"Oops All Instants" with Umori, the Collector - Plot Twist #27
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.
On the last edition of Plot Twist, we built a colorless reanimator deck helmed by Emrakul, the Promised End in honor of her being reprinted in Innistrad Remastered. This time, we're tinkering around with Umori, the Collector as a commander rather than as a companion. I've tried building decks with Umori as the companion before, but committing seven mana to paying for the companion ability and casting Umori is a lot to pay for a mana discount on all of our other spells. I love a good deckbuilding restriction, but we also want our deck to be able to do its thing.
How Does Umori Work?
Umori, the Collector has the much beloved despised companion mechanic, which requires us to build a deck, including our commander, composed of a single card type (artifacts, battles, creatures, enchantments, instants, kindred cards, lands, planeswalkers, or sorceries being the legal card types in Commander) in return for getting a mana discount on spells of the chosen type. Unfortunately, that discount only applies as long as Umori is in play rather than working like the static discount of something like The Ur-Dragon, because we name the card type we want to have our discount applied to when Umori enters. Furthermore, we have to pay any time we could cast a sorcery to put Umori, the Collector into our hand from the Companion Zone before we can even cast Umori. In looking at EDHREC, Umori is most often used as a companion in decks helmed by Henzie "Toolbox" Torre; The First Sliver; and Karador, Ghost Chieftain. All in all, using Umori as a companion has rather steep costs that we can avoid by using Umori as our commander instead while still limiting our deckbuilding to only a single card type.
By using Umori as our commander, we can skip the companion tax the first time we cast it and don't have to worry about Umori being destroyed or exiled before we really have a chance to do our thing. It also opens up a lot of interesting avenues to build our decklist. If we were using Umori as our companion, we'd be limited to choosing creatures, artifacts, or enchantments as the card type because our commander is considered part of our starting deck and therefor must also meet Umori's companion restriction. If we use Umori as our commander, we can instead build a deck made of all planeswalkers, sorceries, or instants if we want. Unfortunately, there are only 11 battles and 36 kindred cards in the black-green (aka Golgari) color identity at the time of writing, so we don't have enough to make a full Commander-legal deck of either of them, and while an all lands deck sounds interesting, it just doesn't seem viable to me (but please tell me if you've brewed something with Umori and lands in the comments below!).
In looking at Umori's EDHREC page, we can see that of the 1,000+ decks, a good percentage of them are ooze kindred or Slime Against Humanity builds. In fact, 90% of the 1,000 Umori, the Collector decks built since Slime Against Humanity debuted last year include it. Other ooze kindred cards like Biowaste Blob; Biogenic Ooze; and Aeve, Progenitor Ooze are showing up in nearly half of Umori decks, so our opponents will probably assume we're playing some sort of oozes / Slime Against Humanity deck when we sit down across from them. Which is when we hit them with the twist: we're playing with Umori's companion deckbuilding restriction, even though it's our commander.
Doing the Twist
That's a long-winded way to say that this week's deck is made entirely of instants. We've done a creatureless deck before with Duskana, the Rage Mother and a nearly all legends build of Nashi, Searcher in the Dark, but this week's brew might be our most challenging deckbuilding restriction yet. If we search Scryfall for instants in the Golgari color identity, we can see that we're starting with a pool of only 962 Commander-legal cards to choose from. While that seems like a lot, we probably don't need almost 40 ways to interact with creatures with flying in our deck. We'll leave building a deck like that for Jesse from Singleton Shmingleton to figure out.
Given we're starting with the unique restriction of using only instants in this week's deck, there are plenty of hurdles we'll have to overcome from how to draw cards, where we'll get blockers from, what instant-speed board wipes look like, and even how we'll win the game. But you'd be surprised by how effectively Benefactor's Draught, Moonlight Bargain, and Necrologia can fill our hand so that we can create tons of tokens with cards like Crash the Party, Curious Herd, and Waste Management. And don't worry, we'll be sure to keep up mana for some instant-speed surprises with Hellish Rebuke, Stunning Reversal, and Thrilling Encore too.
Ramping Up to Speed
The first hurdle we have to overcome with a deck as commander-centric as this week's build is getting ahead on mana. While Umori, the Collector only costs four mana initially, we probably don't want to simply cast Umori and pass the turn. That's why we're running instant-speed ramp spells like Harrow, Natural Connection, and Roiling Regrowth so we can get ahead on mana in the early game. We also have a handful of flexible spells like Archdruid's Charm, Deathsprout, and Rampaging Growth that we can use to keep ourselves alive and/or hit our land drops. One benefit of playing all instants is there are tons of modal cards like Archdruid's Charm that can help shore up our weaknesses and make the deck very flexible.
