You're under a little pressure.
It's Standard, so a "little" pressure can turn into a game loss pretty quickly. You're not dead on board or anything; but it's Standard...
It's the end of your opponent's turn three and you cast the Moment of Truth you just drew; your first spell of the game.
You reveal the following three cards.
What do you do and what card goes where?
The "right" answer might surprise you...
Oh wait, it's probably a good idea to make sure you know what deck you're playing. You're a sucker for combos, card power, and recent success, so you "opt" for this Challenge winner:
Omniscience Reanimator | FDN Standard | suyasome, 1st Place MTGO Standard Challenge 1/12/2025
- Creatures (8)
- 4 Fallaji Archaeologist
- 4 Picklock Prankster
- Instants (12)
- 4 Confounding Riddle
- 4 Ephara's Dispersal
- 4 Moment of Truth
- Sorceries (8)
- 4 Abuelo's Awakening
- 4 Chart a Course
- Enchantemnts (4)
- 4 Omniscience
- Battles (4)
- 4 Invasion of Arcavios // Invocation of the Founders
- Lands (24)
- 4 Island
- 1 Plains
- 1 Conduit Pylons
- 2 Blast Zone
- 2 Fabled Passage
- 3 Floodfarm Verge
- 3 Seachrome Coast
- 4 Adarkar Wastes
- 4 Meticulous Archive
How Does This Deck Work?
SUYASOME won a Challenge a week back with what has since become an important component of the Standard metagame. A lot of folks have been saying that Standard has been the best format in Magic for a few years now... And (outside of Premodern, obviously) it's hard to disagree.
Standard has fast Red Decks, less fast (but more tricky) Red Decks, all manner of decks designed to bounce your own stuff, creature Control, true Control, Reanimator designed to put Atraxa, Grand Unifier into play... And Reanimator that... Well? I guess it makes a 1/1.
The idea here is to get Omniscience into the graveyard.
If you can cast Abuelo's Awakening on the Omniscience, it will come back into play as a 1/1 creature. A 1/1 Spirit Omniscience is still Omniscient, so you will be able to cast whatever you want at that point.
The default play pattern is to immediately save five mana on an Invasion of Arcavios // Invocation of the Founders. You go rooting around in your sideboard and get one of these:
Can we pause a second and appreciate Unnerving Grasp for a second? This is a three-mana card that bounces a permanent and makes a 2/2 creature. A creature, by the by, that might have some upside to it.
That is exactly one of these old timey Staples:
... Only better, because you can bounce anything (not just a creature).
This is convenient because your Unnerving Grasp will then be pointed at your own Invasion of Arcavios. Re-play the Invasion and this time (instead of reaching for your sideboard), just reacquire the Unnerving Grasp from your graveyard. Rinse. Repeat. Lots and lots of 2/2 creatures.
This is the simplest combo finish for the deck. You just have to be mindful of how many cards you have left in your library. You don't want to lose on the spot to a Jace or something. In fact, the most common way to finish this basic play pattern is to go back to your sideboard on the last Unnerving Grasp to go and get the Negate.
There are other patterns and loops you can go for.
Instead of Unnerving Grasp, for instance, you might get Season of Weaving.
Mana, after all, is of no object to you.
You can commit two pawprints to creating a token copy of Omniscience and the remaining pawprints to bounce "everything" (including both the Invasion of Arcavios and the original Omniscience). You could immediately play the original Omniscience to have two copies in play. The Season of Weaving is an important workaround against some problematic battlefield positions... Or you can combine strategies.
For instance you can start with the Unnerving Grasp pattern, until you Manifest Dread multiple Confounding Riddles. Then you can switch your Invasion of Arcavios for Season of Weaving to return all your Confounding Riddles to hand, so that when you switch back to making 2/2s you can pass with a hand full of [free] Counterspells.
Let's go back to that opening question:
So, what do you take? What do you put in the graveyard?
The answer is obviously "it depends". If you don't have anything the default play is going to be to put Omniscience in the graveyard (and keep Abuelo's Awakening). Then you can use Abuelo's Awakening to get the Omniscience, and get the party started.
This assumes stuff like you don't already have an Abuelo's Awakening and you need this one. Of course, no matter what, you're going to need an Invasion of Arcavios to keep going.
The design of this deck - with Fallaji Archaeologist, Confounding Riddle, and Moment of Truth - can get you to your important Battle. Again, mana at this point is no object.
I'd just like you to consider: Maybe bury one Omniscience and take a second Omniscience?
You're probably only going to want to do this if you don't have another Omniscience already in hand... But the double-Omniscience turn is something you have to be cognizant of if you're going to try to win with this deck.
A White Control deck might be able to answer two copies of Omniscience on turn four (say two copies of Get Lost or Soul Partition). I mean against a White Control deck maybe you would take a redundant Omniscience even if you had a second copy in hand!
