Omniscience Draft Guide: Dominaria (MTG Arena)
Here's a super impromptu guide to the Dominaria Omniscience Draft currently available on Magic Arena. I had no intention of writing this, but after spending all of last night jamming endless games, I'm convinced that this event is an excellent way to acquire gems while also expanding your collection if you still need Dominaria cards.
Omniscience draft can be summed up in a single sentence: the person that draws the most cards wins. It's that simple. Is it any wonder why I love drafting this?
This event ends tomorrow night so let's skip the preamble and get right down to business!
Omniscience Is Broken Magic
Omniscience draft is a special draft variant where all the spells in your hand are cast for 0 mana. In addition, you have an emblem you can activate once each turn (yours and your opponent's) to add WUBRG mana to use however you'd like; in the case of Dominaria it's usually to pay for kicker costs (Slinn Voda, the Rising Deep). You also don't have any basic lands in your 40-card deck, so only 2 of the cards that you draft can be left out of your deck. Keep in mind that if a card has a kicker cost or activated ability cost higher than 5, you can't pay for it unless your deck has ways to generate extra mana, so cards like Fight with Fire get way worse.
Once you've removed the mana cost of nearly all your spells, card evaluation completely changes. You can't pick cards as if this was a regular Dominaria deck. You'll lose horribly. This is not a fair game of Magic. Omniscience is a wonderfully absurd Combo format, where the goal is to draw more cards than your opponent. Remember that when picking your cards.
All your card picks fall into five categories:
- Card Draw
- Winning
- Disruption
- Graveyard Synergy Filler
- Garbage
Card Draw Is King
Card draw is the single most important thing in Omniscience. The faster you're burning through your deck, the faster you can win the game. This format is all about dropping as much stuff on the table faster than your opponent can drop their stuff, and card draw is how you do that.
Spells that you up an extra card, like Divination, are amazing. Spells that put you up two or more cards, like Weight of Memory, are absolutely busted. These cards are what make your deck tick and you need as much card draw as you can get.
Card filtering and looting are good inclusions here too, because 40 of the 42 cards that you draft will have to be in your deck so you'll inevitably have a bunch of garbage cards in your deck that aren't really worth casting. Opt is amazing for this, but even Keldon Raider is an acceptable inclusion because it can turn your useless Gift of Growth in hand into a Weight of Memory. All the cantrips are fine inclusions, even Warlord's Fury, because they get you closer to your busted cards. Of the cantrips, Opt and Gaea's Blessing are the two best, with the latter able to tuck your best spells back into your deck so you can draw them again.
Winning
Drawing cards is the most important thing. More cards in hand means more stuff you can drop on the board, and the person with the most stuff wins. So picking stuff to win is always secondary to picking those sweet Weight of Memorys. That said, some stuff is better than other stuff. Let's talk about the best winning stuff.
The single best card that enables easy wins in Omniscience Dominaria has to be Garna, the Bloodflame. She gives all the stuff you dropped on the board haste so you can swing immediately. She also synergizes with the best cards in the format -- Weight of Memory, Dark Bargain, Final Parting -- because they all can put creatures in your graveyard which Garna can get back to your hand, and then you just cast them and immediately swing. Her synergy in this format is absolutely ridiculous. I've never had a game where she wasn't amazing. Ive also lived the dream and cast a turn 1 Final Parting, putting Garna in my hand and Grunn, the Lonely King in my graveyard for a turn 1 kill. To quote my opponent, "Nice!"
Adeliz, the Cinder Wind is another absurd finisher in this format. Again, it comes down to snergy with the best cards in the format -- card draw spells -- which the majority are instant/sorceries. You want to be chaining together Divinations into Opts into Dark Bargains in any deck you draft, and Adeliz turns that engine into a game-winning punch. She also pumps all Wizards on your table, and two of the best filler spells, Caligo Skin-Witch and Ghitu Chronicler, happen to be Wizards, so they get in on the action when you go off.