While we normally wouldn't consider 'ritual' spells that produce mana on a one time basis like Cabal Ritual and Dark Ritual to be a part of our ramp package, they do allow us to help get Umori out early or pay for more expensive spells like Hunting Pack and Harness Infinity later on. Given how limited the number of instant-speed spells that put a land directly into play are, these rituals made the cut so we can have more explosive starts to our games. Crop Rotation can also help us "ramp" by turning any land into Ancient Tomb, Temple of the False God, or whatever other land we happen to need.
Keeping Umori Alive
Umori reducing the costs of our spells is going to be key to this deck keeping pace with other "normally constructed" decks (I know, I know, what Plot Twist deck doesn't rely on its commander, I hear you!), so keeping Umori, the Collector alive is a secondary focus of what this week's deck is going to try to do. While we could consider effects like Fake Your Own Death or Not Dead After All, we'd prefer it if Umori didn't die at all. Those type of spells that put a creature back onto the battlefield don't work well with our token creatures which disappear upon hitting the graveyard either.
Instead, we're packing a suite of protection spells like Gaea's Gift, Overprotect, and Revitalizing Repast that will give Umori some combination of hexproof and indestructible until the end of turn. Normally, these sort of combat tricks are unplayable in Commander and barely passable in Limited, but being able to shave off their casting cost will certainly help. Stonewood Invocation is a card I've considered before, most recently in Plot Twist #24, which both protects Umori and potentially lets us get a kill with commander damage from time to time. If you wanted to cut these protection spells in favor of something like Lightning Greaves or Swiftfoot Boots, I wouldn't blame you, but on Plot Twist we commit to the bit so we're sticking with only instants.
Filling Our Hand
My first concern when I started building this week's decklist was: how are we going to draw enough cards? And boy, was I wrong. By the time I started trimming down cards, there were more than 40 cards in the 'Card Advantage' section. The average mana value of this week's decklist is just shy of 3.5, so Ad Nauseam is going to be real risky, but given we'll be able to save mana on every spell we cast, it was hard to pass up on such explosive card draw. Similarly, we're running Moonlight Bargain and Necrologia as ways to turn a handful of life into a full hand of cards. Blood Pact, Hostile Negotiations, and Rowan's Grim Search give us less cards, but they're cheaper to cast and help fill up our graveyard while we're at it. Which will be really important if we ever manage to cast Harness Infinity with a fully stocked graveyard. If we ever resolve Harness Infinity on an opponent's end step and exchange an empty hand for 10+ cards, we'll certainly be living the dream!
For what I believe is the first time in Plot Twist history, we're running a card from an Un- set in Pair o' Dice Lost. Normally, we don't run cards from Un- sets (particularly Unfinity since I find the whole "acorn symbol as a replacement for silver borders" thing really frustrating personally), but our options were limited for this week's deck and it's hard to pass up a card as powerful as Pair o' Dice Lost when we have less thank 1,000 cards to choose from. I'm curious to hear your personal stance on playing Un- cards in Commander, so let me know if you think we should add them to future Plot Twist decklists in the comments below.
Tokens Are Our Friends
Since Umori, the Collector is the only nonland permanent in our decklist this week, we're going to be leaning heavily on tokens to help us both stay alive and win the game. Arachnogenesis and Galadhrim Ambush are the gold standard here, both acting as a Fog-effect and creating tokens for us to block or counterattack with. Note that with both Arachnogenesis and Galadhrim Ambush, damage is prevented for non-Spiders and non-Elves respectively, so the tokens they generate can still deal combat damage and hopefully take down a few attacking creatures. In the late game, Waste Management seems like a really interesting way for us to make a bunch of 2/2 Rogues at instant speed while also exiling an opponent's graveyard. It might be too expensive or conditional, but the fact that the tokens come in untapped does mean we can create a bunch of surprise blockers. I imagine us casting a timely Waste Management against a reanimator deck going for a Raise the Past or Balthor the Defiled will be an all-time great blowout.
Empty the Pits, Scatter the Seeds, and Sprout Swarm create a more limited number of tokens for us, so we'll probably deploy them early to create some chump blockers or after a board wipe to start rebuilding. Speaking of board wipes, Fresh Meat, Rise of the Dread Marn, and Spoils of Blood are all amazing ways for us to recover after an opponent destroys all creatures. Keep in mind that tokens do technically die even though they don't stay in our graveyard, so if our tokens die to a Wrath of God, they would still count towards the number of creatures destroyed when we cast Fresh Meat or Spoils of Blood.
