Omo, Queen of Vesuva "Landwalk this Way" - Plot Twist #11

Omo, Queen of Vesuva by Alex Brock

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 for the types of stories we're looking to tell.

Last time, we built a Dragons/affinity deck featuring Herigast, Erupting Nullkite that tried to cheat big expensive Dragons into play for a fraction of their mana cost. This week, we're doing the twist on the face commander from Modern Horizons 3's Tricky Terrain decklist: Omo, Queen of Vesuva. When Omo was first revealed, my mind started spinning with the possibility of building a Simic decklist that was filled with lords and all sorts of other kindred cards, but the more I thought about it, the more I was drawn to the line on Omo that reads "each land with an everything counter on it is every land type in addition to its other land types." Being able to turn our opponents' lands into every land type and then use that to our advantage is a very Plot Twist thing to do.

How Does Omo Work?

Omo, Queen of Vesuva has three abilities in total. The first is a triggered ability that allows us to put an everything counter on up to one target creature and one target land whenever Omo enters the battlefield or attacks. Their second ability makes each land with an everything counter on it into each land type (which now includes Cave, Desert, Forest, Gate, Island, Lair, Locus, Mine, Mountain, Plains, Power-Plant, Sphere, Swamp, Tower, and Urza's), and their final ability makes each nonland creature with an everything counter on it gain every creature type.

It's important to note that everything counters placed on lands or creatures will stick around when Omo leaves the battlefield, but without our commander in play the everything counters no longer have any effect on the lands or creatures they're on since it's Omo that grants the abilities. Of course, when we recast Omo, they'll immediately resume granting those abilities to any lands or creatures that still have an everything counter on them.

In looking at Omo's EDHREC page, we can see that plenty of brewers are leaning heavily into building a Kindred Kindred deck filled with creatures like Lord of the Unreal, Timber Protector, Avenger of Zendikar, and Elvish Archdruid, each appearing in more than 40% of Omo decks at the time of writing. The general strategy of these Kindred Kindred decks is to use Omo's everything counters to make all your creatures every creature type so they receive all the benefits from each Kindred 'lord' you have in play.

So when our opponents sit down across the table from us, they'll probably be expecting us to be playing either the Tricky Terrain precon or some sort of Kindred Kindred deck, and that's when we hit them with a twist: this Omo, Queen of Vesuva deck is actually built around putting everything counters on our opponents' lands so we can make our landwalk abilities super powerful.

Doing the Twist

Back in the early days of Magic, when a good creature was a three-mana 2/2 with some sort of keyword ability, instead of having flying or unblockable, we'd occasionally get a creature that had some form of landwalk. Creatures like Lost Soul and Goblins of the Flarg couldn't be blocked if our opponent controlled a Swamp or Mountain, respectively. They were also super underwhelming even when they were unblockable. Over time, landwalk abilities have become less and less common as other forms of evasion, like flying and menace, became the norm.

But what if we could make landwalk better by making sure our opponents always had the necessary land types so that our creatures were unblockable? And what if we had a bunch of ways to grant landwalk to our creatures? And what if we had a bunch of effects to draw cards and make our creatures bigger when they deal damage to our opponents? Now we're talking!

Our deck this week is going to use Omo, Queen of Vesuva to turn our opponents' lands into each land type so we can use cards like Lumbering Satyr, which was also an all-star in our Baru, Fist of Krosa deck, or War Barge to grant creatures landwalk so we can connect and reap the benefits with Grazilaxx, Illithid Scholar, Cazur, Ruthless Stalker, Contaminant Grafter, and more powerful combat damage effects. 

Landwalking the Walk, Land-talking the Talk

Since Omo's everything counters make lands into every land type, we really only need to trigger their ability once for each opponent in order to turn on all of our landwalk abilities for the rest of the game as long as Omo is in play, so we can prioritize cards like Lumbering Satyr, Eladamri, Lord of Leaves, Elvish Champion, Lord of Atlantis, and Master of the Pearl Trident which grant landwalk to large swathes of our creatures at once. We're running quite a few Elves and Merfolk in the deck as-is, but we'll want to prioritize casting Maskwood Nexus and putting Omo's everything counters on our own creatures to ensure that our non-Elves/Merfolk are able to reap the benefits of these 'lords' too.

We've got a handful of repeatable effects to grant a single creature landwalk as well in The Flood of Mars, War Barge, and Weatherseed Elf. All three of these can target our opponents' creatures in addition to ours, so we can use them to strike a deal with an opponent to help them do damage to a mutual threat. Rounding out our suite of landwalkers are Jedit Ojanen of Efrava and The Sea Devils, which can build out a steady stream of landwalking creatures for us to attack with.

