Fish Five-0: Zagoth Instant Umori (Standard)
When we think of Umori, the Collector, we normally think of a mutate and creature heavy deck, but we're going to deviate from that and run all instant spells instead. This deck has existed before but mostly in Dimir and so when this decklist was brought into my stream, I decided I'd add my least favorite color, green.
Gameplan
This deck is very much so a pure control deck as we almost never tap out on our turn except for when we're paying the three mana to put Umori into our hand or when we're casting Umori itself.
The deck is definitely fun for those who enjoyed the good ol' "Land, Go." decks as we do everything on our opponent's turn. Yes, that also means we're playing something so daring and brave in a format that has Teferi, Time Raveler to shut down our whole deck. But with how many counterspells we have, we have to do our best to make sure Teferi never hits the board and if he does, we have a way to immediately remove it. Outside of that, our deck is mostly counterspells and removal.
How does the deck win with only counterspells and removal?
So to lightly touch up on why we added green, I feel like we lacked ways to close out the game if we didn't have Commence the Endgame. There have been so many games where I'd control the opponent and then have no way to win thus allowing opponents to find a way to claw their way back into the game. Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi helps us with that as we will always have a 9/9 colorless threat with haste that will swiftly end the game. This is especially important as it's able to serve as a way to block Stonecoil Serpent until we find a way to efficiently deal with it. The other way to win was Commence the Endgame and yes, I love this card because not only does it have Nicol Bolas but it has "Endgame" in the name. Oh, and it also draws us cards and is uncounterable which is amazing in the durdle wars for some match ups.
The other additions we got with green is a standard staple in Growth Spiral to draw us cards and accelerate our mana. As mentioned before, the Dimir variant didn't have many ways to deal with permanents like Enchantments or Artifacts in the maindeck but Assassin's Trophy definitely helps with that. At the very least, it's more ways to answer Teferi, Time Raveler. It's also a nice way to help us deal with Witch's Oven as that match up is pretty bad for us as we don't get access to cards like Cry of the Carnarium and are purely made of one for one spells. Because of that, we really need the Oven off the board ASAP. Speaking of Witch's Oven, we also pack more ways to remove it with Wilt. Even better, Wilt can answer other things like enchantments and is never a dead card as it can cycle itself.
Conclusion
** VIDEO SPOILERZZZZ**
The games were long but the deck played got the 5-0 while playing the "Land, Go." gameplan. Now, we only got a small sample size of the meta in Cats and Cycling matchups, but the addition of green really helped us in some of those matchups like Rakdos Sacrifice. I haven't tested this against a deck like Azorius Control yet. I have to imagine our matchup against Bant isn't the absolute worst but Azorius based decks having access to Dovin's Veto. However, if you want to just have fun and play the slow grind type of matchups, then this deck is for you. As you saw, Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi really helped accelerate the games and was a way for us to close out a game quickly so it's inclusion was most certainly welcomed.
I think the only changes I'd look into is going up to a full four copies of Erebos's Intervention and a copy of Tale's End to help shut down Shark Typhoon. But outside of that, it's nice to have Wilt to help us destroy Wilderness Reclamation. The deck isn't the easiest to pilot but definitely very rewarding as you will have to work for every win with the deck.
As always, thanks for watching. See ya at the next one!
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-Your Friendly Neighborhood AsianAvenger
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