"No Flying for You!" with Ovika, Enigma Goliath - Plot Twist #28

Welcome back to Plot Twist, the series where we build a Commander deck that looks like it'll tell one kind of story only to throw out a twist for our opponents mid-game. If you're joining us for the first time, welcome! I'd encourage you to check out the previous articles in the series to get a sense of the types of stories we're looking to tell.

Last time on Plot Twist, we experimented with an "Oops All Instants" deck with Umori, the Collector as the commander and functional (but not literal) companion that tried to make viable deck from only the less than 1,000 instants that are available in green and black. It was a blast to build and a very interesting thought experiment. I appreciate everyone who weighed in with their own Umori brews as well!

This week, we're tinkering around with Ovika, Enigma Goliath, a commander that was just reprinted in Foundations and has always been a commander that I've been eager to build around with personally.

Ovika was a little overshadowed when he debuted in Phyrexia: All Will Be One by powerhouses like Atraxa, Grand Unifier, Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines, and Mondrak, Glory Dominus, but you gotta admit this big flying triangle with arms is an interesting commander himself.

How Does Ovika, Enigma Goliath Work?

Ovika has flying and a STEEP ward cost of and three life since it's from the early days of ward being an activated ability. This gives Ovika a natural form of evasion and functional hexproof, which we'll sort of need since Ovika costs seven mana the first time we cast it from the command zone.

Having built-in protection is doubly important since we'll need Ovika to stick around if we want to have any chance of triggering his third ability, which reads "Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, create X 1/1 red Phyrexian Goblin creature tokens, where X is the mana value of that spell. They gain haste until end of turn." 

Creating these Goblin tokens is really the main selling point and reason people are playing Ovika. In looking at Ovika's EDHREC page, more than 1,00 of the registered Ovika decklists fall into the spellslinger category, meaning they rely on casting noncreature spells as their primary gameplan.

Popular spellslinger cards, like Mana Geyser, Goblin Electromancer, Dig Through Time, and Frantic Search, are showing up in approximately half of Ovika lists out there, and it's easy to see why since he allows us to make a ton of 1/1 Goblin tokens as we draw extra cards and make mana through 'ritual' effects.

Of course, there are a fair amount of brewers leaning on Ovika as an Izzet Goblins kindred commander as well. Goblin kindred cards, like Krenko, Mob Boss, Skirk Prospector, and Brightstone Ritual, are also featured in Ovika decks that work well with his triggered ability, allowing us to create an unreasonable amount of Goblin tokens and turn them into mana to further fuel our spells.

So when our opponents sit down across the table from us, they'll probably be expecting some sort of hybrid spellslinger-Goblin kindred deck, especially given Ovika's relative popularity as a commander and recent reprint in Foundations. And that's when we hit them with the twist: this week's deck is all about creatures with flying and pushing our opponents for not playing flyers.

Doing the Twist

"Wut?" you ask. Yes, that's right, we're building a flying-centric deck around a spellslinger/Goblin commander. If you've been following along with Plot Twist, you know that I love strange mechanics that have almost enough support to be commander viable. We've done article around Delirium, Spellshapers, landwalk, and multicolored instants, to name a few. I've even tinkered with the 'Cowards can't block' mechanic, which is now clearly an A-tier deck thanks to Gornog, the Red Reaper.

This week's decklist was inspired when I stumbled across the card Tidal Flats on Scryfall and realized just how many cards there are that hose creatures without flying. With a high density of anti-flying cards being in red, building an Izzet deck makes for a natural color pairing. Since blue is one of the primary colors that gets creatures with flying and cards that enable flying like Levitation and Wonder, this color pairing is poised to take advantage of both having flyers and punishing non-flyers.

So this week's decklist is going to turn Ovika, Enigma Goliath on her head by leaning into noncreature spells, like Levitation, Eldrazi Monument, and Thunderhawk Gunship, that will both trigger Ovika's ability to create 1/1 Goblins and allow us to give those Goblins flying.