Combat Triggers Galore

We're not going to be able to win with a bunch of 2/2 islandwalkers, so we've included a bunch of cards like Arwen, Weaver of Hope, Cazur, Ruthless Stalker, Conclave Sledge-Captain, Marcus, Mutant Mayor, and Master Biomancer that will help our creatures get bigger with +1/+1 counters. Similarly, we should be able to draw a steady stream of cards when our landwalkers connect thanks to Bident of Thassa, Grazilaxx, Illithid Scholar, Ohran Frostfang, and Toski, Bearer of Secrets.

We're going to be trying to grind out value over time with this deck rather than win all at once, but we do have a few effects like Beastmaster Ascension and Overwhelming Encounter that can let get in for large amounts of damage at the right moment. If you haven't played with Overwhelming Encounter yet, it makes for super memorable games whenever you hit a 20 on the dice roll. I recently added it into my Karador cycling-reanimator deck because I find it to be a much more casual version of Craterhoof Behemoth that can still win games reliably.

There are a few novel but powerful combat damage effects in the deck as well: Old Gnawbone creates a steady supply of Treasures for us when our creatures connect, Contaminant Grafter lets us proliferate up to three times per turn and potentially win with poison counters, Stolen Identity can repeatedly get us a copy of the most powerful artifact or creature on the battlefield, and Thada Adel, Acquisitor lets us steal an opponent's Sol Ring or The One Ring (or any other ring we want!) and cast it. Of course, Roaming Throne lets us double up on these effects as we start placing everything counters onto our creatures with Omo. We can simply name Elf, Merfolk, or whatever our most prominent creature type is and then let Omo steadily turn our entire board into every creature type.

Getting Cheeky with Our Interaction

As I was searching for landwalk effects and other cards that care about combat damage to add to this week's deck, I couldn't help but marvel at some of the novel interactive effects that popped up. Stormtide Leviathan provides some redundancy for Omo, Queen of Vesuva's effect by making all lands Islands in addition to their other types and makes it so that creatures can't attack unless they have islandwalk or flying, which acts as a pseduo-Moat for us while still allowing our islandwalkers to get through. Speaking of islandwalkers, Colossal Whale allows us to exile a creature the defending player controls every time it attacks, and those creatures stay exiled until Colossal Whale leaves the battlefield. Typically we'll want to rotate which player we're attacking with Colossal Whale so that we don't accidentally give someone their entire board back when it leaves the battlefield.

Enigma Thief can bounce a nonland permanent for each of our opponents and provide a huge tempo swing, and its prowl cost will be trivially easy to achieve when we can cast Omo, Queen of Vesuva on turn three, attack with them on turn four, and then cast Enigma Thief. Lastly, this seems like a great deck to include Trygon Predator in to help us deal with problematic artifacts and enchantments.

We've also got Mutational Advantage and Ripples of Potential, which can feel like better versions of Heroic Intervention in this deck under the right circumstances. While we don't have an traditional Wrath of God effects in the deck, we're so reliant on our creatures that having a couple of ways to prevent our entire board from being destroyed is well worth it, and while One with the Kami won't save our board, it will give us a huge army of 1/1 Spirits (the non-flying kind) to replace our creatures with.

A Few Additional Twists for Good Measure

We love discovering weird cards and ways to win on Plot Twist, and this week's decklist did not disappoint. As I mentioned above, War Barge can be a way to repeatably give a creature islandwalk, but we can use it as a cheeky piece of removal if someone blows up all artifacts with a Vandalblast or similar effect. I love the idea of using cards with the kinship ability, like Leaf-Crowned Elder, which can allow us to draw a steady stream of cards when we place one of Omo's everything counters on it, or Waterspout Weavers, which can repeatedly give our team flying, in this deck. This sort of strange interaction between old and new cards always makes for memorable games of Commander.

Greatbow Doyen doesn't give our creatures landwalk, but it absolutely discourages our opponents from blocking. And who knew there was an archer 'lord'!?!??! Quietus Spike is the only Equipment that made the final decklist and gives us another way to defeat decks that gain a lot of life alongside commander damage and poison counters. Lastly, I love the idea that Nesting Grounds can let us move everything counters around on our own permanents. While this won't come up too often, it's a great way for us to get extra value when we proliferate, and we love getting extra utility out of our lands whenever we can.

Here's the full decklist for you to peruse:

Roll the Credits

I hope you enjoyed reading the latest edition of Plot Twist, featuring Omo, Queen of Vesuva. 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 find me on Instagram at @girtenjeff and you can check out my other articles here or see what decks I'm currently playing here. 

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