal.
starting hand selection goes a long ways in these decks.
-Stay Frosty
I watched NumottheNummy's version of the Storm deck, this time using Izzet colours for a more control based sideboard plan. Perhaps things that could be included? I especially liked Pirate's Pillage, a card I had not seen play previously. Here is the deck list:
4 Sulfter Falls
7 Mountain
9 Island
4 Opt
4 Shock
4 Anticipate
4 Radical Idea
2 Flood of Recollection
4 Lightning Strike
4 Treasure Map
4 Pirate's Pillage
4 Thousand-Year Storm
2 Expansion // Explosion
2 Blink of an Eye
4 Negate
2 Lava Coil
3 Electrostatic Field
2 Niv-Mizzet, Parun
2 Firemind's Research
That is a really cool idea, I especially like that the deck packs actualt interaction and doesn't auto-lose to any creature deck like the OP's deck.
Some easy upgrades imho (besides the mana) would be:
# Golden Demise -->> Ritual of Soot, it's just a far stronger sweeper.
# 4x Syncopate -->> 3x Thought Erasure + 1x Sinister Sabotage, you already have an expensive counter in Spell Swindle and the discard is better in the early game than a taxing counterspell imho.
Essence Scatter or Murder (or Walk the Plank) might be worth considering over Cast Down if you run into too many legendary creatures.
I'd also want some number of Discovery // Dispersal in the deck, maybe by trimming down a land or two and a spell.
The main problem I can see with the deck is not having enough ramp to consistently cast Omniscience with only 5x treasure-makers.
I'd also consider a stronger ramp option in Gilded Lotus over Treasure Map which takes longer to get going.
Anoher card to consider can be Thaumatic Compass which can be very good in a control deck and find lands while holding up removal/countermagic and flip into a land that can stop attacks (and add mana).
The win-cons seem a bit complicated and require too many moving pieces to my liking and I wonder if something else can be used.
A decent 1x-tutor target for Mastermind's Acquisition from the SB can be Overflowing Insight which can work well with Omniscience.
What is good about it is that it can also be used to mill the opponent if you loop it with Salvager of Secrets.
-Stay Frosty
I don't like Elfhame Druid over Gift of Paradise though and would include at least a copy (or two) of Thaumatic Compass and maybe some number of Root Snare in the maindeck as River's Rebuke as the only protection from creatures isn't enough.