Then, we'll punish our opponents for not having flying with Earthquake, Fault Line, Themberchaud, and similar effects so we can stay ahead on board without losing our flying Goblins in the process. Of course, we're packing a lot anti-flying tech, like Archetype of Imagination, Mudslide, and Tibor and Lumia, to help us press our advantage and close out games.

Making Goblins Fly

If we're going to run an anti-flying deck helmed by a creature that makes a bunch of 1/1 Goblins that can't fly, we're going to need ways to give our team flying. Fortunately, this also gives us a relatively strong way to win the game that also synergizes with Ovika, Enigma Goliath. Akroma's Memorial, Eldrazi Monument, Levitation, and Thunderhawk Gunship are all noncreature spells that will give our team flying and potentially more abilities AND create Goblins if we happen to control our commander when we cast them.

In playtesting, it seems like both Akroma's Memorial and Eldrazi Monument are notorious enough that we should hold off on playing them until after we control Ovika so that we can attack with a bunch of hasty, flying Goblins before our opponents have a chance to remove them. While both Levitation and Thunderhawk Gunship are powerful in this week's deck, we can comfortably play them early and hope they stick around until we have an army of Goblins to grant flying to.

Sprite Noble and Windstorm Drake give our flying creatures extra power in addition to being flyers themselves and are excellent targets for the handful of clone effects in the deck to boot. Shadow Puppeteers takes the cake when it comes to finishing out games though. Allowing our flyers to turn into 4/4 Dragons until end of turn is going to be fantastic, especially since they won't lose any activated abilities when we do. 

The Anti-Non-Flyer Club

Once our team is levitating, it's time to punish our opponents for not playing flyers! Earthquake, Molten Disaster, Scourge of Kher Ridges, and Themberchaud all act as one-sided wraths as long as our creatures have flying and can also occasionally do some damage to our opponents themselves.

We're running Stormtide Leviathan this week because it'll frequently act like Moat in this week's deck, buying us an extra turn or two when we don't have enough flyers to close out the game. It's also worth calling out Gravitational Shift as another way to help us stay alive by giving non-flyers -2/-0 and close out the game by giving our flyers +2/+0.

Being able to cast Gravitational Shift with Ovika, Enigma Goliath and any way to give our team flying will immediately create five 3/1 hasty, flying Goblins!

We're running a trio of old, weird, and expensive anti-flying cards this week in Mudslide, Raging River, and Tidal Flats. You could easily skip these due to their complicated wording or price point if you wanted to, but we love finding homes for old cards like these on Plot Twist.

Mudslide prevents non-flyers from untapping unless their controller pays per creature, acting as a red Ghostly Prison of sorts to help us stay alive.

Raging River has a really complex wording that functionally makes our opponents divide their non-flying blockers into two piles when we attack, then allows us to split our attackers into two piles and choose which pile of defenders blocks which pile of attackers. It's another way for us to punish non-flyers or get through for damage if we're unable to find one of our effects hat grant flying.

Lastly, for Tidal Flats gives our blocking creatures first strike as long as the attacking creature doesn't have flying. Our opponent can pay per creature to remove this effect, but the ability to give all of our creatures first strike in an Izzet deck is going to catch our opponents off guard some amount of the time.

Making Tokens and Token Copies for Days

Since just about everything we do with this week's deck is going to generate Goblins with Ovika, Enigma Goliath, we're running a lot of token-makers, like Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer, Echoing Assault, Flameshadow Conjuring, and Shark Typhoon, to really compound the number of tokens we're making.

In particular, Echoing Assault and Flameshadow Conjuring seem fantastic as they give us cheap ways to create extra token copies of creatures like Manaform Hellkite, Twinflame Tyrant, or Embereth Skyblazer so we can multiply our damage output quickly.