My final favorite "winning stuff" combination is harder set up than the first two, but it's all but a guaranteed win that you don't need to get through blockers to pull off, and they're just commons! It's Guardians of Koilos infinite loops. When we have two Guardians, we can bounce one with the other infinite times. This means we're casting infinite historic spells, which triggers a bunch of cards that care about historic casts: we deal infinite damage with Cabal Paladin or infinite mill with Diligent Excavator. I've won plenty of games doing a Guardian loop with a Paladin in play. Once you've drafted 2-4 Guardians, this combo is a breeze to pull off.
Those were the best win conditions that I found in the format. But honestly, if you draw enough cards, you can win with anything. You don't need fancy combos or legendaries -- draw 10+ cards and drop down four Primordial Wurms and you'll win without issue. Draw cards, draw more cards, then play big things to smash with.
Disruption
If you can't pick card draw or the fattest winning stuff, the next best thing is stopping your opponent from having fun. Countermagic is the best disruption available, specifically Wizard's Retort, but Unwind is usually just as good. You want to trade these spells with your opponent's best card draw, anything that draws 2+ cards, so Divination and better. Again, the person that draws the most cards wins. Keep in mind that Syncopate is nearly unplayable because you have to use your WUBRG emblem to pay for the X, but so can your opponent, so the only time you can counter something is after your opponent kicks a spell.
The next way to cast more stuff than your opponent is to Mind Rot them. In the case of Dominaria, that's Caligo Skin-Witch. This card has a huge variance: if you go first and cast this turn 1, you've forced your opponent to discard 2 of their 3 starting cards, aka 66% of their hand. It's absolutely backbreaking. However, if you go second or draw this card later, it can often do nothing. The upside is too high to ignore, even if the downside happens more often. That said, I'll pick Skin-Witch if there's no card draw, winning stuff, or countermagic in the pack. It's still better than some nonsense Aven Sentry.
All other disruption is basically filler. Obviously In Bolas's Clutches is amazing, but I consider that a winning card, not a removal spell, as are sagas like The Eldest Reborn. Icy Manipulator is alright. Blessed Light is fine. I rank creature removal spells under everything else I've covered, but higher than garbage cards like Bloodstone Goblin.
Graveyard Synergy Filler
Again, the best cards that you'll be running are going to fill the graveyard to some extent. Weight of Memory, Final Parting, and Dark Bargain all put cards in your graveyard. Garna, the Bloodflame is probably the single best non-rare winning card you can run. When you're running lots of these cards, then graveyard synergy cards get more valuable.
Graveyard recursion is good in small amounts. Ghitu Chronicler is the best of the best here because it's another Divination or whatever sweet card draw you've already cast. One copy of Soul Salvage has worked wonders for me, grabbing two of my best creatures out of my graveyard. Excavation Elephant is decent if you've already picked up multiple copies of Guardians of Koilos.
In that same vein, the self-mill cards Homarid Explorer and Windgrace Acolyte are decent filler cards when you have some of the above graveyard recursion spells and (most importantly) Garna, the Bloodflame.
Garbage
There's a lot of cards that are decent/good in a regular Dominaria draft but absolutely useless in Omniscience draft. Cards like Saproling Migration are a waste of space in your deck. The only Saproling generator that you want to run is Slimefoot, the Stowaway, since you can make a Saproling each turn. Unfortunately, you'll be stuck with a fair bit of garbage cards since only 2 of the cards you draft can be left out of your final deck.
Tomer's Priority Pick List (Uncommons / Commons)
After a bunch of drafts, this is my current priority pick list for uncommons and commons. This isn't a definitive list and pick priorities change a little based on previous picks but it should still be helpful to people new to the format:
Pick Over Everything
The Best
Next Best
Great Stuff
Find Your Great Stuff
Winning Stuff
Cycle to Better Stuff
Situationally Great Filler
Running Low On Good Picks? Stop Opponent Then!
Decent Filler
From there, just pick big ol' creatures (Feral Abomination) and you should be fine.
That's All, Folks!
Sorry for the late guide! I didn't think anything of Omniscience draft until I played it last night and it turned out to be so amazing fun. Hopefully this might still be useful to some people looking to draft it today or tomorrow!