But having a second enchantment that you play as an enchantment is something you're going to want to think about in almost every matchup. Even a deck can send a Torch the Tower or Nowhere to Run at your Omniscience if all you have is the 1/1 Spirit version. Yes, you'll be able to re-run your Reanimator turn if you have another Abuelo's Awakening next turn... But at the very least they might be able to stop your baller combo turn.
What you're going to want to do is immediately play the second Omniscience from your hand once you have priority with the first (1/1 Spirit) one in play. Then you'll be able to keep going with free spells, so long as you have something to play.
Remember, in the alternative, the opponent can respond to your first Omniscience free spell with removal. You'll save some mana on that first spell, but if you don't have a backup Omniscience, it's likely to be the end of your turn.
This new Azorius deck is a symptom of Standard... Or at least Standard last week.
What's the sickness we're witnessing?
The graveyard is good!
Here are a couple of other new decks that can help to showcase how good (and interesting, and different) these graveyard angles can be.
Dimir Oculus | FDN Standard | poogaloo, 1st Place MTGO Standard Challenge 1/16/2025
- Creatures (13)
- 2 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
- 3 Preacher of the Schism
- 4 Abhorrent Oculus
- 4 Picklock Prankster
- Instants (10)
- 3 Go for the Throat
- 3 Negate
- 4 Cut Down
- Sorceries (11)
- 3 Duress
- 4 Chart a Course
- 4 No One Left Behind
- Enchantments (4)
- 4 Founding the Third Path
- Lands (22)
- 2 Island
- 4 Swamp
- 4 Darkslick Shores
- 4 Gloomlake Verge
- 4 Undercity Sewers
- 4 Underground River
"I thought you said we were talking about new decks!"
Look a little more closely...
POOGALOO won a recent Challenge with a deck that only looks like a deck you're familiar with.
Rather than being Azorius Oculus... It's Dimir Oculus!
Rather than Helping Hand and Recommission, POOGALOO used No One Left Behind to re-buy Abhorrent Oculus.
This version doesn't have the raw firepower of Haughty Djinn... But gets a couple of things back. POOGALOO's deck has a little more card advantage thanks to Preacher of the Schism instead; and between the Preacher and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, Dimir has substantially more life gain.
While it is expensive to re-buy Sheoldred with No One Left Behind, it's important to note that you can. There are several popular decks that can't really deal with a resolved Sheoldred (at least not for very long). So two of them? You know what's up.
The bonus here is that while POOGALOO could exploit the graveyard, this deck is far less susceptible to graveyard hate than Azorius Oculus. The default version is quite vulnerable to, say, Ghost Vacuum. A patient opponent can "counter" your Helping Hand, reduce your Djinn to zero power, or just keep you from having the baseline fuel to cast your Oculus. The Dimir version - with graveyard-agnostic threats like Preacher of the Schism and Sheoldred - can keep trucking, even against a prepared opponent.
This one is probably my favorite new graveyard deck of the week.
It asks the question what if you had basically all Tarmogoyfs?
Dimir Zombies | FDN Standard | fetnuji, Magic Spotlight: Foundations
- Creatures (32)
- 2 Kiora, the Rising Tide
- 2 Writhing Necromass
- 4 Cruel Somnophage
- 4 Festerleech
- 4 Gnawing Vermin
- 4 Hollow Marauder
- 4 Huskburster Swarm
- 4 Overlord of the Balemurk
- 4 Souls of the Lost
- Instants (4)
- 4 Overwhelming Remorse
- Sorceries (4)
- 4 Wail of the Forgotten
- Lands (20)
- 6 Swamp
- 2 Gloomlake Verge
- 4 Darkslick Shores
- 4 Undercity Sewers
- 4 Underground River
- Sideboard (15)
- 4 Fallaji Archaeologist
- 4 Duress
- 4 Feed the Swarm
- 2 Ghost Vacuum
- 1 Restless Reef
You need Overlord of the Balemurk (ideally) or maybe Gnawing Vermin to get going. You really want Overlord (which is outstanding in this deck)... But then come the midgame, all your cards are cheap and huge.
Huskburster Swarm is just a 6/6 for .
Hollow Marauder is insane. for a 4/2 that forces the opponent to discard (and also often draws a card at the same time!)
Overwhelming Remorse is some kind of Swords to Plowshares in this deck. No life for the opponent AND can target Planeswalkers!
The real gem of the collection is Wail of the Forgotten, though. The card is always flexible and never really bad... But when you have enough cards in your graveyard it's on the order of an Ancestral Recall. Triple value, disruption, and continued velocity! Wail of the Forgotten is so good in this deck I'm surprised there aren't more strategies trying to break it.
I'd close by saying something like "with graveyards this good, make sure to pack some Rest in Peace" ... only...
FETNUJI knew what this deck was weak to before sleeving it up. I can't imagine you want to play against Rest in Peace, but at least this deck has a proposed answer to it.
Still:
With graveyards this good, make sure to pack some Rest in Peace.
LOVE
MIKE