Being in Izzet colors also allows us to create nonlegendary token copies of Ovika himself to make absolutely absurd numbers of tokens. Between Irenicus's Vile Duplication, Quantum Misalignment, Shaun, Father of Synths, and The Apprentice's Folly, we have ample ways to copy Ovika, Enigma Goliath and and start making obscene numbers of tokens.

Keep in mind that once we've made one nonlegendary copy of Ovika, we can make even more with Rite of Replication, Mirror Room // Fractured Realm, and our other token-making spells by copying the nonlegendary tokens. I'd only recommend doing this if you REALLY love math, though.

Winning with Style

At this point, it should be clear that we're going to make a LOT of 1/1 Goblin tokens with this deck. If we're lucky, they'll be slightly bigger than that, but sometimes an opponent has gained an absurd amount of life or has a timely Inkshield or Zealous Persecution that will stop us from winning. One of the best ways for us to break through, and one of the few non-flyers in the deck, is Bria, Riptide Rogue.

Bria not only grants our creatures prowess so they'll get +1/+1 with each noncreature spell we cast, but she can also make them unblockable while we're at it. Bria could be a good alternate commander for this deck now that I think about it!

On a similar note, Soulblade Djinn can buff our team as we cast noncreature spells, while Embereth Skyblazer can give our team +1/+0 for each opponent and weirdly has flying on our turn for some reason! Day of the Dragons is a quick way to turn our 1/1 Goblins into 5/5 Dragons, but the Dragons don't get haste, so we need to be careful when we go all in with Day of the Dragons.

Should our opponents happen to have a bunch of flyers themselves, Thundermaw Hellkite will swoop in to save the day for us by tapping them all down. Last but not least, Twinflame Tyrant will double the damage we do to our opponents and permanents they control and serves as another great target for all of our copy spells.

A Few Additional Twists for Good Measure

It's time for my favorite part of Plot Twist: highlighting the weird cards we uncovered along the way!

I love using board wipes like Perplexing Test that match up with a deck's theme because they often feel one-sided. I run Perplexing Test in my Gandalf, Westward Voyager / Keruga, the Macrosage deck, and it's almost always backbreaking.

Astral Dragon could be one of the five best cards in our deck because it makes a bunch of flyers for us AND helps double up our best noncreature permanents. I'm imagining us copying a Gravitational Shift and Shark Typhoon with this and living the dream.

Scourge of Kher Ridges is a little expensive to cast initially, but being able to repeatedly do 2 damage to all non-flyers at will seems really useful in this week's deck. Bloodwater Entity isn't particularly flashy, but it's hard to recur cards in an Izzet deck, and being able to get back Fault Line or Sublime Epiphany at the right time could be key.

Last, but not least, I'm intrigued by Serum Sovereign. Having a mana sink that can turn an extra into Serum Visions feels really strong. I'm curious if you've played with Serum Sovereign before and if it's actually a solid source of card advantage. Let me know in the comments below.

Here's the full decklist for you to peruse:

Roll the Credits

I hope you enjoyed reading the latest edition of Plot Twist featuring Ovika, Enigma Goliath. Next time you sit down for a game of Commander, see what sort of plot twists you can add to take the game's narrative in a new direction. I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's deck and what cards could find a home in it in the comments below or on Archidekt. The Maybeboards of my decklists are always filled with cards I thought could work but didn't make the final decklist.

You can check out my other articles here or see what decks I'm currently playing here. I've been tinkering around with my Signature Ikra/Bruse Secret Commander Wild Pair Deck lately, and really enjoying looking back at the deck now that I've gotten quite a few games under my belt with it. I'm constantly toying with new ideas like this Mono-Green 'Reanimator' Deck and Colorless Combo deck and would love to hear your thoughts on them there.

I'll be at MagicCon Chicago in February, so please come say 'hi' if you happen to see me there!

Stay tuned to see what other twists and turns are headed your way in the next edition of Plot Twist.