Crash the Party, Curious Herd, and Hunting Pack all require us to jump through a few extra hoops to create lots of creature tokens, but making a bunch of 4/4s will be one of the best ways for us to quickly close out a game. In particular Hunting Pack is a great way to end a turn where an opponent casts a bunch of spells, or turn our Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual into extra value later in the game. It seems like the key to these three spells is to hold off on casting them till we feel fairly certain we'll be able to untap with the tokens we've made still on the board.
Winning the Game
Okay, so we've cast a lot of spells on our opponents turns, taken a lot of game actions, and maybe even made a lot of tokens. Now it's time to win the game. We have three unusual pump spells in this week's deck to help turn our tokens into lethal threats. Echoing Courage gives target creature and all creatures with the same name +2/+2 until end of turn, which works perfectly with all the tokens created off of, say, Rise of the Dread Marn. The ruling around tokens is specifically addressed on the Gatherer page for Echoing Courage, but the TL;DR is: identical tokens made by the same card all have the same name.
Decree of Savagery is as expensive as something like Vitalizing Wind, but the fact that it adds +1/+1 counters so that our tokens are permanently swole makes it ideal for what we're doing this week. We're running Return of the Wildspeaker since it acts as both an Overrun-effect and card draw depending on what we need at the time, helping cover multiple roles in a pinch. The fact that all of these effects are instant-speed makes them perfect for the sort of dramatic ending to a game that we love on Plot Twist.
Some Suggestions if You Want to Cheat on the 'All Instants' Stipulation
Let's be honest, if we're not playing Umori, the Collector as a companion, there isn't technically a reason we can't play non-instants in this week's deck (except, of course, for the best reason of all: having the moral high ground). If you wanted to add in some other cards that synergize well with what we're trying to do this week, I wouldn't blame you. Professor Onyx and Witherbloom Apprentice each help drain the table out with each cast or copied instant, and Sedgemoor Witch would certainly help us make a lot more token blockers. Toshiro Umezawa is such an interesting design and card advantage engine that we may need to build a separate mono-black spellslinger deck around him in the future. If you wanted to add Toshiro into this week's deck, he'd be a solid addition to our gameplan by essentially granting the flashback ability to a spell any time an opponent's creature dies. Primal Amulet is a great way to further reduce the cost of our instants and then copies them for us once it flips. There are lots of interesting permanents you could add to the decklist, and this Scryfall search is only the beginning!
A Few Additional Twists for Good Measure
Oddly, this week's decklist probably started with the smallest available card pool, but there were SO MANY instants that nearly made the deck because limiting ourselves to a single card type requires us to get creative with what we need to play. Benefactor's Draught is an amazing way to save an opponent who's about to be knocked out of the game and draw ourselves a bunch of cards in the process. I can imagine it helping us claw back into a game where one opponent is simply running away with things. Astarion's Thirst can remove a huge threat and potentially make Umori a lethal attacker. Similarly, Ruinous Intrusion can remove an opponent's Blightsteel Colossus or Omniscience and pump up a blocker for us at the same time.
Stunning Reversal can save us from losing the game and draw a fresh hand of cards too, which seems perfect for a deck that would benefit from an unexpected second chance. For similar reasons, we're running Tangle and Terrifying Presence as Fog-effects that pack a little extra punch to help turn the tide in our favor. It's also worth calling out that we have three counterspells in Imp's Mischief, Warping Wail, and Withering Boon that our opponents will almost never expect. Playing counterspells in a non-blue deck, like we did in our colorless reanimator deck, always makes for a memorable game, even if they're rather niche in what they do.
Hellish Rebuke is another card that will set an opponent way back if we resolve it at the right time, and might be something we can use to dissuade an attack with politics alone rather than by casting it. Vona's Hunger is pretty close to an instant-speed board wipe in this deck. We shouldn't have an issue getting to 10 permanents between our lands and all the tokens we're making, and it'll be pretty backbreaking for our opponents every time we resolve it while we have the city's blessing. Last but not least: I've been looking for the right deck for both Shriveling Rot and Sudden Spoiling for a LONG time, and this week's deck seems perfect. Both of them are such a blowout when you time them right, and once your opponent's know you have them in your deck, they tend to automatically expect you have one or the other whenever you leave mana up.
Here's the full decklist for you to peruse:
Roll the Credits
I hope you enjoyed reading the latest edition of Plot Twist featuring Umori, the Collector. 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.
